[MOD] EAW: Open Conflict

[Tal Odo-ki]

Mandead, the pop cap isn't the issue, it's the pop value of the units themselves that I feel needs rebalancing.

 

As for the Marauder, please bear in mind that the Broadside and Tartan were created just for this game. Thus there's no reason why the Rebels couldn't take a "stock" hull like the Marauder and convert it to a different purpose. There is ample precedent for the Rebels doing that with other hulls. The medical frigate, the Mon Cal MC80, and the Assault frigate are all conversions from other ship designs. Why not the Marauder? You should get over your hangup about it having to be a laser corvette.

[mandead]

Mandead, the pop cap isn't the issue, it's the pop value of the units themselves that I feel needs rebalancing.

 

As for the Marauder, please bear in mind that the Broadside and Tartan were created just for this game. Thus there's no reason why the Rebels couldn't take a "stock" hull like the Marauder and convert it to a different purpose. There is ample precedent for the Rebels doing that with other hulls. The medical frigate, the Mon Cal MC80, and the Assault frigate are all conversions from other ship designs. Why not the Marauder? You should get over your hangup about it having to be a laser corvette.

 

It doesn't have to be, I just like things to be canon. Understand?

 

But it's up to Adonnay, I suppose.

[Adonnay]

Well I am working on leaving the old one (modified) in and adding the laser variant as new one. The long range missiles though will not be able to target fighters, will do less damage but have an increased accuracy.

 

Does that sound fair? (I don't want to be known as the one ignoring the wishes of the community )

[mandead]

Deal

 

The original can be as is canon, and the missle variant can be more expensive, and a higher tech level?

[Tal Odo-ki]

Missiles that do less damage but are more accurate is okay by me but, just so you know, that's the opposite of the way Star Wars missiles are (especially those in the RPGs). I also have no problem with the Rebel missile boat being more expensive and/or higher tech (level 3 is where it should be, with the new canon version at level 2). All I ask is that the original version be the missile variant. Otherwise my savegames get screwed up.

[mandead]

Well, it's not my mod, but I'd do the opposite. The original Marauder is a laser corvette (level 2?), whereas your modified version would be the missile variant, which would be tech 3 or 4.

 

On another note, I don't see how your save games really have anything to do with the overall set up of the mod.

 

I'm not trying to be offensive or anything here, just... well, fair.

[Adonnay]

Missiles that do less damage but are more accurate is okay by me but, just so you know, that's the opposite of the way Star Wars missiles are (especially those in the RPGs). I also have no problem with the Rebel missile boat being more expensive and/or higher tech (level 3 is where it should be, with the new canon version at level 2). All I ask is that the original version be the missile variant. Otherwise my savegames get screwed up.

 

Okay, here's the version with the missiles modified and the laser variant as an extra version (not available yet in GC). The missle marauder is now where it always was (tech and cost wise). It's just a special version for you to not "corrupt" your savegames

 

Version .006b or Tal-Special-Version

 

PS: This is only temporary as I have to figure out yet where to place those versions... and for that I have to find out how strong they are by testing.

[mandead]

Excellent, so the standard version has the canon version?

 

PS: Go on MSN

[Tal Odo-ki]

I propose the original be L3 and the new one be L2. The only difference between us, mandead, is that I want the *original* to be the missile variant. And the reason for that is so that I (and anyone else in my position) doesn't have their existing games messed up. That's ... fair. Doing things your way, mandead, is "unfair" in that the ships I built (as missile boats) would no longer be what they were intended to be. I'd have to rebuild all my fleets with "new" Marauders. Doing it my way the only thing that changes is the cost and tech level of the ships I've already built. Which path should be taken by Adonnay (IMO) should be obvious from the standpoint of compatibility. Doing it your way "breaks" people's savegames. That's not a polite thing to do. And it's totally unnecessary.

[Adonnay]

You're right Tal, to be honest I haven't thought about people having savegames using my mod. I just noticed the missiles do target fighters... somehow the filters don't work. But right now I don't have the time anymore (@mandead)... have to get up at 1:45 am and have alot of work to do tomorrow. I will probably not be back before saturday... so I hope this version works and you have fun

[Tal Odo-ki]

Adonnay, I just want to again thank you for all your hard work. And it's unfortunate that the game doesn't distinguish between capital ship missiles (which in reality are much larger) and fighter-scale missiles. The capital-scale missiles should not be able to target fighters (and they should do more damage). But I wouldn't worry too much about it. Fighters are free for the Empire (and they have lots of "reloads") and they are now, thanks to your mod, "free" for the Rebels as well (at least the auto-spawning Z-95s and V-wings).

 

EDIT - I just took a long look at GAMECONSTANTS.xml and noticed that there are 4 different missiles (regular and "light" protons, concussion, and diamond boron). With a little skillful reworking the missiles can be rebalanced. (It won't fix the targeting issue, but it'll help with realism.) I propose the following:

• light proton torpedo - used only by starfighters.
  
• concussion missile - used only by starfighters.
  
• proton torpedo - make this a capital ship missile with heavier damage (25% more than the starfighter version).
  
• "diamond boron" missile - make this the capital ship version of the concussion missile (150% more damage than the starfighter version).

And then refit all the ships with the appropriate type of launcher per the above list.

 

The regular proton torpedo just has a bigger warhead than the "light" version. The so-called "diamond boron" is actually the canon (and RPG) "assault concussion missile" which is a physically much larger missile than a regular concussion missile. That's why it does so much more damage. It is physically possible to mount a regular (ie: higher damage) proton torpedo launcher in a starfighter. You cannot do the same with the assault concussion missile launcher, because the missiles themselves are almost the size of starfighters!

[HomoUniversalis]

Love the mod, and am looking forward to your future venues!

 

Regarding those missiles, if there have been four variants, is there no way to add additional? Oh, and if you do revise the purposes of the seperate missiles, won't that screw up the savegames as well?

[Tal Odo-ki]

Oh, and if you do revise the purposes of the seperate missiles, won't that screw up the savegames as well?

Not really. Each vessel would still have the same types of weapons as it did before. Only the amount of damage they'll do changes. Adonnay's mod has already dramatically altered that for many ships anyway. IMO, what "screws up" a game is if a ship suddenly loses an ability it used to have (such as removing missiles or fighters).

[HolisticGod]

Adonnay,

 

Terrific mod. Just the sort of thing I've been looking for. The laser effects, in particular, almost single-handedly take the battles from "cartoon" to "Industrial Light and Magic." I'm also completely on board with realism (insofar as things in the Star Wars universe can be called realistic) over balance and I think that was one of the great shortcomings of the original release. Too little fundamental difference between the Empire and the Rebellion.

 

I have a few ideas for tweaking Imperial space power, but it's easier to discuss them one on one. I've added you to my ICQ and look forward to hashing it out. There are a couple things, however, that I'm not sure we can do with the current mod tools:

 

1. Increase the unit cap of the Rebel Raid ability. If we could do this, we could easily give the Empire the kind of overwhelming superiority in space that they ought to have.

 

2. Dramatically increase hyperspace times and add trade routes between "sectors," i.e. groupings of planets, and major worlds for faster (but still much slower than vanilla's) travel. If we did this, we could make planets like Hoth extremely remote, i.e. put them further out on the coordinate plane and give them no trade routes, so that the Rebels have a shot at maintaining one or two stations even early in the war when they're outclassed.

 

3. Greatly increase the number of planets on the galactic map. I realize that this is somewhat limited before the mod tools are released, but it is possible, yes? And fairly simple to do. You just have to reuse battle maps. This would go a long way toward making the Empire difficult to defend, together with travel times, and allow the Rebels to hit and fade.

 

4. Dramatically increase the cost and production time of buildings and space stations, so that a Rebel strike team, say a group of infiltrators led by Han Solo, can do real damage to the Empire without confronting it directly. Get in, destroy an advanced factory, get out. Set back the Imperial war machine in that particular sector by weeks.

 

5. Dramatically increase the money earned by smugglers and especially Han Solo. Preferably, disallowing them for the Empire (why would the lawful authorities make a policy of smuggling anyway? It hurts their bottom line), but if that can't be done, well, the AI is ****. And humans can institute house rules about it.

 

6. Allow non-capital class rebel ships (perhaps no Nebulon B as well) to bypass Imperial fleets en route to another destination, with the caveat perhaps that a gravity well generator or an Interdictor Cruiser stops them. This too would allow for the kind of guerilla warfare the Rebellion engaged in, but I suspect of all of these this more than anything else would have to be done by Petroglyph.

 

7. Decrease the cost of Rebel buildings up to Light Factory and space stations up to level 3 (relative to the Empire's costs-all costs should be much higher than in vanilla), and their build times. Essentially, the rebels can move in, build a barracks and light factory and some mines and hold the planet long enough to make some income or hurt the Empire, and then split.

 

8. Decrease the timed effect of the ion cannon and/or its recharge. This thing is so damn overpowered you can easily throw back an Imperial fleet outnumbered several times to one by zapping all their Star Destroyers.

 

9. I know asteroid mines have been added to the galactic conquest mode, but would it be possible to make them much more expensive and use them instead as "shipyards," i.e. necessary components of capital ships. This would expand the potential of space borne hit and fades, as the Rebels could move in, destroy the shipyards and jump to hyperspace, setting back the Empire.

 

It seems to me that if we can do at least some of these things, to give the Rebellion a real shot at being a guerilla outfit in the early-mid game, we can give the Empire the kind of economic and naval power it has in the films and really give the Rebel side a sense of "against the odds" without making it impossible. Right now, it's more like the Spanish Civil War than the Galactic Civil War, with the Rebellion being the fascists.

 

Just as an aside, I'm mainly interested in the galactic conquet mode and mainly, too, in multiplayer. If that doesn't jive with the direction you're headed, I completely understand and will duly shut up.

[Hammer22]

I'd like to make one small request, and thats to decrease the amount of things a factory or wotever can spawn in ground battles... well for the AI anyway! I just get swamped ALL the time by millions of unstoppable AT-ST's as the rebels now.

 

Oh yes and i mean unstoppable, AT-STs cut through hover tank things like a hot knife through butter! Not to mention anti-tank turrets and plex troops, which both do no where near enough damage to them either; AT-STs basicly are FAR overpowered.

[Tal Odo-ki]

Adjusting the spawning isn't the proper solution. Fixing the AT-STs is.

[Jay1717]

This mod is execellent, I am really enjoying this. Hands down best mod at the moment!

[mandead]

Only 'cus I contribute to it

 

Hopefully Adonnay will carry on with it later today, anyway.

[edwynn]

juz wondering where the xml files should be placed...

thx!

[DCorris]

in the data folder

C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars Empire at War\GameData\Data

just put it in

 

on another note, could you possibly increase the strength or rate of fire of the tartan cruisers, they seem really weak to me, my ties take out x-wings and cuh craft faster

i was playing the emp campaign on easy to play with the mod, and my cruisers got owned by the piretes fighters

this cant be right

 

anyway, i love this mod, definatly the best mod so far

i do find a little bug with a ship going through the top of an ISD i think it was, but besides that its very cool

[endo224]

Yes i would like to say that i LOVE this mod and am thrilled there are people actively working on it to make it better along with combining other users imput. I just want to thank Adonnay and mandead for all thier effort!! Thanks guys, your making an already great game better!!!

 

One other thing though, on a personal preference, i dont really like the massive tartans, so could you just tell me what file and what line to change to return it to the normal size? Its not a big deal at all and if you cant i will live, easily. Other than that i love the mod. Thank you once again for such a great mod!

[DCorris]

oh, and you thought about giving this mod a proper name? it doesnt seem to have one yet

[Grov]

Downloaded, where do i install.

 

A readme is always nice.

[Three60]

You take the folder called XML, and you put it in the data folder. If that didn't make sense, look at the stickied tutorial near the top. Or click on this link: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=161131

[Adonnay]

First of all...man I had a horrible weekend. Anyway! Thanks for all your great feedback and your ideas to improve this mod. I really appreciate your criticism and now I'll try to answer a few of your questions

 

1. Increase the unit cap of the Rebel Raid ability. If we could do this, we could easily give the Empire the kind of overwhelming superiority in space that they ought to have.

Should be no problem...

 

2. Dramatically increase hyperspace times and add trade routes between "sectors," i.e. groupings of planets, and major worlds for faster (but still much slower than vanilla's) travel. If we did this, we could make planets like Hoth extremely remote, i.e. put them further out on the coordinate plane and give them no trade routes, so that the Rebels have a shot at maintaining one or two stations even early in the war when they're outclassed.

 

3. Greatly increase the number of planets on the galactic map. I realize that this is somewhat limited before the mod tools are released, but it is possible, yes? And fairly simple to do. You just have to reuse battle maps. This would go a long way toward making the Empire difficult to defend, together with travel times, and allow the Rebels to hit and fade.

Well I haven't played around with the map at all yet... so these two points are things I have to figure out first before I can say if it's doable and how long it will take

 

4. Dramatically increase the cost and production time of buildings and space stations, so that a Rebel strike team, say a group of infiltrators led by Han Solo, can do real damage to the Empire without confronting it directly. Get in, destroy an advanced factory, get out. Set back the Imperial war machine in that particular sector by weeks.

Bad thing is I'm pretty sure the AI cheats about build times anyway. It almost builds space stations and such instantly. I'm not sure about money though... So changing these parameters would only affect the Multiplayer game.

 

5. Dramatically increase the money earned by smugglers and especially Han Solo. Preferably, disallowing them for the Empire (why would the lawful authorities make a policy of smuggling anyway? It hurts their bottom line), but if that can't be done, well, the AI is ****. And humans can institute house rules about it.

I agree on this and will look into it - Vader hiring bounty hunters was already very unconventional for the empire

 

6. Allow non-capital class rebel ships (perhaps no Nebulon B as well) to bypass Imperial fleets en route to another destination, with the caveat perhaps that a gravity well generator or an Interdictor Cruiser stops them. This too would allow for the kind of guerilla warfare the Rebellion engaged in, but I suspect of all of these this more than anything else would have to be done by Petroglyph.

I think if you make those ships stealth capable they should be able to bypass orbital fleets and space stations. Not sure about GW generators though. I think they don't get checked in Galactic mode... only when you engage in a space battle.

 

7. Decrease the cost of Rebel buildings up to Light Factory and space stations up to level 3 (relative to the Empire's costs-all costs should be much higher than in vanilla), and their build times. Essentially, the rebels can move in, build a barracks and light factory and some mines and hold the planet long enough to make some income or hurt the Empire, and then split.

 

8. Decrease the timed effect of the ion cannon and/or its recharge. This thing is so damn overpowered you can easily throw back an Imperial fleet outnumbered several times to one by zapping all their Star Destroyers.

Those two things can be done quickly...

 

9. I know asteroid mines have been added to the galactic conquest mode, but would it be possible to make them much more expensive and use them instead as "shipyards," i.e. necessary components of capital ships. This would expand the potential of space borne hit and fades, as the Rebels could move in, destroy the shipyards and jump to hyperspace, setting back the Empire.

Space Stations are needed to build ships anyway... if you destroy it you set back the empire in its space ship building capacity. But you probably meant bypass the station and only destroy the dock quickly (which is obviously easier than destroying the station). That might prove more complicated... not sure how to "spawn" a mine when you chose to build one in galactic mode. I think you'll have to edit the spacemap for the planet you build on. I'll look into it for it surely is a nice idea...

 

 

I'd like to make one small request, and thats to decrease the amount of things a factory or wotever can spawn in ground battles... well for the AI anyway! I just get swamped ALL the time by millions of unstoppable AT-ST's as the rebels now.

 

Oh yes and i mean unstoppable, AT-STs cut through hover tank things like a hot knife through butter! Not to mention anti-tank turrets and plex troops, which both do no where near enough damage to them either; AT-STs basicly are FAR overpowered.

Well I expect the AT-STs to be more powerful than the hover-tanks which are best suited for a hit and run tactic. But you're right about the spawns... I'll probably reduce the numbers of AT-STs per squad to three too.

 

 

* light proton torpedo - used only by starfighters.

* concussion missile - used only by starfighters.

* proton torpedo - make this a capital ship missile with heavier damage (25% more than the starfighter version).

* "diamond boron" missile - make this the capital ship version of the concussion missile (150% more damage than the starfighter version).

The "light" proton torpedo is actually the station and ship (Acclamator) launched torpedo. It does the same damage as the "normal" bomber torpedo, just not the 5x modifier against capital ships which is reserved for the bombers to make them more useful/important. The proton torpedo I added for the X-Wing is actually more of a light torpedo which doesn't penetrate shields to make the X-Wings no bomber replacement.

 

The Acclamator would need some rebalancing if I upgrade its proton torpedoes and at the same time replace its relatively small missiles with those massive damage missiles.

 

@endo224: It's in the spaceunitscorvettes.xml. Search for the Tartan and it's Death_Clone and change the "Scale_Factor" for both.