[MOD] EAW: Open Conflict

[rocketeer]

Well the point in torpedos is that they do high damage to slow targets, missiles are do less damage but are good at countering faster ships like corvettes. Also not that the boron missiles the artillary used is really more like a cruise missile .

 

These are the missile systems i know:

 

Light missiles: They can catch all but the fastest fighters, ships with shields or heavy armor might take several hits, useless against corvette sized ships.

'Normal' Missiles: Those can hit slower fighters and bombers, they do quite some damage and in larger quantity can overwhelm the shieldsystems of corvettes

Heavy missiles: These are primarily used against corvette sized ships, but they do good damage to all targets. They are to slow to hit fighters or even bombers unless you get a lucky shot.

Torpedos: Several kinds, mostly used on bombers, they travel very slowly. Reason they are not used as much on other shipclasses is that because of their size and slow speed its quite possible to shoot them down before impact unless launched at close distance. They have high damage.

 

So you see it all makes sense, this also neatly explains why bombers actually use the most powerful ordenance with the torpedos, while bigger and slower ships usually rely on the heavy missiles.

 

P.S. I didnt touch those boron missiles the artillery ships use because i never heard of them before i played this game. But then again i cant remember stardestroyers or golan defenses getting ripped apart by artillery at all .

 

Edit: While i do remember some kind of shieldpiercing torpedo or missile from some starwars game i dont think it was in the timeline this game takes place at(something with tie defenders).

[rocketeer]

Found some info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shields_%28Star_Wars%29

Shield generators on star ships project both "ray" and "particle" shields. Ray shields block energy and particle shields block projectiles, but both are typically maintained by the same projector, so energy weapons or projectiles will both weaken the entire shield. However, it is possible to build a projector that only creates one type of shield, as seen on the first Death Star. Although the exhaust port was ray shielded, it was not particle shielded.

 

So a particle shield should prevent objects like missiles penetrating it. Maybe a very slow traveling torpedo could pass it, have to ask tal about that. So while i personally like the missiles on the Venator very much, and also the added firepower they add to spacestations it doesnt make much sense for them piercing the shields. Heavy missiles also shouldnt do massive damage to big ships, maybe this can be offset by giving them a faster fire rate(to show thats its actually not a single launcher but several in the case of a spacestation)?

[Adonnay]

I would like the torpedoes to be interceptable... but I think the gamemechanic doesn't allow this.

[rocketeer]

Yep most likely not, but them being interceptible is the canon reason why they are used by bombers, you cant intercept them if they get launched 50m above your ship. But we only need to care for the result, they are not used for long range battles by frigate ships and bigger. For that we have missiles, but i dont think even those got used in fights between big ships, their payload is to low.

[rocketeer]

I see why you want to preserve the missile system the way it is, and if missiles couldnt pierce shields they would indeed be a little bit redundant. But its quite interesting that neither the Mon cal nor the ISD carries missile launchers. Only the obsolete desings like the Victory I(old, we have a Victory II in the game that uses ions) the Venator and the Acclamator use them.

 

While it does add some interesting variaty it gives these ships a usefulness they should not have. Acclamators or Venators are not supposed to be able to destroy a spacestations hardpoints before taking out its shields. Hell im not even sure bombers should be able to do that .

 

Edit: It seems possible to give torpedos a energy damage value like ion cannons have, maybe we could use that instead of shield piercing missiles.

[Adonnay]

It's an interesting aspect that only older ships seem to have torpedoes for sure.

I assume - thinking in "reality" terms - that balistic weapon systems are shunned because of the need of supplies and cargo space (did you play Republic Commando? Did you see the sheer size of those torpedos, or was that missiles?). Beam weapons "only" need energy.

 

Besides, if you now take away those torpedoes the Venator surely has even less chances to defeat a Victory

 

I could make the Torpedoes

1. do more damage but take em their ignore shields capability

2. reduce the range to real close combat, so you have to get really close to use them

3. make em unguided, which results in fewer hits on moving targets (they don't really look as if they should be guided anyway, they look more like bolts)

4. a combination of the above

[haard]

This looks great, but I'm on the side of "only bombers can use high-yield shield-piercing explosives". Fits better with the sim games feel =)

If torpedoes were taken of the capital ships and stations, and the yield of the bombers increased, I'd start fearing and using them again.

 

(what was the last SW sim?)

 

oh, and about the Y-wing ion thingie - I was wrong, but so was the manual and tooltip.

[rocketeer]

Hm lets see, i think torpedos should do more damage, and only get used by bombers. And yes they should have real close range. All 'ranged' missiles shouldnt be shieldpiercing. Heavy missiles imho shouldnt be shieldpiercing and do less shielddamage than hull damage(they are explosive). Proton based missiles should be the reverse, note that for actually killing the really bad big ships there was special weapon called proton bombs. These where afaik unguided ... well bombs. They did massive damage but where completly useless against smaller craft.

 

Edit: About the Venators chances against the Victory, i wouldnt try getting close enough to a victory to actually use those launchers if i wanted to win .

Found a very interesting page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_ship-mounted_weapons

[Somerled]

@Adonnay: I am going to start a new GC Campaign tonight...as this excellent mod is updated, will those changes impact the saved game?

[Adonnay]

To be honest I cannot guarantee that savegames will be unaffected by any of the changes made, but I think there shouldn't be any problems.

 

edit: I was partly successful at making large warheads targetable. Ships now actually try to shoot the projectile... but it seems they cannot hit/damage it and therefore it won't be destroyed. I'm still pretty sure it's hardcoded but who knows... perhaps I'm lucky.

[rocketeer]

Now that would really give those anti fighter lasers a fine purpose, and it also would show neatly why designs that rely on missile ordenance like the Acclamator and Venator are outdated .

 

This would also create a situation where ships that have point defense systems are less susceptible to torpedos than ships lacking it, i think that fits canon.

[DCorris]

save games shouldnt be affected from what i can tell, the saves should only point to what vehicles are where, planets with what on them etc etc, nothing that would damage a save game as things are changed

 

well thats how i see it, unless a unit is completely removed from the game then everything should be fine, well, we hope lol

 

 

i was juts moaning about the reb art as i only could land three units to begin with and my stormtroopers and at-sts wernt running fast enough lol

 

you couldnt increase the number of bikerscouts/scout troopers in each unit coudl you

in episode 6 there were three of them together but onyl two per unti in game

 

From SW Databank:

They operate in units called lances, which consist of four troopers and their sergeants, as well as their assigned speeder bikes or other patrol craft.

 

im really just trying to give myself a better chance against those reb arts lol

[rocketeer]

http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/republicattackcruiser/

 

I told you we should have put obi-wan into this ship :D(last paragraph)

[DCorris]

http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/republicattackcruiser/

 

I told you we should have put obi-wan into this ship :D(last paragraph)

 

obi wan in that ship would be pretty awesome

 

i dunno what it is about that ship but its just looks so darn cool lol

 

Its standard complement included 192 V-19 Torrent or V-wing fighters, 192 Jedi starfighters, 36 ARC-170 fighters, and 20 LAAT/I gunships.

haha, awesome

[Dirk Pitt]

You should make torps move faster but unguided

[Adonnay]

You should make torps move faster but unguided

 

That's exactly what I just did (in addition to reducing their targeting range)

[Adonnay]

http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/republicattackcruiser/

 

I told you we should have put obi-wan into this ship :D(last paragraph)

 

With the emphasis on: Obi-Wan Kenobi's search for General Grievous on Utapau. Not "during his extensive spacebattles"

 

I can as well give Obi a Venator... he won't show up until tech level 5 anyway... so no worries about unbalancing anything.

[Tal Odo-ki]

does friendly fire affect units in the game?

No. But I think that it may be moddable to make it do so.

[Tal Odo-ki]

Adonnay, I hope you will listen to everyone's clamoring (if you haven't already) and change all the missiles/torps so that none of them are shield-piercing (with the possible exception of those fired from starfighters). Shield-piercing weapons are most assuredly not canon to Star Wars.

 

As for why ship designers went from missile carrying vessels to pure gunnery, it was mainly for cost/maintainance reasons. The reloads for the assault missiles on a Victory I cost a small fortune. Turbolasers are far cheaper to operate, and have much better accuracy.

 

That LucasArts added long-range "artillery" into EAW in the form of the Broadside (and its counterpart) is very much against all the existing Star Wars canon concerning how battles are fought. I'd dearly love to strangle whomever made that decision.

[Adonnay]

And you were the one who wanted to keep the Missile Marauder

[Tal Odo-ki]

And you were the one who wanted to keep the Missile Marauder

Only for the sake of balance between the two sides. You won't offend me if you take it AND the Broadside out. But you must do both or neither.

[Tal Odo-ki]

Adonnay:

 

Can you please change the following TEXT_UNIT entries in the MasterTextFile to read as follows?

• Acclamator-class Assault Ship
  
• Marauder Corvette
  
• Venator-class Star Destroyer
  
• Victory Star Destroyer

I sent you a copy of my own file a few days ago, and it's getting annoying to have to keep making these 4 changes each time you release an update with a new MasterTextFile in it. Thanks, and keep up the great work!

[Adonnay]

Adonnay:

 

Can you please change the following TEXT_UNIT entries in the MasterTextFile to read as follows?

• Acclamator-class Assault Ship
  
• Marauder Corvette
  
• Venator-class Star Destroyer
  
• Victory Star Destroyer

I sent you a copy of my own file a few days ago, and it's getting annoying to have to keep making these 4 changes each time you release an update with a new MasterTextFile in it. Thanks, and keep up the great work!

 

True, you did that... but since I made quite a few changes to my own text file I didn't want to overwrite it with the one you sent me. I've just made the changes.

[Tal Odo-ki]

I've just made the changes.

Thank you. In case anyone hasn't mentioned it recently, you rock!

[Meethos]

I have a space battle saved that involves the Planetary Ion Cannon and have been testing various settings. Here are my observations: I think the Ion Cannon should have its firing rate reduced to 105 seconds. Its not overbalacend and you get to use Ion cannon more than just once a battle. Also I noticed that with the new Anti-fighter hardpoints that are set not destroyable, are immune to the Ion Cannon, which kind of deafeats the purpose of having it. So I set all the hardpoints of a Victory SSD to destroyable and that worked. Though it had one interesting side affect. After all the visible hardpoints on a ship are destroyed the Hull of the ship remains until you inflict more damage to it(I assume destroying the non-visible hard points or its health). I actually think this is a good thing, now instead of the ship exploding after you destroy its last gun, you must now finish off its hull. Seems more realistic to me. Perhaps you should try it on a ship and see what you think.

 

I tried this already... the side effect also has a downside. If a ship decides to shoot at this untargetable hull first, then the whole ship will be destroyed if this hardpoint is, meaning you don't need to shoot the rest of the hardpoints. Just aim at the hull and you'll see all the hardpoints suddenly take damage very fast (depending on the health of this untargetable hitpoint). Besides... they're only anti-fighter hardpoints... that shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

Thats a good point, IIRC over in the Petro forums Joebwan was talking about this subject and he said that in order to overcome this problem you need to increase this:

<Tactical_Health>7800</Tactical_Health>

to be more than sum of all the hardpoints heatlh a ship has. That should prevent ships from blowing up early. If you like I can try to find the post for you.

 

Edit: I found that post here is what he said:

<TacticalHealth> is basically "hull" health. When hull health is depleted the ship is destroyed. If a ship has hard points and if all the hard points are destroyed a ship is also destroyed. Hard points have their own health and for the most part, if a ship has hard points, then those take damage rather than the hull. There are (or were) some exceptions to this where damage would be applied to the hull rather than to a hard point and this was making ships too easy to destroy in certain cases. This is why TacticalHealth will typically be higher than the sum of the health of the destroyable hard points the ship has.

The full thread is here: http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=2670.0

 

Hope that helps.

 

On the pricing topic... sure the prices still need fine tuning... but making a squadron of X-wings worth only 15c or a TIE only 6c (!)... together with a popcap of only 1 *does some math*. What prevents you from building 500 X-Wing squadrons for a price of 1 1/2 VSDs? ... I mean.... 500!!

Your right, I agree with you. I only suggested that low of prices to work for small Galactic Conquest maps with low income, and didn't feel like doing any math to scale prices.

 

What I really wanted was prices more like this:

X-wing: 150

Y-wing: 135

A-wing: 175

TIE: 60

TIE bomber: 150

TIE scout: 125

Action VI bulk freighter: 1,000

Firespray-31: 120

YT-1300: 100

Gallofree medium transport: 350

IPV-1: 3,342

Marauder Corvette: 2,398 (canon version)

Corellian Corvette: 3,500

Corellian Gunship: 4,800

Tartan: 4,760

Nebulon-B: 9,000

Assault MkII: 22,000

Acclamator: 29,000

Interdictor: 52,240 -> 30,000

VSD: 57,000 -> 37,000

Venator: 59,000 -> 39,000

Mon Cal MC80: 44,000

ISD: 49,000

 

Then scale in stations to fit as needed. With these prices the game is drawn out with the player using the smaller ships and only having a few Capital Ships. Not sure if the AI knows how to save money or not. I think the prices upto the Nebulon-B are good, perhaps scale down the Larger ships prices if need be.

 

Unfortunately, because EAW has such small maps, you cannot properly simulate how a Star Wars fleet battle with capital ships would actually take place

I know scaling can have bad side affects, but you could always scale down the large ships, might not be to scale but then maps would appear bigger. Hopefully we'll get the map editor soon, so we can just increase the map sizes.

 

Btw... the mod will from now on be called "EAW: Open Resistance", if that doesn't sound too awful. I'll talk to a mod soon to change the topic.

EAWOC... I like that!

I like the name, kinda freaked me out when I couldn't find the thread at first:D. EAWOC => Ewok J/K

 

Regarding shield peircing missiles/torpedeos: I don't like them either, but at least the Y-Wing and Tie Bomber should keep them for balance sake. Plus it will break one of the Rebel Campaign missions if you remove them completly. Like others have said, Missiles are fast and guided, good for destroying fighters and damaging shields. Torpedos are slow, unguided and do lots of damage.

 

Thank you. In case anyone hasn't mentioned it recently, you rock!

I agree, keep up the great work.

 

Edited for spelling.