[MOD] Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks

[vadiolive]

IZ script its bit fine
But look again in OZ its prety nast sometimes 5 araw take whole 30min to destroy simples xenon K?

[w.evans]

A War Story ....would be nice.....

It would. Would anyone like to share? Unfortunately, haven't had the chance to play much, so I don't have any new ones.

IZ script its bit fine
But look again in OZ its prety nast sometimes 5 araw take whole 30min to destroy simples xenon K?

Is it slow when fighting the Xenon K in particular, or is OOZ combat in general too slow?

If all OOZ combat is too slow, could you please try out Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks v0.25.1x? It's in Miscellaneous files.

That was an experimental balance update of MOCT where OOZ damage levels are back up to vanilla levels. Was hoping that I'd get some feedback about it with regard to balance, but very few people tried it out, and no one gave any feedback, so I thought that no one was interested.

[birdtable]

W.E perhaps to save your sanity a little over the week is it possible

1. To change colour of surrounding ovals of dropped cargo/missiles/scrap etc to highlight missiles,,,,save trying to target and get description during battle.

2. J3ANP3T3R did some work on avoiding Cartel/Ugaras ships frustratingly attacking trade ships in Teladi space which still works sometimes ... Is it possible to update/improve on this by working at least 90% of the time especially if on positive standing.

3. If 2. is not possible/feasible then a comm to state ship entering Teladi space so that escort can be provided ... To have trade ships continually escorted on the chance entry to Teladi space can become as cumbersome as having a large defensive fleet permanently based there.

Cheers... ..

[w.evans]

W.E perhaps to save your sanity a little over the week is it possible

Your concern for my (continuing? *froths a bit at the mouth, eyes quickly darting to the right, and up, slightly to the left*) sanity is touching, and is much appreciated!

1. To change colour of surrounding ovals of dropped cargo/missiles/scrap etc to highlight missiles,,,,save trying to target and get description during battle.

To be honest, I don't know if it's possible to highlight according to object type. However, Frumph's Long Range Scanner Update might help some. In particular, this feature:

3. The ping time's on 'useless junk' items is moved from 20 seconds down to 3 seconds so that they fade right away and can be ignored. The ping time on generic not-so-good containers is down to 15 seconds.

UPDATE: just took a quick look, and it looks like the LR scan distinguishes between good, sorta good, and two kinds of bad loot. There's probably a table somewhere which defines what loot falls under which category, but haven't found it yet.

2. J3ANP3T3R did some work on avoiding Cartel/Ugaras ships frustratingly attacking trade ships in Teladi space which still works sometimes ... Is it possible to update/improve on this by working at least 90% of the time especially if on positive standing.

Not sure how J3ANP3T3R did it. If I remember correctly, Teladi pirate ships behave that way because of the ai script that their captains run: move.plunder. This is the same script that Sovereign and Heretic Vanguards ships run, except those aren't very remarkable because you can't really change faction relations with them. Flip side of the issue, which I don't remember having ever read anyone complain about, is trying to get a pirate ship to actively engage a combat vessel that is attacking them.

What it does is have plundering ships look for and attack non-combat ships exclusively regardless of what their faction relations are. I think the most reliable way to change that behavior would be to simply add in some code (shouldn't take much) to have them distinguish between friend or foe. Another way would be to have them run the standard patrol script instead, but that would mean NO pirates attacking trade shipping in the systems affected.

I have to say, though, this looks deliberate. Checking for faction relations is built into the other fight and patrol scripts, and the absence of that bit of code here looks deliberate.

Another reason why I didn't change it is because, well, I kind of like it this way. You have to really think about how to deal with those factions. Play friendly, or even play pirate yourself and keep their base(s?) as safe havens, or go all-out war on them. If you do play pirate, seems logical that they wouldn't care if you're friendly with them or not; as long as they spot juicy loot, it's all up for grabs!

That said, looks straightforward enough to change. I could fix it up quickly enough if you really want me to. (Let me know if you do.) I'll have to rely on reports for maintenance if anything goes funny though, because I probably won't use it myself, so won't be able to spot any problems that may arise.

3. If 2. is not possible/feasible then a comm to state ship entering Teladi space so that escort can be provided ... To have trade ships continually escorted on the chance entry to Teladi space can become as cumbersome as having a large defensive fleet permanently based there.

Now this one looks interesting. Possible implementation would be to assign ships to a sort of pool of escorts that would automatically escort vulnerable ships through dangerous areas or leap to the defence in case any assets are under attack. Ideal would be to have an interface of some sort to designate dangerous areas, but that requires lua work which is beyond my skillset at the moment. Hm. I'll think about this one, thanks.

[birdtable]

Hi W.E ...Thanks for looking over my requests...
After reading through your responses I find that the 3rd does appear to be the best option ..... certainly better than getting the hoover out, washing the dishes and preparing an evening meal.
Look forward to any further advancement you can make.... ...and thanks.

[w.evans]

Do you still want #2, though? I could whip that up real fast in, say, half an hour? Caveats I mentioned above apply, though.

[birdtable]

Could you spill some chickens blood and rattle the bones and see what can be done with option 3 first, 2 does appear a bit of a cheaty way to overcome a frustration.....
See if an occurs.....

[w.evans]

We use pig's blood round these here parts. Chicken bones could come in handy, though; along with stomachs, livers, and hearts (mmm).

High roller, I see! I'll see what I come up with, if any. #3 is a lot more interesting, but can take a while. (That while possibly being longer than the aforementioned week.)

[birdtable]

I think the responding escort ships will need jump drives to go directly to required zone.....
The only other problem I can think of is collateral damage to friendlies.
Will look forward to your plans for a defensive rapid response fleet,,,,

[w.evans]

Been thinking of implementation. Have to nail that down before the coding begins, and the details can be fleshed out as it's coded once that's decided.

I think that a way to strategically place them would be useful. Say, make them station-based? Would make it a mid-game thing. If so, escort priority could be:

1) The station itself and the station's CV,
2) civilian ships based in the same station,
3) all other civilian ships owned by the same faction,
4) military ships owned by the same station, (?)
5) military ships owned by the same faction, (?)
6) ships owned by allied/friendly factions?

Limit them to the same operating range as the station?

Another option is to simply assign a military ship to escort a freighter or miner. If that freighter or miner isn't in danger, the military ship(s)/squadron(s) could actively monitor comms for distress calls and go to help civilian ships in danger. Could tie that in to the time-to-die algorithm I wrote into MOCT.

I think the responding escort ships will need jump drives to go directly to required zone.....

Having them jump directly to the ship under distress is actually easier to code than having them move the way vanilla ships do. A bit inconsistent with the rest of how the jump mechanism works though, doesn't it?

On one hand, having them move directly to ships in distress will allow the player to quickly concentrate force, and effectively defend a whole trading/mining fleet with fewer ships. (I actually have something like that set up now for, er, testing. Right. I'll stick with that. Testing.)

On the other hand, having them move the way vanilla does inter-sector movement makes the planning part of it more strategic. Would also make prioritization clearer. Would allow a larger number of ships to more effectively spread out depending on priorities.

[birdtable]

I have no idea of the problems involved in coding a sufficient response fleet or ship, but regardless of vanilla flight paths or strategic patterns the timing of an immediate response is crucial..... Escort ships are cumbersome and frustrating and would be little better than exists at present.... Large battleships are ponderous, slow moving and my trader would be long destroyed before the Captains rose from the breakfast table to prepare for action.
Strategic planning works if the game is strong enough to handle flight paths/ battle scenarios quickly, sadly this is not the case.
I was thinking more of a fast attack (Balor/Sucellus) that jumps under your command (on board) if time allows or goes into rapid attack mode.
Messages from the Captain to state engaging enemy.
I will admit I am seeing this from the player perspective and not from viewpoint of creating scenario...
There are plenty of popular jump drive mods so I see no problem in extending this to a special defence/offence ship.....limited to the galaxy....after all it would be an optional mod for the player to choose or not.
Would be nice to view if you are in same zone as target ship to see your defence ship/fleet jump in and go on the offensive....

[icanfly]

love your mods, have some bug reports but they are somehow related to other mods ...


1. When you have the Shipyard Mod from Blackrain you can build the Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer, this version of Secellus does not use the IHC-Cannon properly like the vanilla one does, the ship circels around trying to use it's Plasma Jet/LR Turrets, since i remember reading somewhere you were offering support for the CWIR-Mod, i am reporting this bug to you

2. The Xenon I seems not to use it's missle launchers (IZ, not sure about OOZ) but only it's turrerts, by turning off your mod the Xenon I used the missle launcher as intended. I realized this when i had my own Xenon I (some moding to the Shipyard Mod and the Xenon Hunt Mod) fighting an Enemy Xenon I, while my ship was boosting and jumping around, the enemy one did not (the Captain had less than 4 Stars i suppose). I was surprised that my MICT Captain was loosing the fight, than i noticed he was not using the missile launcher, would you please look into it?

Greetings
icanfly

[w.evans]

@birdtable, some things to think about. Thanks!

1. When you have the Shipyard Mod from Blackrain you can build the Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer, this version of Secellus does not use the IHC-Cannon properly like the vanilla one does, the ship circels around trying to use it's Plasma Jet/LR Turrets, since i remember reading somewhere you were offering support for the WIP-Mod, i am reporting this bug to you

From which mod are you getting the Sucellus Vanguard? We worked on a small compatibility script to interface between the LR ships in CWIR and MICT. If the Sucellus Vanguard is included in other mods, that compatibility script will have to be included in those other mods to facilitate LR Ship movement for those ships. Not sure if BlackRain got around to adding that script to the other mods.

A quick work-around would be to:

get CWIR,
and copy \CWIR\md\brlongrange.xml from that mod to \[Other_Mod]\md\

Just dropping it in should work.

2. The Xenon I seems not to use it's missle launchers (IZ, not sure about OOZ) but only it's turrerts, by turning off your mod the Xenon I used the missle launcher as intended. I realized this when i had my own Xenon I (some moding to the Shipyard Mod and the Xenon Hunt Mod) fighting an Enemy Xenon I, while my ship was boosting and jumping around, the enemy one did not (the Captain had less than 4 Stars i suppose). I was surprised that my MICT Captain was loosing the fight, than i noticed he was not using the missile launcher, would you please look into it?

Surprised that the vanilla I's torpedoes were connecting! MICT Ships only fire torps when their target is within 15 degrees of the weapon. Vanilla ships fire torps within 360 degrees. Since the sides where the torpedo launchers are located aren't necessarily where they can do the most turret damage, they wouldn't necessarily orient those sides toward the target.

One thing to check: are you sure that your I's DO is set to both:

Attack Enemies
and Manage Ammunition Supply?

(Can't remember the exact wording of this second setting. It's one of the two check boxes in the DO's details.)

In case there's something else going on, do your Balors fire torpedoes?

[w.evans]

Sorry for the rather curt response earlier. Bug reports have a higher priority. Ok, back to our pet project:

I have no idea of the problems involved in coding a sufficient response fleet or ship,

Coding it's not a big problem. More a question of how to interface with it. How does the player designate a ship or group of ships as a fast response squadron?

but regardless of vanilla flight paths or strategic patterns the timing of an immediate response is crucial.....

Good point. Either a fast enough response, or an early enough response.

Escort ships are cumbersome and frustrating and would be little better than exists at present.... Large battleships are ponderous, slow moving and my trader would be long destroyed before the Captains rose from the breakfast table to prepare for action.

I find that MICT Ships assigned on escort duty are pretty responsive now, actually. Could be just a question of reassigning them in case a ship comes under attack. I'll keep really-rapid-response in mind as an option, though.

I was thinking more of a fast attack (Balor/Sucellus) that jumps under your command (on board) if time allows or goes into rapid attack mode.

Response on command actually already exists. Assign the ship under attack as superior to your response ship/squad. I usually use Multiassignment for this since there's less talk, and it lets me assign multiple ships to go to a ship in need quicker.

Ok, implementation. While I like having them be station-based better, hooking it into the existing escort script in MICT_supp2 looks like it'll be easier to implement. Maybe have MICT combat ships escorting non-combat ships who are not under attack actively look for non-combat ships who are under attack and move to escort those. If it proves too slow, we'll try RRR.

It's getting late, though, so I'll look into it tomorrow after my physical therapy session.

[icanfly]

hi again, thanks for your quick response. I have checked if the Sucellus Vanguard Destroyer is a part of CWIR/Shipyard Mod and it defently is, i will try your work around tommorow.

Now to the missle launcher problem, you are right it is not working for the I and also for the Balor, the Balor takes the right position but does not fire. I certainly know that it should work with the same mods-loadout, becuase an earlier safe it was working and now i started a new game and it does not work anymore. Recently i deleteted a mod (was not savegame compatible) with a savegame editor, may this cause such trouble?

Edit: With all this trying and turning the mods on and off i forgot to set the defence officer to "attacking enemies", seems to be working now, thanks.

[w.evans]

Edit: With all this trying and turning the mods on and off i forgot to set the defence officer to "attacking enemies", seems to be working now, thanks.

Yeah, that's something I added with MICT 0.53 (the latest update). The DO has to be set to both Attack Enemies AND Manage Ammunition Supply to authorize torpedo firing.

Intention is to give the player tighter control over when torpedo-armed ships fire, necessary since the torpedoes are so inaccurate and so powerful.

[w.evans]

@birdtable, thought that you might be interested to know that the Rapid Response Squadrons thing is pretty much done. There was a bit of a problem with everyone assigned to rapid response clumping and all flocking to one ship that's under attack, then all transferring to the next ship that comes under fire. Think it's sorted out.

Doing final (maybe) testing: dispersed my combat ships from my old game to multiple rapid response squadrons, and am waiting for one of my freighters to come under attack to see if they still clump. If they don't, then this should be up later tonight.

[birdtable]

Looking forward to this , I have just about got Sparky's start ( X Rebirth spoilers) under control and developing nicely....
At my age it is nice to suspend belief and be a child again while practising and exercising my memory, hand eye co-ordination and forward planning skills.
Hope it comes with a maximum of a two syllable worded tutorial, still trying to get my head around unitraders Not Another Trader's range entering mechanism.... as I read through my eyes have a tendency to glaze over..

[w.evans]

4.November.2015 - MICT_supp2 updated to v0.40x

Marking this one experimental for now. Please back up your saves, and prepare to go back to those back-ups if this experiment doesn't pan out. The file is available in Miscellaneous Files at the Nexus.

Rapid Response Squadrons

These are MICT Ships or MICT Squadrons which rush to the defence of any player-owned civilian capital ships that come under attack.

To assign a ship or squadron to the Rapid Response Squadron, simply assign that ship or squadron to escort a non-combat capital ship.

If:

- the ship or squadron cannot detect any hostile ships in the vicinity of the civilian ship that they are escorting,
- the civilian ship they are escorting has fully charged shields and better than 50% hull integrity,
- and any player-owned civilian ship comes under fire serious enough to drop their shields to below 90%

Ships from the Rapid Response Squadron will move to the defence of the player-owned civilian ship that has come under fire.

The speed at which they switch escortees depends on the Captain's primary skills.
At the moment, the option for Really Rapid Response is not active, and they will use gates and jump beacons to move between sectors as normal.

Some ships do still clump under single ships under attack, but they shouldn't all group themselves under single ships (anymore).

Again, please keep in mind that while I have tested this, it appears to work, and doesn't appear to have adverse effects, it is an entirely new feature and, as such, has not been exhaustively tested yet. Thus the experimental tag. Please do take that seriously. Kha'ak and Xenon may yet abound!

Bug reports, suggestions, criticism, general feedback, and just general banter most welcome.

Thank you to birdtable for the idea that led to this.

[birdtable]

Big Thumbs Up for this, cannot do this justice tonight but tomorrow because it will be foggy .. ... I will be able to test extensively...
Thanks.