Kadatherion wrote: ↑Mon, 24. Dec 18, 15:33
So, I've finally decided to play a bit with your rebalance, and I've got to say you've taken the right direction in my opinion. I especially approve how you have balanced it towards longer engagements, so that bigger ships now take quite a while to go down. Overall, the game needed that, but on the other hand some of your tweaks kind of work to the opposite of this and what I believe were intended for. And I'm talking, mainly, about ship agility: you've increased the agility of Xenon Ps and capitals, "to bring them on par with the other factions"... wrong choice, you should have nerfed the latter.
A big issue in X4, that makes engagements feel like an arcade game instead of naval battles, is that even the biggest ships are way too nimble. This also contributes to two other issues: you don't really feel like you are facing a completely different type of gameplay once you upgrade from your fighter/corvette to frigates/destroyers, so variety suffers, and... it makes turrets even worse. Turrets miss a lot for various reasons, but the faster the ship is able to turn, the more difficult it is for the turret to compensate. Instead of making turrets themselves turn at crazy speeds to try and compensate the rapid turning ships, in a neverending chase, I would have made M to XL ships - proportionally - much more sluggish. Basically, I would have went more towards X3 as a balance, trying to recreate that imposing feeling you had when you were flying (or facing) an M2. Would feel better, it would probably help turrets without the need of making them "OP", and would probably be more compatible with what turret fixes Egosoft will implement in the future.
Sure, in X3 flying an M2 was slow as heck and cut you out of several features, but that was the point to differentiate between ships, so that you'd always have need for both cap ships and medium sized ones: this is the path I'd suggest you to go towards (and cap ships not being able to boost already is a good thing). Battles are already fun with your mod, much more exciting than vanilla, but you could go the extra mile and bring the whole balance closer to the old one quite a few of us still love. BlackRain's overhaul is going down the "arcade" route anyway, so one more reason for you, in my opinion, to go the opposite direction, so the two mods cater to two very different approaches and playing styles.
Just my two cents, but after parking myself on the tail of a K earlier (which still is dumb, as they have no turret coverage and then you can fire at will without any need to even steer your ship) and seeing it turn all over like a sports car, bringing my nemesis with it, it felt way too silly
All your points make sense Kadatherion, and you are right, I wish it would be easy to fix these things.
I'll start with the Xenon agility increase, especially K. I would LOVE for the K to be a slow threatening juggernaut. Its' turret configuration is the worst possible, so any ship can go on its large back and kill it easily, it's not like there is even a slow window of opportunity, the blind spot covers half the ship, and also like you said, in X4 you can even park yourself and don't even bother to steer your ship to keep on its back.
The second thing about the K it is its dumb AI, not using the advantage of the firepower of all it's turrets in its belly, but facing the target straight on, and more than half of the turrets are doing nothing.
I completelly agree, it looks silly that K turns so fast, but I feel that now at least it faces sometimes its turrets towards targets, and does some damage. If it was slow, like in vanilla, it is really a sitting duck, which is why I took this approach that is a bit extreme, I admit. If it had full turret coverage, as it should, and better AI, sure, it would work great to be very slow and very mean ! I thought of it, if there is any way to make the K threatening with its current AI and turret layout, I welcome any ideas.
Your second point is ships turning or moving too fast, I think I wish it too, that it was more like X3 in that regard. It is more of the case that the cat is out of the bag, that people got used to fast and manuevrable ships, and this would be a general nerf, which would be unpopular. Let's say the first DLC gets released and I update the mod. "The new Boron ships got updated with this mod, all boron ships are slower than in vanilla now !", haha. It's not that I would want for this mod to be mainstream, and "appease the majority", there are some other things too. This way this mod is compatible with new ships and DLCs. If i nerf existing ships, they would be weaker than any ships being added in the game.
Another thing is that I am waiting for egosoft to fix turret aiming, and i don't think that slowing down ships would make the mod more compatible with Egosoft future turret fixes. If they fix turret aiming, for turrets to aim more, wouldn't turrets work better than intended if the ships were even slower ? As the fix would be designed for the fast and manuevrable ships we have now.
Unless I get some suggestion regarding buffing Xenons large ships with their current AI and without modifying their design and add turrets on their back, I think it is best to be this way so you have some challenge at least.
I thank you for the feedback, and for a good suggestion I can implement. I will see about L ships and M ships being slower, less agile, but tougher.