[MOD] Ship Rebalance Mod ver 0.59 [30/08/2009] + 2 COCKPIT PACKS + Alkeena's BSD!!!!

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Sat, 29. Aug 09, 15:59

base stats and max stats should not be changed of course.
But number of steps from base to max (like splitting it into smaller chunks).

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Sat, 29. Aug 09, 16:05

someone else wrote:
But now, even with your mod, still OTAS freighters have almost no competition.
mmmh... that is not intended... can you explain why? I'm not a "trader", I'm a pirate . I'm a bit lacking in TS experience.

they are quite fast (almost fastest) and big cargo hold. I think you have changed their shielding, which is ok, but price/performance ratio for them makes them obvoius choice. OTAS is supposed to make advanced ships, but they are priced just little over usual ones

The Invader Zim · Post by **The Invader Zim** » Sat, 29. Aug 09, 21:38

at my game at least all Argon, Teladi and Pirat ships have the trails

killerog · Post by **killerog** » Sat, 29. Aug 09, 22:03

The Invader Zim wrote:at my game at least all Argon, Teladi and Pirat ships have the trails

This should be fixed in the next version.

OOZ662 · Post by **OOZ662** » Sat, 29. Aug 09, 22:23

someone else wrote:how much does rise the price for each tuning added before the first? (never cared to know due to so low prices )

I can't remember if it's a factorial or an exponential rise...I think the latter.

Lancefighter · Post by **Lancefighter** » Sat, 29. Aug 09, 22:56

OOZ662 wrote:
someone else wrote:how much does rise the price for each tuning added before the first? (never cared to know due to so low prices )
I can't remember if it's a factorial or an exponential rise...I think the latter.

i believe its actually linear. the 50th should cost half of the 100th.. not entirely sure though

someone else · Post by **someone else** » Sun, 30. Aug 09, 19:56

C'mon guys! I asked for "true data", not speculations...

anyways I'll look somewhere to find the exact formula.

NEW VERSION!!!!!! Alkeena's BSD merged! Lots of changes in the M1 class!

WARNING!
to avoid frustrations I'll repeat here and in the OP what Alkeena said: The ships already in-game won't let you dock after installation of the mod due to the stupid conservative behaviour of the Game Engine, so use Cheats to create a new ship or sell the old and buy a new one.

WARNING2!!!!
for your best interest... follow the installation procedure of the OP to avoid unloadable savegames. Just go in a empty sector in a M5 and save, then exit, install the mod, then load and game on.

p.s. this time I looked closely to the Tfactories...

DannyDSC · Post by **DannyDSC** » Mon, 31. Aug 09, 11:45

someone else wrote:
p.s. this time I looked closely to the Tfactories...

Chealec · Post by **Chealec** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 00:08

someone else wrote:
But now, even with your mod, still OTAS freighters have almost no competition.
mmmh... that is not intended... can you explain why? I'm not a "trader", I'm a pirate . I'm a bit lacking in TS experience.

I'll just answer this one since I'm here...
The effectiveness of a trader is a function of it's speed and cargo capacity - so whilst you've reduced the cargo space of the Mistral S/F by upping the speed to 90 it's now, if anything, an even more effective TS than it was before... it's got 20% more cargo space than the Caiman S/F at about the same speed (89.9 on the Caiman IIRC).

Very rarely will an AI trader fully load up the cargo hold, especially if it's performing UT duties - so in instances like that most of the 15000 cargo space they used to have will have be unused on most trips - therefore speed becomes more of a factor. The faster the ship, the more trading runs it can do in a given time and the more profit it will make. That's why I generally use Caiman Haulers as UTs.

About the only time a TS will fully stock up is if they're trafficking base commodities like Energy Cells.

If you wanted to balance the Mistral S/F out against the other large TSs, try around about 12250 capacity with a speed of about 65 - or to keep it having a slight edge but make it require more upgrades - reduce the initial cargo bay size to about 7800 but have it upgradable to 12250 with a max speed of it's original 78... that way it fills a both the Hauler role with maximum tunings but no cargo increments but if you buy all the storage upgrades as well, it makes a very good S/F.

Gorium · Post by **Gorium** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 02:28

Loved your ship mod, but uninstalled it since it became to "big" with all the other add ons and modifications/bugs (trails, cockpits, docking bays added in latest patch). Too much complexity and "touching everything" at this point...

Would still use a very limited and basic "SRM" if you where to create one with only basic limited impact to other files.

Good luck on your project though, nice open revamp/mod.

someone else · Post by **someone else** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 12:14

@Gorium: no idea on what to do... what you call "limited and basic"? Most of my files come from the draffut's bug-player fixes. I can "easily" make a decoupled version. Most of the others were optionals.

anyways, fixing trail bug in the previous versions, just in case you wanna still use them. you can download them from the link at the bottom of the first post, the one for "dead link problems"

@Chealek: thanks, will do.

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 13:56

someone else wrote:C'mon guys! I asked for "true data", not speculations...

heh. But do you really need it?:)
I always thought, that this is number of upgrades needed what you can define in Tships (never loked at it, so may be wrong)? So its mattrer of how many upgrades you must buy to go from MIN to MAX? The actual alghoritm is not that important - if its too cheap, lets add another 100 upgrades and so on. My feeling is that current cost for enhancing cargohold is more or less good (for freighters at least), maybe just copying (and doubling ;p ) number of cargo upgrades to speed & rudder will be good and fast solution (probably lots of finetuning for specific ships in future, but in general I think it may work).

Speed is cruicial property of many ships (the most if fighting In Sector). 2x faster fighter is in many cases 2x better fighter). Payng 20 000cr to have 2x better ship is unbeliveable, this amount of money is hard to notice, maybe with exception of first 15 minutes of game, which is nothing compared to how long whole game can take).

OMG, I'm just thinking how better will be new game start with prices changed this way

Taking mission just to improve your basic ship a bit and give it 2 more upgrades to engine. NICE!

someone else · Post by **someone else** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 14:03

problem is that each upgrade tunes your ship by a fixed amount (10% the original value). I dunno if that can be changed. would be very cool to make them less than 10% but I dunno where to tinker.

if I say that each ship can have 100 speed tunings it must have a base speed of 4-5 unless you wanna see a M2 that zips past a AI M5.

Ai does not add a lot of tunings so... If I do that you will see lots of flying bricks around.

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 14:11

someone else wrote:problem is that each upgrade tunes your ship by a fixed amount (10% the original value). I dunno if that can be changed. would be very cool to make them less than 10% but I dunno where to tinker.

isn't this 10% calculated from MAX-MIN/(number of steps)?
so maybe base upgrade price? What is actually you can change in this file you're modyfying?

someone else · Post by **someone else** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 14:26

for the cargo bay extension works that way. and it is ok.

for the other two you can "overtune" your ships forever, there is no "max speed" or "max rudder" in the Tships. that 10% of the base speed/rudder adds forever.

i can change min speed/rudder of eachs ship, number of tunings of eachs ship, starting price of each upgrade.

anyways as I said I need to investigate more on the tunings themselves.

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 15:47

i see. thats pity.

So the only way is to increase start price of upgrade. I think thats the way to go.

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 21:09

I found something like this

SPEED_MODIFIER = 500
TUNNING_MODIFIER = 10
minSpeed = ship_speed_value / SPEED_MODIFIER
maxSpeed = (minSpeed / TUNNING_MODIFIER) * ship_tunning_count

in this thread:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... c&start=30

im not a scripter, but this smells like something we need;p but beyond my knowledge, so just posting, maybe it will lead to something more useful ;D

imperium3 · Post by **imperium3** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 22:00

Looking at the thread I *think* that may be old code from X2, but I can't be sure. Never seen anything like it in Tships though (which is the gamefile with all the ship info in it FYI).

someone else · Post by **someone else** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 22:09

that thread is about the X3 Editor, and that things are the formula that Doubleshadow's X3 Editor uses to calculate the max speed for a ship depending on its base speed and the number of tunings. Just to display it in his editor.
too bad.

the tunings themselves are "wares", and are located in the TwareT file, but nothing says how much they will tune your ship each. the Tglobals that seems to be the "catch all" for these things contains no useful entries.

I was thinking of a workaround script that removes all the "Vanilla" engine and rudder tunings from the docks and then places there a "my" engine and rudder tunings, different ware, same name. Everything depends on the game able to raise the ship's abilities in other way than using tunings.
I'll open a thread.

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 23:31

this way basically you'll use game's tunings. But in other way.

First: you block ability for player to buy 'original' tunings and allow player to buy yours. If player buys 100 of your tunings, they will be 'translated/converted' to 1 unit of normal game tuning

And you probably would need to give some other name for your tuning wares (to avoid confusion - I bought 2000 upgrades but game shows I've got only 3!!) - maybe those famous "engine components"?

)

this even could be quite safe - game still would spawn NPCs with usual number of tunings on ship. Only scripts like Maruder Shipyard could mess a bit with its overtuning ability.

but you would need some mechanism to store information of how much tuning is already bought for given ship. Something like Salvage Insurance, but for ship, not player