G613's Capital Ship/Capital Weapon Rebalance [RELEASE 1.0]

[Galaxy613]

If you don't want to read all the Description, then at least read this part: "...capital ship battles are more challanging and anti-fighter weapons WORK now!"

Here is the a formated readme(aka "Changes.txt"):

Capital ship Rebalance 1.0 Release

DESCRIPTION
This mod was spured on by TerrorTrooper's post about how ineffective anit-fighter capital ship weapons were, and with muiltble other posts about it I thought I'll do something about it because it is WELL in my power. TerrorTrooper has been working with me on this mod sense the 22th of Nov, and has been a GREAT tester, so great I'll use parts of his final report in this description!

The major things I've changed are the Flak and PBE weapon types, before they had HORRID range and fighters would get in the first shots and thus QUICKLY get the upper hand. Which is plain wrong to anyone who has a sense of capital ship battles. Some other things I changed were the recharge rate of all the capital ships, which I did INSTEAD of changing the power of the laser generator, and according to TerrorTrooper it was a "Massive improvement" when he did tests with GPPCs.

Another change I did was change the speed and refire rate of the PPCs, now they fire less per minute, but move faster. So now they seem more like heavy weapons and also have a greater chance at hitting out capital ships. They are still crap at hitting at fighters, but thats how it suppost to be! Taken from the final report:

--From TerrorTrooper:
PPC's :- Tested for balancing.

Tests done in :- Ray, Full Load of 40 X GAMMA PPC's, 9 x 1 GJ Shields.

Test to make sure PPC's still primarily Cap Ship Weapon :-

1 x L :- They could barely hit it....were useless against a fast maneuverable target, as i expected...

1 x K :- ...Had a good angle on it, with 3 lots of turrent firing, had about 30 to 35 Seconds sustained fire, A Massive improvement over the standard 10 or so seconds. The Increased speed made them adequately more accurate too with about 80% of my shots hitting the K rather than the previous 60% or so.

1 x Pirate Ray :- Tested in a fair fight.
Made combat Interestingly Difficult, with both ships maintaining heavy & Accurate fire for a good 30 to 40 seconds, Enemy PPC Fire was slightly harder to avoid as expected. Some clever (or should i say lucky) Positioning on the AI's Part allowed it to beat me, I quite liked the challenge.. as strafing no longer guarantees you victory.
--End

He also tested the TL's just to make sure the final report was very conclusive, and helpfull. Apparently the Orca is the TL of choice if you are going to use a ship as a use to hold your capped ships, why? It can field 8 Alpha Flaks, and thus can hold it's own vs. 2, prehaps 3, Xenon L's which are agruebly the most powerful M3 in the game. In another part of his test he found the Mammoth, when fielded with 8 Alpha PBEs, can hold it's own vs. 1 MAYBE 2 Xenon Ls and will most likely NOT have a problem when a Pirate Buster or two come along.

I'll LOVE to add more to this, but this is sounding more like an essay then a description, so in conclusion, capital ship battles are more challanging and anti-fighter weapons WORK now!

INSTALLING
..is pretty darn simple. Just extract the cat and dat file to your \mods\ directory in your X3 Reunion directory, then on start-up select this as the mod. I am 90% sure that you will NOT have to restart your game for this mod to take effect.

CHANGELOG
-RANGES:
A-PBE - 1.7km
B-PBE - 2.0km

A-FLAK - 1.6km
B-FLAK - 1.8km

Release 1.0:
-Nothing but very small tweaks
-Random Change: I change the "Midnight Blue" and "Burning Horizon" sector types to have a greater fog range, not like most people will know what they are...

Alpha 0.2:
-Changed PPC's refire rate to be slower, but PPCs do more damage and are a bit faster.
-Beta PBE has had it's damage and refire rate tweaked so it's more effective then the Alpha PBE

Alpha 0.1:
-Changed all the capital ship's laser recharge from sub standard 0.14~ to 0.24~ or so.
-Flaks now use less energy
-Both Flaks and PBEs fire faster and thus farther e.g.:
Flaks can fire around 3.5km(UPDATE: Because of a error, these are not correct. Check up above)
APBEs can fire to 3.8km(UPDATE: Because of a error, these are not correct. Check up above)
BPBEs can fire to around 4.6km(UPDATE: Because of a error, these are not correct. Check up above)

Please report any bugs or requests to galaxy613(AT)verizon.net
-Galaxy613

DOWNLOADS:
http://subsoap.com/ck/CapitalRebalance.R1.0.zip (21kb)
^Standard Mod
http://subsoap.com/ck/CapitalRebalanceC.R1.0.zip (21kb) NEW!
^Cockpit Mod, this version of the mod has cockpits for M1, M2, and TL classes.

Thanks to TerrorTrooper for giving me inital ideas and doing awesome testing and reports! Real joy to work with!

[RaGodofTehSun]

looking forward to the flak rebalance...they are useless as is

[Lazerath]

I got an idea... You've replied to it in another thread however if you could incorporate it into this mod I'd be super duper happy!!!

Truelight Seeker:

Make it purchaseable as a Heavy Corvette.

Change its stats so it has
5 x 125 MJ shields
5200 MW generator
1 Top turret
1 Bottom turret
1 Left turret
1 Right turret

If you can't add the turrets thats fine.. but if you could add the rest to your mod I think it would be even more kick ass.

This is a personal request I am begging hehehe

What do ya think, is it doable???

[BlackRain]

I actually already have been playing with the game variables myself and have been making what I guess you could call a mod, I am no modder and this is my first attempt at doing so but these are the things I have already done.

Increased speed of all ships- M2 now goes anywhere from 150-165 or so, M1 goes anywhere from 175-200 somewhere around there. Also increased the turn rates for M1, M2 and M6 ships.
Made the flak turret a lot more powerful with less energy use, now no fighters stand a chance against a capital ship.
Increased the speed and decreased energy consumption of most of the weapons
I still need to increase speed of missiles
Increased spawn rate of pirates and general amount of pirates in Universe, also increased their jump range

I am not sure what else I did haha, I havent tested it much yet and like I said I am no modder so I am just trying things out for the first time, I am sure stuff needs to be balanced. It is really just for my own use but I wouldnt mind sharing if anyone wants to try it out.


Also I am curious, what does the MW generator control? Like what does it do?

[cwaHardy]

I have been messing around with M2 Destroyers today. I found that by decreasing the PPC's rounds per minute, yet drastically increasing the speed the Titan became a nicely balanced Destroyer.

Default Titan got whooped with in sector combat from 5 Pirate Nova Raiders. All spawned by me in an empty sector.

After my changes 5 novas lasted a short time and it took 15 to 20 novas to take out the Titan, anything less gave it a fight but where eventually owned

My suggestion for your mod is to make the PPC weapons have much faster projectiles yet a much slower refire rate.

I think i had the GPPC at 20-25 rounds per minute and a 1000mps projectile. (speed may be a little fast tho )

I also altered the turret speeds for PPC weapons, making them faster on the turn, as half the problem of M1/2's is dam slow turrets.

[BlackRain]

Yeah but you gotta understand that the PPC is not supposed to be for destroying fighters, the PPC is for destroying capital ships and stations so it doesnt need to be fast, the energy consumption just needs to be less. What needed to be changed was the Flak cannon to have a greater range to be more effective against Fighters, which is what I did. Now, a titan can take out 10 attacking novas in a minute or whatever, relatively quickly.

[cwaHardy]

I understand what your saying and agree, its just that in this X3 world all AI Cap ships are equipped with PPCs, just modding for certain layouts of weapons will give the advantage to the Player not AI which will unbalance the game imo as AI cap ships need to be as effective and balanced as player controlled ones.

[unfunfofmpc]

Why not change the default weapons layout of titans so they are equipped with a range of weapons? Titans are already done this way, to an extent... But I am talking about a sensible layout:

Set of weapons for dealing with large ships
Set of weapons for dealing with corvette class ships.
Set of weapons for dealing with fighters.

Depending on the destroyer and race, the number of these weapons (and number of shields) will differ, but every destroyer will have at least some of each.

I think increasing the powerplants of larger ships is a very good idea. Turreted ships use energy incredibly fast. That was why, in X2, turrets used no energy. I do not think they should use *no energy*, but I think the regen rate should be equal-or nearly equal to the rate that the turrets take energy away, so you only have to worry about when to use your main weapons.

NOTE: I am aware that some things might be hardcoded, so perhaps this is a job for a patch. Maybe EGOSOFT considered these problems in patch 1.3.

[creidiki]

M6/M2/M1 could *really* do with a speed boost.

Certainly M6s... or is this outside the scope of your mod?

[unfunfofmpc]

I can easily create a mathematically balanced mod (im good with that crap ), but I am waiting for a bit more updated version of x3E, as the current one has some miscalculations for speed and such. With a new version, and a few hours to learn the jist of modding x3, ill go ahead and give something nice .

[RaGodofTehSun]

I think the True Light will make a good H Corvet

[shasla5]

Giving m6's more turrets and allowing them to mount flak would be nice.

[BlackRain]

Well, I don't know if Galaxy has increased the speed of any ships, but I increased the speed of M1's and M2's, as well as every other ship, it really is not difficult to do. You can pretty much change most of the things. The Titan can use a pretty good variety of weapons already, Flak and mass drivers can easily handle fighters, this is of course if you increase the range of flak cannons. The PPC will handle anything heavier, I am pretty sure the Titan can use a few other type of guns too. You can change any ship to have whatever weapons, missiles, or even extra turrents and guns. CWA if you change the range/rate of fire or energy consumption of a weapon it does so for every weapon of that type in the game so the AI controlled ships should be just as effective. When you are fighting in a M1 or M2 your not really controlling the turrets anyway, most likely the ai is controlling your turrets.

[Galaxy613]

Wow, twas not expecting THIS much response!

M6/M2/M1 could *really* do with a speed boost.

Certainly M6s... or is this outside the scope of your mod?

Certienly inside the scope of my mod. Though I may only bump up the speed a little because I think the current speed is quite fitting. I think Egosoft did a grand job at rebalancing the speed of the ships.

Why not change the default weapons layout of titans so they are equipped with a range of weapons? Titans are already done this way, to an extent... But I am talking about a sensible layout:

Set of weapons for dealing with large ships
Set of weapons for dealing with corvette class ships.
Set of weapons for dealing with fighters.
...[lots of other neat ideas and stuffs]

I would love that, but what I really want to do is to break the M2's and M1's habbit of defaulting to all PPCs, PPCs should stay Anti-Capital, while Flaks and PBEs should stay Anti-Fighter, if I could get the cap ships to start out with Flaks that'll be grand...

I think the True Light will make a good H Corvet

True it would, but all other other races lack such a ship until we can make our own custom ships (which Doubleshadow is working on tools to help us do so). Until then I will not make the True Light a HM6.

TerrorTrooper is going to do more in-depth Capital Ship testing and going to give me another report sometime today. Later on I'll work on the mod and hopefully get the Beta out today also.

[BlackRain]

Hey Galaxy, I have already been doing some stuff myself so if you need any help I wouldnt mind helping out. I do think that increasing all the ships speeds is a lot more interesting though. I have light fighters around 700km/s, medium fighters around 550 or so and heavy fighters around 400. M1's around 200, M2's around 150, M6's around 250, TL's around 200 and all Ts's around 120-140 or so, Tp's i think are around 200.

[Red Spot]

guys may I ask ..

what logic is behind the fact you're making M1s faster than M2s ..??


cause thats basicly the same as making an M4 faster than an M5 .. (my 2 cents)


G

[Galaxy613]

...I have light fighters around 700km/s, medium fighters around 550 or so and heavy fighters around 400. M1's around 200, M2's around 150, M6's around 250, TL's around 200 and all Ts's around 120-140 or so, Tp's i think are around 200.

The only problem I have with that speed redid is... that it suffers from what X2 had. Capital ships could out run TS's, and thus if you are flying around in your M2 you will most likely sqwash a few TS's while you move around. Other then I think it's pretty good, but I doubt I will ever have M2's and M1's going faster then 150m/s

[Lazerath]

True it would, but all other other races lack such a ship until we can make our own custom ships (which Doubleshadow is working on tools to help us do so). Until then I will not make the True Light a HM6.

I don't care that they don't have one d00d. I just want it for me.. LoL.

How about this.

You could make it purchasable from the Goner Temple (by Anyone).

[BlackRain]

Red spot, I dont think logic is really required heh, you can do whatever you want really, but to answer your question, the M1's already go faster then M2's in the game so I am sticking with whats there. As far as further thought, I suppose you could say it is because the M2's have greater weapon/shield capacity, but then again it could always be changed so that M2's go faster then M1's. Galaxy, I am not sure whether or not capital ships should out run Ts's maybe they shouldnt, that can easily be changed by increasing the speed of Ts's to maybe around 190-210 ish or so, lower the M1 to maybe 180, and have the M2 still around 150. What I like is the fact that while fighters may be so much faster then an M2, at least the M2 can make it to a battle in a good amount of time to have an impact because while the fighters might be fast, they arent necessarily going to kill each other quickly. Of course once the destroyer gets there, the flak cannons will make quick work of most fighters.

[Galaxy613]

I will not change speeds of the cap ships and etc. until Doubleshadow corrects his speed formula in his X3E so I can correctly change them. On another matter...

I'm going to allow ONE more person to Alpha test this, if you will be on and will be able to play test this mod for about 24 hours from now then please PM me. But only PM me if you can play X3 with my mod, test it, and give me a 'report' on how you think it's working and if I should tweak anything. Just remember that you will be doing the testing, I'm doing minimal of any testing.