Fighter Balance

[Arthanor]

Yes, for the first craft you can send up, it doesn't matter much. Spikes are not too bad once you can make them, but really if you can dive and do some underwater missions and get a Sonic, or any light weapon, really, you're probably doing just as well. What you're engaging with early game weapons doesn't really have the potential to hurt all that much until the first military crafts, so you can save money by sacrificing DPS.

[ohartenstein23]

Completely agree, I don't think you should really take on military craft until you can make basic missiles or naval guns and have dedicated interceptors.  The useful early-game loot I'd on the military transports, freighters, and raider gunships, all of which don't take huge DPS to bring to the ground, just a couple ragtag craft and lots of looted guns.

Edit: As for the incoming revamp for interceptions, I don't know all what Dioxine has in mind, but with the code support I wrote for rechargeable craft shields, I'd expect some of that difficulty created by armor on shippings will be moved to shields, in which case lasers and light weapons will probably have some use against heavy ships again.  This probably also means a split in player craft between armored ones (the current damage reduction mechanics), and shielded ones (extra hit points that recharge quickly at base).

[Arthanor]

Very much looking forward to that. Good job on writing the code for it!

[ohartenstein23]

Thanks! I'm very excited to see what happens when these new mechanics are placed in Dioxine's hands.

Edit: @Dioxine - for some basic number crunching on changing shipping accuracy, the lower bound should be the default 60%, since you can get 54 dodge with craft, pilot, and equipment bonuses.  For the case of the bomber, I could see removing the hitBonus and setting the weapon power to 150-200, so a high roll (ufo weapon damage has an RNG range between 0 and power) would just demolish a dodgy interceptor, but only hit 5-10% percent of the time.  As for an upper bound on hitBonus, it really depends on how dickish you want to be, but above 94 doesn't really do anything with player dodge maxing out at 54.

[Eddie]

My fix would be to simply allow light weapons to be installed into heavy slots.

Beats all my ideas, +1 on that.

[ohartenstein23]

The simple, if hacky way of doing that, would be to create a copy of the craft weapon definition, changing only which slot it uses.  It technically would be a new weapon, but it would use the same item from your stores to equip it, much like the armors that all use uber clothing.  Could be messy though if you middle-click to bring up the pedia article; you'd need to create a new article for it to prevent a crash.

Another option would be to see if we can define a weapon slot as multiple types, e.g., a light/heavy slot - that could be useful to add to the engine if it's not there already.

[Arthanor]

Beats all my ideas, +1 on that.

Thanks Now on the implementation... Actually it's super easy Yankes already did it. As per the OXCE readme:

Code: [Select]

type: STR_CRAFT_TYPE #default config ...
    radarChance: 100    #how effective craft radar is, default 100.
    weapons: 4          #weapon number increased to 4.
    weaponTypes:        #definition of allowed weapon types in craft. Max 4 different types per slot.
      - 0               #slot 1 accepts weapons with type 0. This is default.
      - 0               #slot 2 accepts weapons with type 0.
      - [0, 4, 13]      #slot 3 accepts weapons with type 0, 4 and 13.
      - 1               #slot 4 accepts weapons with type 1.
So it's just a matter of taking all the "weaponTypes: - 1" definitions (1 is heavy in Piratez, 0 for light, 2 for missiles) and changing them to "[0, 1]" so they can use light weapons as well.

Having seen that, I'm now considering making new weapon types for buff items so I can define where they can go on different crafts. Then interceptors can be made able to use targetters + missiles (target painting for missile using Hyperwaves) and heavy only crafts could get some buff items.

[khade]

Something I feel would be important is that missiles are enough different that I don't want to be able to bodge those into heavy slots.  Also, would we need something set up so that the slot specific modules aren't able to be put in a different slot? I can't remember which ones go where, but I don't think the light slot one should be allowed in the heavy slot.

[Arthanor]

Well, it's all up to Dioxine any ways.. (Or up to yourself if you decide to mod Piratez)

I think putting light weapons in heavy slots makes sense. They're kind of similar in that they shoot projectiles, just that the heavy ones are bigger guns with bigger projectiles. I agree that missiles should remain restricted to missile slots, and heavy to heavy slots. It's not about making every craft able to use every weapon. It's about making crafts with heavy slots more useful. If a cruiser (vanilla battleship) can use plasma spitters (light weapon), pirate heavy crafts should be able to as well!

As for buff items, that's partially why I was talking about defining new weapon types for them: Then you can pick where they can go. Currently they are considered weapons instead, which is a bit odd.

The light "buff weapon" is shields, which actually could be very useful on tank crafts (say limited to 2 per craft or something). I personally think shields and targetters should be able to be equipped on any slot, and keep thrusters for missile slots.

That way interceptors can be build either:
-  dodgy machine gun interceptor (as currently, 2 light + 2  thrusters) perfect for chancing light combat crafts
-  accurate machine gun one (as currently, 2 light + 2 targetters) for freighters and the likes (but heavier gunships could be better at that)

but also:
- accurate missile one (2 targetters + 2 missiles) great for supporting a tank and taking down military crafts.
- shield + machine guns for non shielded crafts with light weapons

 whereas shield + missiles is rather useless: You want missiles because they are better against shields, but shielded things hit much too hard for regular interceptors to be good tanks unless they rely on dodge, regardless of shield add-ons.

And then, if you have enough support crafts, you can build a shielded tank to try to lower the damage taken/repair time. Although if you have good guns it might be better to use those to kill the target faster instead.

I feel like opening up lights for heavy makes heavy crafts more interesting (want to field interceptors with 2x light + 2x targetters or gunships with 3x lights or heavy? The former is better against small UFOs, the latter against big ones) and freeing some of the buff items means even more variety of builds for interceptors (ex.: an accurate missile ship is not a good choice for intercepting lighter UFOs, but is great support for military ones, so then you want also a good light UFO interceptor, and maybe a good supply ship interceptor too, which isn't the same).