[Mod] Shields and Weapons balance overhaul 1.74

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AngEviL
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[Mod] Shields and Weapons balance overhaul 1.74

Post by AngEviL » Wed, 5. Dec 18, 22:50

Shields:
In vanilla the smallest damage hit makes shild stop regenerating for 10+ seconds, so basically if you have 100000 shield, and a scout hits you for 1 damage every 10 seconds, your shields will never regenerate. Also if you boost for 0.1 seconds, even if you barely drain the shield, it stops regenerating, it's cumbersome imho. X1, X2, X3 also had constantly regenerating shields.

Also i think that shields drain too fast, and combat ends too quickly if hits are landed on target. For S shield(M3 in X3), M shield(M6 in X3) and L shield(M7) i approximately doubled the shields, but i also increased for XL shield(M1/M2). I lowered shield regeneration to account for constant regen, however I lowered it less for M ships because they were a bit underpowored imho.
Each race has pretty different shield stats, pick the one that suits your playstyle !

Weapons:
Overall I increased the speed and range of weapons, i think it feels better now to start landing some hits, and I also felt that the combat before was too short ranged. I noticed that Mk1 weapons had half the damage of MK2 weapons on vanilla, and i noticed a huge missed opportunity, to give player choice of the same weapon type !
In average I tripled the speed of Mk1 weapons, gave them up to twice more damage, some have increased rate of fire. They are a great anti fighter weapon now !

I made all weapons pretty much as different as i could make them, for different roles. Mk1 are as strong as Mk2, but different, really, try them ! The player has finally a choice, laser, shard, plasma (got a big buff), bolt, beam, they are all good.

Turrets:
I got tired of turrets being underpowered after more attempts, and I want to make it right once and for all. Each M turret close to the damage of an equivalent M Weapon in my mod(which is greatly buffed vs vanilla in speed as well), and has half more range as well. Don't be fooled just by the damage per shot number alone, I increased rate of fire as well.

Repurposed L turrets to be big damage anti-frigats/capitals. They deal up to x2.5 damage and have 66% more range than their M counterparts, but have much slower projectiles and turn speed. Once Egosoft fixed their pasiveness they should own ! There are some cool combos, like having 15k range instant hit beam turrets ! Beams don't do too much damage but small fighters are gonna have a hard time !
Check images for some weapon and turret comparison vs vanilla.

However i don't want to go crazy with damage values and make turrets op and make anything other than a capital ship irrelevant. I like all ships to have a purpose and feel fun to fly and fight with.

Encyclopedia fix:
I am happy to say that i fixed the encyclopedia weapon damage. It is broken in vanilla, and most weapons including laser and bolt dps, heat, fire rate values have NOTHING to do with reality, check it yourself. I am not going to list exact weapon stats because you can check it yourself in encyclopedia, or in shipyard weapon selection for 100% accurate values !!! You can finally theory craft, there are weapons from 1.2km/s speed to 20k km/s !
The only error is Beam Mk2 that shows a much higher sustained dps than in reality.
Mk1 weapons have double the projectile speed of Mk2 weapons, but lower range and a little less damage.

Missiles:
I think that missiles were too good compared to their laser counterparts and made the battles end too quickly, also the player is the one abusing missiles, while the NPCs shoots a missile there and there. A 33% damage nerf seems just imho (-50% after a global damage nerf); plasma cannon (or L Laser) is now a viable alternative to damage large shields. Also fighters don't drop like flies from guided missiles. Where there is both a Mk1 and Mk2 variant to choose from, improved speed of Mk1 missiles by 25% to make them viable as they have lower damage.

Challenging Xenon and Khaak:
I watched how squadrons of Xenon got obliterated by the NPC or a single player frigate over and over again. No more ! Upon analyzing stat files I realized that Xenon inexplicably had worse ship and weapon stats than all other races, and it applied to all: K, P, M, N. Worse max speed, worse agility, low hull hp, mediocre shield slots, you name it. I made their ships and weapons be on par with the other races.

Xenon turrets got a huge boost in damage, luckily for us their AI is still in beta stage, they tend to miss a lot, haha. Khaak got a boost in weapon damage and range, annoying snipers they are.

Engines:
All L miners and traders are finally worth their price now ! Most have doubled max speed. The S miners and traders were underpowered too, they have about half more speed.
There are many adjustements, but to name some bigger ones: Scouts and the Argon Elite Interceptor got a big boost, they fill their roles nicely now. Buffed Teladi M frigate, Argon Minotaur & Nova, nerfed Argon Eclipse & Pulsar.
Due to feedback I tripled/doubled the amount ships can boost, the biggest improvement being on Travel engines. All teladi engies have ~7% faster travel speed.

The Xenon K destroyer was a sitting duck, its turn speed is many times faster now. P, M and N are also more agile than before, this brought their ship on par with the other races imho.
The AI boosted before battle with their capitals and got nice and ready with a spectacular empty shield. Removed ability to boost from L and XL ships, but reduced travel charge by 10 seconds to compensate.

Hulls:
I felt that Argon S ships were too weak compared to the other races, and also Vanguard ships had a bit of an advantage over the Sentinel ships because of their higher speed and manuevrability. Xenon ships were kind of squishy, with no other advantages to make up for it.

Buffed the hitpoints of most Argon Sentinel S ships by a third. Made Vanguard have around 60% more hp for S ships, +50% for M ships, and 30% more hp for L ships.
Most Paranid combat ships got a sizeable nerf to their hp(~ a third less).
Argon and Teladi carriers got 30% more hp.

Increased HP of engines and weapons by 50+%, x5 HP for M turrets, x3 for L Turrets.
Buffed hull hp of Xenon K, M, N by 50%, P hp by 125%.

Longer battles:
After all these buffs to weak aspects in weapons and turrets, I felt that combat got too quick, and I applied to everything that does damage a 25% nerf, however this does not change the balance, things like turrets are still many times better compared vs vanilla to a regular weapon, for example I increased damage and range of some L turrets around 400% compared to vanilla, haha, or more than doubled effectivenes of Mk1 weapons, and much faster projectiles speed resulting in higher dps.

No edits that would break a savegame:
I made my mod not mess around with changing any values that could cause issues especially if you remove the mod later. No weapon or turret adding or switching, no change in cargo or in the max capacity of carrying space of a ware. I will also update this mod if future patches change balance.

As of version 1.63 I am quite happy with the balance, regarding what can be fixed without altering game files. I would like to add more turrets to carriers, bring more weapon variety, change designs of some ships, like K having the worse turret coverage possible, but I am going to leave that to Egosoft.

Weapon quick info:

Plasma: huge damage, long range, but slow moving and low rate of fire, high heat drain

Bolt: average damage, average moving, good rate of fire, medium heat drain

Laser: its sustained damage is about the same as bolt, has very fast projectiles however it lacks burst damage and has short range, very low heat drain

Shard: above average damage, fast projectiles, good burst, but very short range and a bit spread out bullets.

Beam: high range, instant and continuous hit, but low damage.

These weapons changes affect Xenon and Khaak, their weapons were so weak in vanilla for some reason. Watch out for Khaak beams, they aren't just giving you a sunburn anymore !

Sustained Damage per second:
Ion > Plasma > Shard > Bolt > Laser > Beam
Projectile Speed:
Beam > Laser > Shard > Bolt > Plasma/Ion
Range:
Plasma/Beam > Bolt > Ion > Laser > Shard

Shields quick info: For the best in each class (mk2/mk3):

Argon - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship
2500 shield, 25 regen/ 8000 shield, 33 regen/50000 shield, 100 regen/100000 shield, 150 regen

Paranid - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship
1875 shield, 30 regen/ 6000 shield, 39.6 regen/ 37500 shield, 120 regen/ 75000 shield, 180 regen

Teladi - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship
3500 shield, 18.8 regen/ 11200 shield, 24.8 regen/ 70000 shield, 75 regen/ 140000 shield, 112.5 regen

Khaak and Xenon have same shields as Argon for now.
Keep in mind that because of the elimination of shield regen delay, faster/slower regeneration impacts how much you can boost significantly.

Updates:
Spoiler
Show


v1.74 -10% Ion Weapons Heat buildup, +20% L engine hitpoints, +50% XL engine hp(without Xenon). Fixed an issue where Shard turrets dealt more damage than intended. -5% Teladi scouts speed. Added languages support to content.xml to work for other versions than English. Added a *.cat upload for Windows 7 users who can't use loose files.

v1.73 Plasma & Destroyer Weapons: +15% sustained damage, but -17% burst damage. Destroyer laser: -33% reduced rate of fire, +50% damage per shot. Xenon K: - 33% agility, Xenon P: -15% agility. Xenon M&L turrets: -11% damage. All M&L weapon turrets: +20% hitpoints. Argon and Teladi L Destroyers: +10% hitpoints.

v1.72 Halved agility of Xenon K, -16% agility to Xenon P, to make them look more natural. +25% Xenon M&L turret damage. +33% Xenon XL engine hitpoints, +20% M&L Xenon turret hp. Fixed Xenon S/M weapons having a bit shorter range than intented. -8% Bolt Mk1 heat buildup. -9% damage to laser M&L turrets. +20% Argon Elite speed, +10% Argon Callisto speed, -20% Teladi Guillemot agility, -10% Paranid Scout hitpoints.

v1.71: +20% to XL(carrier) shield and regen. +30% hitpoints Argon and Teladi carriers. +10% hp to Argon and Teladi destroyers, -10% hp to Paranid destroyer. +7% hp to Argon Cerberus, -15% hp to Paradid Gorgon. +10% hp to all M corvettes. +10% hitpoints to all S Combat ships, except: Argon Quasar +230% hp, Nova +20% hp, Elite + 25% hp, Teladi Buzzard +20% hp. +10% speed to Argon Elite & Discoverer, Teladi Guillemot, Paranid Theseus.

v1.70: +25% Laser M/L turret range & projectile speed, +35% Shard M/L turret range & speed, -17% Beam M/L turret damage. +7% to all Teladi engines travel speed. Destroyer Laser -50% fire rate, but +100% damage per shot. +33% Argon Minotaur speed, +15% Argon Nova & Callisto speed. +17% Teladi Osprey speed. -7% Paranid Gorgon speed. +10% speed & -35% hitpoints to Paranid Theseus. +30% Teladi Magpie & M Miners hitpoints. +7% Minotaur & Teladi Peregrine hp. -40% Paranid Nemesis hp. -30% hp, -50% agility to Antigone Pulsar. -40% Paranid Perseus hp.

v1.68: Turrets still are poor at aiming, +50% damage to all M and L turrets. Increased speed of scouts and S traders and miners by around 50%. Argon scout(2 weapons) got a 33% nerf in agility to compensate. Argon Interceptor got his agility doubled.

v1.66: Removed ability to boost from L and XL ships, it was of little value, and it ruined combat due to AI capitals starting battle with 0 shield. Decreased Travel charge time by 10 seconds to compensate. -17% Ion heat buildup. Those Xenons just keep getting plowed over, it is neverending ! +300% Xenon M turret damage and +50% range, +100% Xenon L turret dmg, but added a little spread(less accurate at distance). -17% Xenon P agility.

v1.65: Mk1 looked nice on paper but in practice the range was a little shortcoming. I made the weapons a bit more varied, and did adjusments. +20% Range to all Mk1 Weapons. Plasma Mk1 and Ion Mk1 double rate of fire, Laser Mk1 +20% rof, Laser Mk2 -40% rof, but damage per second is the same. -10% Plasma, Ion and Destroyer Laser damage. Added a smallish energy consumption to Ion. +20% Mk2 Beam Heat consumption. Increased Laser damage slightly, and heat consumption by 25%.

v1.64: Repurposed all L turrets to be anti-frigates, they have much lower turn rate speed than M turrets. Upped their damage by +12.5% to compensate. Decreased Xenon K turn speed as it looked a bit silly, however I increased the range of their L turrets by 50%. +6% Mk1 Shard damage.

v1.63: Huge boost in the speed of all L traders from 66% to 100%, but their agility is still as low, should be worth their price now. -25% Destroyer main gun projectile speed. Decreased cooldown when overheating from all weapons from 1.13s to 0.5s. +25% Mk2 Beam heat rate. +8% S Beam dmg. Doubled damage and hp of Xenon L turrets, +50% hp to XL Xenon engines. Decreased hull hp of Paranid M miners and transporters and Gorgon by 25%. Due to some complaints, made turrets look more natural, and lowered their swivel rate, -17% for M, and -33% for L, but they still swivel on a dime.

v1.61: +11% L turret damage. Fixed wrong L destroyer laser stats; it deals 250% of the damage of M plasma cannon mk2 and has 25% more range. Improved Xenon K agility to grandmaster level.

v1.60: Buffed damage of most M turrets by 50% compared to previous version. L turrets do even more damage, double of the M turrets. M turrets have more range, L have +66% range than M; L Beam and Plasma have 15k km, firing that instant hit beam at 15km is insane. Removed the annoying instant heatbar filling at the first fraction of a second when firing a beam weapon, -10% Beam weapon, -20% beam turret damage, -40% Khaak Damage. -25% Global Damage that applies to all weapons and missiles. +7% Paranid max shields, -7% Teladi max shields.

v1.56a: Nerfed plasma weapons damage by 10%. Gatling and laser turrets do 25% more damage. Decreased all turrets rate of fire (but same dps, more damage per shot). Further boosted turrets agility. Decreased L turrets hp from my previous buff, from x5 vanilla hp to x3. Doubled main weapon hull hp and engine hull hp. Integrated shields into the hull.

v1.54: Buffed the hitpoints of all Argon Sentinel S ships by 30%. Nerfed all Paranid and Teladi Vanguard S ships hp by 30%. Buffed all Sentinel M ships hp by 10%. Nerfed all Vanguard M ships by 10%. Buffed Sentinel L Destroyers hp by 5%, nerfed Vanguard L Destroyers hp by 5%. Buffed hull hp of Xenon K, M, N by 50% buffed P hp by 125%. Nerfed Argon Eclipse manuevrability, buffed Xenon M and N manuevrability. Nerfed all missiles damage by a third.

v1.51a: Doubled range of destroyer turrets until turets become viable. -5% Laser Mk1 damage. Increased the hull hitpoints of turrets and shields ~x5 times. Fixed an error in S Bolt Mk1 Damage.

v1.50: Overhauled each weapon in detail, fixed encyclopedia entries for weapons and turrets, now what you see is what you get. I made some Mk1 weapons a bit better, made Xenon K much more agile. Fixed L size Laser gun damage error from previous version.

v1.40: I dissected almost all weapons, analyzed all attributes, brainstormed how to make them all useful and balanced at the same time. Made Mk1 weapons anti fighter, Mk2 for against bigger ships, but these roles overlap too, because there is a big variety in weapon speed, so some Mk2 weapons are faster than Mk1. All weapon ranges, speeds, dps and other stats have been altered, finally you don't just pick the same weapon the whole time !

v1.30: I improved the Mk1 weapons significantly, making them on par with Mk2, but being quite different at the same time, giving choice to the player.Their projectile speed has been doubled, damage increased by a third, but decreased range by a third. Teladi M6 got a +5% boost in max speed.

v1.20: I doubled the projectile speed and range of all weapons, so combat is less frustrating to many hits not hitting, and i also like sniping from a distance. Framework was created, i may balance weapons individiually. Boosted the speed of Telady M6 (Frigate) by 25%. Weakened slightly Teladi shields regen, all shields should be on par now. Fixed several errors.

v1.15: I feel that teladi ships are too weak and paranid too strong. I changed teladi shields to be the best, and paranid worst, however since you can mix and match shields, you would pick only teladi shields for yourself. I boosted paranid shields and nerfed teladi ones, so there is choice for the player.

v1.10: due to feedback, i changed the regen rates, more like X3. I increased paranid regen rate, decreased telade regen rate. However i had to further decrease the shield max capacity of paranid, and increase the teladi ones, to balance it out.
[/size][/size]
Download from: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/46
Last edited by AngEviL on Fri, 28. Dec 18, 18:12, edited 55 times in total.

rusky
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Re: [Mod] Shield Rebalance and no regen delay

Post by rusky » Wed, 5. Dec 18, 23:41

Awesome, was hoping someone would put something like this together! Thank you!

One suggestion:

The shield recharge rates should vary too. With the stats you've set, the teladi shields are just straight up better and paranid ones are the worst but normally the idea is that paranid would have better recharge while teladi would have the greater capacity and argon are a middle ground.

AngEviL
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Re: [Mod] Shield Rebalance and no regen delay

Post by AngEviL » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 01:58

Thanks for the feedback, however there is a reason why the paranid shields are the worst and teladi are the best, that is because paranid have the best speed by a significant margin, and teladi the slowest speed. As an example, the equivalent of an M6 ship from X3, which uses M shield, let's pick a Vanguard type, so max speed:

Argon Cerberus: 338 m/s
Paranid Gorgon: 464 m/s
Teladi Osprey: 169 m/s

There are some other differences like steering, turret placement, but speed is the biggest difference imho, and we have to nerf the paranid ship in some way, and boost the teladi ! Actually the teladi still feels a bit underpowered with that low speed. Before i did this mod, i picked paranid instantly, now i can consider teladi too. Any thoughts ?
Last edited by AngEviL on Thu, 6. Dec 18, 02:15, edited 1 time in total.

astroshade
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Re: [Mod] Shield Rebalance and no regen delay

Post by astroshade » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 02:04

The other thing you have to do along with the base stats is tweak all the tunings/mods. The recharge delay one seems a bit redundant now ;)

FlutterRAGE
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Re: [Mod] Shield Rebalance and no regen delay 1.10

Post by FlutterRAGE » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 04:14

The no delay is great, but because of the boost time is tied to the engine and not the amount of shield, can you increase the duration of boost by the same margin you reduce the recharge rate? Because with t his mod, I can only do a sustained boost once every full moon now and have no shield on top of that when i am just boosting around a station.

Cheers

AngEviL
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Re: [Mod] Shield Rebalance and no regen delay 1.15

Post by AngEviL » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 11:12

I updated the mod to 1.15 due to feedback, i will look into rebalancing some ships next. I think that the strategic choices for choosing paranid or teladi shields for the player are pretty good, hit and run for paranid, and tanking for teladi.

rusky
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Re: [Mod] Shield Rebalance and no regen delay

Post by rusky » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 11:44

AngEviL wrote:
Thu, 6. Dec 18, 01:58
Thanks for the feedback, however there is a reason why the paranid shields are the worst and teladi are the best, that is because paranid have the best speed by a significant margin, and teladi the slowest speed. As an example, the equivalent of an M6 ship from X3, which uses M shield, let's pick a Vanguard type, so max speed:

Argon Cerberus: 338 m/s
Paranid Gorgon: 464 m/s
Teladi Osprey: 169 m/s

There are some other differences like steering, turret placement, but speed is the biggest difference imho, and we have to nerf the paranid ship in some way, and boost the teladi ! Actually the teladi still feels a bit underpowered with that low speed. Before i did this mod, i picked paranid instantly, now i can consider teladi too. Any thoughts ?
Teladi ships have more hull and cargo capacity iirc.

And shields are not tied to ship so by making teladi shields the best you're just saying everyone should use teladi shields on all their ships no matter what.

AngEviL
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Re: [Mod] Shield with no delay regen and weapon balance 1.20

Post by AngEviL » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 20:08

I adjusted again the Teladi shields, I think that the balance is good now, the player has real choice, the differences between the Teladi and Paranid shields are major. I want to make you have to really think which one you pick, haha.
I made the framework to start working on rebalancing weapons, so far i doubled their speed and range, I'll see how that works, and I would welcome feedback, if people like the mod.
The player and AI are finally hitting things ! I like to try to snipe ships from distance as well.

GageDragon
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.20

Post by GageDragon » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 20:22

Have not tried the new version yet but I do like the one I am using now. Will you be making different mods for weapons and ships so we can choose to use other mod if we wish? I am using the tracer mod and the expanded cargo mod already and am afraid they will conflict otherwise lol.

AngEviL
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.20

Post by AngEviL » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 20:42

GageDragon wrote:
Thu, 6. Dec 18, 20:22
Have not tried the new version yet but I do like the one I am using now. Will you be making different mods for weapons and ships so we can choose to use other mod if we wish? I am using the tracer mod and the expanded cargo mod already and am afraid they will conflict otherwise lol.
Of course, it is easy to separate them, i uploaded a file just for shields. However i just edited 1 ship for now, and it just touches the speed variable, not the cargo. The mods in X4 don't have to alter the whole file, but variables within it.

GageDragon
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.20

Post by GageDragon » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 21:23

Cool I look forward to trying out the changes then thanks

Gabeux
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.20

Post by Gabeux » Thu, 6. Dec 18, 21:55

Thanks for the work! I might try this on a new playthrough once Egosoft overhauls the war. :D

Blackscorp_81
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.20

Post by Blackscorp_81 » Fri, 7. Dec 18, 09:09

So i just found this mod and did not test it so far. But i will...
But first some thoughts.
As for shields, i would love to see 3 variants like (example) Teladi = Big Shield capacity but slow recharge, Argon = Medium Cap and charge, Paranid = low shield capacity but fast recharge.
This would give the player the option to choose, what fits more his playstyle. Like Paranid for fast and agile playstyle and Teladi when u will take more hits over longer period of time...

As for the ships, there should not only changes done to speed, but values like "mass", "pitch", "yaw", "hull" etc should be balanced a little bit to. And the best way to really make a difference would be to edit the armament. Like perhaps adding or removing weapon/turret-slots. Paranid for example could have some turrets less... that would make the ships more realistic. Heavy and armed to teeth ships should be slower, and when having lees hull or weapons thy should be more agile. And this would again give more choice to the player, to match his playstyle.

As for Destroyers and Carriers... they should be tuned a lot... all of them. I still remember good old time in X3... they felt powerful and u could do serious combat. But in X4 they are just to weak. More turrets should be added and more shields and hull. I just remember my destroyer yesterday blowing up within seconds after attacking a defense-station. I know, this is what those stations are there for... but my destroyer was down in less than 30 secs. And due to the fact that all those "Gunners" are drunk and never hit target, their 3-4 turrets do nothing. Right now the Nemesis is the strongest ship in game (my opinion) due to tons of massive front-guns to do massive damage spot-on while being fast, agile and good shielded (thx to Teladi-op-shield). And there is no other ship capable of getting u really dangerous on its own. So if L and XL ships would get somewhat like double the amount of turrets, this would not just result in epic looking battles but also give those ships more of that desperately needed Power. They wold now poss a threat to the player and/or make the player flying them feel more powerful. But right now they are just a waste of money.

Hope, that ur mod will address some of that at some day. And thx 4 all that work.

AngEviL
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.20

Post by AngEviL » Fri, 7. Dec 18, 17:53

Blackscorp_81 wrote:
Fri, 7. Dec 18, 09:09
So i just found this mod and did not test it so far. But i will...
But first some thoughts.
As for shields, i would love to see 3 variants like (example) Teladi = Big Shield capacity but slow recharge, Argon = Medium Cap and charge, Paranid = low shield capacity but fast recharge.
This would give the player the option to choose, what fits more his playstyle. Like Paranid for fast and agile playstyle and Teladi when u will take more hits over longer period of time...
Yup, the mod has all that, in vanilla everything is about the same. Regarding the other things you said, this is where our views diverge somewhat, I like to make all ships useful, to bring choice and balance. I understand that some people like to feel that they achieved something big when they get their first capital ship and smash everything, but I like to have all ships viable. The capitals are still by far the most powerful anyway, and this mod makes them better than vanilla because their shields outregen a few fighters. Vanilla = no regeneration in combat for Destroyers.

Version 1.30 is out ! Main thing is that I improved MK1 weapons by a good margin, but they are not same as MK2, but just with lower damage, they have much faster projectile speed than MK2. I also improved boost duration significantly for all engines due to feedback.

rusky
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.30

Post by rusky » Fri, 7. Dec 18, 21:11

Looking good!

I've noticed someone else made a mod to make turret weapons do more damage because apparently they do a LOT less than the standard mounts normally.

Not sure what to make of it, but I generally think turret weapons should do the same or almost the same damage as the equivalent non turret weapon.

AngEviL
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Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.30

Post by AngEviL » Fri, 7. Dec 18, 21:45

rusky wrote:
Fri, 7. Dec 18, 21:11
Looking good!

I've noticed someone else made a mod to make turret weapons do more damage because apparently they do a LOT less than the standard mounts normally.

Not sure what to make of it, but I generally think turret weapons should do the same or almost the same damage as the equivalent non turret weapon.
Everybody has their own vision to the game, and i draw some inspiration partly from X3, but also i tend to balance weaker things, so no matter what you pick, ship or weapon, you are good to go.
Regarding turrets, in X3 it is true that a turret used the same weapons as the front gun, however you had 8 front guns, and around 3 turrets for an M6, 4-6 for an M6+, 10 for and M7 and 40 for an M2(M2 had no main guns). In other words, a turret did 1/8th of the damage of the main gun, so if you had 6 turrets, all the turrets together still did less damage than the main gun.

In X4 you have 2 main guns, compared to 8 in X3, so if you made turrets do the same damage as the main guns, that would make turrets much stronger compared to X3, and also make ships lower than M6 obsolete. I agree that the turrets are lacking, but that is because of their bad targeting. In X4 the turret damage is about an 15th of the damage of the 2 main guns combined, but they have infinite energy. They could use a buff, up to double damage, but more than that, and they become more powerful than a turret in X3.
Please feel free to give a counter argument. Thanks for the idea, i'm gonna buff them in the next update.

rusky
Posts: 450
Joined: Sun, 4. Jan 09, 17:17
x4

Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.30

Post by rusky » Fri, 7. Dec 18, 23:47

Oh I don't necessarily think they should be on par with the main guns, I just though I'd let you know they were quite a bit weaker since you're making a weapon balancing mod now too so it felt like something worth having a look at :)

Thanks for working on this btw, I've been playing with it a bit and it definitely feels better than vanilla already.

One thing I'd like to see but not sure how possible it is since I fear some of this might be in the game engine code rather than the available xml/lua files, is a decoupling of boosting from shields and perhaps even the return of ship specific power generators that affect how much power a ship has overall for using its shields/weapons/boost.

So, for example, if you boost a lot, your shields wouldn't drain, but your generator power would, and if you empty it you stop getting regen, and you can't shoot your weapons either until the generator has had a chance to replenish some of the battery.

Gabeux
Posts: 75
Joined: Sun, 25. May 08, 21:58
x4

Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.30

Post by Gabeux » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 07:09

Only played with it for a bit because the fight ranges, all the missing around, and lack of shield regen was frustrating to me. I don't have a formed opinion yet if I prefer constant regen or vanilla style, but it definitely felt good not being steamrolled by a couple of Defence Drones. And as the Destroyers get to keep some shields up, I believe their AI becomes much more effective and fun.

Regarding Regen, maybe Ion Weapons should be the ones to, after hitting, preventing regen for a few seconds. As long as they are kept low dps and shots per sec. Unfortunately, no enemies seem to field Ion guns, but I think it would be cool for them to have some reason to be used.

And regarding Defence Drones, do the changes to the guns make them Uber Defence Drones? IMO, if they are to have their damage boosted, they should have less health. I think it's super weird how after a fleet engagement, the few defence drones can kill one or two of your unsuspecting M6 (in vanilla at least).

Thanks for the mod by the way!

Baldamundo
Posts: 99
Joined: Sat, 21. Jun 08, 18:46
x4

Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.30

Post by Baldamundo » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 10:35

AngEviL wrote:
Fri, 7. Dec 18, 21:45
Regarding turrets, in X3 it is true that a turret used the same weapons as the front gun, however you had 8 front guns, and around 3 turrets for an M6, 4-6 for an M6+, 10 for and M7 and 40 for an M2(M2 had no main guns). In other words, a turret did 1/8th of the damage of the main gun, so if you had 6 turrets, all the turrets together still did less damage than the main gun.

In X4 you have 2 main guns, compared to 8 in X3, so if you made turrets do the same damage as the main guns, that would make turrets much stronger compared to X3, and also make ships lower than M6 obsolete. I agree that the turrets are lacking, but that is because of their bad targeting. In X4 the turret damage is about an 15th of the damage of the 2 main guns combined, but they have infinite energy. They could use a buff, up to double damage, but more than that, and they become more powerful than a turret in X3.
Please feel free to give a counter argument. Thanks for the idea, i'm gonna buff them in the next update.
Not sure this is exactly true. Certainly in the larger ships (everything from M6 upwards really) they often had multiple weapons in each turret. For the biggest ships, the turrets were extremely powerful. That's not at all the case in X4 - currently because turrets are so weak, a lot of the biggest ships actually seem like they've got a significantly lower damage output than much smaller ships. Pretty sure the Paranid Nemesis has higher DPS than any Frigate or Destroyer.

Also I'm pretty sure missile turrets will have ****** the balance totally. Since they're firing the same missiles, afaik a missile turret is the same damage as a regular missile launcher, whereas gun turrets are 1/15th of the damage (and missiles are already pretty strong!). Seems like there's absolutely no way other turrets can compete with missiles atm, but the game's so badly designed for logistics currently it means the only competitive weapon style is also micromanagement hell for the player.

AngEviL
Posts: 55
Joined: Mon, 10. Sep 12, 14:29
x3ap

Re: [Mod] Shields with no regen delay and weapon balance 1.30

Post by AngEviL » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 11:30

rusky wrote:
Fri, 7. Dec 18, 23:47
So, for example, if you boost a lot, your shields wouldn't drain, but your generator power would, and if you empty it you stop getting regen, and you can't shoot your weapons either until the generator has had a chance to replenish some of the battery.
Thanks for the ideas and support. I don't think that X4 has that functionality, it would be nice to have some more complex mechanics. But i am trying to make the gameplay as interesting as possible with what we have !
Gabeux wrote:
Sat, 8. Dec 18, 07:09
Regarding Regen, maybe Ion Weapons should be the ones to, after hitting, preventing regen for a few seconds. As long as they are kept low dps and shots per sec. Unfortunately, no enemies seem to field Ion guns, but I think it would be cool for them to have some reason to be used.

And regarding Defence Drones, do the changes to the guns make them Uber Defence Drones? IMO, if they are to have their damage boosted, they should have less health. I think it's super weird how after a fleet engagement, the few defence drones can kill one or two of your unsuspecting M6 (in vanilla at least).
Thanks for the mod by the way!
Haha, yeah, it's funny how in vanilla drones and weak fighters kill big ships, because shields don;'t regen, and nobody is hitting the small fast fighters, haha. They miss a lot on the big ships too, but given enough time they kill it eventually.
I changed the MK1 weapons in my mod drastially, they are a great anti-fighter weapon now, trust me, get a MK1 laser or gatling/shotgun if your aim is a little better ! Also i improved turret tracking, got the idea from a mod here. If defense drones are still a problem after this update, I will nerf them.

For now i have changed Ion cannons completely, for better or for worse. They are like a light plasma cannon, half as much damage and range compared to plasma cannon, but has no energy drain.

I also updated the mod to 1.40, i worked a lot on weapon balancing. I did so many changes to weapons that I am sure I have some holes or errors, any feedback is welcome.

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