[MOD] Fewer PPC rounds 13/12/2006

[arcana75]

When big battles with lots of big ships happen, could you say that all those PPC rounds contribute to a significant amount of load on the PC?

I checked the T files and those PPC rounds last almost 30 seconds in space. Based on the rate of fire and lifespan, sometimes there's at least 1000 PPC rounds in space at one time.

I'm pretty sure that contributes a heck of a lot to the in-sector performance. I modded the TBullets and TLaser files to reduce the rates of fire, but correspondingly increased the damage, energy use and energy amounts of the PPCs.

Make your own assessments for balance. Here are the originals for PPCs:

Code: Select all

APPC
Hull damage: 2835
Shield damage: 9712
Energy used: 240
Rate of fire: 89/min
Energy: 3000

BPPC
Hull damage: 4410
Shield damage: 16187
Energy used: 280
Rate of fire: 76/min
Energy: 3500

GPPC
Hull damage: 5670
Shield damage: 32375
Energy used: 288
Rate of fire: 89/min
Energy: 4000

My changes are as follows:

Code: Select all

APPC
Hull damage: 4192
Shield damage: 14296
Energy used: 353
Rate of fire: 60/min
Energy: 4400

BPPC
Hull damage: 5587
Shield damage: 20509
Energy used: 380
Rate of fire: 60/min
Energy: 5000

GPPC
Hull damage: 8350
Shield damage: 47656
Energy used: 424
Rate of fire: 60/min
Energy: 6000

If you're happy with the changes and would like some performance boost in big fights (eg XI missions) and do believe PPCs impact performance, but are willing to run the risk of weird OOS behaviour (mentioned below), then feel free to download this spk:

http://sites.google.com/site/arcana75/x3-mods-scripts

Comments and feedback are welcome!

[BlackRazor]

When big battles with lots of big ships happen, could you say that all those PPC rounds contribute to a significant amount of load on the PC?

I checked the T files and those PPC rounds last almost 30 seconds in space. Based on the rate of fire and lifespan, sometimes there's at least 1000 PPC rounds in space at one time.

I'm pretty sure that contributes a heck of a lot to the in-sector performance. I modded the TBullets and TLaser files to reduce the rates of fire, but correspondingly increased the damage, energy use and energy amounts of the PPCs.

Any comments?

AFAIK that's what the XTended mod crew did and they had to drop it in 0.7 (which is still in the works BTW) because it completely screwed OOS calculations.

[fud]

You could speed them up, and shorten the life span of them. It can take away from their traits tho, doing that.

Sit with a calculator, and figure out damage/sec, and adjust it. If you shorten the lifespan, they'll fade out quicker. But to accomplish the same range, they'll need to have a faster velocity. This is where the balance issue is. If they're faster, they're now more of a danger to smaller ships. While this doesn't bother me personally, some might not like it.

You could reduce the damage caused by each "bullet" by the factor of how much you increased the speed.

In essense:

You increase the speed by 50%, decrease the damage by 50%. You could further balance that out by changing the rate of fire in TLasers.



In my past meddlings, I had laser towers that fired GPPCs, at over 5x the normal rate, with faster bullets, but shorter range. The result was that 4 LTs could wipe out a station with stray bullets in a matter of 4-5 seconds.

It was a little *too* much.


Just fiddle with the files, you can prolly find something to help performance.

[arcana75]

AFAIK that's what the XTended mod crew did and they had to drop it in 0.7 (which is still in the works BTW) because it completely screwed OOS calculations.

How so? It made the PPCs weaker? Sorry, I didn't follow the XTended mod developments...

[Mad Hatter]

It completely unbalanced the OOS combat. Because of the hard coded calculations, ships that were not so tough in sector became nearly invincible OOS. I think that Xenon raiding parties were able to trash entire fleets in seconds.

[arcana75]

It completely unbalanced the OOS combat. Because of the hard coded calculations, ships that were not so tough in sector became nearly invincible OOS. I think that Xenon raiding parties were able to trash entire fleets in seconds.

By fixing the fire rate to 60 shots per second, I had a factor (or divisor dependng on ur view) to use on the damage, energy use and energy store. I'm not sure why but APPC and GPPC had the same RoF (89) but the BPPC had 76.

However I had to keep the bullet speeds to a theoretical maximum else they'd be too fast and deadly. I capped it to slightly slower than BHEPT, and kept their original ranges and durations. Altho it seemed to work (happened to fight a Dragon with PPCs), I'm not entirely sure what happens when durationXspeed != range... unless it's recalculated which I doubt.

There's no way to balance and at the same time maintain equal sum; something's gotta give. I chose range and duration.

Could I ask what the Xtended mod did to make OOS combat imbalanced? What values did they change?

[Mad Hatter]

I think that they raised the damage and lowered the rate of fire to compensate. This kept damage over time the same, but reduced the number of bullets in the air, which raised fps.

Ask over at the XTM forums and I'm sure someone can tell you what they did.

[frymaster]

i believe a smaller though still noticable performance gain can be had from editing the PPC effects to something less... glowy

[Red Spot]

you can change weapons and get an even better relation between IS and OOS combat ... however dont think its just weapons ....

(I dont really see how people get the balance messed up as OOS-values you can see and basicly base weapons so they are in line IS with how they have OOS-values ... I did it in X2 and in time I'll do it again with X3....)



G

[minikin]

Reducing PPC rate of fire dramatically increases FPS.

In my game I reduced PPCs to firing 30 shots per minute while still maintaining the same amount of damage a torrent of PPC bolts would inflict in that same 60 seconds. With a few tweaks to other things here and there, lag in big battles is virtually non-existent now.

[Syklon]

I think that they raised the damage and lowered the rate of fire to compensate. This kept damage over time the same, but reduced the number of bullets in the air, which raised fps.

Ask over at the XTM forums and I'm sure someone can tell you what they did.

ya thats what we did, unfortunatly it caused the occasional OOS hiccup where a couple pirate fighters would take out an m2 or something equally as bad

we're still testing to see what we can do for .7 to improve performance

[arcana75]

Hmmm it's possible that rate of fire and bullet speed are taken into account when fighting OOS, maybe to account for target agility or ship size.

To compensate for less rate of fire, I increased bullet speed as well as the requisite damage/energy.

[arcana75]

Anyway I'm gonna put up the mod for download; caveat emptor I suppose. I've been using it and IS combat seems great.

[al_main]

The theory was:

Wth the half fire rate / double damage (ie same damage over time) it seemed that OOS the calculations could get iffy. Presumably because getting the first shot in was now far more advantageous. The result was that Xenon Q's (M7 class) against a destroyer would usually get the first shot in due to their superior speed and hence the extra damage. So basically they would usually win against a superior opponent.

Basically a fast ship Dragon/Q/etc would appear to get first shot against a slower but superior ship and with more damage on the PPC round would end up winning OOS. OOS the ROF didnt seem to effect it.

[arcana75]

The theory was:

Wth the half fire rate / double damage (ie same damage over time) it seemed that OOS the calculations could get iffy. Presumably because getting the first shot in was now far more advantageous. The result was that Xenon Q's (M7 class) against a destroyer would usually get the first shot in due to their superior speed and hence the extra damage. So basically they would usually win against a superior opponent.

Basically a fast ship Dragon/Q/etc would appear to get first shot against a slower but superior ship and with more damage on the PPC round would end up winning OOS. OOS the ROF didnt seem to effect it.

Which is interesting in itself, since in an IS battle, a faster ship would get the upper hand against a slower ship, especially if we're talking about an M7 vs an M2.

[Arleonenis]

increasing bullet speed and decreasing life time of it should increase performance too and in same time dont touch oos combat calculation.

Simple, bullet go twice as fast and last half as long = half bullet in same battle, especially those that miss its target and fly away and away... same rof same dps same dmg per bullet... and ofcorse higher difficulty;)))


It will be more difficult to survive encounter with destroyer while you fly a heavy fighter as it should imho... if fighter was so much superior than destroyer no one will use destroyers, easier to get 12 fighters;)


It will also help with destroyer to destroyer battle atm its far to easy to use strafe drive and dodge lots of hits in capital ship especially when npc dont do it... it will even things out a little still strafing will help just not that much and it will be better to engage at higher ranges than point blank range when shots just must hit...



But imho to made it really interesting every bullet speed should get up by 100% and missles 50% )) Should be interesting...

[MutantDwarf]

I have to wonder if it's at all possible to change the PPC weapons to use effects similar to the Lasertower weapon - ie, beam cannons rather than the bullets that all normal guns use. I also wonder if that would change the frame rate any.

Another modification could be to increase the damage PPCs do but reduce the number of them possible per turret to only one or two. I'm not sure if you can make it so a turret can only hold two of one type of gun but six other weapons or not.

[arcana75]

U can definitely make the PPCs into lasers easily, just mirror the values of the lasertower and use the same bullet. Then tweak them to be slightly more powerful.

My mod doesn't make PPCs 2x dmg and 2x slower tho... I made the fire rate 60/min so almost everything else was tweaked to reflect the slower rate, ie slightly higher damage and speed.

PPC rounds are still avoidable. Just don't get hit.

[ORIOLE]

Has anybody tried this mod for a long period of time? Are you happy with the results (increase in FPS, no unrealistic battles, etc...)?

I would like to use some settings where one can't easily dodge attacks from M1s and M2s using your strafe drive. It makes it a bit too easy.

[arcana75]

I've found large cap ship battles slightly more bearable with my mod in place. Since they appear less often and disappear quicker, there's less to render.