[MOD] Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks

[w.evans]

Sorry, completely OT. That was such a cool series of emoticons that I just had to quote it to see how you did it.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Hehehe

(Easy way for silly things like that is to click on "View more Emoticons" before the default 20)

[Rubini]

Whew! Problem with the Balors turned out to be "that other thing." Firing properly now. And this mod, as well as all of my other published mods, are safe to play.

Great! Thanks man!

[w.evans]

21.Mar.2015 - MICT_supp2_v0.02 and MICT_supp3_v0.03 are up!

supplement 2:

Squadron subordinates now properly jump to their squadron commander if they're not fighting, and are separated, but are in the same zone. They will now only try do so if they are capital ships.
Squadron subordinates will attack everything hostile within their own gravidar range around their squadron commander.
This will affect ALL squadron subordinates, including NPC escorts. (Expect hostile fighter escorts to be much more aggressive.)

edit: took this down for a while because I forgot to deactivate the logging. Worked on it a bit more and:

Long-range capital ships only target hostile capital ships unless they, or their squadron commander, are/is attacked.

Still not there, but getting ... somewhere. Hopefully somewhere interesting.

........
supplement 3:

Fixed a path error fixing the excessive fuel reserve held by ships set to automatically refuel. Should work properly now.

[oliverjanda]

Whew! Problem with the Balors turned out to be "that other thing." Firing properly now. And this mod, as well as all of my other published mods, are safe to play.

Good to hear that!
Do you intend to upload this mod on steam someday?

[w.evans]

Someday, yeah. Planning on combining this with MOCT and mashing all of the supplements together before uploading it to the Workshop once I stop working on it.

edit: Thinking about it, though. Disseminating mods here feels like I'm sharing stuff I did with my friends. And the Nexus is alright, although the modders' forum is mostly the Skyrim crowd. The Steam Workshop feels, I don't know, like a marketplace? Like we're the crazy blokes at the corner giving stuff away to people who're out shopping.

[oliverjanda]

Someday, yeah. Planning on combining this with MOCT and mashing all of the supplements together before uploading it to the Workshop once I stop working on it.

edit: Thinking about it, though. Disseminating mods here feels like I'm sharing stuff I did with my friends. And the Nexus is alright, although the modders' forum is mostly the Skyrim crowd. The Steam Workshop feels, I don't know, like a marketplace? Like we're the crazy blokes at the corner giving stuff away to people who're out shopping.

I like the workshop for it's convenience.

[w.evans]

Yeah, there is that. A hell of a lot easier to update.

[bm01]

That's the only good thing there is to it. Items are oddly sorted (so many no longer compatible mods on the first page...), they don't support previous versions (what if I want to provide another version (lite, debug...)?), it forces update and gives pretty much no warning, uploading to it requires the use of an external tool... So many problem could be avoided if the Workshop was more like, well, the Nexus for example. To be honest I'm using the Workshop only because it's more popular.

[Conbadicus]

This mod made my ships do a lot of weird stuff that didn't pan out very well. Kept getting "Balor Can't Jump" messages. Ships boosting to odd places and not firing. I like the jump in

However, I think this makes the "Emergency Jump" mod not work.

[w.evans]

@bm01, I don't understand the sorting in Steam either, although it seems like views, subscriptions, and ratings are each weighted and counted. My mods were never very popular though, so I'm not bothered by the shifting much anymore. Was quite confused by it the first time my mod moved from page 1 to page 5, though.

However, I think this makes the "Emergency Jump" mod not work.

Only possible conflict I can see with AEJ is that MICT ships which are currently in combat won't activate AEJ -- they won't jump out when they reach the threshold set in AEJ. They should still try to jump out to beyond their target's firing range if they're shields get below a certain threshold, however.

Kept getting "Balor Can't Jump" messages.

Yeah, been getting that since maybe X:R 3.50. Luckily, that was around the same time got in-zone boosting working. Not sure why yet, but I think it's when they try to jump before their jump drives have had time to cool down. I have it happening much less in the test version I'm running, but it still occasionally happens.

This mod made my ships do a lot of weird stuff that didn't pan out very well.

Please elaborate "weird stuff that didn't pan out very well." Except for the Sucellus and Balor, they're supposed to keep moving around. Balors and Sucellus are supposed to jump or boost to position, stop moving, and keep the front of the ship oriented towards their target.

Would also appreciate if you could describe what happened with more detail: what ships you had, what you were attacking, what other hostile ships were present, etc. Were the ships in one squad? Were they all separate but in your squad? Which supplements did you have installed?

[Conbadicus]

I was attacking a Xenon I with 3 Balors a taranis a titurel and a light sul (we got ****** up something fierce)

As far as I know, the Balor should be able to able to stay well out of its range and just keep lobbing in missiles, but it jumped right into range and, of course, only lasted about 30 seconds before it was toast. I think youre right about the cool down. But he didn't try to boost either

[w.evans]

But he didn't try to boost either

Good idea, thanks! I'll add in a condition to boost if it can't jump for some reason. Best solution is still to try and trace precisely why they sometimes refuse to jump, though. If the problem's just the cool down, I can add a timer.

ps.

I was attacking a Xenon I with 3 Balors a taranis a titurel and a light sul (we got ****** up something fierce)

As far as I know, the Balor should be able to able to stay well out of its range and just keep lobbing in missiles, but it jumped right into range and, of course, only lasted about 30 seconds before it was toast.

Were they squadded together? If they were, then the subordinate ships will stay close to their squadron commander first, and then engage when the target comes into radar range. They could behave the way you described if the Balors were squadded under your Taranis, for example.

If the Balors were acting alone (not in a squad with any ships, or directly under the Skunk), they shouldn't go anywhere close to that I.

Also, do your ships' crews meet the crew requirements? (See OP)

[w.evans]

Oh, and if anyone's trying Xenon 2.0, I'm starting to get some data about Xenon ships spawning with MICT active. Just a question of finding them, but should be interesting times ahead.

[Conbadicus]

Yes my ships all meet the requirements, I just did another test against a singular Tit. and the balors seem to have jumped into an appropriate range.

The ships are all in my squad.


Heres something to think about. I know ships stay out of range of most weapons but what if those are destroyed? Do they continue to stay out? I think I destroyed all the turrets on this ship but my ships are still staying pretty far out and using only those slow blue shots, they could get right in close and full alpha attack. Also, do they have a script to boost away from a ship about to blow?

[Conbadicus]

Ok Same fight, Balors acting fine, just firing slowly.

Tit jumps in at 11km and sits there.
Taranis does a fly by unloading some serious power then flies out of range has 100% hull and 97% shields.
Light Sul flies by pretty closely then sits at 5km range, seems like its aligning, takes a while then starts shooting, when it hits 10% shields it jumps away.

[w.evans]

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Heres something to think about. I know ships stay out of range of most weapons but what if those are destroyed? Do they continue to stay out? I think I destroyed all the turrets on this ship but my ships are still staying pretty far out and using only those slow blue shots, they could get right in close and full alpha attack.

At the moment, the ships go out to close to their max range. Sucellus and Balors use their long ranged weapons to calculate max range, other ships use their turret ranges. The max range of the target only comes into play if they feel threatened.

Also, do they have a script to boost away from a ship about to blow?

Not at the moment. Working on that, but I didn't think it was high priority since MICT ships tend to keep their distance in the first place. In testing, not even Stromvoks get caught in blasts, but have you seen otherwise? If ships get caught in target blasts, I could move it up on the to do list.

Ok Same fight, Balors acting fine, just firing slowly.

To be expected, especially if you have the relevant supplements. The number of torpedoes they launch is greatly increased, but it also takes them longer to reload.

Tit jumps in at 11km and sits there.

Odd. I have a Lepton in my squad (with 4 Taranis set to guard it), and it moves like everyone else.

Taranis does a fly by unloading some serious power then flies out of range has 100% hull and 97% shields.

Thanks, I'll tighten up boosting, or make it more restrictive. Because they move pretty fast when boosting, by the time the crew realizes that they're at their target point, they're often already past it. Did your Taranis move to re-engage, or did it stay out of range?

Light Sul flies by pretty closely then sits at 5km range, seems like its aligning, takes a while then starts shooting, when it hits 10% shields it jumps away.

Good. That's working properly.

Also, a note on the effect of skills. Skills affect the accuracy of the ranges MICT crews calculate, and their over-all responsiveness. So a less-than-perfect captain will, for example, have a chance to jump to beyond firing range when attacking, or to within the target's firing range when running away. The delay in response time if skills are less than perfect, can greatly affect ranges when moving and boosting in general too. If the boost it's doing should only take 10 seconds, and it takes 20 seconds for the captain to respond, then the ship would've traveled roughly double the distance before they realize it.

[w.evans]

22.Mar.2015 - MiscellaneousIZCombatTweaks_v0.08 is up!

• Tactical jumps now use jump fuel. MICT ships will maintain a reserve of 500 fuel cells. Squadron subordinates jumping to join their squadron commander (supp2) still do not use jump fuel so that everyone in the squad will have more or less the same amount after a battle.
• MICT ships in combat will not jump less than 10 seconds after their last jump.
• MICT Ships that do not, or cannot, jump will keep moving. They will boost if they're trying to go far enough.
• MICT ships sometimes got stuck attacking nil. - FIXED
• If targeting station or ship components, MICT ships will maneouver against the station or ship without changing the target.

[Conbadicus]

I can't remember about the Taranis, but I think it came back slowly. I think my biggest issue is that they are being too cautious staying out of range. My squad could have wrecked that tit very quickly if they came in for close attack and utilized all turrets.

Is the targeting of components automatically? Perhaps a 5 star defence captain can purposefully target the enemy turrets, then once a good % of them are down the captain can bring the ship closer for more dps?

How does the script decide whether they feel threatened? Perhaps it can be "DPS" based? Do the tools allow a measurement of how fast the Shield is dropping? If so, essentially that above thing can work. Perhaps a good captain knows that the DPS on themself is manageable for a while in order to get in close to use more turrets.

I'm liking your Mod, mostly because it gets my ships to the target quicker than waiting for them to slow travel.

Also, about the boosting away thing - No, the ships stay out of range, but I was thinking if they did get in close to lay on some damage, they would then want to boost away. etc. Otherwise the blast doesn't touch them.

[birdtable]

(May) the crazy blokes at the corner (keep) giving stuff away to people who're out shopping .. (because we can only shop) .... (very appreciated,, long live the crazy blokes)...