[MOD] Missiles Rebalance Mod v1.2, Updated 25/9/2010 [Lost File Appeal]

[imperium3]

Missile Rebalance Mod

The basic aim of this mod is exactly what it says on the tin! To rebalance all missiles in TC by significantly improving the missiles that aren't worth using at the moment *cough* dumbfire *cough*

Features

-Most missiles' speed increased so they are more like missiles than bombs (and the anti-fighter missiles can actually CATCH most fighters)

-Missile cargo space requirements rebalanced according to the sze of the warhead, whether it is a swarm or not etc. So you won't see ridiculously small Hammerheads, etc. Apart from the smallest, missiles now take up more space than they used to.

-Dumbfire missiles improved and diversified. Firefly is lightning-fast and powerful enough to one-shot an M4. Firelance is slow but nearly as lethal as a Hammerhead (without the blast radius). Tornado is not much changed.

-Previously wimpy Kha'ak missiles now much more scary. All are now swarms. Thorn has been upgraded to an anti-cap torpedo, do not get on the wrong side of these bad boys without some missile defence.

-Cyclone missile now upgraded to a poor man's Flail, with the same retargeting ability but less damaging.

-Aurora now a high-speed "MARS-cracking" missile, but due to low yield and acceleration is best used in numbers at a fair distance.

-Windstalker now a "super-missile" for dealing with M3s and M6s mainly. It is fast and powerful enough to cause serious damage but remains unbuyable (you can sell them for a fair bit though!) And yes, both this and the Aurora have lost the crappy synapticness.

-A few inaccurate descriptions corrected.

-Many other minor changes: take a look at the changelog for full details.

Installation


Version 1.2 is the most up-to-date version available. You can download it from here. (all previous versions are also available at the same place). Rename the .cat and .dat files to one more than the highest numbered file in your TC root directory. So if the highest number is 09 then rename the cat and dat to 10. Then move them across. The script should go into the scripts folder of your TC root directory.

For updating, simply delete the .cat/.dat files from the previous version (MAKE SURE YOU ARE DELETING ONLY THOSE FILES as deleting .cat/.dat files belonging to other mods/ES patches could have interesting effects on your game) and then install the new version. If unsure, you can install the new version without deleting the old one, but this can lead to a cluttered game directory.

This mod should be fully compatible with any mods/scripts that do not edit the Tmissiles file.

Note on updating TC to 2.5: Since the new update did not edit the TMissiles, this makes life easy. Just make sure that you do not have any folders called 09 in your TC root folder (they will be overwritten, as the new update takes over 09). Easiest way to get around this is to ad 1 to the number of all your cat/dat files that are currently 09 or larger. Be aware that some scripts may stop working with 2.5, but mods *should* be ok if they are listed after the 09 that is the official update.

Resources used/edited
Tmissiles file (of course)
Text file 3500-L044

Here is a spreadsheet detailing all missiles under MRM. It's also used by me when balancing! And here is the complete changelog in one document. Both of these files were made in Office 2007 so you may need that to access them.

Note: I now consider this mod to be in a finished state. While there may be a few minor issues still out there (and I will keep an eye on this thread and make further changes when necessary), major changes are unlikely unless Egosoft make large changes to the missiles themselves in a future patch. Therefore you can use the mod and know that (nearly) every missile is useful for something.

Though on that note, if anyone can think of a way to make the synaptic detonators useful, I'd appreciate it. With the obvious option - very large blast radii - that I've gone for in the mod so far they're still pretty weedy and I don't actually want to remove the manual trigger flag from them because it's part of what makes them distinctive (and ATM useless ).

Changelog

v1.1
-Tornado damage reduced back to a more acceptable level (51.2k per warhead, 500k total), speed increased to 360. Now only takes up 8 cargo space.

v1.0
-Many missiles' speed increased, as a guide medium missiles now around 250 m/s, heavy missiles 300m/s but much less manoeuvrable.
-Hammer volume reduced to 10, Shadow to 14

v0.3.1
-Firefly price increased to approx 900 to reflect increased damage.
-Cyclone price reduced to approx 6700, damage per warhead increased to 4k [1].
-Firelance price doubled as it is now significantly heavier than vanilla.

v0.3
Thorn range increased to 48km, as is a torpedo.
-Area missiles (Hurricane, Aurora, Windstalker) AoE reduced (still much larger than vanilla), damage increased.
-Remote Guided Warhead manoeuverability vastly increased, speed upped to 170m/s.
-Banshee missile range increased to 30km and speed to 200m/s as was (imo) absurdly slow and short-ranged.
-Tomahawk and Phantom missiles now take up 8 and 7 cargo space respectively. After a bit of numbercrunching it seemed bizarre that in vanilla a tiny M8 can carry twice as much death as a huge M7M. M8 is still capable of inflicting massive punishment though.
-Cyclone missile now has same retargeting ability as Flail. Damage per warhead reduced to 3k, speed increased to 260k.

v0.2

-All Kha'ak missiles are now swarms. Total warhead damage is the same as it was before.
-Cyclone now a swarm, still WIP though.
-Firelance missile now takes up 10 cargo space rather than 7. Also moved up to light subtype, so cannot be used by M5s/TSs.
-Wraith missile blast radius significantly reduced, maneuverability increased. This missile should now be fully effective... and lethal
-Descriptions for various missiles changed. Bizarre use of grammar in Silkworm's description corrected. Hornet's descr now not so OTT. Inaccuracies in Tornado and Typhoon descr corrected. Beluga, Hammerhead and Firelance descriptions expanded.

v0.1

-Cargo sizes of Kha'ak missiles now rearranged so that Sting is used by small fighters, Needle by large fighters and Thorn by Kha'ak capitals. The Thorn has had a significant upgrade: do not just point and laugh the next time one is fired!
-Firefly speed increased to 900m/s, damage to 35k. This will instakill an M4 if you can hit it, but mostly effective against larger fighters and maybe corvettes if you are desperate.
-Hurricane now an AoE missile with significantly increased blast radius. Damage reduced to 3.5k. Use vs M5s.
-Aurora blast radius also significantly increased to be same as hammerhead, Windstalker even more. (the windstalker is now devastating against smaller fighters... if used carefully)
-Firelance damage increased to 940k, speed reduced to 110m/s. Now requires L size cargo bay.
-Tornado damage per warhead increased to 125k, speed reduced to 165.2m/s.
-Wraith missile is no longer a heatseeker as I believe there are some issues there.
-Shadow missile damage per warhead reduced to 188k (1500 total). Still dangerous but not totally silly.
-Most missiles' cargo size and volume completely overhauled. Now, in general, higher yield missiles take up more space and require a larger cargo bay. Swarms are a touch larger than other missiles with a similar yield, Terran missiles (inc. hammerhead and beluga) a touch smaller.

Recommended

Missile Safety by Gazz. Essential for trouble-free homicide!

Feel free to add comments/requests/ridicule! This is my first mod so please don't be too hard on me

This mod was inspired by Someone Else's Ship Rebalance Mod.

[DannyDSC]

I think your mod and rebalance can use both ( I hope )

it's a good project

[aka1nas]

Any interest in tweaking the combat scripts to use missiles more intelligently as well? Fixing the unbalanced missiles will help, but the AI is still pretty ineffective with the way it uses missiles (i.e. waits to fire missiles until near weapon range, fires blast radius missiles at unsafe times, waits too long between firing missiles). I think there are also some script commands that can affect the missile's rotation and make it more evasive.

Even with the broken vanilla missile defense, NPCs have a hard time actually getting a missile through a missile defense turrets unless they massively overwhelm it. With properly working missile defense like Gazz's missile def mk2, not to mention MARS turrets and goblins, normal missiles fired by non-M7M NPCs will pretty much never get through.

[someone else]

cool one Imperium3! a "missile rebalance" is surely needed, and modifying Tmissiles is easy enough to begin with for your first mod.
(maybe then you can go doing a Weapon Rebalance Mod ... I lack the will to work on that)

some ideas (most need testing):

-the main problem of the "dumbfire" missiles is that they fly out from random positions, rendering them unaimable against fighters.
so, i thought of making them very very fast but guided, in theory they should "aim" correctly when are fired at the target but are so fast that cannot make any in-flight corrections. needs a couple tests though.

-another good thing to do is making the high yeld missiles use 10 or more cargo bay and rise the ware class to something reasonable... maybe M for the corvette-busting ones and L for the Firestorms and similar. (the hammerhead that uses 1 of S cargo but is the OMG WTF bigger missile of the game is a good example)

-a small warning.... a Swarm missile should NOT be a Heat-seeker... that makes all the warheads move to a single trajectory, making them easy to kill in a single shot.

-Synaptic detonator missiles should have a big blast radius imho...

-Player-guided missile's (Remote guided warhead) maneouverabilty and speed should be very high imho... they are "guided" because they need to be more precise than a random Firestorm. And in this way they are funnier too.

- DO SOMETHING TO MAKE THE BANSHEE A LESS-UBIQUITOUS MISSILE.

hope you will enjoy modding...

[JrK]

My idea for dumbfire missiles:
Make them 'divebomber' missiles. Hefty damage (200k-500k or even 1000k if balance requires it), unguided, but very useful against large badly manouverable craft like destroyers. Average speed (say 200) means you gotta be relatively close to hit or just a good shot.

And here's the prime change which makes this missile both unique and serve a singular purpose. If it is possible make the missile UNTARGETABLE. So turrets cannot auto-shoot it down. It needs to be manually targeted. I don't know if this is actually possible, but since the Aran is notoriously hard to target, maybe a similar effect for the dumbfire missiles is possible.

As regarding the other missiles: if you ask me the extremely high damage missiles should be removed. Make the dumbfires the high-damage missiles, with perhaps an exception for the M8 missiles, or make the M8 the only craft capable of firing dumbfire missiles with high yield. In any case, in my opinion no missile should exceed 500k damage. Auto-guiding missiles should have a max of 300k.

This leaves a new role for the torpedo heavy damage-large area missiles. Perhaps these could be used for the role they are most used for now: clearing out large groups of tightly packed fighters. Lower the damage to 300k max or whatever is enough to kill most fighters, but keep the large area so it can kill most fighters in one shot but leaves the larger craft relatively unharmed.

As for the other missiles: these are anti-fighter or swarm-the-target missiles. Play with damage yield, manouverability (a very underestimated quality) and speed. Perhaps if possible make more swarm missiles.

[GreasyBaz]

The only games I can think of in which dumb fire missiles were any use were the freespace games. They were fast, did moderate damage and, if you fired off 5 or 6 at short range, had a decent chance of hitting once or twice and were pretty effective.

These would be my suggestions for the dumbfires:

-make sure they're available in large numbers. this might involve either modifying prices or (if possible) making them similar to ammunition so that, for example, one unit of fireflies bought = 4 missiles. This would make it possible for m5/m4 fighters to pack enough missiles to do a bit of dumb fire spamming.

-up the damage a bit (surely there's more room for the warhead if there's no guidance). Let a couple of cheap dumb fire missiles have a chance of doing some significant damage to an m4's shields if they make contact.

-make sure they're suitably fast to actually hit a fighter.

My major grip about the balance of missiles in general in X3TC is that they cost too much to use in the early phase of the game. In general it costs more to fire a missile than you're likely to make back in loot. This would involve tweaking the economy though, which I doubt is what you had in mind.

Best of luck to you.

[JrK]

They are never going to be good for firing at fighters. Look at some of the fast firing lasers. See how much even those miss when used at semi-auto fire. Hence my suggestion to use them as the bomber type of missiles for things they can hit, namely capital ships.

[imperium3]

They are never going to be good for firing at fighters. Look at some of the fast firing lasers. See how much even those miss when used at semi-auto fire. Hence my suggestion to use them as the bomber type of missiles for things they can hit, namely capital ships.

Not at small fighters in any case. I'm still experimenting with the Firefly as something for M4/M5 class ships to use against larger fighters (as M3s are much easier targets for another fighter). The Firelance and Tornado though are destined to be an anti- capital ship weapons.

These would be my suggestions for the dumbfires:

-make sure they're available in large numbers. this might involve either modifying prices or (if possible) making them similar to ammunition so that, for example, one unit of fireflies bought = 4 missiles. This would make it possible for m5/m4 fighters to pack enough missiles to do a bit of dumb fire spamming.

Last I checked they already are available in vast quantities. Partly because atm they're not worth buying...

And here's the prime change which makes this missile both unique and serve a singular purpose. If it is possible make the missile UNTARGETABLE. So turrets cannot auto-shoot it down. It needs to be manually targeted. I don't know if this is actually possible, but since the Aran is notoriously hard to target, maybe a similar effect for the dumbfire missiles is possible.

Probably doable, but I don't think it's a good idea as AI ships would never EVER shoot these missiles down. So then an M4 could very easily take out a destroyer if it stayed out of gun-range.

As regarding the other missiles: if you ask me the extremely high damage missiles should be removed.

I like the extremely high-damage missiles.

another good thing to do is making the high yeld missiles use 10 or more cargo bay and rise the ware class to something reasonable... maybe M for the corvette-busting ones and L for the Firestorms and similar. (the hammerhead that uses 1 of S cargo but is the OMG WTF bigger missile of the game is a good example)

Too true.

- DO SOMETHING TO MAKE THE BANSHEE A LESS-UBIQUITOUS MISSILE.

I'll see what I can do. ATM all the AI seems to use is firelance on small fighters and banshee on anything bigger.

Any interest in tweaking the combat scripts to use missiles more intelligently as well?

Eventually, maybe. But at the moment I'm just starting out, and the script editor's all Greek to me . For now I'll just concentrate on the missiles themselves.

Back to testing!

[7ate9tin11s]

As a somewhat heavy user of missiles in scripts and such I thought I would chime in

1. Fixing the dumbfires for use against slower ships and particularly stations is a great idea in my eyes. They will still be primarily player only though since the ai is kinda dumb when it comes to missiles in the active sector.

2. Area missiles are kinda nasty, make sure they are slow enough that a player in a fighter has a chance to shoot it down out of range before it is suicide to kill it. 1.5k range aoe? It should probably not outdo squash mines in damage and area

3. It would be nice to have the disruptor do something special considering its history. If possible, I would suggest a drain on the weapons of the hit ship, something like 10% or so

4. As I recall the flail barrage missile changes targets automatically once the primary target is dead. This lets you do a single barrage and basically kill all fighters which seems like a bit of overkill to me. Perhaps make it non-swarm, non-autotarget, much cheaper, and fire much faster so you barrage fighters individually instead of spamming 'L' to kill all fighters? Or make it a single missile with good aoe damage so it can still clear out fighters, but put less strain on the graphics card

5. Changing the cargo classes and sizes to reflect their ship types and damage/swarmishness would be good too.

6. Would swarm boarding pods work?

Good luck!

[Hansi]

There is already a Topic in the german S&M-Forum, named [Mod] Raketen Rebalance Mod

Just have a look...

[imperium3]

Version 0.1 released! Download link available in first post.

Changelog:

-Cargo sizes of Kha'ak missiles now rearranged so that Sting is used by small fighters, Needle by large fighters and Thorn by Kha'ak capitals. The Thorn has had a significant upgrade: do not just point and laugh the next time one is fired!

-Firefly speed increased to 900m/s, damage to 35k. This will instakill an M4 if you can hit it, but mostly effective against larger fighters and maybe corvettes if you are desperate.

-Hurricane now an AoE missile with significantly increased blast radius. Damage reduced to 3.5k. Use vs M5s.

-Aurora blast radius also significantly increased to be same as hammerhead, Windstalker even more. (the windstalker is now devastating against smaller fighters... if used carefully)

-Firelance damage increased to 940k, speed reduced to 110m/s. Now requires L size cargo bay.

-Tornado damage per warhead increased to 125k, speed reduced to 165.2m/s.

-Wraith missile is no longer a heatseeker as I believe there are some issues there.

-Shadow missile damage per warhead reduced to 188k (1500 total). Still dangerous but not totally silly.

-Most missiles' cargo size and volume completely overhauled. Now, in general, higher yield missiles take up more space and require a larger cargo bay. Swarms are a touch larger, Terran missiles (inc. hammerhead and beluga) a touch smaller. Exceptions: I haven't yet touched the M7M/M8 missiles, I'm not sure what to do with them tbh.

Still to do:

-Sort out the cyclone missile. From the description it seems to be a swarm, but what room is there for it between the Wasp and the Typhoon?

-Adjust pricing, as some of the missiles I have made adjustments to (especially the Firelance) may now be massively underpriced.

-Possibly take an idea out of the German mod that Hansi pointed out, and improve the speed of many missiles. I'm still thinking about this though...

-Make Kha'ak missiles into swarms. May not be a good idea for the small fighter missiles because they already spam those like crazy. The Thorn, though?

As always any feedback would be gratefully received.

[someone else]

from the description looks cool too bad that I'm at the seaside.

and yes, the smaller khaak missiles need to be swarms... khaak ARE a swarm.

imho the Cyclone is a dumbfire missile... meant to kill big ships from a M3, while the Typhoon can only be launched from M6 and bigger ships.

anyways there is more important thing to do now: Missile compatibility!

The missiles are divided in various categories using Galaxy subtypes... and those categories decide what missiles will be installed on what ship.
Every missile has a Galaxy subtype entry somewhere in the Tmissiles.

the DUMBFIRE category can be launched by any ship in game (if not khaak nor Terran)

the LIGHT category from M4 and bigger ships (if not khaak nor Terran)

the MEDIUM category from M3 and bigger (if not khaak nor Terran)

the HEAVY category from Medusa Prototype, M6 and bigger ships (if not khaak nor Terran)

there are other categories but are of less importance now.
(have a look at the Tships file, in the "compatible missiles" tab to see how they are grouped up under a single name)

anyways you see that now even a small M5 can launch a devastating Firelance... and that is not a good thing imho.

[imperium3]

anyways you see that now even a small M5 can launch a devastating Firelance... and that is not a good thing imho.

No it can't... because I've never seen an M5 with L size cargo bay.

But I see your point *starts fiddling with subtypes*. It might be worth tweaking the Firelance's cargo size up a bit, it'll be strangely large for its yield, but then I've intended it to be used by M4s and we can't really have an Elite carrying dozens of the things .

Shame there doesn't seem to be a way of making Hammerhead/Beluga compatible with both Terran and Commonwealth ships, short of fiddling with Tships. I don't want to touch that file though because it makes me incompatible with ship mods... which is annoying.

[imperium3]

Version 0.2 released! see first post for details.

anyways you see that now even a small M5 can launch a devastating Firelance... and that is not a good thing imho.

No it can't... because I've never seen an M5 with L size cargo bay.

But TS's have (of course) a large cargo bay, so they'd be able to use Firelance. Corrected in latest update though.

[someone else]

some weird things:
--"The Hornet Class Missile is the most powerful weapon known today. The gigantic resources needed to produce this monster also make it extremely expensive.
The missile works by setting off a small nuclear charge causing a reaction between three differing elements that are then combined on impact to create a large explosion powerful enough to disrupt even the largest shields. The hornet is, on the other side, the slowest of the known missiles, and is best used against immobile or slow moving targets." Ehm. Its damage is about 1/5 of the Firestorm. Imho is better to change the description to say that it WAS the most powerful/slowest before the invention of the Firestorm. It is quite useful for its low price and damage that surgically downs one 200Mj shield. they say "extremely expensive"... 11.00 creds a pop aren't a lot imho.

--"The Hammerhead is the Terran heavy assault missile commonly used on Earth Fleet capital ships." Yeah. And all Commonwealth M3 can mount and use it. (mostly pirates) It should be moved where it belongs... Heavy missiles, even if I'd move it to Terran Heavy missiles. Same applies to the Beluga... they were terran (and the AI enjoys too much using them for my tastes) so they should remain "confined" on terran vessels.

I'd have a look at the the missile's icons too... some are not well placed for that kind of missile imho. (dragonfly and typhoon icons could be exchanged for example... one has a icon with multiple warheads but is single, the other has an icon with one warhead but it is a swarm, the Sting has a Dumbfire icon and some missiles haven't a "cool" icon that represents them well imho)

i'd love to have a script that adds some fabs of these "strange" not buyable missiles somewhere, maybe even at shipyards but I'm not a good scripter.

I have a idea that may prove useful:
-some missiles are not created anywhere can be used to "replace" some others that are clearly useless or too weird to fit in the game, just copy that missile's data from the Tmissiles file and paste it on the entry of the other missile, leaving the ID intact. in that way the fabs that were producing that missile will produce the other missile.