[MOD] Break Euro Deal & Eurolas Rebalance

[Bacon_Hero]

BH Lawyer Mod & Eurolasgun Rebalance Mod
========================

Engage Lawyers to Break Euro Deal Mod:

(A library is required for every step.)

1. Research: Engage Lawyers
    You'll need to have researched a live Govt General and the Eurosynd Deal

2. Hire Lawyers from the black market.

3. Build a case through the manufacturing screen
    You'll need a lawyer for the case

4. Have your brainers research the case after it's built. When done *NEW* eurosynd missions should stop appearing
----

Like real life, cases will take lots of cash and time. It will take $25 million and cost you 3000 points in total to renege on the eurosyndicate deal, so be prepared.

*Please note that while I have tested this there may be bugs that I missed. I'm still pretty new to modding so bad shit might happen!


As I learn more about modding this game I might expand on this and add stuff like renege retaliation missions and more uses for lawyers.


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About the ES-Las Rebalance Mod: The goal here is to make ES weapons viable by slightly tinkering with the weapon stats to raise the utility of ES Las weapons to the level of Gauss Weapons yet retain its Piratezy flavour. My goal isn't to make ES weapons replace Gauss. You'll find that the base damage remains unchanged. It will be a strict side-grade - a different tool but one that will be just as effective.


You may ask, "...why tho?" and "is it really needed?" I feel the answer is yes! Here's my reasoning:

By the time you've unlocked gauss weapons you would have collected over a hundred gauss guns. Gauss weapons practically pay for their own research and you won't even have to manufacture a single one! On the other hand, ES weapons are not found in the wild and it would cost between $10 to $24 millions to furnish a large squad.


Way before "unlock gauss research" finishes you would have found very cheap and very good guns and/or ammo that are as good as or even better than vanilla ES guns. This makes the ES deal a purely detrimental choice. In fact ammo like AC-GAS, AC-AP, LC-AP, Magnum Chem, Super Magnum Mercury boasts damage to TU values that are as good as or exceeds ES las-weapons. Hell, once you've researched Hellerium munitions, the LC-HEAT is so powerful that it matches the Guass Musket's average damage output (and you'll probably unlock it like 12+ months before you unlock gauss).

So because there are too many good choices that make ES las weapons weak in comparison, the ES Deal becomes a choice that has no redeeming qualities.


I believe that if a player decides to sink so much money, effort and risk into a set of weapons, they should receive a justified payoff. No other equipment choice in the game forces the player to sacrifice so much - I love this as a game mechanic - so this mod is here to make that choice a viable one.
------------------------------------------------
BH ER LasMod Changes:

All ES Lasguns have improved armour penetration.
All ES Lasguns have a chance to set enemies on fire (I'm thinking of the lasers in Crusader: No Remorse/ No Regret, or C&C Obelisk of Light, how cool were they!)

ES Heavy has an improved clip size. The damage output of this weapon is already very high, increasing its AP to 40% puts its damage band inbetween the Gauss Musket and Heavy Gauss with full auto-fire. It also sets people on fire more reliably than other ES weapons.

ES Markslaser is now more like a scout's precision rifle. You can move plenty before firing in either aimed or auto mode, or stand and deliver and fire twice in each mode. The auto-fire x2 (pulse) mode and duo aimed shots raise this weapon's average damage to a respectable level. Clip size remains the same so watch your ammo!

ES Lasrifle now boasts an increased clip size and you can fire off 1 more shot in each mode per turn. This allows you to plink away at targets. While each individual shot may be far weaker than a Gauss Musket, the combined average of shots delivered by the ES Lasrifle should match that of the GM in a single turn, in fact, on double auto-fire you might exceed it! This is true even against targets in power armour.

ES Pistol. Improved clip size. Ahhhh... pistols have a funny place in Piratez so I didn't change it much. There are a lot of pistols to choose from in this game but 2 or 3 of those make the other choices obsolete (including ES Pistols). I mean when you have mercury super magnums that can accurately deliver 18% more total average damage than the Gauss Musket vs 25 armour, why choose anything else? And Super Magnums are cheap as chips!


Hope you find this mod useful. 

[Ethereal_Medic]

If I read that correctly you punish yourself even further with that.

It's like a big endurance battle until the player will lose due to exhaustion, lost of interested defending the bases and completely breaking the scoreboard.
If you manage to pull that mod up, I don't see how it's helpful other than losing you the campaign.

[Bacon_Hero]

You make a good point. Euro lasguns should be buffed so that they're worth the trouble. I'm thinking either making them inexhaustible, or ignore X% armour, or a damage boost (simple or stat based).

Right now they really don't outperform LC, AC or CAWs.

The base defense should be spaced out to maybe once a month or once every 2 months until you've been attacked at least a couple of times, this way players won't get killed from 4 attacks in 1 month.

In the end, if you take the eurocontract early on, the payoff (losses) for reneging should be better than staying in. If you're already late in the game then it wouldn't matter much.

[karadoc]

You make a good point. Euro lasguns should be buffed so that they're worth the trouble. I'm thinking either making them inexhaustible, or ignore X% armour, or a damage boost (simple or stat based).

Right now they really don't outperform LC, AC or CAWs.

The base defense should be spaced out to maybe once a month or once every 2 months until you've been attacked at least a couple of times, this way players won't get killed from 4 attacks in 1 month.

In the end, if you take the eurocontract early on, the payoff (losses) for reneging should be better than staying in. If you're already late in the game then it wouldn't matter much.

ES lasrifles do outperform all those things. They've got better accuracy than LC, _far_ lighter than AC, and better range than CAWS; and all laser weapons have some armour penetration, which means the damage is pretty good too.

I'm not saying the eurocontract is worth it; but I do think ES lasers are powerful. I'd use an ES lasrifle over a LC or CAWS any day; and I'd only pick an AC on maybe one or two soldiers per mission.

[Bacon_Hero]

I think you're mistaken on those points, lasers don't have innate piercing as far as I can tell - only rifles with piercing and no stat bonuses get 15% AP

That usually means piercing weapons tend to outperform lasers against heavily armoured troops.

When facing off against guys in power armour, carapace armour or tanks accuracy isn't as important as raw damage and AP because if you can't overcome the base armour you'll do no damage. And if an enemy has laser resistance it makes the already low base damage even less likely to wound

[karadoc]

I just checked the rules files. Every laser weapon I saw is set to ignore 1/3 of armour. This includes the ES laser weapons. I'm sure the armour penetration of laser weapons is mentioned in one of the 'pedia articles. So lasers are a bit better than they look from the raw damage numbers.

[Bacon_Hero]

You are right. I couldn't find anything on the UFOpedia that says Lasers have 34% AP but it's there in the rules. However, you are not accounting for the fact that all the weapons I've mentioned except the CAWS have AP as well. For example, LC's have up 30% AP.

Now, the numbers here by itself don't say much so I've constructed a simple model to judge weapon effectiveness and here is what I found:

See CompareTbl.png for the ranks of low-tech weapons and Eurolasers vs 100 armour and 25 armour.


-Against 100 Armour the HvyLas wins out on virtue of 7x autofire, it's snap shot performance doesn't dominate however.
-Eurolasrifle straight out loses to Heavy Slugger and AC-AP. When compared on Snapshots Eurolasrifle loses out to LC-AP as well.
-Euro MarkLas is just useless, lol! It doesn't even outperform LC-AP's damage band (which is the chance of doing at least 1 damage to a target)

-Against 25 Armour the AC-AP is king. In this regard you can pay an extra $665,000 for an EuroHeavyLas which boasts 0.4% less damage
-Comparing Snapshots, CAWS outperforms the ER-LASRIFLE by roughly 12%.



So my point here is that you are paying outright about 10 times as much for weapons that do not outperform low tech guns. Then there are the pogrom missions that cost you 1000 points per month which translates into tens of thousands of dollars in lost bonuses! And in my current playthrough I unlocked gauss weapons 2 months after finishing eurosyndicate deal (what a joke!)

Also, despite not shooting down or raiding any govt ships, I was attacked by govt forces. I suspect that this is retaliation for the euro-mission I was on. This means that your base gets attacked anyway.

Eurolasers are simply not worth the money or effort. It's a lot of pain for a paltry reward (This really is like the GTA5 Abigail Mission where you spend hours looking for submarine wrecks and she gives you $10 as a reward!)

So yeah, I think it's reasonable to buff these weapons so that it's worth the heavy cost.

[legionof1]

Yep, pretty much what I've been saying for quite awhile now. Lasers don't make the cut against mid tier conventional weapons tech. The only reason to field them is because of resistant foe like mercs if you wish to engage at long range. Alternate damage type(chem,ect) shotgun loads will out perform them at close range. Melee murders anything and everything. Even if your forced to engage at long range bows, mortars, hell even HMG's are probably more useful then anything but the pinnacle of laser line. Which is gated behind the ball buster Russian files mission.   

[Bacon_Hero]

I've made a simpler version of my proposed mod which allows you to break the euro contract after accomplishing these steps:

(A library is required for every step.)

1. Research: Engage Lawyers
    You'll need to have researched a live Govt General and the Eurosynd Deal

2. Hire Lawyers from the black market.

3. Build a case through the manufacturing screen
    You'll need a lawyer for the case

4. Have your brainers research the case after it's built. When done *NEW* eurosynd missions should stop appearing
----

Like real life, cases will take lots of cash and time. It will take $25 million and cost you 3000 points in total to renege on the eurosyndicate deal, so be prepared.

*Please note that while I have tested this there may be bugs that I missed. I'm still pretty new to modding so bad shit might happen!


As I learn more about modding this game I might expand on this and add stuff like renege retaliation missions and more uses for lawyers.

*SEE FIRST POST TO DOWNLOAD*

[ivandogovich]

Bacon__Hero:  Brilliant! Thanks for the Mod!

[Bacon_Hero]

No problems 

[Bacon_Hero]

Ok, here is my separate but complimentary ES-Las Rebalance Mod. The goal here is to make ES weapons viable by slightly tinkering with the weapon stats to raise the utility of ES Las weapons to the level of Gauss Weapons yet retain its Piratezy flavour. My goal isn't to make ES weapons replace Gauss. You'll find that the base damage remains unchanged. It will be a strict side-grade - a different tool but one that will be just as effective.

Please find the attached file with the first post.[/i]


You may ask, "...why tho?" and "is it really needed?" I feel the answer is yes! Here's my reasoning:

By the time you've unlocked gauss weapons you would have collected over a hundred gauss guns. Gauss weapons practically pay for their own research and you won't even have to manufacture a single one! On the other hand, ES weapons are not found in the wild and it would cost between $10 to $24 millions to furnish a large squad.


Way before "unlock gauss research" finishes you would have found very cheap and very good guns and/or ammo that are as good as or even better than vanilla ES guns. This makes the ES deal a purely detrimental choice. In fact ammo like AC-GAS, AC-AP, LC-AP, Magnum Chem, Super Magnum Mercury boasts damage to TU values that are as good as or exceeds ES las-weapons. Hell, once you've researched Hellerium munitions, the LC-HEAT is so powerful that it matches the Guass Musket's average damage output (and you'll probably unlock it like 12+ months before you unlock gauss).

So because there are too many good choices that make ES las weapons weak in comparison, the ES Deal becomes a choice that has no redeeming qualities.


I believe that if a player decides to sink so much money, effort and risk into a set of weapons, they should receive a justified payoff. No other equipment choice in the game forces the player to sacrifice so much - I love this as a game mechanic - so this mod is here to make that choice a viable one.
------------------------------------------------
BH ER LasMod Changes:

All ES Lasguns have improved armour penetration.
All ES Lasguns have a chance to set enemies on fire (I'm thinking of the lasers in Crusader: No Remorse/ No Regret, or C&C Obelisk of Light, how cool were they!)

ES Heavy has an improved clip size. The damage output of this weapon is already very high, increasing its AP to 40% puts its damage band inbetween the Gauss Musket and Heavy Gauss with full auto-fire. It also sets people on fire more reliably than other ES weapons.

ES Markslaser is now more like a scout's precision rifle. You can move plenty before firing in either aimed or auto mode, or stand and deliver and fire twice in each mode. The auto-fire x2 (pulse) mode and duo aimed shots raise this weapon's average damage to a respectable level. Clip size remains the same so watch your ammo!

ES Lasrifle now boasts an increased clip size and you can fire off 1 more shot in each mode per turn. This allows you to plink away at targets. While each individual shot may be far weaker than a Gauss Musket, the combined average of shots delivered by the ES Lasrifle should match that of the GM in a single turn, in fact, on double auto-fire you might exceed it! This is true even against targets in power armour.

ES Pistol. Improved clip size. Ahhhh... pistols have a funny place in Piratez so I didn't change it much. There are a lot of pistols to choose from in this game but 2 or 3 of those make the other choices obsolete (including ES Pistols). I mean when you have mercury super magnums that can accurately deliver 18% more total average damage than the Gauss Musket vs 25 armour, why choose anything else? And Super Magnums are cheap as chips!


Hope you find this mod useful. 

[legionof1]

Seems good, how's the modded version performance at 40-60 armor? This is the range(30-60) that lasers thematically should be good at but are very much not due to order of operations in damage. Vs low armor more raw dmg is always better ala shotguns. Very high armor you either want total bypass or exceptional raw(or both), ala rockets.

[Bacon_Hero]

@legionof1

It looks something like as shown in the png below.

So while single shot damage and hit bands (chance of doing at least 1 damage on a hit) have improved marginally, repeat fire brings up the overall reliability of this weapon. If you go full snap shots the gauss musket tends to be a bit more consistent. The real value for money comes from double auto-fires where the markslas pumps out 4 shots accurately up to range 21 and the lasrifle shoots 8 times.

So at optimal range the ES weapons now gives you the flexibility to take more individual shots reliably against low health pool enemies and also concentrate fire on a single high health enemy

[Bacon_Hero]

Ugh a word of warning guys - you might still get 1 more eurosynd mission after you've done this.

 

I believe this is because missions on queue before new conditions occur don't get removed? For example I still had a mutant pogrom mission after researching MSDF.

So just be aware... you might have to do 1 last mission for those bastards