[MOD] EAW: Open Conflict

[rocketeer]

I noticed that the MC 80 has big problems taking down fighter/bomber compared to the other capital ships, even on fast forward it takes ages. Atm the venator seems to handle them best. With the MC 80 handling them the worst, tbh there is not much point in the mc 80 atm, the liberty is much better, and the venator does the job just as well. His damage is also very low compared to the other capital ships, no doubt because its hard for him to focus fire. Add to that that he has the weakest fighter/bomber wing of all capital ships and its really quite a pitiful ship .

[Adonnay]

Every asteroid or only special ones on certain maps? Perhaps those are the ones Petro put in as a test if asteroids can be broken into smaller pieces... and they forgot to change them back to the "normal" asteroids.

[rocketeer]

Only some asteroids for me it seems, then one on the way to the pirate base in the sullust system being the best example.

[rocketeer]

Btw i would even say the venator has more firepower than the mc 80, on paper the mc 80 is better, but in reality his ion cannons dont do any damage once the shields are down, and its hard to get more then 2 TBLs firering on the same target. Everytime you give a attack order to kill a pesky pirate frigate or acclamator(you only get 2 TBLs on them cause you would need to fully turn to get all 4) the ship starts turning and you loose firefocus on your primary target, then you have to cancel the movement and hope he turns correctly back:D.

 

So in the end the 2 TBLs of the venator(who seem to do the same damage as the mc 80s) his 2 launchers that can damage hardpoints before the shields are down, and the venators superior fighter/bomber/corvette defense makes it more powerful imho.

 

Note that i left fighters/bombers out of this equation, and didnt even mention the more powerful shields of the Venator. And no the Venators shields are not overpowered cause the liberty actually has much much better shields than it(double hp and better recharge) .

 

P.S. If the shieldrecharge is per second we get the following values over a 5 min fight:

 

MC 80: 5000 hp starting shields, 10500 hp shields regained over 300 sec, for 15500 hp total shields after 5 min

 

Venator: 4300 hp starting shields, 15000 hp shields regained over 300 sec, for 19300 hp shields after 5 min

 

Liberty: 10000 hp starting shields, 18000 hp shields regained over 300 sec, for 28000 hp shields after 5 min

 

ISD: 8000 hp starting shields, 10500 hp shields regained after 300 sec, for 18500 hp shields after 5 min

 

Edit: Added ISD

[rocketeer]

Basicly the longer the fight the more important the shieldrecharge gets, if trying to kill a pirate base solo for example the Venators shields will hold easily, while the mc 80 struggles to keep his shields up. The special shield boost ability is also a mulitplier to the natural recharge afaik, so the Venator and Liberty again get much better results.

 

To be precise the shields of the venator start being better after 47 secs of battle, in reality they are better right from the start, because even if under heavy fire he got the better shield boost ability.

 

Edit: If activating his boost ability the venator will have more total shields than the mc 80 after 5(!!) seconds.

 

Edit2: Of course if the shieldrecharge is not per second but slower we get different results, but its just a question of time till the venators shields come out on top as it is now.

[Tal Odo-ki]

Venator vs. MC80:

Gunnery firepower - 3,344 vs. 6,380

Fighter guns - 27,720 (clone wars-era fighters) vs. 2,376 (assuming 36 X-wings on the MC80)

Fighter missiles (per salvo) - 3,564 vs. 3,564.

 

Gunnery-wise, a MC80 should easily handle a Venator, especially since the MC80 has superior shields (with backups). However, when you factor in the fighters, a Venator should be able to defeat anything smaller than the Executor SSD. At least according to canon. Don't ask me why the Empire chose to switch to mainly guns on the ISDs rather than fighters as in the old Venators, as I have no idea. It certainly cannot be manpower, since an ISD uses an obscene amount of crew. An ISD with 400+ modern fighters would make a Venator look quaint. Nor do I understand why the Venators (hundreds, perhaps thousands of them) remained in mothballs. None of it makes any sense to me.

[rocketeer]

Venator vs. MC80:

Gunnery firepower - 3,344 vs. 6,380

Fighter guns - 27,720 (clone wars-era fighters) vs. 2,376 (assuming 36 X-wings on the MC80)

Fighter missiles (per salvo) - 3,564 vs. 3,564.

 

Gunnery-wise, a MC80 should easily handle a Venator, especially since the MC80 has superior shields (with backups). However, when you factor in the fighters, a Venator should be able to defeat anything smaller than the Executor SSD. At least according to canon. Don't ask me why the Empire chose to switch to mainly guns on the ISDs rather than fighters as in the old Venators, as I have no idea. It certainly cannot be manpower, since an ISD uses an obscene amount of crew. An ISD with 400+ modern fighters would make a Venator look quaint. Nor do I understand why the Venators (thousands of them) remained in mothballs. None of it makes any sense to me.

 

Dont nail me on it, but i remember reading somewhere that most of the crew of capital ships wasnt able to efficently pilot a fighter(the crew on a real carrier also cannot necessarily handle a f-16). But in the end it makes as much sense as the empire getting behind in fighter/bomber technology. Maybe it has something to do with the emperors focus on big shiny things ... the evil guys kinda all had this invincibility complex, just think about tarkin and his deathstar .

 

Edit: Your gunnery numbers show exactly what i mean, the MC 80 has double the firepower, on paper. In reality he can never get more than half of his guns firering on the same target due to his cigar shaped form. While the Stardestroyer designs could fire much more of their guns due to their wedge form.

[rocketeer]

Also remember that the fighter damage of the Venator will be steadily going down due to fighters getting shot down, and you cant assume that all the fighters will be shooting 100% of the time at the enemy. They will fly loops, evade fire, and have the ship in their back at times, they only can fire at it on the approach.

 

P.S. It just occurred to me why the empire fighter might not have hyperspace abilities, the empire had quite some problems with deserting troops to the rebellion right? I think palpatine didnt trust the individual fighter pilot enough. Besides you know the saying, a seeman who cannot swim fights harder to keep the ship over water .

[Tal Odo-ki]

Desertion has nothing to do with it at all. Also, the TIE was designed long before there was a Rebellion. The reason TIEs have no hyperdrive is very simple: cost. It's also why TIEs have no shields, no life-support (pilots wear sealed suits), not even cockpit gravity. In order to produce a fighter that was faster than a Z-95 and with more laser firepower they had to sacrifice everything else (including pilot safety).

[rocketeer]

Ok i have some new values for the capital ships shields that are based on some calculations:

 

Venator:

5000hp, 40 recharge, factor 0.1 for shieldboost ability, high penalty for using it(75%increase?); its a old design and doesnt have much shields compared to a newer class of capital ships, it has however a solid recharge due its single strong shieldgenerator.

 

MC 80:

12000hp, 25 recharge, factor 0.075(less is better) for shieldboost ability, increased penalty for using it(50%increase?); The backup shield generators provide this ship with massive shields to chew through, but due to its several less strong shieldgenerators it has a slower recharge, which can be countered by easily diverting lots of power from other systems to the shields.

 

Liberty:

15000hp Shields, 35 recharge, factor 0.09 for shieldboost ability, increased penalty for using it(25% increase?); Improved design over the MC 80, it has better backupgenerators which result in more shields and a better recharge than the older model, the strain on other systems while diverting power could be lessened because of this over the older model.

 

ISD:

9000hp shields, 70 recharge, hull boost(50%); While it has no backup generators that provide it with fallback systems incase the shield gets overwhelmed its massive single generator provides an enormus shieldrecharge. It is however not built to be able to retrieve extra energy from other systems, which would hurt the offensive capabilities of the ship.

 

I wanted the Mon Cals to have massive shields, to take their backupgenerators into account, yet to balance it i assumed that each individual shieldgenerator of them(there is either the normal shield system running or the backup one, not both) has a lower shieldrecharge. Because of the emphasis on defense these ships have the ability to divert massive amounts of power from other systems(lasers and engines) to the shields in emergencys.

 

The imperial ships on the other hand have no backup generators, so their shields are less massive, yet due to the single huge(military grade) shieldgenerator they have a very solid recharge, because of the offensive doctrine of the empire its systems are not intended for energy transfer from weapon systems to the shields, but the reverse in fact. Their capital ships are also much better armored.

 

The liberty now has the most shields over time, unless the fight takes over 3 min, in which case it would have to divert power form weapon systems to keep its shields better than the ISD.

 

The MC 80 needs to turn on the energy transfer after 1 min, to keep its shields better than a ISD, however that cripples its offensive power quite much.

 

The Venator always looses compared to a ISD or mon cal design, unless it uses its shieldboost ability, but in that case its offensive abilities and speed is pretty much nonexistant. And its still got worse shields then a mon cal doing the same for less penalty.

 

Please note that this does not take into account firepower, its only about the relative shieldstrenght to each other. But the values assume that a ISD does more damage then a Mon Cal for example, also his energy to weapons shouldnt hurt his shields, but only his shieldrecharge and be more effective.

 

I assumed that shields function kinda like a capacitor with a builtin powersource, where the energy in the capacitor is the actual shield, and the builtin powersource slowly replenishes it. I dont know how it really works, but i think this is a nice approximination and its doable with the current gamemechanics. This also explains why i made the mon cals have a worse shieldrecharge than the venator, they have several shieldgenerators which are individually weaker than those of a comparable ship, but when one goes down another takes its place. However the shieldgenerators cannot support each others recharge rate. Again i dont know about the real mechanics behind this but there has to be a downside to this to balance it.

 

Edit: Even though the Mon Cals have a slower recharge than ISDs they are not more susceptible to fighter attacks then the ISDs due to their powerful shieldboost ability which raises their recharge quite a bit.

 

Edit2: Remember that a low starting hp make a ship easier to overwhelm with superior firepower, whereas a good recharge means a better defense to not so overwhelming odds. Ideally a ISD would force a mon cal to use its shield boost ability before the mon cal gets the shields of the ISD down, after that the mon cal has less firepower and is easier to outmaneuver/cant flee. On the other hand the ISD has no way to replenish its shields beyond the normal recharge, so it should be a close fight.

 

Edit3: We could also add more hardpointless lasercannons to capital ships that are closerange and restricted to only shoot at frigates and up, then we restrict the current anti-fighter to only shoot at fighter/bombers, and we should get real nice battles with lots of laserfire .

 

Edit4: Since there where different values of penalties used for shieldboost i assumed a base weapon delay modifier of 3.0 and a speed multiply modifier of 0.8

 

Edit5: I also assumed a shieldboost ability duration of 25sec and a ability recharge of 60sec

[rocketeer]

The antifighter turrets damage value of 0.5 seems to make problems on the MC 80, i watched them fire at transports and pirate fighters and they barely scratched them(like not all ). Maybe the game has problems with damage values below 1?

 

Edit: lol, while trying to find out why my venator was still tougher than my mc 80 i found that the mc 80 is missing <Shield_Armor_Type>Shield_Capital</Shield_Armor_Type> variable :D. After adding it he became much much tougher. How about adding it to your version too? .

 

Edit2: The home one is missing it too, but its not as noticable due to the high shields and shieldrecharge. I have no idea to what this value defaults if not set, but its not shield_capital

[haard]

How about instead of having fog of war displaced forever, increasing the view range for units (especially ships and infantry) so that they have 'unlimited' range?

 

I think that would fit better than the current solution, since I belive that a lot of weapons are aimed more or less manually because of the high intensity of EW, it makes sense that you should be able to hide behind obstacles.

[Somerled]

So... so much for that. How's 008 working for everyone?

 

I like the campaign changes very much. The fact that capital ships are more powerful and hardy, and the fact that they cost more and can be built in fewer numbers makes for much more strategic play. Stronger bases are much fun as well.

 

I did run into one issue however...I encountered some pretty significant lag/stuttering on a few occassions as star bases spawned fighters...I don't think its my computer, as much larger battles pose no problems...anyone else encounter this?

[Tal Odo-ki]

I like the campaign changes very much. The fact that capital ships are more powerful and hardy, and the fact that they cost more and can be built in fewer numbers makes for much more strategic play.

Ditto that opinion.

 

I did run into one issue however...I encountered some pretty significant lag/stuttering on a few occassions as star bases spawned fighters...I don't think its my computer, as much larger battles pose no problems...anyone else encounter this?

Me too.

[Adonnay]

The antifighter turrets damage value of 0.5 seems to make problems on the MC 80, i watched them fire at transports and pirate fighters and they barely scratched them(like not all ). Maybe the game has problems with damage values below 1?

 

Edit: lol, while trying to find out why my venator was still tougher than my mc 80 i found that the mc 80 is missing <Shield_Armor_Type>Shield_Capital</Shield_Armor_Type> variable :D. After adding it he became much much tougher. How about adding it to your version too? .

 

Edit2: The home one is missing it too, but its not as noticable due to the high shields and shieldrecharge. I have no idea to what this value defaults if not set, but its not shield_capital

 

D'oh... that explains the weaker shields. If no shield type is used the game uses a default shield type which has all values set to 1 instead of the values I edited for capital ship shields.

 

Did you test all your changes? And how do the other ships fare against those new values? (which seem to be quite high - 15000). How do you balance the space stations and hero vessels against it?

[Adonnay]

I did run into one issue however...I encountered some pretty significant lag/stuttering on a few occassions as star bases spawned fighters...I don't think its my computer, as much larger battles pose no problems...anyone else encounter this?

 

I actually had this already before I started to mod... so it might not be of my doing, though I can't guarantee this of course.

[DCorris]

I did run into one issue however...I encountered some pretty significant lag/stuttering on a few occassions as star bases spawned fighters...I don't think its my computer, as much larger battles pose no problems...anyone else encounter this?

 

i got that alot with the orginal game, i hvae no diea what it is, but with the mod it happs a little more often from what i can see, but not much

it normally happens at the send of every second for a few seconds, whih is weird

must be a memory leak or something along those lines

[Meethos]

I like 008 alot, thanks. A few minor things I noticed:

 

The Moldy Crow's (Kyle Kantarn's) tool tip text file is missing.

 

Also both Maruader Cruiser have the same tooltip and name for that matter. One cost 750 with an and 8 point cap and the other cost 6400 with a 9 point cap. Is the one for 750 correct?

 

Now I just need to capture the wookie homeworld so I can try out the new unit...

 

Could the Plantetary Ion Cannon get lowered to a 105 recharge rate?

 

Concerning the shield boost, if its to compensate for lower recharge rate shouldn't it become a toogle instead of a timed power.

 

I assume you mean "latest_version.zip"? I preferred it when the zipfiles were version-stamped. It'd be better yet if there was a changelog/history file inside the archive. That way you could keep the same filename but we could easily tell what version it is.

I thought a readme would be nice also, but then I got to thinking: it can wait, I'd rather have more updates...

 

Thanks for changing the space cap I like being able to bring a support fleet along with my Hero units.

 

As for the lag some battles I get it others I don't.

 

Edited for spelling.

[Somerled]

i got that alot with the orginal game, i hvae no diea what it is, but with the mod it happs a little more often from what i can see, but not much

it normally happens at the send of every second for a few seconds, whih is weird

must be a memory leak or something along those lines

 

Yep...just tested it in the vanilla version. The station gets the "red halo" indicating it is launching fighters, and lags. Sounds like an issue Petro may need to address. Perhaps it's because stations now launch more fighter squadrons that the lag is increased.

[Darth_Extas]

Explain to me again, as of how you were able to get the Moldy_Crow in the game?

[Somerled]

Should the Imperials have the IPVI Patrol Craft? I can't seem to find any references to it in canon sources, but it seems like if it is going to be in the game, it should be Imperial...happy to be corrected, however.

 

Also, is it just me, or does the Broadside look alot like the Alliance's Liberator from Rebellion?

[wolfshadow]

Several of us have had the lag bug, which I did not get, at least to the degree before the mod was installed... I think it might have somthing to do with the graphical changes to the various lasers/projectiles firing. I noticed that the game speed jumped dramatically once my SD stopped firing...

[rocketeer]

D'oh... that explains the weaker shields. If no shield type is used the game uses a default shield type which has all values set to 1 instead of the values I edited for capital ship shields.

 

Did you test all your changes? And how do the other ships fare against those new values? (which seem to be quite high - 15000). How do you balance the space stations and hero vessels against it?

 

I did some testing yes, 15000 seems much, but did you see my calculations on shieldrecharge? A Ship with a recharge like the home one regains aproximitly 45000 hp over a 5 min fight. Compared to that 15000 starting hp is pretty insignificant. Actually the liberty and venator for example have now less shields then before.

 

Your real shields are: shields = starting shields + recharge * time the battle takes

 

For example the liberty you now use will replenish 9000hp over 15 seconds with its ability. The liberty i proposed will replenish 10937,5hp over 25 seconds, but it will take 20 seconds longer till it can reuse its ability, also it will face a greater penalty while using it. Also i have almost halfed its natural recharge. Didnt change much here.

 

The venator got a 700hp increase but i cut its recharge down quite a bit. It already was pretty strong. It regains 10000hp while boosting, but has the lowest starting hp out of all capital ships, also its energy weapons are all but useless while boosting.

 

The MC 80 got the biggest boost, 12000 shields but the worst shieldrecharge out of all capital ships. Also its weapons and engines are quite crippled while using the shieldboost, it also only regains 8333hp while boosting.

 

All in all fights should take a little bit longer, butwithout a strong shieldrecharge the mon cal designs are far from being invincible. They are just hard to kill. Im still playing around but up to now i have found no problems.

[Adonnay]

I like 008 alot, thanks. A few minor things I noticed:

 

The Moldy Crow's (Kyle Kantarn's) tool tip text file is missing.

 

Also both Maruader Cruiser have the same tooltip and name for that matter. One cost 750 with an and 8 point cap and the other cost 6400 with a 9 point cap. Is the one for 750 correct?

 

Now I just need to capture the wookie homeworld so I can try out the new unit...

 

Could the Plantetary Ion Cannon get lowered to a 105 recharge rate?

 

Concerning the shield boost, if its to compensate for lower recharge rate shouldn't it become a toogle instead of a timed power.

 

I thought a readme would be nice also, but then I got to thinking: it can wait, I'd rather have more updates...

 

Thanks for changing the space cap I like being able to bring a support fleet along with my Hero units.

 

As for the lag some battles I get it others I don't.

 

Edited for spelling.

Thanks for the infos... I'll fix those tooltips right away.

About the toggle instead of a timed ability... I've done that with the Acclamator... and now the AI just switches it on throws the key away. What I want to say is that the AI don't really "know" what the specials do... they just switch em on (some of them at least) as soon as they are available. This leads to the problem that now all Acclamators have their weapons overloaded and their shield rate dropped to zero. So if I made the shield boost a toggle, the AI would probably let it switched on all the time waiting for it to wear off

[Adonnay]

Should the Imperials have the IPVI Patrol Craft? I can't seem to find any references to it in canon sources, but it seems like if it is going to be in the game, it should be Imperial...happy to be corrected, however.

 

Also, is it just me, or does the Broadside look alot like the Alliance's Liberator from Rebellion?

 

I gave the IPV to the Empire stations as garrison unit. I didn't make it available for building because it has no hyperdrive and thus would be doomed to stay at the planet you built it.