Burianek's Laser / Economy Rebalance v1.0 *Update*

[roboneal]

From what I've read of the lasers mod, it looks exactly like what I was about to start doing myself! Well, looks like you saved me the trouble
I'll start testing it in a few days when I get back into X2 mode


I do have a question tho - why have you reduced the Khaak weapon ranges?

[Burianek]

How about upping the mass driver damage a bit further in your mod?

It received roughly a factor of two increase in damage from original values. This combined with the fact that most other weapons got (at least) a 50% reduction from relative values means it's roughly four times more powerful than it was before.

[Burianek]

I do have a question tho - why have you reduced the Khaak weapon ranges?

Only the fighter weapons, and only a tiny bit. The khaak M3 weapon still outdistances the HEPTs, and the Khaak M5 is now equiv to IREs. The capship weapon is unchanged (on a relative basis, it was / and is the same as the GPPC)

I just thought the relative ranges before were a bit too favorable for the khaak. It was annoying IMHO that if you squared off one on one with a khaak M3, it got to fire four to five times before you could even get in range. It still gets to fire first, but not so much that your ship is halfway destroyed before you can return fire.

(Ranges are pretty easy to change if you want them back the way they were, I'll teach you how.)

[Burianek]

Burianek,
e-mail me if you need somebody to do a translation of your readme.

Thanks!
Pm'ed you. Let me know if you got it.

[Burianek]

Just as an update, this mod is now available on the german forum thanks to the efforts of SevenSword, Simplexissimus, and Zakalwe. Thanks guys!
(If you see these guys around, thank them!)

[desius]

tried posting on the german forums bur?

[brohawk]

Burianek,
Below is a question I posed to moggy2 (ie: Dr. Xavia) on his forum.

brohawk wrote:
Since I am using Burianek's laser mod, the mining laser has a 2K range.

Could the automining script check the range of the mining laser and adjust accordingly?

Dr. Xavia wrote:
Do you know of anyway to detect if the mod is installed?

Xai Corp scripts are using a global variable to store which scripts are installed. If the laser mod uses something similar it would be simple to check if it's installed and adjust the closing range.

So do you use a global variable to show your mod is installed so Autominer v2.x can access that and adjust the range accordingly?

Thanks,
Mike

[Burianek]

hmmmm... tricky problem, this is a mod, not a script.
The thing about mods is that they directly alter game parameters, so they don't adjust or even need variables etc. So there really aren't any "traces" that he could sniff for to detect if it's running or not.

At the most basic level, Moggy2 could always create a simple script as part of his automining package that you can manually run if you are using my mod which creates a global variable like using.burianeks.lasers. The script could do nothing more than set this value to true if the user manually executes it. Then his scripts could adjust accordingly. (he'd know what I mean)

If the script editor is sophisticated enough, it could check the maximum range of the mining laser and adjust the script accordingly, but to be honest, I don't know if this is possible.

Just so you know, you'll be asking him to rewrite his scripts to include this extra functionality, so don't be too surprised if this project is a lower priority

I'll help however I can, but like I said, this is a mod. I can't change or add scripts to it. It doesn't use any.

[brohawk]

Thanks for the reply. True it would be low priority unless of course people wised up to your far improved mod over the original economy.

[Burianek]

There was a slight problem with the lasers-only mod I added. It has been fixed. If you downloaded it last night, just redownload it. The new version works, I promise

[Chamdar]

Heh, I just found out that the Laser-Only mod didnt do anything. Now you say it is fixed. Good.

[Zakalwe]

Hey Burianek!

Did you ever try to increase also rocket speeds? They are just useless right now. Hornet has a speed of 148m/s and is too slow to hit anything that moves. Which is pretty good for the player since the AI is spaming rockets like hell, but well, we want a challenge, eh? So technically it shouldn´t be a problem, but have you experienced some fights with lets say doubled rocket speeds? Can imagine it´s quite devastating.

Zak

[Burianek]

Hey Burianek!

Did you ever try to increase also rocket speeds? They are just useless right now. Hornet has a speed of 148m/s and is too slow to hit anything that moves. Which is pretty good for the player since the AI is spaming rockets like hell, but well, we want a challenge, eh? So technically it shouldn´t be a problem, but have you experienced some fights with lets say doubled rocket speeds? Can imagine it´s quite devastating.

Zak

Yep, I played around with it, and I have some thoughts, but you can't increase the speeds too much without combat becoming frustrating.

'Warning, incoming ....' Game Over

In the end I decided to leave them alone for now, but as you probably know, they're certainly easy to change.

I think the "right" way to balance them is to make the fast ships in a class able to outrun them, but the slow ships not. So, for example, a mamba can outrun a silkworm, but a nova can't.

For the most part that's how they're already set up, I guess egosoft didn't think the hornet was really meant for ship to ship combat, more for stations, I suppose...

I dunno. I think you could probably get away with bumping the hornet speed, I agree.

[brohawk]

I noticed on your site that the latest date on the zip file is Aug 6 for the economy mod but the version is the same. Were there any changes?

BTW, your economy is much better and more reasonable than the original. Thanks for putting in the time to do this.

[Burianek]

Yeah, I included a new version of the mod in the zip that only makes the laser changes for the people that *shudder* like the original economy better.
If you're happy with the laser/econ combination, you don't need the new file. It has no edits, just the extra version.

[Mailo]

Thanks for your fantastic work with this mod.
I restarted just so I could have both the new combat and the new economy right from the start.

Now, especially with Kairics improved AI, Combat is actually challenging, and I keep dying (still in a bayamon, assassination missions against 1 TP and 4 M3 are HARD )

[happykoala]

I did some testing on the BPSG and Massdriver to see how balanced they are in this mod.

Using either constant shooting with no energy or recharging. By recharging I mean shooting until out of energy, wait until the lasers are full again and then shoot, this gives the target time to recharge shields as well.

Target is a Demeter with 75000 shield and 27000 hull.

Orionco with 2 BPSG or 2 AHEPT, the best weapons it can use. Not counting Ion Disruptor.

2 BPSG took 2min 20sec of constant shooting to kill it.
2 AHEPT took 1min 12sec of constant shooting to kill it.
2 BPSG took 5 rounds of recharging. Each round took 24secs to recharge.
2 AHEPT took 4 rounds of recharging. Each round took 10secs to recharge.

AHEPT costs 134,760 each. BPSG costs 421,128 each.
Range of target is 1km for BPSG. PSGs do less damage the closer the target.
PSG is better at killing missiles and hitting multiple enemys as well as friendlies. But Ion disruptor is better and its cheaper at 252,676.

My opinion, increase the hull damage of PSG. This doesn't look like a shotgun to me. You can fall asleep with 2 1/2mins of shooting.

Nova with 2 Mass Drivers or 2 BHEPT, the best weapon it can use. Not counting Ion Disruptor. Nova supposedly has 150 power compared to 100 of Orionco.

2 Mass Drivers took 1min 10secs to kill.
2 AHEPT on Orionco. Took 1min 12secs to kill(see above).
2 BHEPT took 52secs to kill.
2 BHEPT took less than 4 rounds of recharging. Each round took 10secs.

Mass Driver ran out of energy when target is left with around 1/3 of hull.
Both BHEPT and Mass Drivers cost 269,520. Mass Drivers shot around 1400 rounds or 7 ammo, around 10,000 credits.

My opinion, increase damage of Mass Driver. If its around 30 damage it will take 46secs to kill.

Might as well give it 40 damage and half the current time and costs, giving it 35secs to kill and $5,000 in ammo. Which is the same as giving a free silkworm to a BHEPT user who kills in 52secs.

Thats just my opinion on balance, currently I don't find those 2 weapons that useful, but I'm no expert on weapons.

[jduato]

PSGs are fine. This weapon is poor when fighting against small ships like TS, TP or M3, although it is fine for capturing. However, PSGs are incredible when fighting against destroyers and carriers. I killed many Xenon K and J with just a Perseus. Making them more powerful would unbalance the game too much.

On the other hand, Mass Driver is underpowered. Although I managed to kill Xenon Ks with both a Mamba and a Dragon, it took me ages to kill those Ks. Of course, you have to avoid being hit several times or you are dead.

[happykoala]

PSGs are fine. This weapon is poor when fighting against small ships like TS, TP or M3, although it is fine for capturing. However, PSGs are incredible when fighting against destroyers and carriers. I killed many Xenon K and J with just a Perseus. Making them more powerful would unbalance the game too much.

*rushes off to purchase a Perseus*

[Burianek]

2 BPSG took 2min 20sec of constant shooting to kill it.

Hmmmmm.... are you sure you're at the correct range? You know there's a "sweet spot" in terms of the correct range to target when you fire a PSG. If you're too close you'll do very little damage. I tested the balance in much the same way as you describe, and while I agree with your findings with the AHEPT (I used a Nova as target and it took roughly 65 sec of constant firing to kill) I found that BPSGs actually killed the Nova in roughly the same amount of time. Huh. If your range is right, I'm not sure what the issue is. (by the way, if you're planning on continuing to test, and please do, I love the feedback! you'll find that just holding the trigger button down kills the target in almost exactly the same time as letting them recharge and then refiring, the reason being that once you deplete your original energy, you're limited to damaging the target at the rate your energy will recharge whether you save it up and then fire, or not)

PSGs are fine. This weapon is poor when fighting against small ships like TS, TP or M3, although it is fine for capturing. However, PSGs are incredible when fighting against destroyers and carriers. I killed many Xenon K and J with just a Perseus. Making them more powerful would unbalance the game too much.

I agree

On the other hand, Mass Driver is underpowered. Although I managed to kill Xenon Ks with both a Mamba and a Dragon, it took me ages to kill those Ks. Of course, you have to avoid being hit several times or you are dead.

That's balancing. Here's my thought process, feel free to disagree:
Because the mass driver neglects shields, you can switch targets back and forth and never have to worry about the shields recharging ruining your 'progress' in destroying the ship. This makes the mass driver more versatile. Plus, it fires faster so it's easier to hit the target. Therefore, damage is decreased to balance out these two positives.

Love the feedback and discussion! Keep it up. I have no problem changing the mod if you can convince me .....