[MOD] Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks

[iWARR]

w.evans
Exactly. I think the same. Only once, may be, for the battle start in the SECTOR or if the last battle was long time ago (don't know if you can control this. Then, it may couse a couple of a garbage counting algorithmes and so on).

[w.evans]

or for threat level 5 and above. I'll look into it.

[iWARR]

For threat 4. Stupid Vanilla have only one - Level 5, or even silent. For the 5 - it's too late, I think. "AAAAH! Goodbye forever... I will all my pancackes to you."

[w.evans]

Was surprisingly easy to track down, but it doesn't really fit if you're using any cockpit other than default because there are blinking red lights that fold out of the front of the cockpit, and with the new cockpits, they just fold out of nowhere, then fold to nowhere and disappear.

[iWARR]

w.evans
For other cockpits would be enough just fill lightning (colored environment: on the walls, equipment, etc.), with no spot lights.

[w.evans]

11.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.17

The great MICT captain, iWARR, lamented the loss of the Talorcan's brave pilot who very recently devised a most ingenious means of increasing his battlefield awareness. Blaming the young Teladi pilot's demise on the seeming lack of alertness on the part of the player who has a penchant for digging through obscure menus while his brethren are risking their necks, Captain iWARR thought it only fair that the same stick-and-bucket system be installed on the Skunk. He looks forward to the player being at least aware when his comrades face danger in parts unknown.

Priority alerts are now much harder to miss when player-owned ships and stations face threats OOZ with Threat Levels 5 or above.

Thanks to iWARR for suggesting this.

[iWARR]

Talorcan... Thousands and millions years... Inclement cosmic winds that blow here, didn't spared the poor teladi. So utterly downcast and frightened was the miserable pangolin.
His little defenseless cockleboat scattered like a dust in the merciless abyss, seemingly able to swallow up even the Time...

But somewhere out there, among the distant systems, scattered like a handful of diamonds on the black veil, there is shining a small window, gaily looking at this colorless world.
Hidden thought was focused here, quietly and heartily. The scientist-engineer w.evans, has held in his hands a prototype of a new TRANS-GRAVY-STICK-AND-BUCKET-CHALLENGER.
He didn't know what he had to invent in the not too distant future. Just to write the laws, the Universe itself have subdue to.

Captain iWARR had to visit him next day...
To be continued...

P.S.
Sorry, Split does not speak English. Split say: "YES!"

[iWARR]

w.evans
Think about addon that learning enemy get back. If a player decides smash any station or have a very big strike force close to enemy territory, enemy calculates EQUAL power (exept Skunk) and assign ships to the battle.
But no-no way for any fake spawns. Only really existed ships and routes (from the different neighbouring zones) for the present moment. One-time launching. If the enemy power is not enough, then nothing special happens. Еnemy tramples down bofu and pancackes into the lower deck.

[iWARR]

Titurel in fire and try to escape. One-eyed muzzle of the last engine was still breathed hot, as if a giant sun suddenly came inside the cabine.
Enemy ship have darted forward, ashing the last innards with all his might.
It spun sidelong, almost vertically, like a match on fire. At the same time, it has flied with unbelievable speed.
We had leave others in a short time and stay alone into entire darkness. I had try to overtake it, again and again, but without any chance.
Have you ever see a dream, when you try to overtake somebody, but you can't, staying at the same place?

Hm... Seems, I'm doesn't eaten hallcinogenic mushrooms today...
And all of this bugs... Why they always creeping over my keyboard?

P.S.
Sorry, Split does not speak English. Split say: "YES!"

[w.evans]

w.evans
Think about addon that learning enemy get back. If a player decides smash any station or have a very big strike force close to enemy territory, enemy calculates EQUAL power (exept Skunk) and assign ships to the battle.
But no-no way for any fake spawns. Only really existed ships and routes (from the different neighbouring zones) for the present moment. One-time launching. If the enemy power is not enough, then nothing special happens. Еnemy tramples down bofu and pancackes into the lower deck.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=381043

Not exactly what you're asking for since the wars will rage on regardless of player intervention rather than tailoring to player actions (and I think how it's done there is better than playing on a stage set), but the player can choose which side(s) to help, can help considerably, and player action can have very real consequences on the political and economic map, and the game as a whole.

Titurel in fire and try to escape. One-eyed muzzle of the last engine was still breathed hot, as if a giant sun suddenly came inside the cabine.
Enemy ship have darted forward, ashing the last innards with all his might.
It spun sidelong, almost vertically, like a match on fire. At the same time, it has flied with unbelievable speed.
We had leave others in a short time and stay alone into entire darkness. I had try to overtake it, again and again, but without any chance.
Have you ever see a dream, when you try to overtake somebody, but you can't, staying at the same place?

Hm... Seems, I'm doesn't eaten hallcinogenic mushrooms today...
And all of this bugs... Why they always creeping over my keyboard?

[iWARR]

w.evans

INTERGALACTIC KINGDOMS - it's something very cool, I suppose... Tanks I didn't know about it.

But all of existing bugs for the moment will make new hard gameplay just insane (I mean, bugs from many other mods I have installed: pretty good, worked but unfinished there and there and not so clear as yours).
Too much gameplay brakes for now. And I saw my debug log - this is really sad situation.

[w.evans]

Just an update, if anyone's interested: I'm switching the threat assessment for the OOZ alerts over to the most damage that a hostile ship can possibly do, rather than tracking particular salvos. The assessment won't be as accurate, and the resulting threat levels would tend to be alarmist since it will no longer track the actual damage that a hostile ship can do (such as changes in turret damage, relative orientation, etc), however should be more effective at keeping everyone aware of whether they might lose a ship OOZ due to enemy fire, with enough time to do something about it.

Also changed it to give you later reports if a ship starts out facing chickenfeed, but later gets into trouble. Right now, I have it so that your captain will keep spamming you with messages everytime a ship gets hit OOZ at Threat Level 4 or greater (so you'll get messages one-after-the-other from Threat Level 4 and above), with klaxons sounding once it hits Threat Level 5. Haven't yet decided if that's a good thing. Opinions?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I'll give it a try this evening. Is the Steam MCT appropriate or are relevant updates currently just in Nexus files?

[w.evans]

At this very moment, the steam version is current. Will change in a bit though, because I'm planning on uploading this latest update just to the Nexus for now. Next steam update will be tomorrow, most likely.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

No prob, I'll file up Nexus

[w.evans]

Looking forward to your feedback!

You know, I could update the steam version too. It's mostly updating three copies of mod descriptions that's keeping me from updating both versions. Uploading to steam's just a copy-paste -> double-click. You prefer to get it there?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Thanks for asking. For general personal use, I am not sure yet (I need to reacquaint myself with the ins and outs of the supplements after a long spell in vanilla) but for balance/bug testing, I believe it would be best to take into consideration the entire package.

So basically, MCT is convenient for the latter but since I can appreciate that updating that as regularly as Nexus would a bit of a PITA, I am happy to go the all-from-Nexus route for balance/bug testing too. Faster updates and more time for coding instead of tweaking Steam

[w.evans]

13.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.18

A few changes to how the Battle Display works with regard to battles OOZ:

• The initial threat assessments that your crews make to OOZ threats assume that the threat will do the maximum amount of damage that it possibly can.
• Following threat assessments take only the amount of damage that a hostile threat did in its last salvo, and projects that into a survivability threshold.
• IF that threshold later drops, such that the Threat Level is elevated to Level 4, the affected captain starts sending a steady stream of reports with real-time updates of the status of their shields and hull.
• If the threshold drops further, such that the Threat Level is elevated to Level 5 and above, the affected captain starts sending urgent reports, and Betty reinforces those reports by sounding the Skunk's klaxon which should be very hard to miss.

Also cleaned up and optimized the code in general, although it wasn't very resource-intensive in the first place. Messy code makes me itch.

Happy 13th, everyone!

_____
Thanks, Sparks! Looking forward to your observations and recommendations.

[w.evans]

Went ahead and updated the Steam version as well since it's the 13th.

=== Steam and Nexus versions are up-to-date up to this point. ===

[w.evans]

13.August 2015 - MOCT_supp2 updated to 0.04

Having been hammered relentlessly by the Xenon for 25 years, Family Ryak, already formidable warriors, have developed a warrior culture of peerless resilience and tenacity.

Why?

Lore: They're Split. They're supposed to be awesome warriors, but suck at pretty much everything else.

Gameplay: Particularly with a fairly large percentage of Xenon running MICT with MOCT_supp2, there's a tendency for Family Ryak to get blasted to within an inch of extinction; that inch thanks only to the fact that stations are indestructible without mods that change that. And while they ought to have the fight of their lives, I think that it would be a shame if they were extinguished before the player even gets to see them.

Besides, they're Split.

What does this mean in gameplay terms?

Split captains, pilots, and defence officers will tend to be excellent. Split of other trades, not so much.

For those also running MICT, Split ships would almost always fly MICT, except their engineers kinda suck. Why do they suck?

1) Remember how Split ships are awesome implements of war, but not so awesome pieces of engineering? These are the engineers that designed those.

2) Lore holds that the really smart Split are the women, and all the Split engineers in the game are male.

That said, ships with Split crews have the highest chance to run according to MICT doctrine.

Juicy Data:

Code: Select all

Stat Ranges
            Combat      Leadership  Morale      Navigation  Engineering Total
Xenon       3-5         3-5         3-5         3-5         3-5         15-25       40
Split       3-5         2-4         2-5         2-4         2-5         11-23       34
Split (new) 5-5         4-5         4-5         4-4         0-4         17-23       40
Teladi      2-4         3-5         2-4         2-5         2-5         11-23       34

Military    2-5         2-5         2-5         2-4         2-5         10-24       34
Pirate      1-5         3-5         1-5         2-5         2-5          9-25       34
Corporate   2-4         2-4         3-5         2-5         2-5         11-23       34

Mean
            Combat      Leadership  Morale      Navigation  Engineering Total
Xenon       4           4           4           4           4           20
Split       4           3           3.5         3           3.5         17
Split (new) 5           4.5         4.5         4           2           20
Teladi      3           4           3           3.5         3.5         17

Military    3.5         3.5         3.5         3           3.5         17
Pirate      3           4           3           3.5         3.5         17
Corporate   3           3           4           3.5         3.5         17

MICT Chance
            Combat      Leadership  Morale      Navigation  Engineering % Chance
Xenon       0.67        0.67        0.67        0.67        0.67        13.5%
Split       0.67        0.33        0.5         0.33        0.5          1.8%
Split (new) 1.00        1.00        1.00        1.00        0.2         20.0%
Teladi      0.33        0.67        0.33        0.5         0.5          1.8%

Military    0.5         0.5         0.5         0.33        0.5          2.1%
Pirate      0.4         0.67        0.4         0.5         0.5          2.7%
Corporate   0.33        0.33        0.67        0.5         0.5          1.8%

* Military Factions = Heart of Albion, Argon Government, Reivers
* Pirate Factions = Sovereign Syndicate, Heretic Vanguards
* Corporate/Civilian Factions = PMC, Albion Corporations, Omicron Lyrae Corporations, Canterans