OpenXcom Forum

Modding => Released Mods => Topic started by: Istrebitel on July 05, 2014, 05:07:10 pm

Title: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Istrebitel on July 05, 2014, 05:07:10 pm
This mod changes the air combat balance, aiming to make UFOs more challenging, provide incentive to use different weapons together on one craft, make more craft weapons useful etc.

Mod page: https://www.openxcom.com/mod/air-combat-rebalanced

---

After getting back into X-Com again with the long-awaited release of the OpenXCom version 1.0, I quickly remembered how simple is the air combat in that game. The tactical combat is awesome, deep, and challenging, where aliens remain quite terrifying for a long time, but in the air, X-Com dominates from the first day, and just keeps dominating until the end. Seeing as at that time, there were no mods available that tacke this problem, with most modders focused on the tactical aspect of the game, I've decided to do it myself.

I've tried to focus on making different weapons vialbe on the same craft - so that a loadout like Laser+Plasma, for example, is preferable both to 2xLaser and 2xPlasma. I've also tried to make it so that the player spends more time in range of a UFO taking damage, while at the same time not forcing the player to always engage with multiple craft. I hope I managed to achieve that, and at least in my experience, shooting the UFOs is much more fun now, but we will see what the players who use the mod think.

In order to strike the optimal balance, I've relied on both calculations and actual playtesting. In process of developing this mod, I've made some simple programs, spreadsheets and even a crude emulator for the dogfight process in order to test the modded stats over millions of engagements, or just calculate exact probabilities of each outcome (like, for example, to know what damage total, on average, would 10 shots of Plasma Beam do against a Terror Ship, with exact probability of each outcome, or summarised probabilities, like, the chance to crash it, or the chance take it down to less than 100HP). If anyone is interested, I could release those too.

Well, guess that's it. Now I should await what you guys think of it.

PS: As a side note, how do I contact the admins of openxcom.com? The "images" section for mm mod has bugged out and I can neither sort nor delete images I've uploaded for the mod. I need help with that.
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Deskulpa on July 06, 2014, 02:35:43 am
Nice, will download and play.
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Warboy1982 on July 07, 2014, 12:42:37 am
message Jo5hua (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1376), or contact him on the IRC (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=63.msg444#msg444) channel, he hangs out there with us :)
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Aldorn on July 07, 2014, 01:38:24 am
I was intended to make some changes in order to rebalance Air combat, I will have a look at your mod  :)

Congratulations for quality of description on Mod Site !
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: ibanix on July 07, 2014, 01:56:16 am
Takes a different approach than the changes I made in Modest Rebalance.

I think my only concern is the huge increase in damage (280) to the Avalanche. I suspect this makes medium sized UFOs a whole lot easier.
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Istrebitel on July 08, 2014, 12:24:45 am
2 iblanix
Well, medium sized UFOs were actually not a concern when balancing things out because... do you see them often? I mean, what's the last time you saw one? Honestly, I hardly ever saw them in my whole life... I've played countless of campaigns, I've played when I was ten years old, I've played it on PS One, DOS and Windows, I've played it with XComUtils and UFOExtender, I've played it over and over... and I'm playing it now when I'm 28 and... well, maybe I had 3 or 4 I can remember? They're really really rare... and thing is - they have pitiful range and not that much health, so they never were a challenge to begin with. They're outranged by even Stingrays in vanilla! And btw, new Avalanche is both less damage total per one sortie (a little bit), and is less reliable, than old one... so the damage change can't really make anything easier.
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Solarius Scorch on July 08, 2014, 12:25:22 am
I'm seeing them all the time. Almost as much as Large Scouts.
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: animal310 on July 08, 2014, 12:45:00 pm
This is a fantastic mod. Thanks Istrebitel. The only area of the game I think is really lacking now is base defence, not the battlescape part but the pre attack bit.
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Istrebitel on July 09, 2014, 02:00:28 pm
Welp... just noticed I've posted in the wrong forum. Could this topic be moved to "Complete mods" please?
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Istrebitel on July 09, 2014, 07:00:38 pm
Quote from: Solarius Scorch on July 08, 2014, 12:25:22 am
I'm seeing them all the time. Almost as much as Large Scouts.
Lucky you. I'd love to see more mediums, I like that design with the door on the second floor etc. But not getting them! Alien Abduction and Harvest missions (the only ones where they show up) seem to be really rare - most UFOs I see are on Terror or Retaliation missions, with occasional Infiltration and Research (and Base, of course).
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: lordkrike on July 10, 2014, 07:32:32 pm
Hi Istrebitel,

I have something for you.

I saw your mod and decided to take my own crack at rebalancing air combat.  After messing around with it for a while I gave up on it, but along the way I wrote an air combat simulator in Python for funsies (https://github.com/adammartinez271828/XCOM-ACS).

It allows you to simulate thousands of air combats between craft of your choice in a couple seconds, so you can get an idea of how likely you are to take down a certain type of UFO with any particular craft with any particular weapons.

Hopefully it will be of some use to you.  I plan on messing around with it for another few days, and if there is anything you'd like to see me add to it, or you have any questions on how to use it, let me know.

Edit: what kind of forum doesn't automatically markup url links? :-P
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Falko on July 10, 2014, 08:14:19 pm
interesting i did not know that difficulty has an influence to air combat

does it really make a big diffence to an easy estimation like (craft-hullstrength/(ufo damage/ufo reloadrate))-(ufo-hullstrength/((my damage-weapon1/my reloadrate-weapon1)+(my damage-weapon2/my reloadrate-weapon2))) ?

i have a bunch of things i would make differently
- loading data from rulfile -> modded ufo/craft can fight each other
- allowing multiple craft to atttack (needs a parameter like "duration between starts")
- getting rid of numpy.random using the default random.random function
- web :)
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: lordkrike on July 10, 2014, 08:40:10 pm
Quote from: Falko on July 10, 2014, 08:14:19 pm
interesting i did not know that difficulty has an influence to air combat

It's not that crazy for regular weapons, but if, for example, you do what I did and mod the UFOs to fire for less damage more often, the -10 cooldown from superhuman difficulty makes it impossible to attack some UFOs.

Quote from: Falko on July 10, 2014, 08:14:19 pm
does it really make a big diffence to an easy estimation like (craft-hullstrength/(ufo damage/ufo reloadrate))-(ufo-hullstrength/((my damage-weapon1/my reloadrate-weapon1)+(my damage-weapon2/my reloadrate-weapon2))) ?

Honestly, no idea.

Quote from: Falko on July 10, 2014, 08:14:19 pm
i have a bunch of things i would make differently
- loading data from rulfile -> modded ufo/craft can fight each other
- allowing multiple craft to atttack (needs a parameter like "duration between starts")
- getting rid of numpy.random using the default random.random function
- web :)

Thanks!  I'm not really a programmer - my background is in numerical computation and applied mathematics.  This is mostly just me messing around.

I'll look into loading from rule files.  At the moment it wasn't worth my time, but I can figure it out, since it's something that probably should be in there.

Multiple combats should be extremely easy.

I just used numpy out of habit, I guess I can switch it out no problem.

Honestly, I don't know absolutely jack about web development.  You're more than welcome to put a wrapper on it and put it on a website.  Just give me some credit.  :-)
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Dioxine on July 12, 2014, 05:14:08 pm
The best air combat rebalancing mod I've seen. Great work. I've learned a lot from your readme alone :)
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: animal310 on July 12, 2014, 05:51:14 pm
I can only manufacture one tuned missile at a time despite having lots of the base missile in stock.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Dioxine on July 12, 2014, 06:03:46 pm
@Istrebitiel:

Regarding animal310's question, you might try the following feature in Manufaturing (example):

    requiredItems:
      STR_AVALANCHE: 10
    producedItems:
      STR_AVALANCHE_B: 10

Alternatively, Sup said he enabled the option for stuff appearing at the shop after certain researches are completed (just add Required flag to any item which has a buy price).
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: lordkrike on July 14, 2014, 06:15:56 pm
I updated my simulator for multiple interceptors in a combat.  It also supports an arbitrary number of weapons per craft, but that's not terribly relevant until someone decides to mod the game.

Fun fact: it takes 48 Interceptors equipped with stingrays and cannons, attacking simultaneously, to have a roughly 36% chance of taking down a battleship.  They will suffer something like 90% casualties if they do succeed.

Derp, the UFO was firing every second... forgot to include the cooldown check.  Should have caught that.

4 interceptors with stingrays and cannons have a 30% chance of taking down a battleship... that's a little more realistic.  Should have realized that the previous result didn't pass the "this makes sense" test.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Istrebitel on July 14, 2014, 10:52:36 pm
Quote from: animal310 on July 12, 2014, 05:51:14 pm
I can only manufacture one tuned missile at a time despite having lots of the base missile in stock.
Huh? What error message are you getting when you try to manufacture more than one?
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: moriarty on July 15, 2014, 06:52:11 pm
do you mean that you are trying to manufacture more, but only one new missile arrives in your stores? probably the "sub-hour manufacture" bug... there's an advanced option for that, called "TFTD manufacturing rules".
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: animal310 on July 15, 2014, 08:16:19 pm
Quote from: Istrebitel on July 14, 2014, 10:52:36 pm
Huh? What error message are you getting when you try to manufacture more than one?

Quote from: moriarty on July 15, 2014, 06:52:11 pm
do you mean that you are trying to manufacture more, but only one new missile arrives in your stores? probably the "sub-hour manufacture" bug... there's an advanced option for that, called "TFTD manufacturing rules".

It would only build one and then show manufacture as complete meaning I had to do a manufacturing order per missile. Its been sorted now though as I've turned on the TFTD manufacturing rules option which I had originally set to off. Thanks to both, for great mod and advice to fix this issue.  :D
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Mr. Quiet on July 19, 2014, 07:04:28 pm
Quote from: lordkrike on July 14, 2014, 06:15:56 pm
I updated my simulator for multiple interceptors in a combat.  It also supports an arbitrary number of weapons per craft, but that's not terribly relevant until someone decides to mod the game.

Fun fact: it takes 48 Interceptors equipped with stingrays and cannons, attacking simultaneously, to have a roughly 36% chance of taking down a battleship.  They will suffer something like 90% casualties if they do succeed.

Derp, the UFO was firing every second... forgot to include the cooldown check.  Should have caught that.

4 interceptors with stingrays and cannons have a 30% chance of taking down a battleship... that's a little more realistic.  Should have realized that the previous result didn't pass the "this makes sense" test.

Dude turn that into a mod! I want a mod that lets me send out multiple Jets at once to attack, max of 3 fighters to be fair. Then someone will make a balance mod around this alone! Thanks for sharing that anyway, I've always wanted this feature though..
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Solarius Scorch on July 19, 2014, 07:51:41 pm
Quote from: Mr. Quiet on July 19, 2014, 07:04:28 pm
Dude turn that into a mod! I want a mod that lets me send out multiple Jets at once to attack, max of 3 fighters to be fair. Then someone will make a balance mod around this alone! Thanks for sharing that anyway, I've always wanted this feature though..

What's stopping you from doing this now? You can easily attack with four craft at once.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: LeBashar on July 20, 2014, 12:01:19 pm
Maybe he doesn't know you must minimize the first combat interception until the second interceptor arrive for let him the time to do.

I have test this mod and make some modifications :
- delete all the tuned stuff, because make many game manipulation is not really funy, and make them for stuff will become obsolete quickly is a waste (for me). So I have make stingray 50% accuracy, avalanche 30% and cannon 70%.
- little nerfed the laser canon I think little too powerful, with 18 range, 40 power, 6 fire rate and 90 accuracy. The DPS is nearly the same but payload is divided by half, and the interceptor must take more alien fire.
- +5 ammo for the plasma cannon and reduce range to 50. (should already unable to shut down big UFO alone)
- reduce range of fusion ball to 65 (I don't want any weapon could do safe damages) 

And change some costs : half avalanche missile, double laser and plasma cannon, x5 fusion ball ($ cost, not elerium).
And make all rearmrate to one hour. I see no reason to make it longer.

Anyway, it is a really nice mod.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Mr. Quiet on July 21, 2014, 01:16:01 am
LeBashar, mind sharing the file with  us, especially little old me who doesn't know how to mess around with the .rul files. Someday I'll get around to it.

I wanna try your changes and see what's better :) I just started a new game so I can test your edits.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: LeBashar on July 21, 2014, 11:10:26 am
It should be with pleasure but I have made many other changes : add a new interceptor, very fast but with only one slot for weapon, switch the firestorm with the lightning (which become the first UFO buildable after UFO construction research, and the only ship in the game which have no rental cost but also no elerium consumption), and modify some graphics.

Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Mr. Quiet on July 21, 2014, 10:43:21 pm
Thanks LeBashar, can't wait to sink in with it.

@Solarius I meant being able to group them together and you'll have screens for each interceptor during dogfights. No pause with this would be hard.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Solarius Scorch on July 22, 2014, 03:36:04 am
Quote from: Mr. Quiet on July 21, 2014, 10:43:21 pm
@Solarius I meant being able to group them together and you'll have screens for each interceptor during dogfights. No pause with this would be hard.

But... Isn't it how it works now?
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Fred558 on September 11, 2014, 11:15:21 pm
I must say I really like this mod.

But could it be there is a bug in it?

It happened 3 times to me now that i'm attacking a scout with two interceptors and at first the ufo is shooting one of the interceptors normally. Some damage occurs like it should. But then all of a sudden one shot from the ufo destroys both my interceptors.

I know it should be a bit harder, but should it be possible for this to happen?
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Markus Ramikin on January 22, 2015, 05:48:22 pm
Really liking this mod. I am generally cautious about adding mods to my games, but this one won me over easily - it's one of only two mods I'm using currently.

I most like the increased fuel efficiency on the Firestorm, good reason to use it more.

And the new interceptor is very useful.

Still, the mod has its problems. Sorry if this is going to be kinda detailed, but I like this mod and I wanna shore up what I see as its weaknesses.

To put it brutally, it's a nice change of pace, but at least in craft weapons it ends up replacing one kind of fake variety with another. Previously it was Avalanche and Plasma Beam, now it's Craft Cannon and Laser Cannon.

1. Laser is the new plasma.

TBH this is my only real problem with the mod: Plasma Beam seems near-useless now. Laser has higher DPS against everything except Very Large ships, where it's kinda equal. UFOs with < 35 range can be shot down safely with lasers, while stronger UFOs have too many hitpoints for plasma anyway.

I could maybe see using plasma on multiple firestorms to chase down Supply Ships, but that is too narrow a role, and still multiple firestorms with laser cannons will do just as well with only a little repair time. Besides, we don't shoot down supply ships, we let them land to seize their Elerium intact.

Plasma is supposed to be the pinnacle of beam technology, requiring researching the weapons of an alien, superior civilisation. How about give ship weapons the same balance as ground ones? Think about the difference between Plasma weapons vs laser rifles. Could do the same thing with the Plasma beam: make it strictly superior, but cost precious Elerium to rearm.

That way you might want to have Ravens/Firestorms with laser cannons for Elerium-efficient shooting down of small ships, and Avengers with plasma beams for the dangerous targets. There, real variety for good reasons.

2. Craft Cannon is the new Avalanche missile.

I just end up using Craft Cannons every time. 15-20% accuracy missiles are a joke. Even more so after you count in ship size penalties, difficulty level penalties, damage variance-based reductions, and when the Avalanche clip has a size of 2 and a greater cost than a Skyranger. It's very possible to send both of your interceptors with a total of 24 stingray missiles and fail to down a Medium Scout, after catching up to it 3 times because it keeps outrunning. That's not fun!

But if I use solely craft cannons, I can get by just fine until laser cannons, just gotta be cautious and pay attention, and withdraw when damaged. The rare interceptor loss I could manage just fine (hasn't happened yet in two games).

Of course you could "fix" this by making the cannon worse, but if using this mod required me to build a 4th hangar to be able to deploy enough missiles against a single Small ship, I'd give up on it.

BTW, I like the idea of Avalanches being powerful-but-costly. That's good enough for balancing reasons, as early in the game you're not exactly swimming in cash, unlike later. So there's room for higher accuracy  - or a larger clip (more cost to arm!).

3. Improved Accuracy tech doesn't work out that great.

I end up ignoring it every time. Two main reasons. One, craft cannon works okay and laser cannons are just around the corner. If I first beeline to Laser Rifles as I usually do, from there it's just an average 880 man-days (18 days with a 50-man laboratory) to Laser Cannons, and 450 man-days (9 days) to Improved Accuracy, a mere 9 days difference. So there's no point producing all those Tuned weapons when you can have laser cannons soon enough.

They just clutter up the Manufacturing screen for the rest of the game, which is my other reason: I hate that clutter. Though that's mostly the fault of the interface, inefficient use of screenspace by the manufacture list.

IF the research was much shorter (100 man-days? And maybe have the research require just the Navigation item, directly, not Navigation researched?) AND if you could make it so that it doesn't require manufacturing new items, merely change stats on existing ones, then I'd see use for it. But I guess that can't be done. So what i'd suggest instead is removing the Accuracy research and just giving the starting Stingrays and Avalanches their "improved" stats.

I know this is an old topic and there's a chance the author isn't reading (let alone going to be convinced). But for anyone else who would like to try these ideas, here are the changes I made in my own game:

Plasma Beam:
* performance back at vanilla values (52 range, 140 damage)
* 24 ammo (up from 10)
* requires 6 elerium to fully rearm

Stingray missiles:
* start with "tuned" accuracy (50%) and costs

Avalanche missiles:
* start with "tuned" accuracy (40%) and costs
* clip size increased from 2 to 3

Fusion Ball launcher:
* clip size increased from 2 to 3

Improved Accuracy:
* research no longer available (disabled in a dirty way, by adding an impossible requirement, as I didn't want to clean up the whole file)

Ruleset file attached. Install Istrebitel's original first. You'll need the Resources. EDIT: updated due to Nightly build changes.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Markus Ramikin on January 25, 2015, 09:22:54 am
Interesting. It should take 6 Elerium to rearm a plasma beam - rearm rate of 4 out of 24, clipsize 4 - but if I equip a single plasma cannon, my stores go down from 183 to 176, so it takes 6+1. If I equip two, they go from 183 to 170, so 6+6+1.

Not a big deal, but I wonder what could be causing this behaviour.

EDIT: never mind, this even happens with the stingray launcher. I guess maybe Elerium-based craft cycle through the Refuelling phase after Rearming even if they're full on fuel, and use up 1 Elerium before they decide they're full?
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Hobbes on January 25, 2015, 05:02:09 pm
Quote from: Markus Ramikin on January 22, 2015, 05:48:22 pm
1. Laser is the new plasma.

2. Craft Cannon is the new Avalanche missile.

I was thinking of adding this mod to the expansion I'm currently working (it includes elements of several existing mods) but those 2 reviews really made me think twice. There isn't much a point to make changes if they simply replace the optimal choice of a weapon for another one.
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Markus Ramikin on January 25, 2015, 09:20:46 pm
Hey, one man's opinion. :)

Besides, you could always check out my adjustments, three posts above, and see how that works out for you. The mod is a fundamentally sound idea, it just needed a bit of tweaking.

With my adjustments, I use pretty much everything:
- Craft cannons vs small scouts, to not destroy them,
- Stingrays vs medium scouts, to outrange them
- eeeeeeeeeeverything against large scouts, to defeat them before they defeat me
- [could use Avalanche against larger stuff, but I just speed my way to laser cannons instead]
- laser cannons against medium and smaller UFOs, to save on Elerium for rearming plasmas
- plasma beams against large and very large UFOs
- [Fusion balls would work well against Battleships, but I just let them land so I can get all the Elerium from a ground mission. And in a pinch, I tend to have enough Avengers to just bite the bullet with plasmas.]
Title: Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
Post by: Markus Ramikin on February 13, 2015, 11:58:55 pm
UPDATE: the game's fix to a problem with dogfight speed resulted in this info from Warboy:
Quote
mod authors: double your ufo break-off times and reload rates for both ufos
and craft weapons.

I replaced my tweaked ruleset with a version that does this, attached in the same post as before (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2552.msg37699.html#msg37699).

The actual mod author needs to do that for their ruleset. (Or you can all just play with my tweaks, muahaha)
Title: Air Combat Rebalanced Mod question
Post by: Antan on February 23, 2016, 04:27:55 pm
I was going to post in the original mod but the warning message convinced me not to. My question is probably dumb but it will help me understand this better.

This mod is about a year old and from what I am reading about the install directions will only work with openxcom 1.0? It mentions the data folder which as I was reading the wiki and mod changes saw that the Git no longer uses that folder. So to play this mod it can only be used on version 1.0 correct? I tried using it on the latest git and the game would not load.

Also what is the rule or how does one go about asking or getting permission to update someone else's mod that is no longer being updated?

Antan
Title: Re: Air Combat Rebalanced Mod question
Post by: Arthanor on February 23, 2016, 05:04:52 pm
The only rule I am aware of is: Credit people properly. Ideally ask for permission, but asking someone who moved on and may never reply isn't really going to work. Posting in the original thread might well send the creator a notification, which would be a good way to get his attention.

If you do update the mod by yourself to work with the nightlies, post about it in the original mod's topic, so that people can see the creator's original work and that we keep all the information in one spot.