[MOD] Ship Rebalance Mod ver 0.59 [30/08/2009] + 2 COCKPIT PACKS + Alkeena's BSD!!!!

[someone else]

thanks for the suggestion of using WinMerge, I was simply thinking of taking all my modded ships and ovrewrite the 2.1 entries...

that way will probably be a more "fine" work, and a more cool one.

[Gazz]

Do you have any plans to set Tiger and Panther apart?
Right now the Panther is a Tiger plus 32 hangars. And now even with a bigger cargo bay.

The problem is that the Tiger is already one of the best M7.
Improving it any more would just create another super ship instead.

Leaves bringing the Panther in line with the M7/M1 lineup.

Panther 24 total lasers, Tiger 18.
That is not even a big problem. The Tiger is designed for an all-out charging attack. But it should be able to do that better than a Panther.

The Panther, however, mounts a lot of corvette class lasers in those many turrets so it has a lot of medium-long range firepower spread all around the ship. (and Flak in every turret...)
Removing the corvette class lasers (CIG, ISR) from a few of those would put them in a more defensive role.
Flak is not a very offensive weapon because it's short range - a range not very well suited to duke it out with other capital ships.

I suggest reducing the front turret of the Panther to 2 lasers and noticably reducing laser energy pool and recharge rate.
Just like typical commonwealth carriers.
Those 32 fighters should have to do something.

Maybe a 10% increase in both laser pool and recharge rate for the Tiger but a 25% reduction for the Panther.
Both would still be powerful ships but without making one of them superfluous.

Another thing would be rudder. Add 0.1 to the Tiger and remove 0.6 from the Panther.
The Tiger has to bring it's cockpit lasers to bear in order to do it's job. The Panther is just excessively maneuverable for a ship that already has all lasers in turrets.
Even then the Panther would be noticably more maneuverable than the Shrike so it's really not as bad as it sounds.

A useful thing to have:
A Script (probabaly Al Plugin) that updates all ships in the universe to the new stats, to do that
they need to be killed and respawned, but I have only a vague Idea of what to do... If a good
scripter can do that... please... XD

Not going to happen.
Destroying/creating ships merely adds extra ships. They will not be the same one Jobs is "responsible" for so it will spawn it's own on top of them.

What you can do is a loop that walks all sectors and summarily destroys all AI ships. (that aren't story relevant aka invulnerable)
Then the new versions will respawn.
Simple.

I wanted to make them appear on random Commonwealth ships you must board, but no idea on how to do that... Jobs is sooo limited :D

Jobs will not do that.

Either use an AL Plugin to routinely select and "equip" a few random ships or tie that into a signal.
Like a Tiger that docks with any equipment dock has a chance to receive a few phase laser beamy things.
That would require little maintainance because you don't need to look for these ships.
They would call your signal script.

[MutantDwarf]

It took three hours? You could do it in about fifteen minutes using a spreadsheet program like Excel or OpenOffice. Load up one worksheet with the vanilla 2.0a information, one with the 2.1 information, and one with the rebalance mod information. When loading that info, make sure you select semicolons as delimiters so that each data bit is in its own cell.

Then just use a formula in another worksheet, something like this:

=IF(Vanilla20!A1=Rebalance!A1,NewPatch21!A1,Rebalance!A1)

Then just copy that all the way down through the worksheet so it hits every cell used by the other three worksheets.

This gives priority for changes to the rebalance mod. You can look through the differences between 2.0 and 2.1 to decide if you want to integrate them into the rebalance mod later.

[someone else]

@Gazz: all plans for the future were put on hold for the 2.1 patch (and because I hadn't time at the moment), but the Panther was indeed to rebalance, I was thinking that removing IBL compatibility from front guns was enough, it will become a much more Carrier-oriented M7.
(yeah, try to kill a M2 with 8 CIG/ISR and 2 IBL... doable but quite long)
Lowering its power generators will be another nice addition, its manouverability can be lowered to around 3 without any problem.
This way would still kick arse to M6 and lower but be ineffective as a cap-killer (without fighters of course... 32 EBC+Typhoons-equipped Falcon Haulers will blast most things out of the sky)
Was thinking on doubling its hangar... now a Python can load 195 fighters... the Panther can live well with 64.

for the script... I made it myself the "kill all non-player-owned bigships", but saw that was a bit too sad to not see bigships around (M6 and bigger), how much time they need to respawn?
(yeah, I knew that just kill/create a new ship is not enough, the Jobs will not recognize it)

for the ALP: this sonds interesting... I'll take a look at how to do a ALP, this idea looks bloody simple and effective.

@Mutant Dwarf: looks quite cool that method... I'll have a spin with it.

@ALL: what about drones? I think that nowadays drones are a bit overpowered... I can vapourize sectors in my elephant with its 1000 Keris/DronesMk2 payload... what do ya think of that?

[Gazz]

@ALL: what about drones? I think that nowadays drones are a bit overpowered

Yes, they are.

3.8 Mk2 are worth 1 PPC.
Around 50 Mk2 equal the firepower of an M2 (for under 1.4 million Cr) and 63 of them equal the laser energy recharge of a Titan.

One Mk2 has 8 times the firepower of a Mk1.

For a drone with an apparently limited energy supply it would be far more in character to not have infinite laser energy.

PAC does (theoretically) 50 points of shield damage for each point of energy.
Leave the Mk2 energy pool as is but reduce the recharge rate to 2 or 3 instead of 65.

That would make drones disposable one-shot weapons.
Good to distract an enemy but not suited to annihilate sectors because they'd run dry after about 15 sec of fire.
That's still 180.000 shield damage during those 15 sec so if you want to make them less effective against cap ships you need to reduce their energy pool as well.

Mk1 could mostly stay as is. You need insane numbers to kill anything worth killing.
You could still limit their laser recharge to the same value. Their laser pool is tiny already.
But it would practically not affect them at all due to the low power consumption of IRE so you can just as well ignore them.


The alternative:
Script a limit to the drones that can deployed in a sector at the same time.

All drones created by dropping from the cargo bay start with an order to protect their mothership.
If you change that script so they check the number of active drones in the sector, you can make them poof back onto their mothership if the number exceeds "x".
Since they are protecting their mothership, they know which ship dropped them and now has the cargo space to take them back. =)

[plynak]

Hi again, I have cheated in a couple of PALCs and I am really disappointed. I thought they will be similar to khaak weapons, but the are inaccurate and have a terrible graphics. Does anyone have a screenshot of some M6 firing this or similar beam weapons?

[Gazz]

Was thinking on doubling its hangar... now a Python can load 195 fighters... the Panther can live well with 64.

Oh. If a Python already has 195 fighters, how many do the carriers have? 800?

Increasing hangar size would imply that you can use that many fighters.
But even with 195 fighters in sector you most likely have 1/3 to 1/2 of them shut down by the X3 CPU load management.
Ships stop dead in space, turrets freeze at random - the works.


And a Panther with even more hangars?
I thought it was way overpowered with 32.
It's not exactly a cripple with 32. That many fighters can annihilate practically any ship in the game.
Why does it have to be able to do it twice at the same time?

[thunderai]

I use a Raptor with CODEA so I can have 30 heavy and 30 lite fighters. I leave the rest open for bailed pilot ships.

[someone else]

ooooops I meant Raptor, the Python has no hangar.

actually that was a more "cosmetic" change, 60 or so fighters on carriers are more than enough.

anyways I see your point. No bigger hangar for Panther, maybe I'll return to a more manageable hangar on other ships... I just increased that because a Carrier that can load 40 fighters is quite useless if we consider the Panther.
And that other carries actually bigger than Raptor can load a little more than half of his fighters... madness imho.
I was just a bit overzealous...

@plynak: all the laser experimental weapons look this crap.... and are a bit ineffective at very long/ very close range. I did not change them in any way.
Note that Kha'ak weapons are not really better on effectiveness, thay may be cooler but miss a lot.
My "weapon/shield rebalance Mod" is still in my dreams for now.
You are free to install any mod that changes weapons... like Cmod3, they are compatible with this mod.

[thunderai]

I want to see "The Anaconda", an M0 designed to carry M1 and M2 Split ships for transport. Faster than an M1, but slower than an M5 with maybe a single 1 GJ shield.

Not sure what purpose it would serve since I hyper jump EVERYWHERE now and dont use the standard jump for anything.

[someone else]

sounds pretty similar to my "mobile Eq. Dock" idea... reusing the XTM mobile factory model, adding 4 docking ports for bigships, and giving it a very very very big hold.

it couldn't dock anywhere and would have no weapons but would be cool, maybe transforming it in a Mobile PHQ.

(the model is in TC unused files, so I have rights to use it as I wish)

[Gazz]

anyways I see your point. No bigger hangar for Panther, maybe I'll return to a more manageable hangar on other ships... I just increased that because a Carrier that can load 40 fighters is quite useless if we consider the Panther.

That's exactly the problem. The Panther is way too good as a carrier considering it's small silhouette and tremendous firepower.
15-20 hangars would have been far more apropriate to it's size.

That many fighters plus the very maneuverable Panther's (now 2) IBL would be a serious danger to any M2 but it wouldn't be the overwhelming instakill that 32 heavy fighters (each with their own missiles...) put out.

I know, reducing it's hangar will be bad press but I don't see another way to make it fit into the M7 lineup without removing all "split" from it. (speed and guns)
But you can blame me if you like. I got thick skin. =P

[someone else]

sigh... I knew that... i hate nerfing my favourite ships...

so hangar of Panther drops to 20 fighters.

and its front guns will no more install IBL (leaving IBL on sides).

no change on manouverability.

some 25% less laser energy and recharge

1 less shield (damn it is a carrier... a split carrier!)

sigh...

No problem for that, I have thick skin too...

Anyways who are you to force other people to do what you want?
(one of the best scripters around? the man that will fix OOS in one month? the man that made loads of scripts to make the game more... well more playable? the man that made the Turret Fix Mod that was included in a Egosoft official patch?)

This is my mod! I decide and accept the consequences of my decisions!

[Gazz]

*snicker*

Come to think of it, you could upgrade it's speed to an even 130.
In this nerfed version it is a true light carrier and should be noticably faster than a Raptor (=109) or a Tiger (=121).

The M1 are all faster than their M2 brethren so keeping in line with X3 habits, the Panther should be faster than the Tiger.
I guess that was meant so that carriers could (in theory) run from an M2.

On the whole I don't think the new Panther will be a terrible cripple.
Soloing M2 would take a lot longer because of it's far lower sustained firepower (lookie) but with high speed it could stay out of reach long enough.
Now if you figure in 20 Chimeras with PBE or EBC, this ship is anything but underpowered.

[Killjaeden]

Now if you figure in 20 Chimeras with PBE or EBC, this ship is anything but underpowered

Don't forget about the teladi way of thinking
20*6mio + 36mio =150mio = 1 good equipped M2

[Gazz]

Yeh, but should the fighting power of carriers always be rated without fighters?

Ignoring hangars, the Panther is perfectly balanced and the Raptor massively overpriced.
The Panther has far more firepower than a Raptor (especially against capital ships) and is a smaller and faster, too.
You'd have to be crazy to buy a Raptor.
Well, ignoring 65 fighter hangars...

[someone else]

New Version! 0.5!

now 2.1 compatible, I have merged my mod with draffut's Unofficial bug (player) fixes
to get rid of annoying problems.

Panther rebalanced ( )

WARNING, PLOT SPOILERS... but I can use your help

Spoiler

Show

I was thinking of giving back to Xperimental shuttle decent stats, because doing all the new plot mess just to have a useless ornament is too much for me...
what do you think of it?
(in the spoiler section there is a discussion about it)

[Aragon Speed]

Good to see someone has taken on this task with the vanilla game.

[cnecktor]

Now that the new 2.1 patch is out. I want to give another play trough and thinking about using this mod and I was just wondering what can I expect to see as far as changes to medium to light fighters. Oh and what about the hidden ships how have they been changed.

[someone else]

fighters modded so far are
Teladi ones, now they have double their original cargo bay.
Kha'ak ones, faster.
Xenon onse, better weapon selection and stats, LX back to decent stats.

I'm thinking of doing something to Borons too...

Do you have some ideas for fighters? It is a easily overlooked question these days...

Hidden ships? the ones that you "find" around? nothing changed there.