[MOD] Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks

[iWARR]

w.evans
Main question. Can you separate parameters in the "IN/OUT of zone" modes and tweak "OUT of zone" mode only? To prevent imbalancing risk in the LIVE battle that is good for now?

[w.evans]

w.evans
Main question. Can you separate parameters in the "IN/OUT of zone" modes and tweak "OUT of zone" mode only? To prevent imbalancing risk in the LIVE battle that is good for now?

Well, yeah. I wasn't kidding when I said that combat IZ and OOZ are completely different.

OOZ, the entirety of the code available to us is:

<get_attackstrength object="this.ship" target="$target" usedrones="$target.isclass.[class.ship_xs, class.ship_s, class.ship_m]" result="$result" />
<apply_attackstrength object="$target" attacker="this.ship" strength="$result * ($waittime)f" result="$isdead" />

.......
EDIT: Just wanted to emphasize this. get_attackstrength literally just produces a number, and apply_attackstrength applies that number as damage to the hit ship. get_attackstrength is modified by a number of things, and usually works rather well, BUT, and I want to emphasize this:

we cannot touch those things
and that number is sometimes, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, very very large.

.......
That's it. The rest of it's hardcoded. I apply modifiers between those two nodes to alter $result depending on crew skill and relative skill, but that's pretty much it with regard to OOZ rebalance.

Ego also released some parameters several patches back for us to play with, and those do affect the two internal functions above. However, all I ended up modifying in those parameters is to nerf damage done by everything. I nerfed damage, and apply more penalties to damage than bonuses, because the internal calculation sometimes glitches for no apparent reason, and the damage spikes, and this can result in battles that are going ok suddenly resulting in no shields and hull at 10%. I cannot prevent that spiking because it happens in the internal calculation, but it's effects are at least lessened because everything does less damage in the first place.

In-zone, the process is more transparent since it actually uses ship models, the weapons they have, what hits where, and all that, and everything's out in the xml files. So changing ship behavior and specs directly changes combat results, and it's easier to verify since it's in-zone so you could see the results.

[iWARR]

w.evans
Very clear explanation. Thanks!
Sadly, get_attackstrength is a core parameter... While you have tertiary influence factors in your hands. That's why I told about imbalance risk in other things. get_attackstrength need to be taken ~10 times less or so.

Well, with this info I can tell you that previous OOZ was better (first version without UniBar)

[w.evans]

Sadly, get_attackstrength is a core parameter... While you have tertiary influence factors in your hands.

Exactly, but

That's why I told about imbalance risk in other things. get_attackstrength need to be taken ~10 times less or so.

get_attackstrength isn't used anywhere else, so won't affect anything other than OOZ combat.

...
EDIT: Funny that you mention 10 times less. My very first nerf had everything doing damage at 10% what it is in vanilla. Some fights were taking forever, though, and I find 35% a decent compromise.

...

Well, with this info I can tell you that previous OOZ was better (first version without UniBar)

Ok. Made a probably unwise decision, and the OOZ code is now scattered among 4 files, and three of those have to be merged rather than just overwritten in the MCT, so that's 3 files more. I'll see to reversing the recent changes, but want to take my time about it because I want to make sure that I don't miss anything.

[iWARR]

w.evans
About rockets. Lets think logic. Why rockets is a great advantage.
For example, it's almost impossible to take a boarding of Tyrant if you don't have enough strong missiles (like NovaDrones, Tristars) + strong support
5% - it's the difference between stronger/weaker turrets, not between turrets/missiles.
turrets/missiles advantage have to be 10...40% depending of missile type. IMHO.
It's overall observation.

[w.evans]

Because they were doing too little damage in relation to turrets, in my opinion. Balors, for example, were doing less damage OOZ than Stromvoks.

To clarify, "secondary weapons" appears to refer to integrated missile launchers. In the vanilla game, these are the novadrones fired by the Balor and the Xenon I, and missiles launched by fighters. Also, missile damage isn't always applied. (I think this is modeled into the get_attackstrength function to simulate missiles missing.) Damage output by turrets, however, is consistent, so they're modeled as if they always hit.

edit: increasing the damage done by missiles relative to turrets further would make torpedo-armed capships like the Balor, the Xenon I, and eBARRACUDA's Tyrant OP OOZ. Not to mention missile-armed fighters.

[iWARR]

I find 35% a decent compromise

Don't forget, Vanilla "out of zone" is crappy core algorithm.
Roughly:
18min (real) / ~3min (sim) = 6 times
So, if you have now 35% in OOZ, then 35/6 = ~6% you have to set to fix OOZ.

[w.evans]

18min (real) / ~3min (sim) = 6 times

Don't forget damage spiking. That looks completely random. Could sometimes cut that 18 minutes to a couple of seconds.

I wouldn't call it crappy, though, especially since I haven't seen it. To their credit, Ego did do a lot of work on it around the 3.50 betas, and now, for example, ship orientation is taken into account. Used to be that all of a ship's turrets would hit all the time, so, you know how the Arawn has turrets inside it? Those would hit all the time too. Now, at least it looks at how the ship is oriented, and only applies damage from those turrets that are actually facing the target (sort of, more-or-less, most of the time). This single change is what made sense to have ships maneouver OOZ in the first place. Without it, with ships just moving around with a sort of aura of decay at a set radius, with damage == that ship's absolute dps, there was literally no point to having ships move any which way OOZ because it wouldn't matter. And other things are taken into account now too.

It isn't 100% consistent with IZ, but I don't think anything short of modeling IZ combat everywhere all the time can do that, and that would be very expensive indeed in computing power for very little return.

[iWARR]

w.evans
I have to go, my friend. See you next week. Bye
OOZZZZ.........

[w.evans]

Missed your edit:

So, if you have now 35% in OOZ, then 35/6 = ~6% you have to set to fix OOZ.

This is going into "realism" (realism, in this case, making abstracted OOZ combat more like "real" IZ combat) vs gameplay, I think. At 10%, some fights were taking hours to finish. Not sure that nerfing OOZ damage to below 10% would be a good idea.

Has knock-on effects too. Making OOZ battles take much longer means more calculations happening that you aren't even aware of, and that have 0 effect to your game. (Like Xenon fighting Family Ryak somewhere far away while you're still stuck in Albion. If outcome won't be affected, you want those calculations done as fast as possible to minimize their impact on your game, while it would be great if calculations that do matter to you are in accordance with your expectations.)

Something between 35% and 10% might not be a bad idea, though.

See you next week!

[Scoob]

Hi,

From your MICT thread you'll know that my Fulmekron is doing the business In-Zone now, which is great. However, it appears to totally suck OOZ!

I just sent it to attack a small PMC Fleet OOZ - this fleet consists of a Taranis, a Heavy Sul and two Light Suls (Arbiter and Typhoon) - and it didn't even last 30 seconds before it was badly damaged and had to jump away.

It engaged one of the Light Sul Varients but only did 15% shield damage, while taking 100% shield damage its self and loosing half its hard points and 30% of its hull. Even if ALL those ships attacked at one In-Zone it'd last longer than this.

Is this one of the "damage spikes" you've mentioned before? If so, the Fulmekron always suffers from these "spikes" in my testing and totally sucks OOZ.

In the same OOZ fight, my Taranis does well, it's engaging the same ships, but has only taken light shield damage so far.

Anyway, just some feedback as the Fulmekron seems to be exceptionally weak OOZ.

Scoob.

[BlackRain]

Hi,

From your MICT thread you'll know that my Fulmekron is doing the business In-Zone now, which is great. However, it appears to totally suck OOZ!

I just sent it to attack a small PMC Fleet OOZ - this fleet consists of a Taranis, a Heavy Sul and two Light Suls (Arbiter and Typhoon) - and it didn't even last 30 seconds before it was badly damaged and had to jump away.

It engaged one of the Light Sul Varients but only did 15% shield damage, while taking 100% shield damage its self and loosing half its hard points and 30% of its hull. Even if ALL those ships attacked at one In-Zone it'd last longer than this.

Is this one of the "damage spikes" you've mentioned before? If so, the Fulmekron always suffers from these "spikes" in my testing and totally sucks OOZ.

In the same OOZ fight, my Taranis does well, it's engaging the same ships, but has only taken light shield damage so far.

Anyway, just some feedback as the Fulmekron seems to be exceptionally weak OOZ.

Scoob.

I also noticed that the Taranis seems to kick an Arawn's butt OOZ, or is that just me? In Zone, the Arawn tears it apart.

[Scoob]

I also noticed that the Taranis seems to kick an Arawn's butt OOZ, or is that just me? In Zone, the Arawn tears it apart.

My Taranis - all on its lonesome - just took out a large Reiver fleet OOZ moment ago. So, three Titurels + Support. I wasn't watching "live" so to speak, I saw the initial encounter, looked back a few minutes later and there were just wrecks...with my Taranis patrolling the Zone like nothing had happened.

My Fulmekron never does well vs. Taranis OOZ, and that thing would beat an Arawn In-Zone one on one.

Scoob.

[w.evans]

Do either of you remember how an Arawn compares to a Taranis in vanilla OOZ? Or a Fulmekron vs Taranis? Would help find a balance point. Would go in myself, but afraid this week's looking a bit busy.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

In-zone ship agility is rather sluggish for XL ships. Might agility/rotation be less so in the OOZ model? If it was, perhaps it comes down to the speed differences as a Taranis (80 m/s) is quite a bit faster than an Arawn (60) and Fulmekron (66).

Assuming equally-skilled crews, an OOZ Taranis would find it easier to keep intact long-ranged weapons facing a target, and to keep at long range relative to weak points (e.g. probably less likely to have intact Plasma/JET turrets shooting back at it).

[Scoob]

From what I remember, a Fulmekron OOZ should be able to take down three Taranis and not suffer too much damage. An Arawn would too, but take a few more scrapes.

Previously, a Fulmekron or Arawn parked in a remote Zone was the idea OOZ defence. Currently, with the Fulmekron at least, one or more of its stats see it spanked OOZ by Suls, let alone Taranis.

I can't see what, other than general sluggishness, would count so strongly against a Fulmekron OOZ. Its main In-Zone weakness is attacks from the rear - its engines are very easily killed - possibly this weakness is exaggerated OOZ?

Btw: how come ships OOZ when you watch them can do insta-turns? I.e. they'll be manoeuvring normally, then suddenly flip 180 degrees. This uber agility must be useful for bringing weapons on target.

Scoob.

[w.evans]

Looking at data on this. (Made all pirate ships Marauding Taranises, and just left the game running with logging on while zeroed in on only battles involving Taranis vs Arawns or Fulmekrons.)

Haven't organized the data yet, and strangely haven't found any Fulmekrons fighting Taranis; but in a cursory look, the damage that they deal doesn't seem to differ much, which means that in a 1-on-1, an Arawn should outlast a Taranis.

In these last exchanges of fire:

- Arawn did from 28,612.287 to 41,742.105 damage on the Taranis (looks like the same Arawn: same crew skill, no drones, same orientation. Variance is mostly from varying relative speeds, and from astrobees.)
- Hm, Taranis wasn't doing any. Possibly glitched, or I'm catching the tail end of a fight. Found a Fulmekron-Taranis fight, though!

- Ok, Fulmekron was doing from 10,149.739 to 19,580.662 (not a huge penalty to damage due to speed, though. Without modifiers due to skill and speed, it would be doing from 14,032.501 to 20,805.701)
- Taranis was doing 109.365 to 2,819.769 (raw - 140.993 to 3,635.221)

Fulmekron sucks, but it's not the modifiers. Those raw numbers suck relative to the Arawn too. (The raw numbers are before the modifiers due to skill and speed, but after the universal damage nerf. So those are all around 20% (this is lower than what's released) of what vanilla would output.)
But the Taranis sucks even more!

However, all of these are vanilla ships, so they mostly have their rears pointed towards their targets. (Vanilla ships ignore each other OOZ, with defence officers just taking potshots at each other when someone comes into range.)

One thing I noticed is that MICT ships tend to be pointing towads their target OOZ, and do much more damage. A bit further down, one of my Arawns, with a crack crew and loaded with 240 combat drones did 86,434.313 damage at a Marauding Taranis that had its rear pointed towards the Arawn.

I'll print this out and take a closer look, hopefully later today.

edit:

Btw: how come ships OOZ when you watch them can do insta-turns? I.e. they'll be manoeuvring normally, then suddenly flip 180 degrees. This uber agility must be useful for bringing weapons on target.

Yeah, noticed that too. I don't think they actually maneouver OOZ. Just have position and orientation data.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Might there be something in the turret placing that leads to differences OOZ for the Fulmekron compared to the Taranis?

Perhaps IZ, the Fulmekron's design allows for more than half of the JETs to hit a target roughly in front whilst OOZ, quadrants probably impose different limitations. Not something easily 'fixable' but a possible contributor alongside OOZ agility.

[w.evans]

Might there be something in the turret placing that leads to differences OOZ for the Fulmekron compared to the Taranis?

Perhaps IZ, the Fulmekron's design allows for more than half of the JETs to hit a target roughly in front whilst OOZ, quadrants probably impose different limitations. Not something easily 'fixable' but a possible contributor alongside OOZ agility.

My thoughts exactly. Would be better to test a MICT Fulmekron, but I don't have one yet. (Still haven't gone to Omicron Lyrae in my main game.)

Here's a more decent exchange though.

Fulmekron's doing 17,902.289 (19,629.701) damage against a Taranis that's behind it.
Taranis doing 4,594.802 (8,303.977) against the Fulmekron, also behind it.

Sent a MICT Taranis out looking for trouble, but haven't found anything yet.

[Marvin Martian]

why you not write a Job?
on the ship file you can design crew, equipent and faction

then place both opponents into the same zone to patrol, i think they will start fight shortly