[MOD] Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks

[Simoom]

Quick question about the Balor tweaks (in the supplement) - is there a reason for the increase in the number of torpedoes, but at reduced damage? Since the amount of damage done is same as vanilla, why not leave it at 4 torpedoes of 80,000 damage each?

(I am asking because I am assuming Novadrones launched by the player and the Xenon I are affected as well, and since these do not gain the benefit of increased torpedo count per volley, it does in effect affect them)

Anyway, will start testing this in a bit! Thanks for putting work into this!

[w.evans]

@Sparky, trying to find a specialized role for the Drostan, and make it more interesting. Having it missile spam at range will turn it into a small, more fragile, more powerful, and cheaper Balor, wouldn't it? Right now, I turned the torpedo 2s into lots of small, low-yield swarmers which fire at ~4km, and turned the torpedo 3s into high-yield dumbfires (which will hopefully detonate when they hit the hull) firing at ~2km.

@Simoom, mostly because it looks really cool. Mechanic-wise, it increases the burst damage of the Balor (damage per volley) while neutralizing the dps via increased reload time. Makes it more important to control when the Balor fires. Accidentally nerfed it OOZ, but that's offset by the movement stuff keeping it at extreme range. Novadrones fired by the player won't be changed. Not sure about the Xenon I. (Didn't know that the Xenon I fired novadrones.)

- Just checked. Found that the Xenon I has two of the same launchers the Balor has. Yes, it will change the torpedoes that the Xenon I fires as well. Player novadrones will be unaffected.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I was having a think about the adjusted volley damage for the Balor from the numbers in the thread.

Vanilla: 320k damage
Modded: 1280k damage

Hopefully I have those numbers correct as if not, the rest may be unhelpful

Those volley numbers, mean thay a modded Balor can now start to single-volley some Large ships, which I think would would be a bit too strong as a capability.

Balor: 1100k HP
Vulture: 1100k HP
Styrvok: 1200k HP
Lepton: 900k HP

Doubling the volley instead would avoid volleying any capitals if that was preferred.

Although due to the way front-loading damage with higher alpha works, maintaining DPS won’t technically maintain DPS until a while into the battle. There’s an increased chance of over-damage, wasting missiles that could have been applied to the next target (although groups of vanilla Balors suffer this too) but on the other hand, being able to take targets off the field sooner reduces incoming DPS.

Comparing vanilla vs modded damage over time:
000s: 0320k vs 1280k
040s: 0640k vs 1280k
080s: 0960k vs 1280k
120s: 1280k vs 1280k (parity is reached)
160s: 1600k vs 2560k (modded Balor kills tougher targets sooner again)

[w.evans]

Thank you for that, Sparky! Yes, the numbers look correct, except the Balor will tend to fire four volleys at four different ships in a target-rich environment, and the torpedoes try to acquire a different target if the original target is already blown up and they're circling for another go. So, still ~320k per ship. And they miss a lot more than they used to. So even in a one-on-one, it'll tend to do less than the full 1280k damage on the target.

By the way, do your HP values take shields into account?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Hi, you're welcome and thanks for the info about multiple target acquisition. Nice

Yeah, the HPs are for hull plus shield, assuming no recharge.

The stats in Simoom's guide are up-to-date with at least 3.50 b1, with the possible exception of the Phoenix (was going to check 3.51 b2 this evening) as I think the basic variant had more shielding and less weapons than the Marauder variant in 3.50 b1.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=4400578

[w.evans]

I think I'm giving up on the Drostan. Increased the torpedo numbers to something ridiculous (torpedo 2 splits into 10 swarming submunitions each, torpedo 3 changed to dumbfires doing 4,000,000 damage per pop) and I'm still not seeing much of a difference IZ. Missiles fired from smallships against bigships seem a bit flaky IZ. Sometimes, they pass right through the hull of the ship. More often, they just kinda thud against the hull without exploding. I did notice that they seem to explode more reliably when I'm within 4 km or so of the target; but if I get that close to it, I'm gonna cap it, not send bombers against it.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Sounds like they are suffering from a generic missile bug I reported ages ago, that I still see time-to-time.

Test case: Fire loads of V Crushers at a Targon Tracer....some will go right through the model and explode in the distance. I see it sometimes with ships too.

[Simoom]

Hey w.evans! Some quick feedback:

I am running Xenon Hunt, so my flagship is a Xenon I. Its battle group is two Gangrene Chasers and two Phoenixes. All crews are 5/5/5. I took them to Stable Vortex to do some test skirmishes against the Xenon K's there. A couple of observations:

• The combat jump, in combination with weapon range detection, seems to cause some issues. In particular, my Xenon I seems to have the tendency to jump away very prematurely - it appears to prefer maintaining a distance of 20KM from target (where it starts firing off Novadrones - I didn't install the supplement package, so not sure where it got the idea from that the Novadrone can shoot that far - would your OOZ combat tweak have any effect on this?). The Novadrones don't have that range, so they simply detonate before reaching the target. When target closes in to 10KM (so I am guessing half the distance of what the AI thinks the Novadrone range is, but still outside most capital weapons' 6-8KM range), the Xenon I would jump away, again to 20KM. This effectively results in it not engaging the target at all.
• Other combat ships (when not under the I's leadership) appear to function fine, but I am not sure I like the fighter-avoidance jumps (see suggestion section below).

I am running Better Turrets and Captain AI Overhaul, I checked the script names and I don't think they conflict with this mod? Anyway, I would like to make a few suggestions (this is based on my personal preference, so I am sure some other users will disagree):

1. Capitals with highly-skilled captains (4 in Navigation or above) will be able to make in-sector jumps (so from one zone to another, without need for a Jump Beacon). This cuts down on a lot of travel time, since we all know boosting can often be problematic (especially with vanilla collision issues). This is similar to what CDOAIO used to do (and I think UFO does it now, too), and I actually find it to be a useful feature. I understand why some people feel this is against the lore or make highways obsolete, but I argue that in vanilla, capitals are pretty useless as escorts (given the time it takes for them to maneuver and boost to your location, they pretty much never make it in time to a fight when you want them to).
2. The trade-off to the above point is that capitals will not do in-zone jumps. Once they jump into a zone, they will only utilize their boosters to get to their target (this is acceptable IMO, since most zones are less than 100KM in diameter).Capital ships will not do combat jumps (i.e. jumping in to get close to enemy, or away when enemy gets too close). The fighter-avoidance jumps in particular I think should be done away with, for two reasons. One, if you are going up against a large fighter swarm, and have a destroyer in your squadron, chances are you are hoping for it to take out the fighters for you. In this case if it jumps away whenever fighters get to close, that defeats its purpose. Two, players are actually effective (at least to an extent) against fighters and can help take out some of them if your capital ship is actually taking a lot of heat (more of a concern for capitals with weak fighter defense such as Phoenix or Balor, but those really shouldn't be sent in alone against a large fighter swarm anyway).
3. Skilled captains (above 4 stars) will try to maintain a minimum distance from target (but only if target is a capital. It shouldn't care about fighters). This will be done through both maneuvering (if the capital's speed is sufficient) and, if unable to increase distance, the ship will do a short-range boost. I am not sure about using maximum weapon range as a guideline for the minimum distance to maintain... detection issues aside, many capital ships have a mixture of long-range and medium-range weapons (in the case of Xenon K, for example, its maximum weapons range is 8KM, but its medium-range weapon does not quite reach 4KM; so if you tell the Xenon K to maintain too much of a distance, it won't be able to utilize its full firepower). I would suggest simply setting a flat minimum distance: 3.5KM. The reason for 3.5KM is because it is within the range of all capital weaponry, but outside anti-fighter weapons like Hailstorm turrets. I know this goal may not be easy to implement since capitals often maneuver stupidly (they wiggle too much in general), but sounds like you were already looking into maneuvering issues.
4. A highly-skilled Defense Officer (4 stars or above), when set to "Defend" mode, will jump the ship away (this can be either in-zone or to a nearby zone) when shield is below a certain threshold (25%? 15%?). If you want to make things more fun, perhaps lower-skilled DO's will only jump the ship if the hull falls below a certain threshold. But if set to "Attack Enemies", the ship will simply fight until destroyed (I was gonna suggest some morale check and panic behavior, but then I remembered Better Turrets already has that covered)

[w.evans]

Hey Simoom,

Thank you very much for the very detailed feedback.

The combat jump, in combination with weapon range detection, seems to cause some issues. In particular, my Xenon I seems to have the tendency to jump away very prematurely - it appears to prefer maintaining a distance of 20KM from target (where it starts firing off Novadrones - I didn't install the supplement package, so not sure where it got the idea from that the Novadrone can shoot that far - would your OOZ combat tweak have any effect on this?). The Novadrones don't have that range, so they simply detonate before reaching the target. When target closes in to 10KM (so I am guessing half the distance of what the AI thinks the Novadrone range is, but still outside most capital weapons' 6-8KM range), the Xenon I would jump away, again to 20KM. This effectively results in it not engaging the target at all.

The range increase is included in MOCT_supp3, or in all versions of MOCT before v0.07. Novadrone range in MOCT_supp3 is 24km. It should be able to fire over that range, although the torpedoes will be extremely slow. (uh oh. Just checked and it turns out the torpedoes in MOCT have an absolute maximum range of 9600 meters. Should be fine with MOCT_supp3 AND MICT_supp1, but I should do something about that for those using just MOCT. Hm. Thanks for letting me know this problem.)

Sorry about the Xenon I. I'll write in an exception to the movement script for the Xenon I in the meantime until I get one myself for closer inspection. Have to think about this, though. At the moment, this.ship.maxcombatrange.all is used for most of the distance calculations, which means ~24km for torpedo users. Could use this.ship.maxcombatrange.turrets instead, but that'll ruin the Balor and Sucellus movement concept. Possible to work in exceptions, of course, but I'm trying to avoid writing exceptions into the movement portion of the script itself since that could get messy fast, and I have to be careful about the blocking portions of the scripts. (Ships could get stuck if that isn't manage properly.) I'll try working it into the variable definitions for the range calculations.

I am running Better Turrets and Captain AI Overhaul, I checked the script names and I don't think they conflict with this mod?

Yes, both MICT and MOCT are fully compatible with both of cicero111's mods. However, MICT will override Captain AI Overhaul on MICT ships. If Captain AI Overhaul is installed, it will be active on all other ships. Better Turrets should be completely unaffected.

Capitals with highly-skilled captains (4 in Navigation or above) will be able to make in-sector jumps (so from one zone to another, without need for a Jump Beacon). This cuts down on a lot of travel time, since we all know boosting can often be problematic (especially with vanilla collision issues). This is similar to what CDOAIO used to do (and I think UFO does it now, too), and I actually find it to be a useful feature. I understand why some people feel this is against the lore or make highways obsolete, but I argue that in vanilla, capitals are pretty useless as escorts (given the time it takes for them to maneuver and boost to your location, they pretty much never make it in time to a fight when you want them to).

I appreciate the suggestion, but am not planning on changing the out-of-combat movement scripts at the moment since I think that the way vanilla does it is fine. Might in the future, though. For ships that need to get somewhere fast, I use a heavily-modified copy of UFO. Pretty sure UFO does do in-sector jumps out of the box, though. This mod is compatible with UFO, but MICT won't be active on any UFO ships out of the box since UFO uses completely customized scripts for movement and firing of UFO ships.

The fighter-avoidance jumps in particular I think should be done away with, for two reasons. One, if you are going up against a large fighter swarm, and have a destroyer in your squadron, chances are you are hoping for it to take out the fighters for you. In this case if it jumps away whenever fighters get to close, that defeats its purpose. Two, players are actually effective (at least to an extent) against fighters and can help take out some of them if your capital ship is actually taking a lot of heat (more of a concern for capitals with weak fighter defense such as Phoenix or Balor, but those really shouldn't be sent in alone against a large fighter swarm anyway).

Actually wrote that in because capships were getting burned by swarms of fighters OOZ since they tend to sit stupidly while they get pummeled by fighter swarms. At the moment it uses:

<set_value name="$MICT_MaxShortAimDist" exact="this.ship.maxcombatrange.turrets" />
<set_value name="$MICT_MinShortAimDist" exact="this.ship.maxcombatrange.turrets * 0.75f" />

for movement against fighters. You're right though in that that could be excessive since that would be Plasma/MA or JET/LR range on some ships when you want them to stay within HIT/MA or Hailstorm range. I'll take your advice on this and set it to ~3.5 km for now.

Skilled captains (above 4 stars) will try to maintain a minimum distance from target (but only if target is a capital. It shouldn't care about fighters). This will be done through both maneuvering (if the capital's speed is sufficient) and, if unable to increase distance, the ship will do a short-range boost. I am not sure about using maximum weapon range as a guideline for the minimum distance to maintain... detection issues aside, many capital ships have a mixture of long-range and medium-range weapons (in the case of Xenon K, for example, its maximum weapons range is 8KM, but its medium-range weapon does not quite reach 4KM; so if you tell the Xenon K to maintain too much of a distance, it won't be able to utilize its full firepower). I would suggest simply setting a flat minimum distance: 3.5KM. The reason for 3.5KM is because it is within the range of all capital weaponry, but outside anti-fighter weapons like Hailstorm turrets. I know this goal may not be easy to implement since capitals often maneuver stupidly (they wiggle too much in general), but sounds like you were already looking into maneuvering issues.

That IS tricky. Reasoning for using max range is because attacked hostile ships will try to approach the attacking ships thus bringing the medium and shorter ranged weapons into play. If the hostile vessel gets too close for comfort (hopefully before it could bring any significant firepower to bear, especially since most ships' heavy weaponry appears to be on their sides, and an approaching ship will be facing your ship.)

In-zone boosts are very tricky. cicero111 managed to get it working reasonably well, but, if I remember correctly, that's by doing a series of boosts. Not sure why it's so tricky, but it may have something to do with there being some delay before conditions are checked for. (If all of the commands of all of the ships fighting everywhere, even just in-zone, anyone's computer would probably seize up. Mine does, anyway.

About just using in-zone maneouvering, yeah, that's possible. Why not in-zone tactical jumps, though?

A highly-skilled Defense Officer (4 stars or above), when set to "Defend" mode, will jump the ship away (this can be either in-zone or to a nearby zone) when shield is below a certain threshold (25%? 15%?).

It's at 50% right now, and a less than exceptional captain can miscalculate the jump and still land within an opponents firing range. A bit high at the moment, but I find that it goes from 50% to 0 extremely quickly, while it usually stays above 50% when it's ably managing the engagement.

But if set to "Attack Enemies", the ship will simply fight until destroyed (I was gonna suggest some morale check and panic behavior, but then I remembered Better Turrets already has that covered)

I don't know if movement behavior can be made dependent on DO setting. Probably can, but movement scripts act upon the captain, and are separate from the firing scripts handled by the DO.

cicero111 did do some interesting things with skill checks, like a 0/0/0 DO being an incompetent half-asleep half-drunk lout who won't even be able to see a target bearing down on his ship until the ship's fired upon; and even then, will probably miss.

Ok, I'll get to work. Please do let me know if I missed anything.

[w.evans]

4.Mar.2015 - v0.04 is up!

Long-range behavior made specific to the Sucellus and the Balor. All other ships, including the Xenon I, calculate their desired maximum damage relative to maximum turret ranges rather than maximum range of all weapons.

Captains will try to maintain between 2,625 to 3,500 meters from the target when maneouvering against fighters.

Thank you to Simoom for suggesting both of these adjustments.

Makes sure that the ship is maneouvering relative to a ship or station rather than a component.

[w.evans]

6.Mar.2015 - v0.05 is up!

Bungled the conditions for range calculations. Sorry. It was set to calculate long ranges for the Sucellus only, rather than for the Sucellus and for the Balor as intended. Fixed in v0.05.

And it's playing stable on my run-down machine. So alpha status is lifted as of MiscellaneousIZCombatTweaks_v0.05.

[w.evans]

I know that it kind of sucks to have to re-download a mod everyday, but:

7.Mar.2015 - v0.06 is up!

* Ships will boost to position if their jump drive is destroyed or if their target position is less than 30,000 meters away except if they're trying to retreat. (This comes with all of the flakyness of vanilla boosting like backwards boosting and sideways drifting.)
* Tactical jumps now need time for jump drives to charge up.
* I'm planning to have tactical jumps use jump fuel in the future. In preparation for this, ships jump much less than they used to, more often boosting or simply using their engines to maneouver.
* Front-firing long-range ships (at present, only the Sucellus and the Balor) stop when they get to their firing position, and more reliably track their targets. Still doesn't work 100%, though.
* Fine target tracking after boosting is still problematic, so long-range ships still jump to position.

Attempt to differentiate captain tactics from background and training. At the moment, only the retreat thresholds are affected:

• Split captains are trained to attack until danger of obliteration is certain. They will retreat only if shields are completely drained, and will rejoin the fray when their shields recharge to at least 10%.
• Teladi captains are trained to protect their assets and those of their employers. They will retreat if their shields are depleted to 40%, and will head back to the fight when their shields recharge to 80%.
• Argon captains are trained to maintain a reasonable balance between application of pressure and protection of property. They will retreat if their shields are depleted to 20%, and will go back to the offensive when their shields recharge to 40%.

[w.evans]

v0.061 is up.

Forgot to turn off the PDA and logbook spam in v0.06. Sorry about that. Nothing else changed.

[oliverjanda]

I'm looking forward to trying your mod when 3.5 is out.

One question: Are the tactical jumps only within a zone or can my ships now jump from anywhere to the target if i give the attack order?

[w.evans]

I'm looking forward to trying your mod when 3.5 is out.

One question: Are the tactical jumps only within a zone or can my ships now jump from anywhere to the target if i give the attack order?

Good question. They should only jump within a zone, but come to think of it, should check to see if the script is invoked the moment an attack order is given, or only when combat actually begins.

ps. And I don't think I did anything 3.5 specific, so this should be compatible with 3.2

[oliverjanda]

Good to know, maybe I'll try it sooner.

Jumping to the target from ooz would be very handy but not lorefriendly, so I'd rather go without it.

How did you improve the move.attack script for the succellus? I considered to mod the behaviour myself based on CDOAIO but skipped it as I read about your mod.

[w.evans]

Jumping to the target from ooz would be very handy but not lorefriendly, so I'd rather go without it.

Agreed. Should be a quick fix if it does that.

How did you improve the move.attack script for the succellus? I considered to mod the behaviour myself based on CDOAIO but skipped it as I read about your mod.

Most reliable is to have it jump to position since it can be made to finish its jump with its gun already oriented correctly. Starting to think that it's kinda cheap though, so I'm working on having it track its gun after moving or boosting to position. Still rather wonky at the moment, so sticking with the tactical jump for now.

[oliverjanda]

Sounds like a good solution if jumping is not too fast.
Did you take a look at CDOAIO? The sucellus movement script is relatively easy to read.

[w.evans]

Sounds like a good solution if jumping is not too fast.
Did you take a look at CDOAIO? The sucellus movement script is relatively easy to read.

Not in a while. Should probably take a look to see if there's something that's better done there. Found this in move.nohighway.xml:

Code: Select all

        <move_to object="this.ship" destination="this.zone" forceposition="false" forcerotation="true" >
          <position value="$pos" />
          <rotation value="$rot" />
        </move_to>

where $pos is this.ship.position, and $rot is where you want to be pointed. (prep for boosting) Adapted that, and that's what the Sucellus is using for target tracking right now:

Code: Select all

<do_if value="this.ship.macro.ismacro.{macro.units_size_xl_red_destroyer_macro} or this.ship.macro.ismacro.{macro.units_size_l_single_attack_ship_macro}">
	<move_to object="this.ship" destination="this.zone" forcesteering="true" forceposition="false" forcerotation="true" finishonapproach="false" sinceversion="2">
		<position value="this.ship.position"/>
		<rotation value="$MICT_AimVector"/>
		<interrupt>
			<conditions>
				<check_any>
					<event_object_destroyed object="$target"/>
				</check_any>
			</conditions>
		</interrupt>
		<interrupt_after_time time="$MICT_update"/>
	</move_to>
</do_if>

Found that the problem with tracking in previous versions of the mod is that it was coupled with a move order so the ship would plot a point to which it'll move, and it'll have to be pointed at that point while it's moving. It'll point towards its target after it gets there, but it'll then immediately plot another destination point and start moving (and facing) that way. Fine for closer-range destroyers, but not good if we want a ship pointed a particular direction. Having them not move and just face a direction while checking every so often to see if the target moved seems to have fixed that. Works most of the time. Still wonks out sometimes, though.

Another solution that worked is to have the ship jump far far away, then start moving slowly towards its target. Discarded that because I'm trying to have all of the ships jump less in general though.

[w.evans]

One question: Are the tactical jumps only within a zone or can my ships now jump from anywhere to the target if i give the attack order?

Back to this question. Can't run the game to check right now, but I did take a quick peek at command.fight.attack.xml

Code: Select all

      <do_if value="$target.isoperational">

        <!-- if different zone, go there -->
        <do_if value="this.ship.zone != $target.zone">
          <run_script name="'move.generic'" sinceversion="1">
            <param name="destination" value="$target" />
            <param name="endintargetzone" value="true" />
          </run_script>
        </do_if>
        
        <run_script name="'fight.attack.object'" >
          <param name="target" value="$target" />
          <param name="escort" value="$escort" />
          <param name="pursuetargets" value="not @$escort" />
          <param name="allowothertargets" value="false" />
          <param name="checkrelation" value="$checkrelation"/>
        </run_script>

      </do_if>

So if this.ship.zone != $target.zone, then the capship should perform jumps and go through gates (move.jump) until it's at the correct sector, then boost (move.nohighway) until it's at the correct zone. It should only trigger fight.attack.object after it's at the same zone as the target; and the MICT movement script is triggered from fight.attack.object, so we should be ok in this regard.

Please do let me know if this is not the case. (If a ship can jump from Omicron Lyrae to Albion in a single bound when given an attack order.)