[MOD] Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks

[w.evans]

By getting your ship out of danger?

Ok, seriously, too loud? Has to be loud and irritating enough that you can't miss it.

[xrook]

i have 1 golem following me and 8 follow him, and when they get attacked by a tituriel they all give me an alert one by one

the first time they did that i just shrugged it off, but it is getting annoying

[w.evans]

In-zone? Shouldn't. Could you send me a save from right before that starts happening?

[xrook]

out of zone, remember they are following me and small ships dont have booster nor jump drives like the capitals so they tend to get left behind

[w.evans]

Ah, ok. Then working as intended. They do all send alerts, but just one each unless one of them gets in trouble. If one of them gets in trouble, then that one starts spamming you with alerts.

[w.evans]

@All, a couple of questions:

1) How useful is the status display showing shields and hull? Would it be more useful to show these in percentages?

2) Right now, alerts are sent by pilots or captains. If a player-owned asset doesn't have a pilot nor a captain (such as for stations), the defence officer. If no defence officer, then the station's AI sends it, identifying itself as the entity itself.

Would it be preferable to reorder this? For example:

if entity has a commander, the commander's ship's/station's defence officer,
if no commander, the entity's defence officer,
if no defence officer, the pilot,
if no pilot, then the entity's AI?

3) How accurate are the Threat Levels?

[kelmenwong]

ooz nexus 014
iz nexus 022

i did modification over ur iz, but basically just to
1) remove show_notification
2) remove/change code block involved jump and warp

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=381636

*** ***

save_09.zip
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B79qo ... 1oxb2RMZEU

OOZ

DeVries » Bleak Pebble » Crimson Rocks

my Olmekron ( M2 Olmekron - DV.BP.1 )
vs PMC Taranis
- getting beat

captain skills, all 4 stars
def-off, combat 4, the other 5
eng, 5

*** ***

this zone seems to have at least 2 factions forces active, reivers and pmc

reivers are just fighter squadron
pmc taranis

for this occurance, reivers is not involved in the battle

i got this warning from the captain, surprised to find out this
then i load back early save, to watch the battle progress from start

when these 2 m2 mingled, Olmekron seems to get slight upper hand, but never managed beat taranis hull/wpn
as it progress, taranis is hitting Olmekron hull and wpn

statistically, Olmekron is superior to taranis
and in-game when attempt to capture these ships, taranis is the far easier, due to the lesser plasma jet and it's blindspot (upside)

[w.evans]

Just sat through your whole battle twice.

Your Olmekron has more and more powerful guns, but it also has less shielding, is bigger, is slower, and has less drones.

That said, it's still hitting the Taranis harder on average than the Taranis is hitting your Olmekron.

However, because your Olmekron has less shielding, it's shields get stripped faster, after which it starts losing guns, and nearing the end of the battle, it has only around 20 turrets left while the Taranis still has full guns. While the Olmekron makes up for the thinner shielding by having a more robust hull, hull strength won't prevent those turrets from getting stripped off; it'll just make it longer before the whole ship blows up, giving you time to send help.

See, it isn't just my dps is bigger than yours, so I should beat you. If it were, then just get a fleet full of Fulmekrons and call it a day; and that would be boring, I think. Other things come into play.

[kelmenwong]

i assigned a m2 taranis as escort to the Olmekron

on next battle with pmc taranis, it still quite terrible
it still took long time for the battle, and Olmekron wpn being reduced downed to 3, hull taken hit, captain crying to me

2 m2 vs 1 m2, doesn't look right

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

However, because your Olmekron has less shielding, it's shields get stripped faster, after which it starts losing guns, and nearing the end of the battle, it has only around 20 turrets left while the Taranis still has full guns. While the Olmekron makes up for the thinner shielding by having a more robust hull, hull strength won't prevent those turrets from getting stripped off; it'll just make it longer before the whole ship blows up, giving you time to send help.

Although the Taranis has a stronger hull shield (1.8 vs 1.2), surface elements can be destroyed IZ before hull shields are down. Are things different OOZ?

Both the Taranis and the Olmekron use the same MkI surface element shields, although the Taranis has a higher ratio to weapons surface elements. Perhaps I have misunderstood and this was what you were referring too.

Do Astrobees have an abstracted ability to hit multiple surface elements OOZ?

[w.evans]

However, because your Olmekron has less shielding, it's shields get stripped faster, after which it starts losing guns, and nearing the end of the battle, it has only around 20 turrets left while the Taranis still has full guns. While the Olmekron makes up for the thinner shielding by having a more robust hull, hull strength won't prevent those turrets from getting stripped off; it'll just make it longer before the whole ship blows up, giving you time to send help.

Although the Taranis has a stronger hull shield (1.8 vs 1.2), surface elements can be destroyed IZ before hull shields are down. Are things different OOZ?

Just going by the logs I got. At 100% shielding, the Taranis reported 1,800,000 points, while the Olmekron reported 1,200,000. Doesn't seem like much, but if you're exchanging salvos at around 10,000 points a pop, then 600,000 points before your salvo strength starts going down from losing turrets is a huge difference.

edit: sorry, forgot your question. Looks like surface elements don't start going down until the hull shields go down.

Do Astrobees have an abstracted ability to hit multiple surface elements OOZ?

Internal calculation, so I can't examine it. However, when I did, from just looking at damage output before MOCT made it more dynamic, it seems like they just hit hull like everything else, they're not affected by orientation the way turrets are, and there appears to be a chance to hit per missile. (Raw observation: damage jumped, up or down in distinct increments, and the amount of points jumped coincides with the number of missile launchers that a ship has.) Not sure if that's per submunition in the case of swarming missiles.

[w.evans]

By the way, kelmen, for the first two runs, I turned off MICT jump to sort of replicate the conditions that you had. For this last run, I turned it back to running normal MICT, went to the grocery with logging on, and the battle, after roughly an hour and a half, is still going.

With jump on, when the Olmekron's shields start going down, it manages to get away, and repair some before jumping back in. It also maneouvers better. Your Olmekron has 100% shields and 100% hull (residual repair from your engineer 100, I presume? And you complain about the player having unfair advantages. Bah.), but with just 7 turrets running. The Taranis is down to 6% shields and 72% hull, and has only a single HIT/MA turret.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Interesting about surface elements and the astrobees, thanks and great detective work as always!

I remember some sort of discussion about surface elment loss with Devs some where from a few months ago. Something to do with how non-launched drones were being abstracted into the OOZ vanilla fight and/or how surface elements can be lost OOZ. Or something like that.

Anyhow, I don't remember surface element immunity before hull shields go down being mentioned so this is interesting to know. A shame really since whilst I appreciate a wish to keep calculations down, it's a bit lop-sided in favour of particular hulls.

[xrook]

1) percentages would be better (unless your the kind of guy who remembers the max Hull & Shields of all your ship types)

3) very inaccurate, multiple times its threat lvl 5 but none of my ships are destroyed so far
very rarely my golem squad gets a hull scratch or two

[w.evans]

3 x ~65 pages of logs. Was fun, but I'm pooped. Think I'll take a nap.

By the way, I had some questions several posts up before we got into this interesting discussion, in case anyone has opinions on the matter.

edit: @xrook, thanks. #3 is probably due to initial reports assuming worst case. Probably unnecesarily cautious now that you get later reports if the ships get in trouble.

Anyone else want to pipe in on the matter?

[kelmenwong]

imo, in-zone jump is not supposed happening, whether having unfair advantage is different topic

if both side also can do this in-zone jump, the battle with never end, unless the jump drive is destroyed
the j-d is not designed for this (battle) purpose

enabling it, doesn't resolve the issue the ooz battle is not working right, it just delay the evident.

[w.evans]

imo, in-zone jump is not supposed happening, whether having unfair advantage is different topic

if both side also can do this in-zone jump, the battle with never end, unless the jump drive is destroyed
the j-d is not designed for this (battle) purpose

enabling it, doesn't resolve the issue the ooz battle is not working right, it just delay the evident.

Look, kelmenwong. I have sat through your battle three times, read through 65 pages of logs three times, and I have explained to you why it happened. Now, unless you actually have something to point at in the explanation rather than just repeating "it sucks," I'll have to conclude that I wasted my time looking at your report, and will waste no more time reading your posts.

Regarding in-zone jump, NPC ships do, if they meet the same conditions that player ships have to, and battles do end. You don't like it? Fine, I told you how to deactivate it. Didn't work? Tough. I tested it, and it did work, so you were doing something wrong.

Seriously, if you're reporting a balance issue, I'll look into it. I thought you were, so I did, and gave you an explanation about why it happened and, looking at why it happened, looks fine to me.

But if it isn't just the balance issue, what do you want me to do? Change my game to suit yours? Because you think that the biggest guns should win because, duh, they're bigger? Because

in-zone jump is not supposed happening, ... the j-d is not designed for this (battle) purpose

?

According to who? You? Why? Because vanilla doesn't do it? Vanilla ships ram into each other when fighting. Vanilla, the Sucellus doesn't fire the IHC unless it happens to accidentally point towards the target. Should I take those out too?

Look, I even explain why I think all of the changes I made make sense, gameplay-wise, and lore-wise. But guess what: I don't have to. I could just put it out there, and if anyone complains, I can say "tough." But when someone like you walks in here and says, "look, it sucks." I waste my afternoon looking through data to tell you why it's happening, and all you have to say is "noooo, it sucks." Then, I'm sorry, but that pisses me off.

[kelmenwong]

i dunno why u pissed-off, i never said suck or criticize ur work

i just reporting what happening, i only stated the obvious that certain m2 is statistically better than the other
and 2 m2 still doesnt work right

did i used any bad words?
i don't like the in-zone jump mechanic, and appreciate ur feedback how to turn it off, so i did, and improvise on it

i just thought maybe u tweak some number, by reporting this, it may ring a bell to u.
something like in past about 1 taranis vs fighter squadron, it turns up u managed to find out something about tech doc issue

if i ever really offense u, i will apologize to u here. but i dunno when did that ever happened. or maybe i just not friendly enough

anyway, i have playthrough this game enough. dunno why now this become personnal, it will give a pause, as i have other interest.

do carry on ur work
if u think i found ur work not good, why i still keep using them?

or are u actually a dev or qa staff of the egosoft? i did sounds out unsatisfaction toward their work, as a customer, i don't see what's the problem with this.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

@All, a couple of questions:

1) How useful is the status display showing shields and hull? Would it be more useful to show these in percentages?

2) Right now, alerts are sent by pilots or captains. If a player-owned asset doesn't have a pilot nor a captain (such as for stations), the defence officer. If no defence officer, then the station's AI sends it, identifying itself as the entity itself.

Would it be preferable to reorder this? For example:

if entity has a commander, the commander's ship's/station's defence officer,
if no commander, the entity's defence officer,
if no defence officer, the pilot,
if no pilot, then the entity's AI?

3) How accurate are the Threat Levels?

Hi, thanks for asking.

1) Percent sounds good, although I must admit I am new to it.
2) For the alternate, it's basically DO or pilot, with AI as backup? Sounds fine. Maybe even no report if no DO hired?
3) Not enough ships and experience yet to have a sense of any potential issues.

[w.evans]

Ok, I've cooled off a bit, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you missed my explanation. It's several posts up, here:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 53#4544853

And just so it's clear, I wasn't pissed off by your criticism. If there IS an issue, then I appreciate your letting me know. But in this case, there doesn't appear to be an issue, and I explained that in the post linked above. If you can explain WHY the balance is off in light of all of the factors in play, would love to hear it.

What did piss me off was that you just repeated what you said without addressing anything that I said.

the ooz battle is not working right

How? Why? How can it be better? I need something more than

i only stated the obvious that certain m2 is statistically better than the other
and 2 m2 still doesnt work right

What statistics? How is your Olmekron obviously better than the Taranis? Only advantages I can see is that it has more guns, and a hull that's harder to blow up.

As to the suggestion that I might be a dev, thanks for the compliment, I guess. I'm not, but this is the internet, so really, who knows?

And to everyone else, I would really like opinions on these questions, please. Was actually looking forward to working on that today.