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Author Topic: [0.95a] Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.9.5-rc4(4/12/21)  (Read 1115550 times)

MShadowy

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #855 on: January 09, 2016, 05:28:37 PM »

I actually finally got around to fixing this; I'd put it off because other implementations of scripted animation which I'd seen were in some way quite complicated which made figuring out how to implement them in the vectored thruster script seem quite daunting.

But the solution I ended up needing was actually incredibly simple, which makes me feel kinda like a dummy.

Still, I hope you enjoy your ill-gottenlegitimately acquired new scan frigate.
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Taverius

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #856 on: January 09, 2016, 06:37:44 PM »

Still, I hope you enjoy your ill-gottenlegitimately acquired new scan frigate.
"Ain't never been used and only dropped once."
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MShadowy

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.4
« Reply #857 on: January 10, 2016, 08:07:38 PM »

Alright, this should finish off the last lingering bug (the vectored thrusters hanging around outside of combat) as well as add some nifty new sounds and deal with some other tweaks and balance changes:

Shadowyards 0.6.0.4 Changelog:

  • SRA Phase anchors have gotten an experimental semi-buff(?):
    • Flux cost of SRA phase anchors set to 0.02 on use and 0.09 f/s gain (from 0.01, 0.07 on the Shamash, 0.02, 0.08 on the Scylla)
    • Phase anchors flat speed boost increased (to +90, from 50)
  • Some balance changes to the Overdrive system; weapons flux cost while system is active is now reduced by 20%
  • Finally renamed Lumen.  This tiny planet is now known as to Lambence so as to reduce confusion with the Lumen added in vanilla
  • Wavepulse Cannon Firing Sound improved somewhat
  • Finally fixed the problem with the Vectored thrusters showing up outside of combat/the refit screen
  • Added custom engine and flux venting sounds to SRA craft

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Taverius

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #858 on: January 11, 2016, 08:12:03 AM »

Custom sounds, neat!
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grinningsphinx

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #859 on: January 11, 2016, 10:30:47 AM »

Thank you, great work!

Hows about some specialized skill-tied gear ala Blackrock now?
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Ceebees

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #860 on: January 11, 2016, 01:44:57 PM »

You mean the BRDY-exclusive hullmods? There already is the fighter 'ejection seat' mod, but i'm trying to think of what else would be useful. CEPC reloader, sensor drone effect as a hullmod, projectile accelerator that makes your bullets go faster maybe?
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Taverius

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #861 on: January 11, 2016, 02:09:57 PM »

Well, if you want to go the BRDY hull mod way, you'd make one hull mod that enhances the faction's nice - BRDY has strong burst, hence the Strike mod that increases damage at the cost of range - and then the rest would be faction-specific takes on vanilla hullmods; after all the BRDY engine mod is an augmented engine with different downsides, and the assault fitting is a cocktail made of one part resistant flux conduits, one part automated repair unit, and one part reinforced bulkheads.

I'm not sure what would fit for SHI - that's for MS to decide really - but projectile (and beam) speed seems fitting and its certainly useful. I always end up putting expanded magazines on CEPC ships, so maybe a combo magazines/advanced turret gyros/armored weapon mounts? Say, +50% ammo, +20% turret turn, +15% turret health, +5% armor at twice the OP of expanded mags?
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Wyvern

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #862 on: January 11, 2016, 03:31:58 PM »

I wouldn't suggest adding skill-unlocked hull mods, actually.  Mostly for mechanical reasons - it'd make SHI incompatible with other mods that modify skills, including BRDY.

Now, SHI-only hull mods that don't have a skill unlock requirement could be interesting - but the question is, what and why?  The combo mod Taverius suggests seems like a poor idea, mostly because it'd pretty much always be a good choice to install.  Ideally for something like this you'd want a hull mod where it's a definite decision, like the BRDY strike suite.

My first thought for such a mod was a device that increases flux capacity at the cost of shield efficiency, on the theory that a larger flux pool would make Harmonic Shield Conduits more effective.

...Which lead to my discovery that HSC does not work at all the way I thought it did.  It says "increases passive flux dissipation on a curve approaching 80/60/50/40 percent of the ship's current hard flux", which I'd interpreted to mean that if a frigate had 1000 hard flux, it'd get something approaching 80% of 1000, or 800 extra dissipation.  (Which would be absurd.  I'm glad it doesn't work that way.)
Edit: if it did just scale off of hard flux, something like 3% of hard flux as dissipation might give reasonable numbers?

However, looking through the files, I can't figure out quite how it actually does work.  The HSC hull mod on a frigate, for example, applies a percentage adjustment to flux dissipation rate that varies from -40% (at zero hard flux) to -11.8% (at 100% hard flux).  Which means a couple of things: one, that there has to be some sort of counterbalance elsewhere in the code so that -40% doesn't result in the ship having lower dissipation than it's supposed to.  And two, that HSC's effect scales up with additional vents, not additional capacitors.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2016, 04:45:49 PM by Wyvern »
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Taverius

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #863 on: January 11, 2016, 04:04:35 PM »

BRDY doesn't modify the skills - its SS+ that integrates them into the skill tree. I'm assuming everyone is intending the same for these putative SHI hullmods, assuming MS can even find the time.
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Ceebees

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #864 on: January 11, 2016, 09:56:50 PM »

The graphical changes to the Clade and Belet-Seri are indeed very nice - and, feeling like a fool lasts for a day, but an elegant solution lasts, Schrodinger-like, until the next time someone looks at your code.

Ah, however, as i do have the ISS Completely Legitimate for testing purposes, i noticed that no matter what weapons i put on a Belet, the main fitting screen always reports weapon flux/sec as zero. The weapon groups panel's values remain accurate, the Clade is unaffected, and the weapons very definitely generate flux when i take it out for a spin.
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MShadowy

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #865 on: January 12, 2016, 07:46:08 AM »

...

...Which lead to my discovery that HSC does not work at all the way I thought it did.  It says "increases passive flux dissipation on a curve approaching 80/60/50/40 percent of the ship's current hard flux", which I'd interpreted to mean that if a frigate had 1000 hard flux, it'd get something approaching 80% of 1000, or 800 extra dissipation.  (Which would be absurd.  I'm glad it doesn't work that way.)
Edit: if it did just scale off of hard flux, something like 3% of hard flux as dissipation might give reasonable numbers?

However, looking through the files, I can't figure out quite how it actually does work.  The HSC hull mod on a frigate, for example, applies a percentage adjustment to flux dissipation rate that varies from -40% (at zero hard flux) to -11.8% (at 100% hard flux).  Which means a couple of things: one, that there has to be some sort of counterbalance elsewhere in the code so that -40% doesn't result in the ship having lower dissipation than it's supposed to.  And two, that HSC's effect scales up with additional vents, not additional capacitors.

The awkward wording around the Harmonic Flux Conduits description is kind of a problem yeah; it largely emerged from the combination of struggling how describe what it does (or at least what I thought it does), not really knowing for sure what it does, and space limits.  That being said, a part of the erroneous description is definitely related to how much worse my coding skills were at the time and a resulting inability to figure out what the code was actually doing.  I'll change the reading of the hull mod description so it makes more sense.

As for HFC actually being secretly a malus, it probably shouldn't be unless every other modifyPercent call is as well; for example, the Advanced Turret Gyros implementation reads:
Code
public class AdvancedTurretGyros extends BaseHullMod {

public static final float TURRET_SPEED_BONUS = 50f;

public void applyEffectsBeforeShipCreation(HullSize hullSize, MutableShipStatsAPI stats, String id) {
stats.getWeaponTurnRateBonus().modifyPercent(id, TURRET_SPEED_BONUS);
stats.getBeamWeaponTurnRateBonus().modifyPercent(id, TURRET_SPEED_BONUS);
}

public String getDescriptionParam(int index, HullSize hullSize) {
if (index == 0) return "" + (int) TURRET_SPEED_BONUS;
return null;
}


}

While I haven't rummaged through it to confirm it myself, I'm pretty sure that modifyPercent simply adds the modifier onto the base rate which is probably considered to be 100%; in such a case, that actual curve would go from 100% at 0 hard flux to 128.2% at 100% hard flux for a frigate.  If we look at the Enlil, with a base vent rate of 160 before vents and skills are added, this results in a vent rate of 204.8 at 100% hard flux.  I'm waffling over whether the effect might be a bit weaker than intended, but it's important to keep in mind that the hullmod also considers additional flux vents, as you pointed out; with a default 10 vents, the rate is 260 at 0% hf, and 332.8 at 100% hf; it's also curved so you see the majority of the effect by (iirc) somewhere around 60%-70% hard flux.

For now, I'm going to call it fine.

As for SRA specific hullmods, it's been on the backburner for a while, but I still don't feel like I have any really compelling ideas for them.

On the matter of the Belet, the problem definitely isn't related to the vectored thrusters or the enhanced sensors of the craft, since the remodeled Elysium has had that same problem since well before either the thrusters or sensors packages were a thing.  I had no idea what could be causing it, but I may be on to something now.  Aside from both using the same sensor range effecting hullmod, their only common trait is that their ship system is a weapon type system which shoots projectiles rather than missiles.  This might be a bug with vanilla or my implementation of the systems, so uh, I guess I'll have to work on that.
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Wyvern

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #866 on: January 12, 2016, 12:45:34 PM »

On the matter of the Belet, the problem definitely isn't related to the vectored thrusters or the enhanced sensors of the craft, since the remodeled Elysium has had that same problem since well before either the thrusters or sensors packages were a thing.  I had no idea what could be causing it, but I may be on to something now.  Aside from both using the same sensor range effecting hullmod, their only common trait is that their ship system is a weapon type system which shoots projectiles rather than missiles.  This might be a bug with vanilla or my implementation of the systems, so uh, I guess I'll have to work on that.
Check any decorative weapons?  The last time I remember seeing a bug like that, it turned out that a decorative weapon was set to exist in one of the firing groups.


While I haven't rummaged through it to confirm it myself, I'm pretty sure that modifyPercent simply adds the modifier onto the base rate which is probably considered to be 100%; in such a case, that actual curve would go from 100% at 0 hard flux to 128.2% at 100% hard flux for a frigate.  If we look at the Enlil, with a base vent rate of 160 before vents and skills are added, this results in a vent rate of 204.8 at 100% hard flux.  I'm waffling over whether the effect might be a bit weaker than intended, but it's important to keep in mind that the hullmod also considers additional flux vents, as you pointed out; with a default 10 vents, the rate is 260 at 0% hf, and 332.8 at 100% hf; it's also curved so you see the majority of the effect by (iirc) somewhere around 60%-70% hard flux.
Oh, hm.  Yeah, I misread the math.  Let me recalculate...  And run some tests...  More confusion!

Okay, some interesting things to note: this doesn't scale with flux vents; apparently they're added in after percentage modifiers.  It does scale with flux capacitors (albeit relatively poorly); apparently fluxTracker.getMaxFlux() returns the ship's base flux pool, which means that for, for example, an Inanna with 10 capacitors, you can get ratio going into getFluxCurve of up to about 1.6, which spits out a ~70% boost to (base) dissipation, which means an extra 218 flux/s if you're somehow running at exactly 100% hard flux.

Suggested re-write of description, based on actual mechanics:
"Increases flux dissipation by up to approximately 66/50/40/33% of base dissipation.  Higher hard flux levels result in more flux dissipation, with significant diminishing returns as flux levels approach the maximum."
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Ceebees

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #867 on: January 12, 2016, 03:56:42 PM »

Brace for :words:!

I've been thinking about weapon balance due to 0.7.x being generally more difficult, which makes loadout choices matter more - and specifically, i was thinking about the Medium cEPC, which i used to like, but these days just can't find a place in my fleet for, no matter how snazzy the color scheme. (Preemptively, i checked and SS+ doesn't modify any of the guns i'm about to ramble about)

The vanilla weapons that meet the same role - good range, sustained hard flux pressure, medium energy slot and energy damage type - are the pulse laser and heavy blaster. The mCEPC costs more than either of those (14 OP vs 10 and 12), and is pretty much worse across the board than both. It's main advantage is range; it has 800su range to both vanilla weapons' 600, but it has a minimum spread value and recoil against the other weapons' perfect accuracy, and the popper means that 800 is a hard limit, not the normal soft boundary. Apart from that, it can crack armor better than the PL, or has better flux efficiency than the HB, but you're paying a serious premium in OP for these benefits.

Just so i could make a more informed suggestion than 'gun make sad buff pls', i looked at the IR Pulse Laser versus the basic small CEPC, which i think worked well and is a decision i do find interesting and comparable - those two have the same OP, similar flux profiles, an accuracy/range tradeoff like their bigger cousins, but here the CEPC has better peak but lower sustained damage than the IRPL.

I'm sure there's a bunch of clever things that could be done to the mcepc - a Shard-style damage rider on some condition, an inverse pre-0.7.x-energy-weapon damage bonus at low flux levels, etc. However, i don't know enough to do any of those (yet?), so instead i just mucked around in the weapondata.csv until i had something that seemed cool.

I am by no means an expert at balance, but, for your consideration:
Spoiler
Code
Medium CEPC+,ms_mcepc+,2,2250,800,,210,,8,15,12,20,0.87,2,231,ENERGY,,0,0.975,2,0.25,3,6,2,10,,800,,,30,,5205
Medium rCEPC,ms_mcepc6,2,2250,800,,222,,8,15,12,18,0.70,6,265,ENERGY,,0,1.0,2,0.232,3,6,2,10,,800,,,30,,5205
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The first idea is just a general buff to match the IRPL/CEPC paradigm. Reduced OP cost, slightly better peak damage than the PL, significantly worse sustained, at the same flux/shot as before. 5% more damage per hit and 10% faster RoF to bring the DPS up without making it way better against armor. Might even be worth bringing down to 11 OP, as it still isn't really strictly better than the PL.

The second is my flailing attempt to do something other than just scaling up the CEPC/IRPL. Basically, it acts a bit more like a midpoint between the HB and PL, but one that rewards (requires) you fading back or holding fire to regenerate ammo between salvos. The 'sustained' value is kind of irrelevant because if you run dry the enemy has a good 6-7 seconds to vent, run, whatever.
And honestly, the idea of someone building a turret around a big huge space six-shooter amused me.

Or i guess you could just slash the OP to 10-11 and call it a day, but honestly i didn't think of that until i was elbow-deep in spreadsheets and multiboxed instances of the game  :P

That got kind of boring, so here's a bunch of pictures of what i mean.
Spoiler
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Spoiler
[close]
« Last Edit: January 12, 2016, 04:00:59 PM by Ceebees »
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Wyvern

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #868 on: January 12, 2016, 04:20:28 PM »

Odd... I tend to use the medium CEPC as my medium-energy-weapon-of-choice.*  It's significantly better at breaking armor than a pulse laser, and that extra 200 range is a big deal, especially if you're trying to find outfittings that won't lead to the AI deciding it needs to commit suicide by closing to knife range, or if you're trying to mix energy and ballistic armaments.  I'll admit that the OP cost is a bit of a premium, but I find it worthwhile.

I mean, I wouldn't complain if they got buffed; a small increase in firing rate, for example, would push them over the pulse laser's dps.  But I don't think it's needed.

_____
* When I'm not using heavy blasters.  But there are a lot of ships that can't support those, especially if you're going to give the hull to the AI - it's not good at managing flux-intensive weaponry, and the medium CEPC is the clear second best option.
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MShadowy

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Re: (0.7.1a) Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.6.0.3
« Reply #869 on: January 12, 2016, 06:59:22 PM »

Well, I'm certainly not adverse to fiddling with the balance... and I'll admit I was thinking of increasing the MCEP's refiring rate already.  The gamefeel for the smaller ones seems good to me, but the MCEPC's wait sometimes gets a bit interminable.

I'll screw around with stuff a bit more, I guess.  Also probably going to make a kind of energy machine gun type thing to fill the 'cheap PD slot' the light CEPC has vacated, and one of my planned weapons will be changing role since the medium has ended up moving into the Heavy Blaster position instead.
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