[SUGGESTION] USO size accuracy modifier

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Hi, Meridian and all.
I am sorry if this question was asked before. I didn't find anything in OCXE forum regarding that.

Vanilla sub armament USO size modifier formula uses USO size index in denominator, which causes extremely big accuracy jump for large to extra large USOs (2.00 / 1.25 = 1.6 times). This effectively causes two issues.

• Extra large USO becomes noticeable easier to fight so the Battleship (not Dreadnaught) becomes a toughest target.
• A lot of armaments with > 0.5 accuracy become capped and actually loose their advantage comparing to less accurate ones.

Both of above problems theoretically can be fixed by modifying USOs and armaments parameters but why bother? I don't see this modifier adding any serious variation in game mechanics. All of this can be easily incorporated into USOs capacity. I.e. if it takes 0.8 accuracy penalty to hit extra small USO then we can just make them 1/0.8 times tougher which will result in exactly same battle outcome.

Another important consideration is that this modifier is not documented anywhere in the game deceiving users not aware of it and building false impression on larger USOs being actually tougher based on their damage capacity.

With the above in mind please consider my proposition.

• Remove this effect altogether. It does not seem to add anything significant mechanics or UX wise.
• If not removing, then making the effect linear and not that pronounced. Something like 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2.
• If not any of the above, then exposing all these coefficients to mods so they can change them.

Thank you!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Should it be even in extended section? Maybe I should move it to OXC?

[Yankes]

Depending on scope, some changes could be done in OXC but if is very complex and detailed then only chance to be included is to target OXCE.

For proposal itself, removing any functionality is no-go for OXC or OXCE, there could be option to allow more custom calculations (like using y-scripts or more parameters in rule sets).
I could even consider adding like this but for now I have lot other things on TODO and not enough "working time" to take new requests.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Got it. Thank you for response.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

With the above in mind, would it be easy to add optional parameter to alien UFO for the purpose of accuracy modifier? By default it will compute it as in vanilla but can be overridden by mod.

[Yankes]

Yes, some thing could be possible and probably in scope of OXCE, but you should precisely define show it should work and how it should be used before we (me and Meridian) could consider adding to OXCE.

Another thing is check what other modders thinks about how this feature should work.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Yes, some thing could be possible and probably in scope of OXCE, but you should precisely define show it should work and how it should be used before we (me and Meridian) could consider adding to OXCE.

Will do.

Another thing is check what other modders thinks about how this feature should work.

Isn't this the place to post a suggestion? Where else I can poll modders feedback on OCXE proposed changes?

[Yankes]

Yes, this is place for suggestion, and discussion, but always is good actively seek other modders feedback, simply more people backing given proposal then is bigger chance it will be implemented.

[Finnik]

IMO, it would be good to have dogfight hooks in YS at some point, I can imagine some scripts using it. Looks like handling dogfight fits YS concept. If you would ever develop it, consider also pushing string to dogfight state output line. AFAIK all new OXCE dogfight features do some updates to it in order to let the player know what is happening.

[Yankes]

IMO, it would be good to have dogfight hooks in YS at some point, I can imagine some scripts using it. Looks like handling dogfight fits YS concept. If you would ever develop it, consider also pushing string to dogfight state output line. AFAIK all new OXCE dogfight features do some updates to it in order to let the player know what is happening.

I would like too but looking on my current speed it will be done in next decade :>
Code wise adding scripts is easy, hard part is what exactly should be added.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

If you are referring topic original question then I was suggesting to add one parameter to UFO that would specify custom armament accuracy modifier. If not specified then vanilla default.

[Finnik]

Code wise adding scripts is easy, hard part is what exactly should be added.

I can imagine 2 hooks - on state init and on projectile hit, with pointers to vector of crafts, pointer to the ufo and their rule stats, health, distance to ufo, geoscape game and tags. Also, would be cool to have the pointer to projectile. State init is a good place to setup custom tags, while projectile hit would be nice to customize return of hit or miss, damage value and output string.

I would like too but looking on my current speed it will be done in next decade :>

Just adding on top of that pile, I guess ^ _ ^

[TBeholder]

You could tweak evasion (avoidBonus) for fine-tuning. It does all works linearly, much as it pains me to see probabilities added and subtracted like this.
Here you can see the code.
As to the differences in weapon performance, armor is damage reduction, so it weakens low-damage weapons relatively more.

[MaxMahem]

I'm open to doing this, it seems like an easy patch, though is this really desirable? Seems like any hit chance you want can already be achieved by setting the avoidBonus to whatever value you want. Less intuitive, perhaps, but you can get the same effect in the end. Less work than adding another variable to the rule files and changing a bunch of int based logic to float.