[MOD TC/AP] Combat Mod 4 - v4.16 17/06/13 - AP 3.0 Compatibility

[rusky]

Yes the individual beam DPS is higher, but overall it's the same (because of the long cooldown between shots), and since the beam doesn't move while firing it is very unlikely to deliver more than 1s worth of damage to anything lower than an M6 (sure it can 1 shot M5's, but how often do you (want to) see that ? (when it could be firing at the M2 that's eating your shields instead )

Obviously the best fix would be if the AI could somehow learn to track while shooting a beam.

Thats exactly the reason for the long duration of beams. If they deliver their damage in a shart time they then become the ultimate weapon, good against capitals and fighters - Far too powerful.

In giving them a long duration they become the heavy, anti-capital weapon they are supposed to be. No use against fighters, just like PPC and PSP. Again if the beams tracked while firing it would still make them far too good.

As for manually firing the beams - yes they are bugged. They will fire contiuously even when the ships energy runs out.

Simply just stop yourself from being tempted to manually fire them!

They will only spawn in AI ships if a script has been setup to spawn them. I think that the Pirate Guild and Yaki Armada do this. Jobs wont spawn them though.

But even with just 2 or 3s lifetime the slow turret tracking makes them worthless versus fighters unless they get a lucky shot on a fighter running in a straight line toward the turret.

On the other hand the AI handles them a LOT better, and poses a greater threat, even to the player (much harder to strafe out, at least if you're in an M7 or higher)

[Esgaro]

Beams seem like they should probably have a higher than 0 minimum target size in the MARS data. Right now, the PALCs in the Taipan I am testing are very fruitlessly trying to swat down smaller ships. They are doing very little of worth while wasting my laser energy.

The default MARS energy settings don't seem to work particularly well either. In particular, I was testing the large Teladi M2 that can mount 36 gauss cannons. I don't recall the name. The energy regen is a bit on the low side for an M2, which is expected. MARS is very reluctant to switch from PPCs to gauss, even when the ship energy is exhausted. It would rather slowly dribble an ineffective amount of PPC fire at the Xenon M1 in front of me instead of switching those 12 PPCs to Gauss and fire everything. There was plenty of gauss ammo too.

Edit: It actually doesn't seem that effective at aiming Gauss either. My turrets with gauss that aim at fighters very rarely hit. It looks like the gauss ammo moves pretty quickly, but it doesn't fire all that terribly straight. Ion shard railguns seem to hit much more reliably. It isn't exactly what I would expect, looking at the weapon speeds.

[Requiemfang]

That explains the reason why I use MEFOS right there, MEFOS you can set up the targets for turrets to prioritize over, most large ships, M7 and above have front, left and right turrets which house the larger class weapons that can bring a lot of hurt to other large vessels. The other turrets being the top, bottom and back are more for the anti-fighter role where they can house light to medium weapons. Though some turrets in the front, left and right can house medium to heavy weapons. MEFOS you can set up the range and type of ships they will prioritize over and shoot at while ignoring others.

PALC yes will take time to chew through a M3 but it is brutal towards M4 and M5's and PALC are extremely accurate. The Taipan alone itself is a good ship and it's able to utilize two types of flak weapons which is the PALC and the FAA. I usually use both and either one are very effective in taking out fighters, you also have 6 docking ports which can house 6 M3's or if you want... house 4 fighters of your choice and 2 corvettes, fighters and corvettes can easily take out the smaller targets while your big Taipan M2 takes on the larger more dangerous targets

Edit: also Gauss aren't exactly anti-fighter weapons... so of course they aren't effective vs them, Gauss are a lower tech replacement for the PPC

[Greetmir]

OK there, Lads and Lasses ... Here is the final Graphic Missile Performance Chart for CMOD 4.1 (GMPC-3) showing all the big boy missiles.

http://MyTCscreenshots.homestead.com/GM ... 00wide.jpg

It turned out that this chart was a bit more crowded than I thought and some name labelling juggling went into the wee hours but it all eventually fit in there well enough to make out, methinks.

It has been a great learning experience. Like most things, about the time one is finishing the task, they are getting pretty damn good at it.

I look forward to the next update ... (not next week I hope, though) where I can take these basic charts and REALLY polish them up and make them look professional.

Again ... I hope you find these useful as a quick reference but they are no substitute for the spreadsheets which have precise statistics on them.

me

[paulwheeler]

The Gauss Cannon is absolutely a heavy weapon. It shouldn't really be used against fighters. It seems as though the turret aiming is less accurate the more damage a bullet does.

With the PALC, I wanted to make sure it didn't replace the FAA or CFA as the anti-fighter weapon of choice. Basically, I want the beams to be alternatives rather than replacements.

I'm by no means certain I've done everything right on the MARS data file as I don't use MARS myself (I use the Missile Defence Mk2 script - far less resource hungry and extremely effective). So if anyone wants to check it out and see if I've overlooked anything I'd be very grateful.

[irR4tiOn4L]

Just tried this and i like the effects (ESPECIALLY the IBL, simply beautiful!), but im not so sure on some of these changes (need more testing). Larger weapons feel quite underpowered. IBL's and most capital ship weapons have been nerfed massively which seems to have been intended to make Capital ship combat last longer, but has nerfed capital ships altogether against M6 and under - M6 class weapons now match the IBL or Gauss of an M7, yet are far more nimble and very slow to kill - effectively nerfing M7's. Even a single Khaak Corvette will pose a serious threat to an AI controlled Tiger, and two or three will endanger even a player controlled one. Those Corvette's are hitting far above their weight here!

Particular note, however, should be paid to the Khaak and the Gamma Kyon Emitter in particular - a beam weapon with 9k shield damage and 9km range is massively powerful! I am undecided on whether this is a good or a bad thing - is this intended?

I am also sad to report that the CMOD 4 has actually DECREASED my performance, by a fair margin, at least in the Khaak sectors ive tried (though it looks pretty!) - and taken me from generally smooth gameplay to some considerable slowdowns in Khaak sectors in particular (only one tested so far).

Overall i will need to test this mod more, it certainly seems to have many good ideas and a lot of potential but it does seem to come with some of its own drawbacks

[mr.WHO]

With the PALC, I wanted to make sure it didn't replace the FAA or CFA as the anti-fighter weapon of choice. Basically, I want the beams to be alternatives rather than replacements.

I think it's nothing wrong with PALC replacing the FAA and CFA as anti-fighter beam, as it's the Split only-weapon, FAA if more universal (with heavy use by Teladi), while CFA is Argon/Boron weapon.

PALC comparing to FAA should be more advance, harder to get/produce weapon, while FAA is a standard issue anti-fighter weapon.

[paulwheeler]

Just tried this and i like the effects (ESPECIALLY the IBL, simply beautiful!), but im not so sure on some of these changes (need more testing). Larger weapons feel quite underpowered. IBL's and most capital ship weapons have been nerfed massively which seems to have been intended to make Capital ship combat last longer, but has nerfed capital ships altogether against M6 and under - M6 class weapons now match the IBL or Gauss of an M7, yet are far more nimble and very slow to kill - effectively nerfing M7's. Even a single Khaak Corvette will pose a serious threat to an AI controlled Tiger, and two or three will endanger even a player controlled one. Those Corvette's are hitting far above their weight here!

Particular note, however, should be paid to the Khaak and the Gamma Kyon Emitter in particular - a beam weapon with 9k shield damage and 9km range is massively powerful! I am undecided on whether this is a good or a bad thing - is this intended?

I am also sad to report that the CMOD 4 has actually DECREASED my performance, by a fair margin, at least in the Khaak sectors ive tried (though it looks pretty!) - and taken me from generally smooth gameplay to some considerable slowdowns in Khaak sectors in particular (only one tested so far).

Overall i will need to test this mod more, it certainly seems to have many good ideas and a lot of potential but it does seem to come with some of its own drawbacks

90% of the changes you are mentioning are all from the CMOD3, made by Ulfus - these have been around for a very long time and most people report a much improved performance as well as prefering the capital weapons.

Kha'ak weapons are beam weapons which are notoriously heavy on frames. The reason your frames may have dropped in Kha'ak sectors maybe because of the increased range of these weapons so ships fire more often. I am aware of the fps issue with the Kha'ak weapons - as I've said I haven't really looked at these yet, but I'll see what I can do. The only way to improve Kha'ak beam performance is to reduce their fire rate. I may look into this perhaps...

In the vanilla game the Kha'ak are a shadow of their former selves (from X2) and are really no threat to the player. They badly needed a boost to their weapons. Also I consider the Kha'ak corvette to be more of an M6/M7 hybrid (just look at its size!).

I have reduced shield damage across the board - including all M6 and fighter weapons. The intention is to make battles last longer. However, capital weapons should still be far more powerful than medium weapons. The CIG is no where near the PPC.

For capital weapons, it has been assumed that the weapon of choice is the PPC. Therefore the other weapons have been transformed into more specialist weapons - Gauss has a high rate of fire plus a huge range - Ion cannon is now a beam weapon with excellent shield busting abilities. AI capital ships should mostly spawn the PPC in their turrets. It gives a good balance of variety and gives more options to the player. Also since Gauss can be mounted on some M7s and PPC can't, it should definately not be as powerful. I would consider the IBL more of an M7 weapon than a full on capital weapon too - especially as in vanilla it can be mounted on many M7s.

Of course this mod is very much a work i progress so I welcome any more suggestions you may have. I suggest you have a play for a while with the CMOD as its only in normal play that you begin to see the effect the CMOD has on things.



EDIT - I take back a lot of what I said about the Kha'ak weapons and the CMOD4 - there are almost no changes to the Kyons at all in the CMOD from vanilla. The same effects are used, the same sounds etc. The Gamma Kyon has a slightly improved impact effect and has had its rate of fire slowed down. This should IMPROVE frames - not hurt them. This is also the reason for the big damage increase - it simply doesn't fire as often.

Alpha and Beta Kyons are practically identical except they have a slightly higher damage rating.

So I am confused as to why you are seeing an fps hit in Kha'ak sectors. There should be virtually no difference or a slight improvement.

I agree that the Kyons do hit FPS - but they do this in vanilla too. I can try the technique used on the Gamma Kyons and reduce rate of fire while increasing damage. This may help a little, but it won't be perfect.

All beams cost fps - Kyons and IonD too.

[de wiesn]

is there a way to only use the FactoryPack without the CMod4 i tried that but i had troubles with the EMR Forges .. they happened to produce IREs instead of EMRs
hope u cam help me out on that one

regards wiesn

[paulwheeler]

is there a way to only use the FactoryPack without the CMod4 i tried that but i had troubles with the EMR Forges .. they happened to produce IREs instead of EMRs
hope u cam help me out on that one

regards wiesn

If your EMR forges are producing IREs then you either have another mod that alters "warestemplate" - or you haven't put the CMOD4INST.xml file into your "Director" folder. This script forces the waretemplate file to refresh, putting the correct product onto the EMR forges.

[de wiesn]

the other mods im using are M.A.R.S and the SRM and they definitly dont alter that file and i used the .spk to install the CMod4 + the FactoryPack. its working fine when im using the CMod but once i deactivate it the EMRs change to IREs. thats what made me suspicious of the CMod might being nessesary for the EMRs.

regards

edit: i almost forgot: i also do use the Marines Repair script from Tatakau. but i dont think that that one changes that particular file u mentioned.

[irR4tiOn4L]

90% of the changes you are mentioning are all from the CMOD3, made by Ulfus - these have been around for a very long time and most people report a much improved performance as well as prefering the capital weapons.

Kha'ak weapons are beam weapons which are notoriously heavy on frames. The reason your frames may have dropped in Kha'ak sectors maybe because of the increased range of these weapons so ships fire more often. I am aware of the fps issue with the Kha'ak weapons - as I've said I haven't really looked at these yet, but I'll see what I can do. The only way to improve Kha'ak beam performance is to reduce their fire rate. I may look into this perhaps...

In the vanilla game the Kha'ak are a shadow of their former selves (from X2) and are really no threat to the player. They badly needed a boost to their weapons. Also I consider the Kha'ak corvette to be more of an M6/M7 hybrid (just look at its size!).

I have reduced shield damage across the board - including all M6 and fighter weapons. The intention is to make battles last longer. However, capital weapons should still be far more powerful than medium weapons. The CIG is no where near the PPC.

For capital weapons, it has been assumed that the weapon of choice is the PPC. Therefore the other weapons have been transformed into more specialist weapons - Gauss has a high rate of fire plus a huge range - Ion cannon is now a beam weapon with excellent shield busting abilities. AI capital ships should mostly spawn the PPC in their turrets. It gives a good balance of variety and gives more options to the player. Also since Gauss can be mounted on some M7s and PPC can't, it should definately not be as powerful. I would consider the IBL more of an M7 weapon than a full on capital weapon too - especially as in vanilla it can be mounted on many M7s.

Of course this mod is very much a work i progress so I welcome any more suggestions you may have. I suggest you have a play for a while with the CMOD as its only in normal play that you begin to see the effect the CMOD has on things.



EDIT - I take back a lot of what I said about the Kha'ak weapons and the CMOD4 - there are almost no changes to the Kyons at all in the CMOD from vanilla. The same effects are used, the same sounds etc. The Gamma Kyon has a slightly improved impact effect and has had its rate of fire slowed down. This should IMPROVE frames - not hurt them. This is also the reason for the big damage increase - it simply doesn't fire as often.

Alpha and Beta Kyons are practically identical except they have a slightly higher damage rating.

So I am confused as to why you are seeing an fps hit in Kha'ak sectors. There should be virtually no difference or a slight improvement.

I agree that the Kyons do hit FPS - but they do this in vanilla too. I can try the technique used on the Gamma Kyons and reduce rate of fire while increasing damage. This may help a little, but it won't be perfect.

All beams cost fps - Kyons and IonD too.

Lol, dont worry about it, I think i figured it out - im seeing an fps decrease because where a Tiger would previously MASSACRE any khaak ship that got within a few km, its now taking much longer to kill the swarms of irritating Khaak M5/M4/M3s - and these keep firing their FPS killing lasers! Its simply a case of no direct change, but an indirect effect - less killing power means more khaak means more alpha/beta/gamma kyons means lower framerate

Its not your fault at all so no impetus on you (although i suppose the reduction in fps is still very much an issue, its a vanilla game issue)

On the other topics, i dont mean to be harsh on the CMOD4, its a very good mod and it truly does have some beautiful weapon effects, sounds and does what it says on the tin - balances weapons and makes combat last longer.

Personally though, i liked PPC's that one shotted my fighter and took a massive chunk out of my cap ship's shields, and IBL's that tore through M6's. Yes, capital ship battles last longer now, but it all seems a little more sedate overall - and easier - I dont even need to fear that K's odd PPC/PSP shots now when strafing to an easy victory.

I do very much like much of the mod - its just that im probably not the kind of player who wanted a weapon rebalance.

Of course, i can always customise your mod to suit my personal tastes, so dont take this as any kind of request, and neither is it criticism. The mod does what it is supposed to brilliantly!

Id definitely like to look at applying many of your weapon effects to my vanilla game - those IBL's are SOO beautiful - would you mind if i did that?

[rusky]

I am planning to make a Mod-Mod of SRM/CMOD4 which alters Tships, TLasers and TBullets.
This is for myself primarily but if people want and paul agrees, I can upload it as well.

My planned changes are something along these lines:

TLasers, Tbullets

Divide all weapons into 6 categories:

Very Light (Mass Driver, IRE)
Light( (EMR, PAC, PBE, AKyon ...)
Medium (PRG, FBL, EMPC ...)
Heavy (HEPT, EBC,BKyon..)
Very Heavy (Flak, SSC, PSG, PAL ...)
Capital (PPC, PSP, GKyon, FBC, PBC ...)

The point being to make them actually differ in DPS to emulate the increase in power.

I will make a nice spreadsheet with new values, but the general idea i plan on following is:

Very Light - Short range, very high RoF, low damage (only usefull against M5/4 maybe M3 with focus fire).

Light - Short/Medium range, high RoF, lowish damage (usefull against all fighters)

Medium - Medium range, medium RoF, medium damage (usefull against M3/M6/TS/TP, but also M5/M4 etc)

Heavy - medium/high range, medium/low RoF, highish damage (usefull against M6/TS/TP but also M3/M7 )

Very Heavy - Most of these are actually the capital class anti fighter weapons, so they generally have higher rof, with lower range and medium/high damage.

Capital - Very Long Range, Very Low RoF, Very High Damage, Very Very Very low tracking speed.


TShips

My intention is to make some small changes to the ships. Small being the operative word here as I feel ships are rather well balanced as is (I do recommend one of the hull packs though so I will probably try and make these changes to all 3 of them).

Generally I feel that while the speeds are ok, the bigger ships are way too manoeuvrable.

Planned changes:

M6 - A small reduction in manoeuvrability, M6's shouldn't really be able to dogfight.

M7 - A large reduction in manoeuvrability, M7's are already just shy of a destroyer, they manoeuvre way too good.

M1/M2 - A reduction in manoeuvrability, probably not a huge one, but enough to make them feel more like mobile gun platforms and not space trucks with guns.

The general feeling I'm trying to create here is this:

Light Fighters/Scouts (M5) - Should be fast, manoeuvrable and lightly armed, enough to dogfight with other M5's and M4's and perhaps overwhelm single M3's or TS's. (in number)

Interceptors (M4) - Fast, Better Weapons, capable of engaging any type of fighter and harassing TS/TP ships.

Fighter (M3) - Slowest of the fighters (keep in mind i'm not modding speeds here), Best fighter weapons, capable of fighting all fighters, TS/TP and in numbers M6's.

Bomber (M8) - Slow, Not very manoeuvrable (for a fighter), this ship is intended to provide support against enemy capital ships.

Corvettes (M6) - Bridges the gap between fighters and capital ships. Fastish, well armed, can protect the heavier capital ships from fighters or support fighter groups.

Frigate (M7) - The lighter capital ship class, faster than the heavier ones, generally well armed but with lower energy generation, tends to run out of juice in prolonged battles.

Carrier (M1) - The carrier class. Slow, well armed and shielded, this ship acts as a remote firepower projection base. Relies on it's fighter/bomber wings.

Destroyer (M2) - The ultimate battle platform, the destroyer fields the most armor, shields and weaponry of any ship class. It is slow, has the lowest possible manoeuvrability and it's capital class weapons track as fast as a snail going backwards, but it packs a huge punch. Probably not very effecting against anything that isn't an M7/M2/M1 or station though.

The capital weapons for example, will feature a large damage boost, but slower overall bullets and much slower tracking. They won't be able to track anything lower than an M6 and even that is unlikely. A direct hit from one of these weapons will however take out an M5 or M4 in a single shot, and probably cripple an M3, highly unlikely to actually hit one of these though.

[paulwheeler]

I dont even need to fear that K's odd PPC/PSP shots now when strafing to an easy victory.

Try the Ship Rebalance Mod then - makes it far, far harder! The K and the J are far more fearsome.

The slower battles just highlight the bad balancing in the vanilla game. Weak ships simply can't keep up.

Id definitely like to look at applying many of your weapon effects to my vanilla game - those IBL's are SOO beautiful - would you mind if i did that?

You can do that for your own personal game if you wish - just dont post it as I think that IBL effect has been taken from XTM and they are very protective of their stuff. Ulfus managed to get permission for many of the XTM effects.




BTW - I've made some headway of improving the fps hit with Kha'ak weapons. I've reducing the firing rate and it helps a little and is barely noticable. I'll see if I can take it a bit further.

I just don't understand why the beams are such a drain in fps... It must be something to do with the way the game renders them.

[paulwheeler]

I am planning to make a Mod-Mod of SRM/CMOD4 which alters Tships, TLasers and TBullets.
This is for myself primarily but if people want and paul agrees, I can upload it as well.

The one thing which you won't be able to do is include any of the CMOD custom effects. Many of them have been taken from XTM and I have permission from the XTM team to include them in the CMOD4. However, they are very protective of their stuff so you will not be able to include it in your mod.

One way around this though is to make people install the main CMOD4 at a lower cat/dat then to put yours after with just an altered TLasers and TBullets.

Also if you are going to include the SRM, you'll need to get permission from Cadius, Killerog and all the other mod makers who have contributed.

Again it might be easier just to tell people they need to install the SRM cat/dat first and then yours. That way all you need to put in is TShips, TLasers and TBullets which are all Ego files so you can redestribute them freely.

[rusky]

I am planning to make a Mod-Mod of SRM/CMOD4 which alters Tships, TLasers and TBullets.
This is for myself primarily but if people want and paul agrees, I can upload it as well.

Again it might be easier just to tell people they need to install the SRM cat/dat first and then yours. That way all you need to put in is TShips, TLasers and TBullets which are all Ego files so you can redestribute them freely.

That's exactly what i was planning on doing

[rusky]

Oh and I do have a question. Do you know any way of making the beams thicker ? I mean both the hitbox and the gfx.

I tried changing the Rapid Box (Width,Height) but that didn't seem to do anything.

[TrixX]

You'll have to edit the bod file to get the beams thicker. Currently they are very demanding due to the method of using a repeating set of 8 double sided faces with all being repeat textured. Makes a lot of extra poly's and textures in use suddenly which although the GPU could handle it the CPU can't (single threaded).

I don't know how long the beam sections are, but if short (to get accuracy with target) then it's basically loading up hundreds if not thousands of models to create the beam.


Making the beams DOT as well as low RoF would reduce the effect and with the lower level Kyon's you could give them reasonable tracking capabilities. This could work in so it's like being stuck in a damaging flashlight

The Gamma Kyon's would be closer to the Terran's beam weapon in application, if a little more damaging.

[rusky]

That sounds bad But yeah i'll give it a shot see how it goes. Trying to make the beams quite a bit bigger and last longer (~10s) . Obviously any fighters wandering into the beam would be fried pretty quick (as it should be, friendly ones included ).

Also going to make the GKyon longer lasting heavy beam like the terran one, but with a red tint (like the good ol' Shivan ones )

Would be grand if i could somehow turn the khaak into black/red instead of black/purple too.

[Greetmir]

@ Rusky ...

You were saying that you planned to make a spreadsheet with the new values of the weapons ...

It already exists ... in colour and B and W and jpg ... and I posted it just a few pages back ....

Here ya go, Guys and Gals ...

Enjoy ...

http://mytcscreenshots.homestead.com/CM ... COLOUR.xls

http://mytcscreenshots.homestead.com/CM ... _and_W.xls

... and for those without Excel ...

http://mytcscreenshots.homestead.com/CM ... istics.jpg

Cheers,

me

me