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[Liral]

Feel free, just don't forget to add a disclaimer that the video has additional mods.

Thanks--done!

[Nilfenheim]

Hello the mod is awesome but right now the beams seems broken, they don't go past 1000 range. I believe it's a bug?

[Liral]

Hello the mod is awesome but right now the beams seems broken, they don't go past 1000 range. I believe it's a bug?

Wooooooo, thank you!  Please tell me more about this problem with the beams.

Edit: I see the problem now and am working on it.

[CactusCraze]

This mod seems very cool! But I'm a bit confused on how armor works. If I'm understanding it correctly shots have to penatrate through to the citadel layer to do damage. Does that mean you want guns that do more damage per shot? That way you could go all the way through easier. And the vanilla armor overlay is for bonus damage to the hull right?

[Liral]

This mod seems very cool! But I'm a bit confused on how armor works. If I'm understanding it correctly shots have to penatrate through to the citadel layer to do damage.  Does that mean you want guns that do more damage per shot? That way you could go all the way through easier. And the vanilla armor overlay is for bonus damage to the hull right?

Thank you!  I should improve the explanation of damage in the field manual: you deal 1/6th damage if you penetrate just the surface armor until the compartment there is destroyed.  Then, you deal 1/10th damage.

[Liral]

New patch: 1.5.0!  Beams are fixed and buffed.  The damage per second of continuous beams is increased by weapon size across the board.  Beam range is up because the range cutoff calculation is fixed.  Damage per second cutoff increased to 10.

[PCCL]

Glad to see it's fixed. I'll playtest it tonight. That said though, I don't know that I agree with binding a beam's range to its DPS, much less it's sustained DPS (which was the 1.4.2 implementation). By making one a function of the other, you remove a dimension that beams can use to differentiate between them -- we can no longer have a short range, high damage, high diffraction assault beam and a longer range, lower damage close support beam. From a game design perspective, I don't know that that's ideal. From a realism perspective, I think different beam emitters can have different diffraction factors.

Perhaps a better way of dealing with it is for beams to use their CSV range and DPS, and for the game to calculate diffracted DPS accordingly as a function of the two, down to the threshold at max range?

On another note -- the excessive harpoon speed seem to be hardcoded for whatever reason. In my personal mod I've made a copy of harpoon_mrm.proj and called harpoon_mrm_rc.proj. I then changed all references to harppon_mrm to the rc version and that seems to have fixed the issue.

[Liral]

Glad to see it's fixed. I'll playtest it tonight. That said though, I don't know that I agree with binding a beam's range to its DPS, much less it's sustained DPS (which was the 1.4.2 implementation). By making one a function of the other, you remove a dimension that beams can use to differentiate between them -- we can no longer have a short range, high damage, high diffraction assault beam and a longer range, lower damage close support beam. From a game design perspective, I don't know that that's ideal. From a realism perspective, I think different beam emitters can have different diffraction factors.

I bound beam range to diffracted damage per second because every beam could deal a little damage per second from across the map, but every ship AI which must decide whether to fire each beam weapon thinks it would deal full damage.  I cannot find a justification for a tradeoff between range and damage because they depend on the same phenomenon: many energetic photons moving closely together at once.

Perhaps a better way of dealing with it is for beams to use their CSV range and DPS, and for the game to calculate diffracted DPS accordingly as a function of the two, down to the threshold at max range?

Beam weapons need ranges much longer than the ones in the CSV to compete with projectile weapons.

On another note -- the excessive harpoon speed seem to be hardcoded for whatever reason. In my personal mod I've made a copy of harpoon_mrm.proj and called harpoon_mrm_rc.proj. I then changed all references to harppon_mrm to the rc version and that seems to have fixed the issue.

It might be because old versions had some custom files.  Which version were you using?

[Ranakastrasz]

I bound beam range to diffracted damage per second because every beam could deal a little damage per second from across the map, but every ship AI which must decide whether to fire each beam weapon thinks it would deal full damage.  I cannot find a justification for a tradeoff between range and damage because they depend on the same phenomenon: many energetic photons moving closely together at once.

How about focus range? Something about how rather than having laser light all in exactly the same line, which is apparently impossible, but rather it is more like one of those "arbritrarily close" things where they converge at a point at some distance. Presumably you can somehow alter the focus range, but that takes equipment of some kind that reduces how much power you can put into the beam.

[Liral]

How about focus range? Something about how rather than having laser light all in exactly the same line, which is apparently impossible, but rather it is more like one of those "arbritrarily close" things where they converge at a point at some distance. Presumably you can somehow alter the focus range, but that takes equipment of some kind that reduces how much power you can put into the beam.

For quantum mechanical reasons, photons indeed cannot travel together indefinitely, but their minimum dispersion depends only on their wavelength, distance traveled, the aperture of the laser, and its beam quality; beam quality decreases with laser power but not so quickly that increasing the power of a laser within its material tolerances would not extend its range.

[keckles]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXD8Asgn1io

Gave the new version a shot, the beam change made it feel very different to me somehow in a good way, maybe previously my fleet just behaved oddly because beams just weren't working correctly. The AI doesn't seem to utilize the range of their weapons that well though, you can see them completely swarm the station at knife-fighting range for some reason. Very fun and different feel to Starsector, I'm not sure it works all that well at the massive, modded scales that I'm playing at though, people playing more vanilla might find the AI behaves better.

edit: Actually, after reloading that save and replaying that fight with Realistic Combat off, it felt significantly more cramped and too close-quarters in vanilla by comparison. I might try the rest of this run with Realistic Combat on. Most weapons definitely need to be rebalanced though, the Devastator Cannon is just way too good in RC and Harpoons are overperforming like crazy. My Dominators with triple Harpoon MRM Pods absolutely decimated the enemy fleet with their opening salvos, those things are just too fast to be intercepted

[Liral]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXD8Asgn1io

Woooo, another video!

Gave the new version a shot, the beam change made it feel very different to me somehow in a good way, maybe previously my fleet just behaved oddly because beams just weren't working correctly.

Glad to see that the range buff helped!

The AI doesn't seem to utilize the range of their weapons that well though, you can see them completely swarm the station at knife-fighting range for some reason. Very fun and different feel to Starsector, I'm not sure it works all that well at the massive, modded scales that I'm playing at though, people playing more vanilla might find the AI behaves better.

Yeah, I noticed that in the video.  Thanks for showing it to me.  I don't understand why the AI got so close to the station either, and it makes no sense: they should pummel it from a safe distance.  I wonder if the AI personality has anything to do with this strange behavior because you are fighting Pirates, which are Aggressive by default.

edit: Actually, after reloading that save and replaying that fight with Realistic Combat off, it felt significantly more cramped and too close-quarters in vanilla by comparison. I might try the rest of this run with Realistic Combat on.

Oh my gosh!  A Realistic Combat run!  This is amazing!  Please, let me know how it goes!

Most weapons definitely need to be rebalanced though, the Devastator Cannon is just way too good in RC and Harpoons are overperforming like crazy. My Dominators with triple Harpoon MRM Pods absolutely decimated the enemy fleet with their opening salvos, those things are just too fast to be intercepted

Please tell me why the Devastator cannon is too good.  I have no idea why the Harpoon is amazing: someone else has complained about it, but no-one else has complained about any other weapon in particular since I overhauled the missile speed and maneuverability changes to  keep the Reaper from being overpowered.  The other user who complained about the Harpoon fixed the problem by replacing the harpoon_mrm.proj with a copy called harpoon_mrm_rc.proj and replacing all references to the former with ones to the latter.  This mystery runs deep.

Edit: Found the cause. The missile specification was modified every time any weapon firing it was modified.  Removed the distinction between guided and unguided missiles and torpedoes from the WeaponCategories.

[Astra Anima]

This mod is extremely cool and I don't think that I'll be able to play without it to be quite honest.

I do have a question: how does the mod affect the Energy Weapons Mastery skill?

[Liral]

This mod is extremely cool and I don't think that I'll be able to play without it to be quite honest.

Wooooah!  That is awesome!  I'm glad you like it a lot.

I do have a question: how does the mod affect the Energy Weapons Mastery skill?

I haven't even gotten to skills yet.  I'm still debugging this thing. 

[Liral]

Hotfix 1.6.1 is out!  Fixed the cause of the over-performance of the Harpoon MRM: the missile specification was modified every time any weapon firing it was modified.  Removed the distinction between guided and unguided missiles and torpedoes from the WeaponCategories.