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Released Mods / [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« 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
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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.
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.