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Author Topic: Smaller Scale Mod  (Read 1796 times)

Czyrek

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Smaller Scale Mod
« on: September 25, 2019, 11:10:52 AM »

I was interested in perhaps making a smaller scale game, as the current game usually ends up  with primarily capital class ships with perhaps a few cruiser level ships being required, with destroyers and frigates often being little more than gap fillers.

Things I can do without a dedicated mod (I believe):
restrict the fleet size to 10-15.
Reduce total deployment points in a battle to 100-150

Things I would probably need a mod for
Restrict AI fleets to having only 1 (maybe 2) cruisers per fleet with the remainder being destroyers and frigates.
Reduce the strength of space stations (potentially preventing anything bigger than an orbital station, may force it to start partially damaged to allow for typical size fleets to be able to have a chance to defeat it)

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Those goals stated, would this be possible to make? If so, does anyone have any pointers on what files or code I might need to modify in order to accomplish this?

Since this is only for myself, I could self restrict myself to not being able to build/buy battleships or more than a single cruiser. But having those as built in limits would potentially make the mod usable for other people who are not so self restricting.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2019, 11:12:23 AM by Czyrek »
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Elijah

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #1 on: September 25, 2019, 12:01:28 PM »

It is indeed a shame that late game is dominated by bigger ships. Would be interested to see this mod.
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flyingllama

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2019, 12:38:34 PM »

I would be really interested in something like this too. Personally, I'd like the smaller ships to have fewer crew, and allow even the smallest ships to be relevant and have advantages to late game (e.g. stealth -> make it impossible to have a big stealthy fleet of colossi so smuggling necessitates small ships,  have missions about transporting small amounts of valuable cargo or VIP passengers).

Then I can fly around in a corvette/frigate all game and pretend like I'm the Serenity.
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Salv

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2019, 02:18:15 PM »

The easiest way to reduce the amount of big ships in AI fleets is to edit the ships size value for each individual faction in their respective FACTION files. If you wanted to define concrete size limits per AI fleet , I suppose the FleetFactoryV3 class is where it's all at. It's one of the core files in fleet generation I think, so replacing it for the purpose of a mod would be practically impossible. Implementing size limits for the player would probably be difficult as well. I think it may also be pretty artificial. What would happen if you found a battleship wreckage, for example? Could you recover it and disregard the limit, upsetting the intended balance?

Rebalancing of the strength of space stations can be easily done in ship_data.csv.

As for making smaller fleets less detectable than bigger ships when smuggling, I think some relevant code and referenced classes can be found in computeSmugglingSuspicionLevel in CoreCampaignPluginImpl.

I'm sorry if I'm mistaken on any of these, I just took a quick glance at the code :P.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2019, 02:19:54 PM by Salv »
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Czyrek

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2019, 11:27:46 AM »

The easiest way to reduce the amount of big ships in AI fleets is to edit the ships size value for each individual faction in their respective FACTION files.

I think I found the place you are talking about:

# multiplier for how often hulls show up in the faction's fleets
   "hullFrequency":{
      "hulls":{
         "buffalo2":0, # just say no
      },
   },


So I could basically go through each faction, and set the frequency of a hull to 0 for all capitals and perhaps leave a cruiser or two at like.. 1? or does the frequency only affect which ships are chosen rather than how many of that type? (in which case any non 0 would allow for unlimited numbers of that ship to be used) I might try a few test mods to see  how it works.
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Salv

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2019, 11:51:52 PM »

I think it is just a weight modifier, the value I was talking about is under the factionDoctrine section.
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goduranus

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #6 on: September 28, 2019, 12:19:31 AM »

Would it work if you just quadrupled the fleet points/maintenance supply/repair supply of every ship in ships.csv? So that everything costs 4 times as much, and the AIs will be able to afford fewer ships.
Maybe also decrease the cost of supplies to compensate.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2019, 12:28:31 AM by goduranus »
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Salv

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2019, 12:42:44 AM »

Fleet points are used for autoresolving battles I think, so increasing that too much would make capitals more powerful on the campaign map than they really are in regular battles. As a result, you would have ai deploy smaller fleets (not necessarily smaller ships, a fleet comprised of, for example, 4 capitals and 1 cruiser would maybe roll 1 capital and 1 cruiser after your change) due to meeting their desired FP quicker, particularly nerfing those factions that use big ships agains the player. They would fare comparably on the map in autoresolve due to the big ships having more FP, but like I've said, in battle they would be the same, only now there would be just fewer of them. That would kind of break the balance of factions and make fighting some easier. I'm not sure if the ai considers the other values you mentioned when creating their fleets.

« Last Edit: September 28, 2019, 12:46:39 AM by Salv »
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bananana

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Re: Smaller Scale Mod
« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2019, 01:02:02 AM »

i wholly support the idea of a mod like this
while i have no problem with big ships present at all
late game fleet sizes are ridiculously bloated
to a point when enemy fleet can include up to 10 Legion-class carriers
that's 40(!) wings of fighters, up to 240 in total
and that's not counting smaller ships.
while fighting a fleet like this is hypothetically possible
actually _running_ such a battle completely is a whole new challenge
with fps as low as 5 game becomes virtually unplayable as a pilot, an i'm reduced to just commanding fleet from tactical screen. i have such battle run continuously for literally hours of real time.
i want to limit maximum fleet size all across the board. do quality, not quantity.
unfortunately i've been told that this would either involve tedious manual editing of some values in vast amount of files at best, or will be outright impossible due to some values being hardcoded.
 
« Last Edit: September 28, 2019, 01:05:18 AM by passwalker »
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