Author Topic: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced  (Read 22894 times)

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #15 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).

Offline lordkrike

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #16 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.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2014, 07:51:48 pm by lordkrike »

Offline Istrebitel

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #17 on: July 14, 2014, 10:52:36 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?

Offline moriarty

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #18 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".

Offline animal310

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #19 on: July 15, 2014, 08:16:19 pm »
Huh? What error message are you getting when you try to manufacture more than one?

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

Offline Mr. Quiet

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #20 on: July 19, 2014, 07:04:28 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..

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #21 on: July 19, 2014, 07:51:41 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.

Offline LeBashar

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #22 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.

Offline Mr. Quiet

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #23 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.

Offline LeBashar

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #24 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.


Offline Mr. Quiet

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #25 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.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #26 on: July 22, 2014, 03:36:04 am »
@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?

Offline Fred558

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #27 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?

Offline Markus Ramikin

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #28 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.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2015, 11:57:37 pm by Markus Ramikin »

Offline Markus Ramikin

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Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced
« Reply #29 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?
« Last Edit: January 25, 2015, 11:33:40 am by Markus Ramikin »