[Progress Update] WIP mod ReX, combat enhancements.

[Kierk]

So after taking some time off to let some patches release, I'm back to work updating X Rebirth capital ship combat. I've got a short sample video up on YT

http://youtu.be/ooCLsMp6S0g

Short Summary
Longer Anti-ship weapon ranges, slower capitals and heavy drone reliance.
looking for suggestions on balancing or other changes.

TL;DR section
Progress so far:
Dumbfire missile drones (overrun) are now counted as anti-capital drones to help with drone launch logic.

Drones launch in waves of 12, launches staggered 15 seconds apart.
Ships with Overrun drones will launch anti-capital strikes using the following logic.
-Few small threat w/capital support -> launch full anti-capital strike
-Mix of small threats/capitals -> 25% anti-cap 75% anti-fighter
-No Capitals -> full anti fighter launch
If no overrun drones loaded ship will launch full anti-fighter strikes.

Capital ship weapons
Intent is to balance around 20km engagement range
-Capital Primary weapons will have the longest range, leaning toward 15km right now but haven't done any balancing yet.
-Plasma jets will be second longest, plasma ball shorter still.. thinking 10km and 8 km respectivly.
-still working on shotgun, machinegun and missile turret ranges, need to balance them with drone combat changes.

Capital ship movement
I want long range slugfests from my capships, plus movement for bigger ships is really wonky at close ranges so my best answer was to slow them down. At present cap ships move half as fast as vanilla, accelerate half as fast but turn at the same rate...It seems decent so far.
-Larger, well armored ships can still get into close range
-Lighter, weaker ships get heavily damaged before they reach short ranges, especially if they get hit by full drone strikes.

Thats what I've got so far, working on some other things but wanted to post this now to see if I could get some suggestions from folks on other changes or balancing ideas.

Thanks for your time,
Kierk

[IRaven]

Battlestar Galactica's Free Mod of Freespace 2 - DIASPORA got some nice Big Ship Combat.

Just as you use your drones they would use their Fighter Squads.
Looking at your Drone Behaviour i only see 2 Dumbfire Drones per Attack Squad and they are attacking the Enemy in a straight Line. Normaly a Fighter Squad should lock on around 4 - 6 Ships and they should kind of flank the Enemy.

Rules for DIASPORA
1. Never stay inside your Battle Ships FIRING SOLUTION
2. Never stay directly between the two Battle Ships or you will get blasted by the Anti-Capital Weapons.
3. Dont forget the FIRING SOLUTION, Stay Inside the PERIMETER

Copy and Paste from Diaspora Forums

Tip 1: "And for Frak's sake stay out of the firing solution!" - Apollo Theseus defends itself primarily by firing its Heavy Turrets and its Light Turrets. The Heavy Turrets create a sort of wall of explosions. This wall is what's known as the perimeter. Most of the time you'll be eager to lock on to a bandit and shoot him down. However, if it's outside the perimeter then this is a bad idea. Let the bandit fly through the perimeter (being damaged in the process) and then finish him off! Staying inside the perimeter also keeps you safe from Theseus' Heavy Turrets.
Sometimes the mission objective is outside the perimeter. In this case it is easier to fly above or below the firing solution to get through to your target (trying to fly around the sides is too long and flying through it is dangerous). If you are forced to fly through the firing solution (or if you're just impatient) at least use your afterburner at top speed to get through as quickly as possible to obtain the least damage.

So normaly one would expect those drones to attack from the upper or lower side of enemy Capitals (i know this will need some heavy aiscripting)


Thinking about a Perimeter the actual Shot Gun Turrets would look much better if they were doing FLAK Rounds instead building up a Wall of Explosions vs. Enemy Fighter Craft.


Firing Range for Capital Main Weapons (only Sucellus has one?) sounds great.
Make Dumbfire and Swarm Missile Turrets 20 km Range so the other Capitals like Arawn and Taranis also get a little shooting Practice. (But only make them attack Capitals) (this will need even more heavy aiscripting)
(of course the Shotgun / Flak Rounds should take down like 50% of the missiles while the Capitals could start some Anti Fighter Drones for extra Missile Defense)


At least this is how i could imagine Capitals fighting each other.

[Kierk]

The rules for drone combat is a good idea, before this test video I had the dumbfire drones with a much longer range, trying to get them to attack from above/below is a good thing to try.

I'd like to leave at least swarm turrets as anti-fighter, dumbfire as anti-capital makes sense. Good ideas, thanks

[IRaven]

The rules for drone combat is a good idea, before this test video I had the dumbfire drones with a much longer range, trying to get them to attack from above/below is a good thing to try.

I'd like to leave at least swarm turrets as anti-fighter, dumbfire as anti-capital makes sense. Good ideas, thanks

No no no

Shooting Fighters is the Job of machine gun nests(HIT/MA Turret), Flak (Hailstorm/MA Turret maybe?) and other Fighters.
A big ship should always have a fighter squad escorting it (my Real War Mod at least gives all Military Ships spawned by a shipyard a bunch of fighters)


Capital Ships main job is to attack Enemy Stations and Capital Ships. Thats what all other Weapons like Plasma/MA Turret; Plasma/JET LR Turret and Missiles are for.
And strictly speaking the only ship with swarm-missile launchers is the Taranis. So if you take those out of the quotation you would take them away any logical Long Range Combat Abillity)
Also one would expect Balors to only shoot Nova Missiles against Stations or Enemy Capital Ships.

For enemy Fighters they got their own Fighters and if worst comes to worst the HIT/MA and Hailstorm/MA Turrets can _try_ to inflict some extra damage helping their own Fighters take out the enemy Fighters.


While you are rewriting Drone Combat. What about putting them into Squads?

4 x 5 Drones will be deployed when Enemy is in Range (if we got heavy enemy Attack)

1 Drone = Squadleader + 4 Wingmen

2 of those 4 Squads should patrol the own Capital Ship, giving it anti Fighter Support. Attack Enemy Fighters but never stray too far. (this will need an interrupt)
1 Squad should consist of Dumbfire Drones attacking the Enemy Capital Ship (one Squad per Enemy Cap. Ship) and 1 Squad should also be Anti Fighter Drones protecting the Dumbfire Squad from other Fighters.

So we have 2 defensive Squads and 2 offensive Squads making it all balanced. If we loose a squad (and only then) we should launch a new one (another interrupt here)
If you could take Real Fighters into Account that are escorting the Capital Ship using move.escort would be great too.
They could be used for Special Missions like eleminate enemy Dumbfire Squad that is trying to attack or a little Kamikaze Action on the Enemy Capital.

That way we could make Capital Ships stop doing pirouettes around each other and actually use heavy weapon systems from afar for attacking each other while leaving the fighter squads to the close combat.
(This would at least feel more natural to me)


Ideas on Weapon Ranges:
HIT/MA Turret - leave it as it is in Vanilla, its only a emergency weapon anyways
Hailstorm/MA Turret (the Shotgun) well changing this into a flak sounds kind of impossible at this time. But it should get a _minimum_ range of 1 km and a maximum range of 4 km
That way it would inflict a little damage on incoming enemy Fighters and Missiles while stop shooting if the enemy Fighters are too close. Leaving the Rest for the HIT/MA or the Drones.
Plasma/MA Turret Min. 4 km Max. 10 km
Plasma/JET LR Turret (the Laser) Min. 6 km. Max. 15 km.
Same goes for Dumbire, Swarm Turrets and the Main Weapon from the Sucellus


The Split capital will be a Special Case as it only has Machine Gun Turrets. Honestly i have no idea for this as to scrap the whole ship for normal Fighting and give it a Special Kamikaze script to attack the Enemy Capital in Close Combat ignoring any danger or other stuff. Just charge on and show em the Hell of a Lead Rain.
(This would also kind of merge with Split behavior)


This sounds to become quite the mod as you would probably have to rewrite 80% of the actual base aiscripts, adding new ones and so on.

And always change, reload the game, try, error, change again

[Kierk]

update 2

http://youtu.be/JFnMtcZGddY

so I managed to stop the missiles and larger guns on the cap ships from targetting the drones, also put in a very basic inital movement to clear the drones out from between the two capitals and this is what I got.

No point defense work done yet, that'll be next. Squads is the normal method for drone use in rebirth, but for capitals mass attacks work better I'd think...I'd prefer one squad of 12 for a capital run, but they get in each others way. At present I've kludged it with 2 groups of 6 and so far you don't lose too many drones to friendly fire. A permanent fix will happen when I can figure out how to properly assign the drones a formation.