[MOD] Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks

[w.evans]

As far as I could tell, same as regular turrets: damage * reload rate.

All vanilla figures (IF calculations are correct). All just basic, most common variants. IZ takes a few more things into account, so these are only effective OOZ numbers:

Turrets (these are affected by relative orientation and are partially affected in vanilla by relative size and speed):

HIT/MA - 1,400
Plasma/MA - 1,720
Hailstorm - 2,100
Ragefire - 3,300
HIVI/MA - 6,000
JET/LR - 12,050

Astrobees - 32,000 (think this is supposed to be divided by the reload time of 12 seconds, but doesn't look like that's done)
V Crushers - 12,000

Secondary Weapons (Last time I checked, these DO take missile reload time into account, and do not always hit. Relative speed and size taken into account, but not orientation.):

Balor Novadrones - 2,000
Drostan medium torps - ~2,857.14
Drostan short-range torps - ~3,636.36
Sunstalker - 600
V Crusher (fighter) - 300

Primary Weapons (These are hugely affected by relative speed and size, but not at all by orientation.):

IHC - 49,720
Impulse Emitter Mk1 - 1,400
Impulse Emitter Mk2 - 2,000
Plasma Repeater Mk1 - 2,400
Plasma Repeater Mk2 - 3,300

...
Take this with some salt. Haven't looked at the actual numbers in detail in a while. If anyone wants to take a look, there's a bunch of links to raw data logging combat between different types of ships at the OP. I'm pretty sure that the weapon load-outs listed at Roguey's site are still current, except for the new ships that aren't on the site at all, of course.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

You beauty.

Yeah, I am sure those Astrobee and Crusher numbers are the damage from single volleys rather than DPS. The in-game encyclopedia DPS values for their launchers are 130 and 33.3 (lol).

[DaveDee]

btw, i have noticed, that my ooz ships are more powerful, than enemies.
it's notmal for my ships not to take damage completely in fights with same-power enemies.

Iz it cause crew skills?

[w.evans]

btw, i have noticed, that my ooz ships are more powerful, than enemies.
it's notmal for my ships not to take damage completely in fights with same-power enemies.

Iz it cause crew skills?

Crew skill and speed are taken into account. Also, MICT ships use drones against capships OOZ while non-MICT ships don't, same as IZ.

If you use MOCT_supp2, though, that increases the possibility of there being NPC ships running MICT by increasing the skills of many factions' personnel. Table here.

...
To stack the odds OOZ, organize your ships in squadrons, have good crews (at least on the lead ships), and stock up on drones.

[w.evans]

You beauty.

Yeah, I am sure those Astrobee and Crusher numbers are the damage from single volleys rather than DPS. The in-game encyclopedia DPS values for their launchers are 130 and 33.3 (lol).

To be fair, those are the per salvo numbers for capship-mounted Astrobee and V-Crusher turrets. To be honest, not sure how their dps is computed. I do know that dropping Astrobee turret damage per submunition from:

4000 to 500

dropped UP dps on the Taranis from

862,800 to 50,800

Arawn DOWN dps was dropped from

606,000 to 200,000

Not sure how many Astrobee turrets the Arawn has, but I know that the Taranis has two, both top-mounted. Think that comes out to a drop of 406,000 dps per Astrobee turret, but how that relates to the 3,500 difference?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Just measured refire rate for a vanilla PMC Taranis and it was 40 seconds per Astrobee volley per launcher.

With 6000 damage per munition and volleys of 8, that's 48k every 40 seconds = 1,200 Damage Per Sec (72,000 DPMin).

If V Launchers have same RoF, that's 2x6000 damage volley and 300 DPS (18,000 DMP).

If skill affects RoF then the above will vary a bit as was only able to test 1 ship.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Arawn wan has 1 Astrobee Launcher and 5 V Launchers.

One possible explanation could be that since missile blast areas typically apply damage to multiple surface elements as well as the hull, the OOZ DPS is intentionally a lot higher the theoretical IZ DPS I wrote above to account for not modelling hull and surface elements OOZ.

Edit: Personally I think missiles are a bit over-power IZ because their blast area takes no account of intervening graphics. Classic examples:

- The massive armour around Taranis engines offers no engine protection when armour is hit.
- Explosions on the top of a Targon Tracer or Rahanas nuke surface elements on the bottom.

Since I doubt the mechanics of blast areas can be changed easily, maybe it would be nice if blast areas could be shrunk a bit (to prevent the above examples), and for their OOZ damage to be reduced.

[GCU Grey Area]

Since I doubt the mechanics of blast areas can be changed easily, maybe it would be nice if blast areas could be shrunk a bit (to prevent the above examples), and for their OOZ damage to be reduced.

Disagree - reducing blast radius of missiles to the extent that they are smaller than the thickness of a Targon Tracer would mean effectively eliminating them completely & pretty much negate the whole purpose of using missiles against turrets etc on capital ships & stations.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I suppose a smaller reduction could still work for Rahanas whilst allowing the hitting of multiple surface elements.

Although I personally dislike that missiles are more effective against Force Field Projectors when they hit more surface elements without accounting for model shape and surface element position.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Just measured refire rate for a vanilla PMC Taranis and it was 40 seconds per Astrobee volley per launcher.

With 6000 damage per munition and volleys of 8, that's 48k every 40 seconds = 1,200 Damage Per Sec (72,000 DPMin).

If V Launchers have same RoF, that's 2x6000 damage volley and 300 DPS (18,000 DMP).

If skill affects RoF then the above will vary a bit as was only able to test 1 ship.

I was able to measure RoF for Astrobees on my vanilla Taranis by ordering it attack a station above it, making sure it had a target. DO is 3-4-5 star and both launchers were shooting a volley every 12 seconds (4k DPS; 240k DPM).

If Skill increases the rate of fire in vanilla, I can imagine 406k DPM being achievable with a 5-5-5 star DO (a volley every 8.46s) but not 406k DPS. Maybe there is a error with units?

Edit: Could it be a simple case of the code mistakenly multiplying volley damage (48k) by fire rate of 8.46s instead of by (8.46/60)?

[w.evans]

Just measured refire rate for a vanilla PMC Taranis and it was 40 seconds per Astrobee volley per launcher.

With 6000 damage per munition and volleys of 8, that's 48k every 40 seconds = 1,200 Damage Per Sec (72,000 DPMin).

If V Launchers have same RoF, that's 2x6000 damage volley and 300 DPS (18,000 DMP).

If skill affects RoF then the above will vary a bit as was only able to test 1 ship.

I was able to measure RoF for Astrobees on my vanilla Taranis by ordering it attack a station above it, making sure it had a target. DO is 3-4-5 star and both launchers were shooting a volley every 12 seconds (4k DPS; 240k DPM).

If Skill increases the rate of fire in vanilla, I can imagine 406k DPM being achievable with a 5-5-5 star DO (a volley every 8.46s) but not 406k DPS. Maybe there is a error with units?

Edit: Could it be a simple case of the code mistakenly multiplying volley damage (48k) by fire rate of 8.46s instead of by (8.46/60)?

Hi Sparky,

possible, but that part of the code's not in the files that we can easily access, so can't verify. Yup, the Astrobee numbers are:

4000 per munition,
8 munitions per volley,
12 second reload time.

I don't think that crew skill has an effect on reload or refire rate. Unfortunately, can't verify that either. All we have is a command to shoot (IZ), and get_attackstrength (OOZ).

In the case I cited above, however, vanilla Astrobees potentially do more than 406k damage per turret per second because that number is just the drop after damage was reduced in MOCT from 4000 to 500.

Error could be a multiplication rather than division for missile turrets, but that still comes short. (4000 * 8 * 12 = 336000 which is still less than just the drop, much less the total turret dps.)

However, it looks like everything else -- non-missile turrets, integrated missile launchers, and integrated weapons -- takes refire rate correctly into account in the output dps, and it looks like dps is the main number that is used in OOZ calculations. Like I mentioned earlier, not quite as simplistic as in X3 where it's almost just dps: other factors come into play. But dps does appear to be the base number(s) upon which these other factors apply.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Good news from the Slayer of Xenon:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=4551132

Well done for all the hard work again

[w.evans]

Oh cool! Thanks for bringing it to the attention of the devs, Sparky. Didn't want to post the issue in the tech support forum because had the feeling that issues found via modding had a tendency to be dismissed as being due to mods. (To be fair, it could quite possibly be due to mods sometimes, and I understand their not wanting to waste time on possibly wild goose chases; but learned to just try to deal with things as they stand.)

Looking forward to the update, and to retiring the Astrobee turret nerf.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

You're welcome!

Yeah, I held off on mentioning it for a while too. Things didn't feel quite right with vanilla whilst your nerf supplement felt good. It was only after we started thinking about what the ballpark values for OOZ damage should maybe be, that I was encouraged to go forward with some numbers.

[w.evans]

20.September 2015 - MOCT_supp4 updated to v0.05

Astrobee dps OOZ and IZ are now identical.
Missiles launched from capship-mounted Astrobee turrets divide into 32 submunitions, each one dealing 1000 damage (same total dps as vanilla).
The Skunk's Astrobees are now identical to those launched from capship turrets.

...
The former nerf to Astrobee OOZ damage is now unnecessary due to a fix implemented by Egosoft with X:R 3.61 RC3. (Yay!) However, I got rather used to the fireworks that Astrobee launchers push out IZ. This changes it such that Astrobee launchers still launch many submunitions, but in such a way that IZ and OOZ dps are now the same.

There were reports of fps dropping whenever Astrobees launch IZ due to the increased number of submunitions. Due to these reports, Astrobee launchers now launch 32 instead of 64 submunitions. This, in combination with all submunitions being launched in one go as opposed to 8 times in quick succession should result in a reduced, hopefully negligible, fps hit. Reports on this would be greatly appreciated.

In vanilla, the Skunk's Astrobees are more powerful than those launched by capship turrets. This has been changed such that the Skunk now launches Astrobees that are identical to those launched by NPC ships.

Because this was done as a way to compensate for a problem in the vanilla OOZ calculations, and that problem has now been addressed, this supplement is now unnecessary. As such, it will be removed from the MCT uploaded at the Steam Workshop after X:R 3.61 is out. If Steam users would like to avail of this supplement, you could simply download MOCT_supp4 from the Nexus, and install the assets folder into your extensions\w.e_mct\ folder.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

super duper

Thanks for confirming the fix worked.

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together etc.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Hi there,

It may be widely know but it is new to me so mentioning the following just in case. Observed in vanilla 3.61 HT1 TO.

If we are in the same Sector as a guidance target (e.g. ship or station; could be a mission target or a manually-designated target) in a different Zone and the guidance is to the object* and we press F3, that remote Zone becomes rendered. We can rotate the view and see ships etc. doing their thing (e.g. flying, using weapons, controlling drones).

The view around the zone looks the same when the Skunk is OOZ as when the Skunk is in-zone. With saving and reloading with/without 3rd person view on ships, it allows for what should be the same starting test conditions for comparing scripts that differ when IZ and OOZ (e.g. combat, mining etc.).

I think the Skunk remains in-zone too since test missiles I fired remained in flight after switching to other-Zone-view and back again. Similarly, when I watched a Mining ship use drones remotely, then cycled to 1st person view and back to the view of the other Zone, the mining ship's drones seemed to be following the same courses so I guess the game continues to do IZ calculations for a while after the Skunk or 3rd person view leaves a zone.

So if also useful, I think two rendered zones would be available for parallel testing with some flipping back and forth. Wasn't able to test for changes in GPU load but CPU and RAM seemed unchanged whether the 3rd person target was IZ or OOZ.

*E.g. The direct route is not via a highway; normal in Serpentine Haze Sector and arrangeable via use of nearby temp Zones elsewhere.

Regards,
Sparks


Edit: Extra info added.

[w.evans]

Hm. I wonder if attention level as pertains to ai scripts is still defined via IS/OOS rather than IZ/OOZ.

There are several attention levels, but ai scripts use either attention min="visible" or attention min="unknown". I always just assumed that "visible" refers to in-zone while "unknown" refers to everything else but, come to think of it, there is an attention level called "inzone" that is a level up from "visible". Maybe "visible" is defined by rendering distance without regard to whether something is within a zone or not?

The attention levels as documented in common.xsd are:

Code: Select all

      <xs:enumeration value="unknown"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="ingalaxy"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="incluster"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="insector"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="visible"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="inzone"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="nearby"/>

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Interesting, thanks. Didn't have a clue it was so nuanced!

Thinking about it now, I suspect visible will be how you suggest. Like for example, how DHA stations can be seen from nearby temporary zones.

[w.evans]

1.November.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.27

Fighters and other small ships under attack OOZ will no longer send reports.

Thanks to Monster for the feedback leading to this change.