[AP]Need some Ideas: Making Fighters survive OOS

[Cronos988]

Dear Scripting and Modding Community,

I am currently testing some new weapon designs, among which is an anti-Capital weapon that is designed to be used by small ships against capitals. It is intended as a carrier-based fighter that allows carriers to project power against any type of foe (as the current M8 ships aren't really designed to be carrier based).

It works fine IS, but as could be expected, does not work well OOS.
The Bullets are slow enough so that bombers are reliably killed by interceptors (IS and OOS), but unlike IS, OOS bombers are immediately killed by larger ships.

Now my large ships use only anti-capital weapons, so IS, Bomber losses are rare and considering the power of these small ships, some losses need to occur to balance them. However, OOS there is no damage to the capital whatsoever. The Bombers need to be weak in Hull and shielding to make their damage output both balanced and believable. IS a wing of 15 Bombers can seriously endanger an M2, OOS they are dead in 2 seconds.

I already tried halving anti-capital bullet speed, but not only does this adversly affect the IS Capital battles, it does not change the OOS behaviour at all. Bombers are relatively slow and sluggish, naturally, so I guess the OOS code does not think they can evade. But they can and do evade IS.

I am afraid there is really nothing I can do about it and bombers like that will be restricted to IS combat, but maybe one of you has some ideas? How do M8s fare in Vanilla (or XRM) OOS combat? Any experience on how the relation between bullet speed and ship evasion works?

Thanks in advance for any input!

[apricotslice]

Are you tweaking the OOS bullet values ?

Tbullets in AP has an extra set of values for OOS hitting.

It would seem that your current OOS settings are not nearly high enough. If you look at some of the vanilla bullets, the OOS values are significantly higher.

[Cronos988]

I do know about the OOS Bullets. I even tried cheating a bit here, but Apparently IS laser switching is based on OOS damage values, as the behaviour suddenly changed when I used completely different values.

Which bullet's damage should I increase? The bomber's damage?

The damage output of the bombers is a secondary Problem because as of now, they all just die immediately (not very surprisingly, as getting hit by the capital-grade weapons is supposed to be instakill). The Problem is that IS, a single Bomber get's hit by a single projectile every few seconds, while OOS 6 Bombers are hit with a full volley every turn.

[apricotslice]

Have you tried the OOS rebalance that someone did ? (Forget who, Gazz ?). A lot of people like that. Might make a difference.

[Cronos988]

Have you tried the OOS rebalance that someone did ? (Forget who, Gazz ?). A lot of people like that. Might make a difference.

Not really applicable to AP. Though I might take a look at what gazz did and see if I can create a script especially for the bombers.

[Killjaeden]

If you create a script perhaps it might be more applicable to change bomber attack behaviour instead. Keeping distance to their target instead of headbutting it should help alot. The AP OOS combat is a refined version of Gazz's OOS rebalance as far as i understood, i don't think it would help to use the old version.

[DrBullwinkle]

The Bombers need to be weak in Hull and shielding

This is the heart of the problem for your OOS behavior. It would be nice if hull and shields had OOS settings, like bullet damage, but that feature does not exist.

Fighters can survive in OOS battles against capital ships if their shields are strong enough and if they are more maneuverable than the capital ship weapons.

Also, the bombers should be faster than the targets. The faster ship fires first.

Finally, the OOS damage should be high for the bombers, so that their "first strike" does some actual damage to the capital ship.

Why do your bombers switch lasers? Perhaps you could limit one turret to the special bomber weapon, and use other turrets for anti-fighter defense? That would eliminate the problem with weapon switching.

It is very difficult to make a "fair fight" OOS. It is much easier to create a combination that always wins or always loses. To find a good balance is very challenging.
.

[Cronos988]

This is the heart of the problem for your OOS behavior. It would be nice if hull and shields had OOS settings, like bullet damage, but that feature does not exist.

Fighters can survive in OOS battles against capital ships if their shields are strong enough and if they are more maneuverable than the capital ship weapons.

Also, the bombers should be faster than the targets. The faster ship fires first.

Finally, the OOS damage should be high for the bombers, so that their "first strike" does some actual damage to the capital ship.

Why do your bombers switch lasers? Perhaps you could limit one turret to the special bomber weapon, and use other turrets for anti-fighter defense? That would eliminate the problem with weapon switching.

It is very difficult to make a "fair fight" OOS. It is much easier to create a combination that always wins or always loses. To find a good balance is very challenging.
.

The Bombers do not switch lasers, the Capital ship does.

The way the bombers are set up, they basically circle the target ship being very hard to target and shoot down while doing consistent damage. They do not pack nearly as much of a punch as an M8, but they can and will wear down a destroyer.

Unfortunately that behaviour is apparently completely incompatible to OOS combat.

I am afraid that making the Bombers too nimble will result in too high damage vs. interceptors.

[DrBullwinkle]

The Bombers do not switch lasers, the Capital ship does.

OK, so how about experimenting with increasing OOS damage and shielding for the bombers? Ships do not switch lasers OOS, so I don't understand why you mentioned switching as a problem?

It's not going to be easy to achieve a perfect balance, but you might be able to get something that is "good enough" for your purposes.