This is the combat rebalancing mod I have been personally using. It focuses only on the core: Lasers, bullets and missiles are only files edited. Perhaps it will be useful to someone else as well. (Install as fake patch)
http://www.geocities.com/ttlaurila/Ligh ... etorar.pdf
(rename to .rar)
The objective with this mod is simple: Throw the AI a bone, to make combat happen in a non-silly manner.
All bullet speeds are greatly increased. Since AI is utterly incapable in choosing its weapons with anything but "biggest guns all around", the biggest guns are considerably more effective now, even against smaller ships, because of increased bullet speeds. (yes I know, but MARS is too CPU intensive for me and doesn't work on fighters who can't dogfight with the HEPTs) Khaak weapons have been tried to be made hugely more effective, instead of the joke they are in Vanilla.
Most weapons fire rates are much decreased, AI no longer exhausts its energy reserve at max range. Coupled to increased speeds this means much less bullets in space (1/8th or so), and thus much better CPU performance in battles. Damages are unchanged to maintain OOS combat as it was (a dread to rebalance). Max dmg per time and per energy for all lasers is decreased. This is more than offset by greater hit probability. Flaks are totally overhauled to long-range, small damage weapons.
Missiles are rebalanced. Typhoons are no longer solve-all kill-all, but still powerful in large numbers. As are flails. Khaak missiles are swarms, as are Hammers. Normal missiles now have very small blast radius. This means launching a missile under fire is no longer automatic death sentence. Something the AI was very prolific at. (Even modern-day missiles have arming times, so that they can't blow in their launchers face)
Be warned, the mod is for people who want less power for the almighty quick player joystick hand, and a more even and reasonable battlefield. As result, the game becomes much more strategic and tactical.
The mod comes with a full spreadsheet of changes, possibly even useful for people who want to make their own mods. You edit factors to laser properties in the spreadsheet, and it calculates the values for you to enter to the Tfiles, if you say, want to double all speeds and keep ranges fixed. The spreadsheet also calculates key properties of each laser, damage/time dmg/energy, etc.
I'm more than happy to take suggestions and comments on the balance here. Especially the balance of flaks and many of the more exotic lasers new to TC is still tentative (PAL, PBG, etc.) Here's to hoping someone else will find this useful, too.
[mod] Lightspeed combat rebalance mod v1.0 22/01/09
Moderators: Moderators for English X Forum, Scripting / Modding Moderators
just wondering, will this conflict with CMOD?
http://www.thexuniverse.com/forum/showt ... hp?t=13553
maybe wanna merge your changes into it?
http://www.thexuniverse.com/forum/showt ... hp?t=13553
maybe wanna merge your changes into it?
Yes, it will conflict.
Merging is not really an option here. Taking other peoples mods and modding them further is fine for personal use, but not for distribution.
Anyways, this works to an extent, but neither this nor CMOD in the end makes this game have a point for me. Essentially the combat system is broken from X3R, in my opinion, by the spreads. The AI just can't use the existing weapons in a reasonable manner, with either fighters or capitals. And for me, this breaks the game.
Merging is not really an option here. Taking other peoples mods and modding them further is fine for personal use, but not for distribution.
Anyways, this works to an extent, but neither this nor CMOD in the end makes this game have a point for me. Essentially the combat system is broken from X3R, in my opinion, by the spreads. The AI just can't use the existing weapons in a reasonable manner, with either fighters or capitals. And for me, this breaks the game.
This mod has got me intrigued. I’ve never really cared about how well the A.I. can handle combat in X2/ X3, as long as they were abusing targets and relatively challenging to kill I was ok. However I’ve long ago given up in having large fleets as their combat performance was average at best. Any thing below M6 was just not worth replacing as they would only need replacing in an hour or so, therefore I suppose looking back I’d say any combat mod that I would install would be chosen because it made the AI "good Sport" to hunt.
However the idea of a mod which is primarily intended to make combat work for the AI does seam quite enticing and the idea that combat between groups of ships should be a "tactical" affair rather than mob dogfights really does appeal.
One thing I’d like to say is that your changes seamed to have altered fundamentally the way the player has to use capital ships, for the better! E.g. you've changed the nature of flak from anti fighter to anti missile due to their longer range but lower damage. This forces the player to invest in fighter interceptors rather than rely on the capital ship it's self.... very nice
However the idea of a mod which is primarily intended to make combat work for the AI does seam quite enticing and the idea that combat between groups of ships should be a "tactical" affair rather than mob dogfights really does appeal.
One thing I’d like to say is that your changes seamed to have altered fundamentally the way the player has to use capital ships, for the better! E.g. you've changed the nature of flak from anti fighter to anti missile due to their longer range but lower damage. This forces the player to invest in fighter interceptors rather than rely on the capital ship it's self.... very nice
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