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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.14.1

« on: August 17, 2022, 07:40:51 PM »

Limiting the range of weapons flagged for fighters would defeat the purpose of Realistic Combat: projectile weapons on fighters should out-range ones of equal muzzle velocity on ships because fighters can jink ship weapon projectiles at ranges within which ships cannot jink fighter weapon projectiles, and fighters therefore would carry weapons with muzzle velocities equal to those of the weapons in the small mounts of the ships they attack.

That's why I'd like it as an option, I understand it's not realistic in the context, but gameplay/balance still has some importance! Mass fighters is absolutely steamrolling in early/mid game so far because of this.

Please tell me more about the point defense weapons out-ranging their non-point-defense counterparts, though.

It's not as dramatic anymore since yesterday's patch because now, cannons have more range, but since there's no distinction between PD and non-PD, they essentially have the same range as non-PD autocannon. For example, the Vulcan Cannon has a range of 4300, same as the Light Autocannon or the Light Assault Gun. Though that's only vanilla, some mod light PD weapons have ranges over 5500, but you can't exactly control those specifically.

Another variable I think should be added to distinguish autocannons from cannon is the size; I changed my setting so I'm not 100% sure, but while on small mounts it was fine, on medium mounts and large mounts some autocannon counted as normal cannons, and if after modifying the files so all autocannons were autocannons, some canons end up in that category (like the Railgun). Maybe having a different threshold for different mount sizes would fix that?

Another issue I see that mainly affects missiles is that some settings modify the amount of shots fired, max ammo, time to reload and reload amount, but missiles suffer most from this because some saturation missiles (like the Locust) end up barely shooting any missiles and have a significantly reduced ammo pool

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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.14.1

« on: August 17, 2022, 06:27:15 AM »

The problem with PD having insane range is that AI targeting priority can be an issue since they like to shoot at the currently targeted ship.

I think you mean that ships are wasting their limited PD ammo on ships that can absorb it easily.  Care to elaborate?

I think he meant that since PD ranges are so high they are basically used as regular weapons, if a ship is attacking another with PD weapons, the PD weapons aren't doing their intended job which I think I noticed too.

Personally, my big problem with long range PD is that if the range is longer than some other weapons (I'll give you examples later, currently at work), and said PD ends up being the longest range weapon, the AI will try to only use PD since they tend to stay just far away enough to use their longest range weapon, in this case PD, instead of using more powerful weapons. In the base game, PD solutions are usually half the range of regular weapons so it's rarely ever an issue.

This issue is less of a big deal now that cannons shoot further than autocannons but it's still an issue between PDs and autocannons since they share the same category/range/bullet velocity.

Once that is fixed, it will cause another problem where fighters have weapon ranges being 2-5 times longer than the PDs, but even that problem is less frustrating than ships limiting themselves to using PD, and there's honestly worse problems to solve before that one.

3

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.14.1

« on: August 16, 2022, 04:48:00 PM »

I also want to add I find it amazing how everyone is super invested in this mod with their opinions and suggestions and how open minded you(Liral) are in face of all that. A+ mod, A++ modder.

People love to complain and argue on the internet, and I have little to no idea what I am doing, so I just let the users playtest, reply, and discuss ideas.

Well if you're open to it, like you can see, people are glad to discuss it!

Is there a way to disable the changes to weapon ammo/refire delays? I'm trying to adjust the values but some weapons just become incredibly strong by trying to normalize changes that made other weapons obsolete (why would the heavy autocannon have a refire delay of 8 seconds?)

No, though I may implement a sub-category of autocannons with high damage to accomodate this issue.

Speaking of discussing ideas, and implementing categories (that I assume can be tweaked), I think two things that would benefit a lot from categories are, if possible, weapons flagged as PD and fighters, so their range can be limited. I think it'd be the simplest way to be able to control (limit) their range because as it is, a lot of PD weapons outclass regular weapons in range and/or DPS, although less so after the latest version.

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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.14.1

« on: August 16, 2022, 03:46:55 PM »

Is there a way to disable the changes to weapon ammo/refire delays? I'm trying to adjust the values but some weapons just become incredibly strong by trying to normalize changes that made other weapons obsolete (why would the heavy autocannon have a refire delay of 8 seconds?)

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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.14.0

« on: August 16, 2022, 11:35:09 AM »

Awesome, can't wait to try it out!

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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.13.0

« on: August 16, 2022, 08:29:20 AM »

IF we're going to do full on realistic combat, may I suggest maybe revamping the damage types? "High-explosive" makes a lot of assumptions on what the damage really is, and I would like to have a way to differentiate between HEAT-style, concussion-style, straight up nuke torpedoes, and maybe a way to get multiple-stage warheads like modern weapons do.

There's also kinetic rod AP and then straight up kinetic slug that spalls the armour.

If there's already a difference between energy beams and bolts, then what about EMP missiles? Those aren't really bolts and get brokenly powerful.

That doesn't sound like it'd be easy to implement, and there's already quite a few wrinkles to iron out before we get to that point! Also, if the combat system gets too realistic it could end up being a bit of a chore to keep everything in mind, no matter how impressive the depth may be no?

CR rating decrease based on hull instead of citadel damage makes less sense, the crew are mostly in the citadel and aren't so affected by hull integrity falling apart outside the citadel armour.

I think this feature is already fine as it is! CR doesn't stand for crew readiness . It's fine if all the crew's safe but if the rest of the ship is all shredded up, the ship isn't exactly combat ready anymore!

Some comments in the settings would go a long way to documenting what they do.

+++

Fighters can have a really hard time targeting each other, and so do some frigates. Maybe give them a range buff vs fast targets based on manoeuvrability?
Also, a fighter deployment range multiplier would be real nice.

I think (and hope) that this is something that's coming in the future from what I read, Liral seems to be adding more and more customization features, and I agree that more explanation would be great! And for the fighters issue, it would be fantastic if there could be modifiers specific to fighters to reduce the range of their weapons, that way they can properly fight each other while not being borderline broken against anything below capital sized ships. IMO, fighters and PDs need range restrictions (to like 1000-2000 range), my band aid solution was to reduce the velocity of autocannon fire (which is what PDs and Fighters mainly use) and it made the mod much more useable.

7

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.13.0

« on: August 15, 2022, 06:50:33 PM »

2. In addition or alternatively, giving "shield piercing" and not additional shield damage to kinetic rounds will also be a solution. In fact, this is similar to some shields depicted in sci-fi works, where a shield is more like a force field, meaning that extremely fast kinetic projectile can get through despite being slowed down (basically kinetic round does a bit of dmg to the shield, and gets through with reduced capability, and therefore can be negated by armor) This also comes with the benefit that AI can use their shield effectively with this change (basically they can just keep shield on against kinetics), as in current version their biggest problem is that they are unable to switch shield on and off effectively according to incoming rounds, currently often catching a huge wave of kinetics and overloading.

In fact, this change would makes kinetic weapons even more interesting, since now Large Kinetic weapons have the ability to directly damage small ships, going right through their shield (though their damage is slow lower), while such large kinetic weapons are no longer useful against capital with shield up as their penetration are drastically reduced by the shield. (they can still penetrate armor effectively against capital ships with shield down) Given how the recent cannon nerf, and the fact that there is no vanilla weapon that can do full damage to capital (1500-2250 armor, this calls for at least 1200 damage kinetics to do full damage), one may even consider raising large kinetic weapon damage, making a situation where large kinetic weapons could potentially fully penetrate capitals when their shield are down, but can only do partial/no penetration when the capitals have shields (with their decreased damage on shield, they will be much less useful in this stage)

That change to kinetic would be fantastic if possible, though not as a first priority!

I'd love to see some sort of "roadmap" or priority list because I'm just afraid to voice my opinion on my issues in case everyone else already mentioned them lol, I just tweaked the settings a bit to make it more manageable (upped reload speeds because 25 seconds reload is way too long, and made cannon projectile velocity higher than autocannon because a sniper weapon should have higher range than a PD turret). I wonder if there's was a way to help without hard coding because this mod is quickly becoming one of my favourite and I want to see it reach its full potential.

8

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.13.0

« on: August 13, 2022, 07:56:51 PM »

I am absolutely struggling because I am not good at the game and I'm used to just spam SO scarabs with antimatter blaster (frighteningly effective) but this mod just changes everything, it's amazing. I feel like I have to just re-learn the game.

I've thought before how great it'd be to just have longer range across the board and then this is made. Great work, and I really hope I get the hang of this because it's just super cool.

Edit:
After playing it some more, I've really got issues with some range since in my simple mind, I felt like the "order of engagement" should be missiles/torpedoes > projectiles > PD solutions, but PDs very often outrange other projectiles. Going through the forums to see others' opinions, found out that there's some options that can be changed, and decreasing autocannon velocity while increasing cannon velocity is a very viable band aid on the issue(playing some more after this, big issue #2 is fighters have too much range for PDs to first affect them lol). Would be cool if there was a "PD" flag for PD weapons to further customize them, maybe that way specifically PD turrets could have lowered range(less than 2000), but faster turn rates to compensate and have higher accuracy? Maybe a fighter modifier to reduce their range a bit too.

Also, while reading the comments (holy ***, 80% of the discussions go right over my head) someone mentioned the issue of phase skimmers being rendered useless because of the range, and how recoding it would be too difficult. I don't know how hard coding ship systems is, but maybe a simple solution would be to overwrite the effect of phase skimmers with an ultra powerful, short duration temporal shell that reduces damage? Like 500-1000% time dilation for half or a quarter of a second. Would essentially be the same as skimmer, but could actually look even cooler.

I also want to add I find it amazing how everyone is super invested in this mod with their opinions and suggestions and how open minded you(Liral) are in face of all that. A+ mod, A++ modder.