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[Digganob]

Ok, so just 3D targeting?

Essentially, yes. Many of the UI changes I have found useful, though.

Have you tried those mods and found them not to be compatible, or are you speculating?

Well, I think I heard as much from other users that there have been issues with other mods' weapons not being used as intended. Then again, I may be wrong to a large extent. You seem to be doing a good job of balancing it!

I have enhanced cannon detection, so the weirdness of frag-autocannons becoming cannons should stop.

I may be wrong to a large extent. lol

Do you mean that you found, for example, weapons that would have been classified as cannons to deal huge damage per shot?

Well, I found that the damage type armor thickness multipliers and damage multipliers after disabling weapon changes were still active, which I had thought was not intended. I may have been chasing a wild goose of a bug here, though.

So, again, you want to run just the 3D targeting.

Yes, I was just explaining further why I think it's a good change, and the balancing that may need to be done to account for it.

Anyway, in the next patch, you should be able to do just that by turning everything off.

Really? You mean that beams wouldn't have infinite range without weapon changes but with 3D targeting on? I'm confused.

I intend that while projectile weapons follow the 3D targeting system using their muzzle velocities to determine their range, beam weapons instead follow a standard "muzzle velocity" only for the purpose of 3D targeting range calculation, and multiplying the resulting range by their base range in their stats, keeping their relative range compared to other beam weapons the same, and keeping their range roughly in line with the projectile weapons.

Could that be done with disabling weapon changes, but keeping 3D targeting?

Looking into the rest of the mod folder, as you suggested, I have found how beam range is determined, and I have an idea of how it determines it, but I am not quite sure how to do what I had postulated, that being applying a standard "muzzle velocity" to beams in order to calculate their 3D range the same as projectile weapons, and multiplying the result by their range stats in the game.

I'm sorry if this is troublesome for you, but I ask that you point me at which file(s) in the src folder I must look at and modify in order to affect such a change, if such a change is viable. I am no modder, but I expect I can figure things out if you give me a rough outline of where beams' range is determined, and if I could modify just that, or if other parts would have to be modified to make the changes I wish to make.

To be specific, I believe weaponstats.java would be where most of the action is happening?

And, I know it's not realistic, but 3D targeting is, as I said, SUPER COOL, even if I cannot implement it in my game in a way I find most fun, while also keeping it realistic. If possible I would want to be able to play with it for every proceeding playthrough, and I think many others do too, but do not like the change in scale that the rest of your mod's changes create in the game.

Again, I'm sorry if I've been presumptuous, or troublesome for you.

[Liral]

Really? You mean that beams wouldn't have infinite range without weapon changes but with 3D targeting on? I'm confused.

Sort of.  See the rest of this reply.

I intend that while projectile weapons follow the 3D targeting system using their muzzle velocities to determine their range, beam weapons instead follow a standard "muzzle velocity" only for the purpose of 3D targeting range calculation, and multiplying the resulting range by their base range in their stats, keeping their relative range compared to other beam weapons the same, and keeping their range roughly in line with the projectile weapons.

Could that be done with disabling weapon changes, but keeping 3D targeting?

No, that could not be done with disabling weapon changes because 3D targeting doesn't even consider beam or projectile muzzle velocity to begin with.  It presumes projectile weapon range to equal projectile weapon muzzle velocity and multiplies projectile weapon range by the time the target would need to strafe off the path of a projectile fired at it.

You could remove the line that resets the ship-wide beam weapon range multiplier, though.  3D targeting used to adjust beam range, and I didn't even notice at first but had to add that line later because the API doesn't have a 'energyProjectileWeaponRangeMult'.  With that done, you can then write a script to modify the base ranges of all the beams to suit yourself.

Looking into the rest of the mod folder, as you suggested, I have found how beam range is determined, and I have an idea of how it determines it, but I am not quite sure how to do what I had postulated, that being applying a standard "muzzle velocity" to beams in order to calculate their 3D range the same as projectile weapons, and multiplying the result by their range stats in the game.

I'm sorry if this is troublesome for you, but I ask that you point me at which file(s) in the src folder I must look at and modify in order to affect such a change, if such a change is viable. I am no modder, but I expect I can figure things out if you give me a rough outline of where beams' range is determined, and if I could modify just that, or if other parts would have to be modified to make the changes I wish to make.

Beam range is the point on a modified inverse-square diffraction curve DPS (plus/or EPS) falls below a threshold of flux-efficiency.  That curve is I(x) = I₀ / (1 + (x/I₀)^2)  If you want shorter-range beam weapons, then multiply their base damage by some factor less than one before their range is modified---but why would you want beam weapons to be the same range as projectile weapons, anyway?  Having different ranges for different weapon categories is interesting, and besides, that flux-efficiency threshold I mentioned is 1/10.   

To be specific, I believe weaponstats.java would be where most of the action is happening?

All the weapon-modifying action happens in WeaponStats.java, with ModPlugin basically being driver code. 

And, I know it's not realistic, but 3D targeting is, as I said, SUPER COOL, even if I cannot implement it in my game in a way I find most fun, while also keeping it realistic. If possible I would want to be able to play with it for every proceeding playthrough, and I think many others do too, but do not like the change in scale that the rest of your mod's changes create in the game.

3D targeting is already its own plugin that runs independently of everything else--much like each HUD feature does--and you will be able to toggle everything but 3D targeting (and 100% autofire accuracy across the board...) off.  3D targeting will have its own settings file too, so don't worry about messing with RealisticCombatSettings.json . 

Again, I'm sorry if I've been presumptuous, or troublesome for you.

Requesting features or worrying about bugs or problems that you would know didn't exist if you had played Realistic Combat, read the Field Manual, directly asking how the mod worked, or even opened the mod folder to find the source code instead of digging through a forum thread with many (usually resolved) complaints about old versions and then imagining what might be happening based on second-hand concerns has indeed annoyed me.  Speaking of etiquette, here's how to quote someone on the forum:

Code

[quote]
What they said.
[/quote]

Please use these keywords to break up the big, automatically-generated quote that appears at the top of your post when you click the Quote button on a post so the forum will automatically quote-box each part of the post you quote, and don't include the words that the other person quoted to avoid giant quote-ziggurats.

Still look forward to hearing from you, though!

[Digganob]

Sort of.  See the rest of this reply.

No, that could not be done with disabling weapon changes because 3D targeting doesn't even consider beam or projectile muzzle velocity to begin with.  It presumes projectile weapon range to equal projectile weapon muzzle velocity and multiplies projectile weapon range by the time the target would need to strafe off the path of a projectile fired at it.

You could remove the line that resets the ship-wide beam weapon range multiplier, though.  3D targeting used to adjust beam range, and I didn't even notice at first but had to add that line later because the API doesn't have a 'energyProjectileWeaponRangeMult'.  With that done, you can then write a script to modify the base ranges of all the beams to suit yourself.

Ah, so I got the order of operations wrong here?

Anyways, so I would have to find the bit of code you added to modify beams' base ranges, remove it, and that should cause beams to follow the same rules of range as other weapons in 3D targeting?

Beam range is the point on a modified inverse-square diffraction curve DPS (plus/or EPS) falls below a threshold of flux-efficiency.  That curve is I(x) = I₀ / (1 + (x/I₀)^2)  If you want shorter-range beam weapons, then multiply their base damage by some factor less than one before their range is modified---but why would you want beam weapons to be the same range as projectile weapons, anyway?  Having different ranges for different weapon categories is interesting, and besides, that flux-efficiency threshold I mentioned is 1/10.   

Oh, I think it's fairly cool how beams have infinite range (even if it gets cluttered with too many of them), but I would then have to go through the trouble of carefully balancing code I barely understand so they're balanced for vanilla-level ranges, and I'll probably run into lots of issues with that. I'm satisfied with vanilla beam mechanics, so I would rather not bother with those issues.

Requesting features or worrying about bugs or problems that you would know didn't exist if you had played Realistic Combat, read the Field Manual, directly asking how the mod worked, or even opened the mod folder to find the source code instead of digging through a forum thread with many (usually resolved) complaints about old versions and then imagining what might be happening based on second-hand concerns has indeed annoyed me.  Speaking of etiquette, here's how to quote someone on the forum:

Code

[quote]
What they said.
[/quote]

Please use these keywords to break up the big, automatically-generated quote that appears at the top of your post when you click the Quote button on a post so the forum will automatically quote-box each part of the post you quote, and don't include the words that the other person quoted to avoid giant quote-ziggurats.

Still look forward to hearing from you, though!

Yeah, I apologize for my stumbling through my discovery and discussion of this mod. I had figured that I might be able to figure out what's going on with the game easier if I can figure out what's going on with the code and what others think of the balance of the mod.

And, even with your explanation of quoting, I can't figure how you've gotten your posts to look like how they do. I hope this looks fine. Sorry for the massive posts, I'll edit those in a bit.

Anyways, thanks much for the help! In my attempt to configure something useable and fun out a vanilla-ranged, short-beamed version of your mod, I'll be sure to come to you with any interesting discoveries. If I can make something useable and fun out of it, and if you agree that it is, then feel free to put it in the parent post as a "lite" version of your mod! Or don't. I'd mostly be making it for me, of course.

[anhkhoa3302]

Starsector Combat Extended

[Liral]

Ah, so I got the order of operations wrong here?

Anyways, so I would have to find the bit of code you added to modify beams' base ranges, remove it, and that should cause beams to follow the same rules of range as other weapons in 3D targeting?

It's in ThreeDimensionalTargeting.resetWeaponRanges().

Oh, I think it's fairly cool how beams have infinite range (even if it gets cluttered with too many of them), but I would then have to go through the trouble of carefully balancing code I barely understand so they're balanced for vanilla-level ranges, and I'll probably run into lots of issues with that. I'm satisfied with vanilla beam mechanics, so I would rather not bother with those issues.

Realistic Combat beams don't have infinite ranges, and you can already shorten them with a higher flux-efficiency threshold of 0.2 or even 0.5 (!).  I could even add different thresholds for different classes of laser; e.g., higher threshold for anti-ship lasers to prevent flux wasting, lower for point-defense lasers to start damaging missiles as soon as possible.

Yeah, I apologize for my stumbling through my discovery and discussion of this mod. I had figured that I might be able to figure out what's going on with the game easier if I can figure out what's going on with the code and what others think of the balance of the mod.

Gotcha.

And, even with your explanation of quoting, I can't figure how you've gotten your posts to look like how they do. I hope this looks fine. Sorry for the massive posts, I'll edit those in a bit.

Ahhhh, sweet relief... your quotes are perfect!

Anyways, thanks much for the help! In my attempt to configure something useable and fun out a vanilla-ranged, short-beamed version of your mod, I'll be sure to come to you with any interesting discoveries. If I can make something useable and fun out of it, and if you agree that it is, then feel free to put it in the parent post as a "lite" version of your mod! Or don't. I'd mostly be making it for me, of course.

Again, I recommend increasing the flux efficiency threshold before going into the code.  I am working on beam range anyway, too, because the system I have written leads to some strange results.

[OmegaMan]

So I finally got back in town and got some time to sit down with this mod and start a new Playthrough.  it’s very interesting but I have a few things I had questions about.

1. Opaqueness   

This is sort of a general catchall  but I’ll just take an example from vanilla combat where you’ll take section of your fleet in and it’ll be some thing like 10 V 10 on The screen but only a few of the ships are in range of each other and there’s constant maneuvering back-and-forth.  Because all the ranges are five times shorter and ships are slower  it’s a lot easier to see the weapons firing and see what shields are getting low, and fire missiles or send in fighters to finish off.   With the extended ranges in this mod I feel like I’ve got a much less situational awareness vs vanilla.

To Be more specific in vanilla when one of my ships is disabled I generally know why it happened because they’re out of position or overextended or Ai was just dumb but at least I know what happened.  But with this mod the range is so large and all the ships flying around so fast Half the time I can barely tell which way my ship is facing and keep it on target much less why my other ships are blowing up.

Also and I will admit this is primarily  an aesthetic point but to be in effective in combat with 4000+ ranges I have to spend most of the time zoomed out all the way and I miss out on all the cool weapon effects and ship sprites and explosions etc.

I really like the idea of treating the combat as more realistic and I think there is a good opportunity here to open up interesting new gameplays  but The UI being human readable in real time in a abroad overall tactical sense IMHO a it necessity in games like this. 

If you look at the tactical turn based strategy game like Jagger alliance 2, you’ll see something like two or three small houses on the screen together maybe 100 meters max  and the range of weapons is roughly around the screen size. Yeah in the weapon stats you’ll see ranges on the sniper rifles up to 700 m but for gameplay reasons they scale everything down so they can all fit on the screen (or slightly off) and it just WORKS and still feels realistic.

My final note on opaqueness is to do with weapons hitting armor and doing hardly any damage, it would be Nice  to get a little more feedback or info  in the game why 1000 bullets for 30-60 secs from an assault chain gun or heavy auto cannon fails to penetrate or damage armor.    IMHO there should always be a small chance for rounds to hit weak or less armored spots and do damage. 

This is just my.02 cents and I’ve only played for 8 hours or so but I already ran into a run ending battle Where in vanilla I would’ve won with 20-30% losses but with the mod the super long battle ended up a mutual massacre with both 30!ship fleets with losing 80% of ships. 

[Draconas]

One comment I'd like to make on this, we need to set something for target focus (unless I've missed it so far).

If I set a target priority for my fleet, they zerg rush that target, and I'll generally lose a few ships in process because they gave their sides to other enemies, sometimes (faster ships) litterally charging through entire fleet if enemy ship phases back. Can the engagement range for target prioritization be changed?

[Digganob]

Ahhhh, sweet relief... your quotes are perfect!

That's good to hear!

Well, once I get a decent amount of free time, I'll see about making those changes I was talking about, I hope I can make something you and others find interesting or useful. *thumbs up*

Thank you for the help and patience.

[Embrain]

Anyone got tips for taking down stations with this mod? I go carrier and missile heavy and pirate stations are obliterating me

[Liral]

Patch 1.12.0 is out!  Beam stat modification constraints changed to having the initial intensity to diffract to vanilla damage at vanilla range and then stopping at a range that depends on flux efficiency. 

[Liral]

So I finally got back in town and got some time to sit down with this mod and start a new Playthrough.  it’s very interesting but I have a few things I had questions about.

1. Opaqueness   

This is sort of a general catchall  but I’ll just take an example from vanilla combat where you’ll take section of your fleet in and it’ll be some thing like 10 V 10 on The screen but only a few of the ships are in range of each other and there’s constant maneuvering back-and-forth.  Because all the ranges are five times shorter and ships are slower  it’s a lot easier to see the weapons firing and see what shields are getting low, and fire missiles or send in fighters to finish off.   With the extended ranges in this mod I feel like I’ve got a much less situational awareness vs vanilla.

I'm working on fixing the radar to help you know what's happening even while zoomed in.

To Be more specific in vanilla when one of my ships is disabled I generally know why it happened because they’re out of position or overextended or Ai was just dumb but at least I know what happened.  But with this mod the range is so large and all the ships flying around so fast Half the time I can barely tell which way my ship is facing and keep it on target much less why my other ships are blowing up.

Are you using a version of Realistic Combat that includes projectile indicators and ship momentum indicators?

Also and I will admit this is primarily  an aesthetic point but to be in effective in combat with 4000+ ranges I have to spend most of the time zoomed out all the way and I miss out on all the cool weapon effects and ship sprites and explosions etc.

I would love to display a picture-in-picture view...

I really like the idea of treating the combat as more realistic and I think there is a good opportunity here to open up interesting new gameplays  but The UI being human readable in real time in a abroad overall tactical sense IMHO a it necessity in games like this. 

See my question about indicators.

If you look at the tactical turn based strategy game like Jagger alliance 2, you’ll see something like two or three small houses on the screen together maybe 100 meters max  and the range of weapons is roughly around the screen size. Yeah in the weapon stats you’ll see ranges on the sniper rifles up to 700 m but for gameplay reasons they scale everything down so they can all fit on the screen (or slightly off) and it just WORKS and still feels realistic.

They don't so much scale down the ranges as limit them entirely with cover, but space contains nothing to limit range.

My final note on opaqueness is to do with weapons hitting armor and doing hardly any damage, it would be Nice  to get a little more feedback or info  in the game why 1000 bullets for 30-60 secs from an assault chain gun or heavy auto cannon fails to penetrate or damage armor.    IMHO there should always be a small chance for rounds to hit weak or less armored spots and do damage.

Because the damage-per-shot is too low and armor too thick for them to damage even the weaker spots.  Kinetic rounds that hit at steep angles and do not penetrate ricochet to indicate this.

This is just my.02 cents and I’ve only played for 8 hours or so but I already ran into a run ending battle Where in vanilla I would’ve won with 20-30% losses but with the mod the super long battle ended up a mutual massacre with both 30!ship fleets with losing 80% of ships.

Wow, that sounds like a crazy fight!

[Liral]

One comment I'd like to make on this, we need to set something for target focus (unless I've missed it so far).

If I set a target priority for my fleet, they zerg rush that target, and I'll generally lose a few ships in process because they gave their sides to other enemies, sometimes (faster ships) litterally charging through entire fleet if enemy ship phases back. Can the engagement range for target prioritization be changed?

That is a good question.

[Liral]

Anyone got tips for taking down stations with this mod? I go carrier and missile heavy and pirate stations are obliterating me

Energy autocannons are the best against stations because you can sit outside the weapon range of the station while using 3D targeting to get unlimited range because the station can't dodge and just unload until it fluxes out.

[Liral]

Hotfix 1.12.1 is out!  Fixed crash-to-desktop and Realistic Combat - breaking bugs introduced during development.

[Pieresqi]

Hi, I am not sure if this was asked before but changing fire rate of Thermal Pulse Cannon on Onslaught to 12sec is intended behaviour ?