[3.2/2.5 MOD] X3TC Naval Shuffle 1.3.3.3/1.1: Now reasonably AP compatable

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Wed, 3. Feb 10, 21:03

Like I mentioned in my PM, I can host it for you and give you an account to keep the files up to date yourself, just let me know....

oh, and 3 hours now and still no file, I officially formally despise rapidshare now.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Wed, 3. Feb 10, 21:13

That's extremily generous of you, but I don't want to inconvenience of you, and I just threw Beta 2 up on Filefront (now I just have to wait for it to appear...). I'll keep it in mind, though, in the event that the stuff starts to get ridiculous.

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Wed, 3. Feb 10, 21:17

It's no inconvenience at all. Takes a grand total of a minute to set up the account and verify that it works, and it's not like your mod files are gigabytes in size anyway. I'd be happy to help out any way I can.

Edit: On a side note, I figured out the formula to convert the decimal value to the visible RPMs used in the editors (it was disgustingly simple too). Once I have the names issue resolved I might actually have a utility worth releasing!

The formula I have seems to be 'close enough' accurate, in that it doesn't seem to round up the decimal places to the same degree, which can probably be done in Excel anyway. Oh well, at least it's giving correct output now.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Wed, 3. Feb 10, 21:59

All right, I'm switching over to Megaupload for now, hopefully that'll work better: I've linked up to the mirror in the OP. You still waiting for that download?

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Wed, 3. Feb 10, 22:16

I managed to get it off Megaupload after being visually assaulted by ads and having to wait a minute, although a minute is a far shot better than 3 hours (with no results).

Oh, by the way, I put the beta2 file up on my personal webspace so you can use it as a mirror anyway. That way there's zero waiting time or advertising molestation for a 42kb file. Feel free to link it, cause I'm gonna volunteer my efforts one way or the other dammit, either through statistical analysis of things or helping with hosting the files.

http://www.cwmftw.com/x3tc/sorenson/X3T ... Beta_2.rar

I henceforth dub my actions....HELPRAPE!

Edit: On a side note, I got my little applet capable of properly interpreting ALL of the names exported by the TShips file (except 6 that are named as *** UNDEFINED *** Hauler, but they're like that in the X3 Editor as well...soooooo), so it suddenly became very easy to parse all of the modded ship information like speed/handling/shields/etc. I haven't gotten it to do weapons yet, but it grabs the rest of the pertinent information. Would that be of any use to you?

Edit 2: One inconsistency I noticed is in the speed of the Solano vs. the Venti. The Solano is supposedly an 'interceptor' class M4, but is far slower than the Venti. I do realize the Venti is supposed to be a rediculously strong M3, but shouldn't the OTAS Interceptor at least be able to keep pace with it?

Oh, and with the speed increase for the PPC/IBLs up to speeds that are higher than HEPTs. Doesn't that essentially give them the speed required to swat fighters out of the sky? If energy isn't an issue, then what's the point of mounting anything but PPCs all around if they're a one stop kill shop for all classes? I think the heavy cap weapons should be fast enough to hit other caps reasonably well, but too slow to be able to swat faster ships (M6 and smaller) like nothing. Otherwise it completely defeats the purpose of having multiple weapon types on a ship.

TSM · Post by **TSM** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 04:05

As requested your file is hosted by Filefront aswell

, if you need to update your beta overthere pm me on here when you have uploaded and I will sort it for you

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 04:36

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:Edit 2: One inconsistency I noticed is in the speed of the Solano vs. the Venti. The Solano is supposedly an 'interceptor' class M4, but is far slower than the Venti. I do realize the Venti is supposed to be a rediculously strong M3, but shouldn't the OTAS Interceptor at least be able to keep pace with it?

Ack, good catch - I must've forgotten to change the original tunings or set them to 15 for some strange reason. Corrected.

Oh, and with the speed increase for the PPC/IBLs up to speeds that are higher than HEPTs. Doesn't that essentially give them the speed required to swat fighters out of the sky? If energy isn't an issue, then what's the point of mounting anything but PPCs all around if they're a one stop kill shop for all classes? I think the heavy cap weapons should be fast enough to hit other caps reasonably well, but too slow to be able to swat faster ships (M6 and smaller) like nothing. Otherwise it completely defeats the purpose of having multiple weapon types on a ship.

A fair enough cop, I suppose. Although part of the problem is that I really want to convey the big gun mystique that's attached to PPCs and the like - them being these huge eff-off guns that fire slow, pack a wallop, and god help you if you're in their firing arc, capital ship or otherwise. Pluis with the increased speeds of M3s and M6s, it's even easier for them to dance around PPC fire, although I suppose in retrospect that quadrupling their speed was a bit overkill. I'll take another stab at the numbers tonight, maybe try just double.

EDIT: Which still puts them above HEPTs, so it looks like I'm going to have to develop a new speed curve calculation for the whole lot. Yay. Although I suppose I should've seen this coming a good while ago.

EDIT:

TSM wrote:As requested your file is hosted by Filefront aswell , if you need to update your beta overthere pm me on here when you have uploaded and I will sort it for you

Thank you for that, although based on how long it took them to get that done I might stick with Megaupload as my primary and use Filefront and Shadow's server as backup mirrors - gotta' be punctual and all that.

In other news, I've started working on missiles with a rework of the galaxy subtyping, so expect the Dumbfire class to vanish and be integrated into the light/medium/heavy/whatever varients instead, and the Terran stuff's finally going to become exclusive to Terran fighters (no more commonwealthers whipping out Hammerheads like a big ol' nuclear-tipped middle finger, yay) I'm also wondering if maybe I should let Bombers be able to launch AF_CAPITAL and TORP_CAPITAL subtyped missiles and Capitals to launch BOMBER missiles to boost up their power - some of these bomber weapons are more powerful than the torpedoes!

Matterom · Post by **Matterom** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 04:49

i think the main problem is that you can shoot anywhere you can see
plus some of those turrets go to fast

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 05:21

I have a suggestion for the laser type weapon classifications. Why not set up their speed characteristics according to what sort of target they should be fired against? or near instant in the case of beam stuff, but still...have PRG be the same speed as it is now as sort of a 'chaingun' style weapon for anti-fighter...have HEPT be geared for hitting M3/M6s, CIG/ISR type class geared for fighting M6/M7, and the big cap ship guns geared towards Capital class ships.

I tweaked your beta release a bit, and I put the speed of PPCs at 475m/s (with the other 3 +/- a bit of speed for a bit of variation), and it seemed a decent speed...could be bumped to 500 maybe 600 without being TOO overpowering. I was able to hit small stuff at 475 but only when they're being idiots and flying straight at me.

I bumped up HEPTs to 650 and it seemed to give them a lot more hitting power against the fighter class ships, without being an insta-sniper cannon.

Might be something to think about...oh I also re-tuned the 4 main cap ship guns I was playing with to NEAR stock...I just bumped up the speed and left the charge up time at what you modded it to.

Oh, and for my mirror, you don't have to wait for me to upload anything, I can set you up with an account so you can upload there whenever you have a release.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 05:58

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:I have a suggestion for the laser type weapon classifications. Why not set up their speed characteristics according to what sort of target they should be fired against? or near instant in the case of beam stuff, but still...have PRG be the same speed as it is now as sort of a 'chaingun' style weapon for anti-fighter...have HEPT be geared for hitting M3/M6s, CIG/ISR type class geared for fighting M6/M7, and the big cap ship guns geared towards Capital class ships.

That's certainely workable. The one thing I worry about, especially with regards to the HEPT, is that increasing the speed (since it's primarily a fighter-scale gun) might make M4-on-M3 fights a lot more difficult due to the way the power curve's set up, even after optomizing some of the shield loadouts..

I tweaked your beta release a bit, and I put the speed of PPCs at 475m/s (with the other 3 +/- a bit of speed for a bit of variation), and it seemed a decent speed...could be bumped to 500 maybe 600 without being TOO overpowering. I was able to hit small stuff at 475 but only when they're being idiots and flying straight at me.

I usually try to keep stuff fractional to make calculations and reversals easy to complete. Given the new capital ship speeds you think 666 m/s might be overdoing it?

I bumped up HEPTs to 650 and it seemed to give them a lot more hitting power against the fighter class ships, without being an insta-sniper cannon.

Half again sounds like it might work. The way the beam body's set up gives it a pretty good advantage as well (as compared to its Terran sibling, whose rather tiny body makes hitting stuff at max range a pain).

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 06:13

Actually yes I recant on the 600m/s PPC shots, as sitting at 475m/s seems to put it in a pretty comfortable spot...I'd say ballpark of 525m/s would probably as fast as a capital class weapon should go, any faster and hitting capital class ships would essentially be a turkey shoot.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 06:39

One other problem I'm worried about is that the capital guns have to compete with the race beam weapons for slot occupancy - the Tri-Beam Cannon's only 500 meters short of the PPC, and the Fusion Beam Cannon actually overshoots the PSP's range by about 200 meters. If the capital guns take 10/15/20 seconds to reach their target, and if the bullet speeds are low to the point where they're able to whiff with some regularity (especially with the increased capital ship speed/maneuvering) folks might pass up capital guns in favor of a full beam load (which to be fair has an allure all its own) since they're guarenteed and instant hits (on anything larger than an M3, anyway) even if they've got a lower DPS. Capital bullet speeds of around 650-700, even though it'll make it possible to take out fighters and the like with them (which'll happen anyway if the player decides to beam-boat or use flak) will at least give capship guns that much more of an edge to make people want to use them.

lamoyja · Post by **lamoyja** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 16:40

I think it'll be fine. AI is super dumb when it comes to using beam weapons. So unless they do super overpowered damage when in the hand of npc's, it shouldn't really matter.

Given the choice, I'd probably use beam weapons even if they were far inferior anyways

Thats probably one of the reasons why egosoft never seriously released beam weapons into the universe. They figured no one would use anything else.

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 16:44

Yes but as the beta currently sits, the only way to get those super beam weapons is through a cheat package (that I know of anyway), or spawning them on an equipment dock. That alone means that the players ships alone will be the ONLY ones in the universe capable of being a beam-boat, which is a bit unfair to the poor AI buggers we have to fight.

That plus in terms of OOS combat, there are no misses for ANY weapons, that means if PPCs are set to double damage and fire like a machine gun, they'll obliterate everything in their path.

What about having the beam weapons range cut down to roughly 6km (+/- for racial variants), and balance them so that they are a tad higher damage-wise than CIGs? If the draw of a weapon is instant hits and 100% accuracy then I would even venture to say that the overall damage output should be lower, and the benefit of the weapon is in system combat and guaranteed hits instead of having to worry as much about missing your target.

The pewpewlaz0rz are cool and all, but the trick is giving them their own perticular role that doesn't involve having to gut another class of weapon systems to CREATE a role for them.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 19:01

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:Yes but as the beta currently sits, the only way to get those super beam weapons is through a cheat package (that I know of anyway), or spawning them on an equipment dock. That alone means that the players ships alone will be the ONLY ones in the universe capable of being a beam-boat, which is a bit unfair to the poor AI buggers we have to fight.

True, but that's just a matter of getting into Jobs and messing around with some of the strongs or values for equipment selection.

That plus in terms of OOS combat, there are no misses for ANY weapons, that means if PPCs are set to double damage and fire like a machine gun, they'll obliterate everything in their path.

I don't suppose you've got any links leading to a good specific breakdown of TC OOS, do you? The stuff I'm reading says it's done in 30-second blocks in which each gun fires once, so I don't exactly follow you comment. Although if some of the stories I'm reading are anything to go by capital ships need every bit of help OOS they can get.

What about having the beam weapons range cut down to roughly 6km (+/- for racial variants), and balance them so that they are a tad higher damage-wise than CIGs? If the draw of a weapon is instant hits and 100% accuracy then I would even venture to say that the overall damage output should be lower, and the benefit of the weapon is in system combat and guaranteed hits instead of having to worry as much about missing your target.

The Tri-Beam and Plasma Beam are already only a little more damaging than the CIG and ISR (~15% and 10% respectively) but're also more than twice their volumes and're a class heavier in terms of mountability - plus, as noted, their hit rate on anything that's an M3 or lighter's far from 100% thanks to the random beam angling. The one thing that makes them look overpowered is that their one biggest competitor's bullet by default is so slow that it's easy for fighters to dance around them and for capital ships at range to pull dodge maneuvers and avoid a good chunk of the fire.

The pewpewlaz0rz are cool and all, but the trick is giving them their own perticular role that doesn't involve having to gut another class of weapon systems to CREATE a role for them.

I wouldn't say that they're gutting other weapons to make their role. Think of the FBC, TBC and PBC more as mid-range omnisituational weapons: they can be used against capital ships to deliver concistant and immediete damage, but don't have nearly as much an impact as dedicated capital ship guns in terms of DPS, and they can be switched around to anti-fighter duty, but while possessing a far longer range than the dedicated anti-fighter weapons are prone to frequent misses at range because of the fanning effect, whereas flak weapons are guarenteed hits on fighters because of their area-of-effect munitions. Jacks of all trades, but masters of none.

What I could do is try and beef up some of the other weapons (like maybe increase flak weapon ranges to 3 km) to make them more appealing, and perhaps also jack up the beam weapons' energy requirements to make them even more power hungry than the capital ship guns.

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 19:48

For out of system Combat I really think Gazz would be the person to talk to about the semantics, since he wrote the "OOS Combat Rebalance" mod (http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=249331) which is quite good once you make sure to disable the debugging output.

Perhaps the best way for tweaking the beam weapons vs. capital weapons would be to do it almost irrespective of each other? It seems like you're on the same train of thought that I am as far as weapon conclusions go. I'm just being a pain in the arse to make sure the big blue balls of death I enjoy using so much don't get crippled, or made to be the only gun worth equipping somehow.

I guess the trick at the end of the day is to still maintain some form of balance across the weapon systems, but hey that's what betas are for, and opinionated goobers like myself.

Oh, on a side note, when you re-balanced the turrets, did you intend to re-structure the amount of gun slots as well? I noticed on my Panther, the turret slots for the Top and Bottom went up to 8 slots from 4, and on my Hyp. Vanguard the turrets were effectively doubled. I didn't go through and check EVERY ship, but just wanted to verify those changes were intended. I know that using my Panther as a carrier and having to hold missiles for my fighter wings + jump energy + spare guns/shields in case of replacements, the storage on it can run pretty tight. Perhaps if you're going to increase the number of available gun slots in a turret, then an increase to the cargo space for the effected ships would be a good idea.

Oh, and a drop-in upgrade DEFINITELY screwed up some of my ships in my current game, it wasn't pretty but I managed to salvage it. My Panther's bottom turret was filled with IRE's that I wasn't able to remove or do anything with....but it seemed to only affect a few existing fleet ships, and the problem was fixed when I bought/built a new ship and re-equipped it.

Such is the price of not wanting to start over to help test.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 20:16

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:Perhaps the best way for tweaking the beam weapons vs. capital weapons would be to do it almost irrespective of each other? It seems like you're on the same train of thought that I am as far as weapon conclusions go. I'm just being a pain in the arse to make sure the big blue balls of death I enjoy using so much don't get crippled, or made to be the only gun worth equipping somehow. I guess the trick at the end of the day is to still maintain some form of balance across the weapon systems, but hey that's what betas are for, and opinionated goobers like myself.

I don't think you're going to have to worry about PPCs becoming obsolete or inferior to the beam weapons, as they'll still be in the most powerful class of weapons; they won't kill stuff exactly as fast, but that's more to give capital combat a bit longer length, and round-for-round they're going to beat almost anything else senseless.

Oh, on a side note, when you re-balanced the turrets, did you intend to re-structure the amount of gun slots as well? I noticed on my Panther, the turret slots for the Top and Bottom went up to 8 slots from 4, and on my Hyp. Vanguard the turrets were effectively doubled. I didn't go through and check EVERY ship, but just wanted to verify those changes were intended. I know that using my Panther as a carrier and having to hold missiles for my fighter wings + jump energy + spare guns/shields in case of replacements, the storage on it can run pretty tight. Perhaps if you're going to increase the number of available gun slots in a turret, then an increase to the cargo space for the effected ships would be a good idea.

Turrets with single guns got kicked up to double gun slots as per Geekey's request, though admitably I didn't take into consideration the effects on cargo since for most of the affected were TS' and M6s', who at worst lose another 60 volume from filling out their turrets with HEPTs, their largest mountables. I'll go through and kick up the cargo capacities for affected M7s and the like since those ~25 volume concussion impulse guns can add up fast.

F.A.B. · Post by **F.A.B.** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 20:25

i really don't see what you think the problem is with beam weapons. they are just long-range flaks, nothing else. what's the difference between killing fighters in ~7km or in ~2km?

if you worry about the balance, make beam weapons available for npc vessels (in slots where they can equip anti-fighter-weapons) and give them some more escort to make sure they are still a threat.

lamoyja wrote:I think it'll be fine. AI is super dumb when it comes to using beam weapons. So unless they do super overpowered damage when in the hand of npc's, it shouldn't really matter. [...]

where did you get that information?

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 20:25

It might be a good idea to limit that somewhat on frigates, as in my opinion probably the only ships that should be roaming around with 8 gun slots on a turret would be the M1/M2 class, just seems a bit out of whack on a M7, especially one that isn't a dedicated gunboat.

Oh, have you uploaded any new version of minor changes? or do you save it for a major release type?

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Thu, 4. Feb 10, 20:49

The need to give M7s and other reworked-turret vessels actually made me think about something. How do you guys feel about having the subspace compression reduced on TS ships and giving them higher bases to compensate? The problem as I see it's that due to the price curve for doing additional cargo space once you hit a certain point you'd simply be better off buying another ship - filling out the last 1000 units of a regular TS alone is somewhere between five to 10 times the ship price alone, and doing so for a superfreighter makes it almost eight times as expensive. SSC is useful on fighters where you're fighting for ever cubic meter of volume you can get, but on freighters the end simply cannot justify the means. The only reason I don't think to get rid of it entirely on TS' is because so many scripts for ship generation use fractions of max SSC plus X, so outright elimination would have ships running around with wierd numbers of them.

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:It might be a good idea to limit that somewhat on frigates, as in my opinion probably the only ships that should be roaming around with 8 gun slots on a turret would be the M1/M2 class, just seems a bit out of whack on a M7, especially one that isn't a dedicated gunboat.

True that, but remember too that even with that many turrets they still don't hold a candle to M1s and 2s due to the limited payloads they can carry - at best they can do concussion impulse generators and ion shard railguns, plus PSGs and flak. And considering that this is the Split we're talking about, having tons of guns tacked on is almost expected..

This also alerted me to the fact that apparently I missed a bunch of single-gun turrets, or at least the Argon ones. :headdesk:

Oh, have you uploaded any new version of minor changes? or do you save it for a major release type?

I prefer big releases on a weekly basis, I can't see the point of releasing something for every little thing especially when I'm getting feedback about mistakes and whatnot.