Weapons mod » Forum Post by Director

I like the idea of extra techs to improve accuracy and jamming. The different weapon abilities can't be done right now - rate of fire is determined by damage type presently, so all lasers fire at the same rate and any modifier modifies all weapons of the same type to an equal degree.

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Weapons are broken anyways? So where is your mod?

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Thanks for the info, naselus. I'd just like to have options rather than 'research a new gun, build a new fleet'.

I think a lot could be done with computing and power techs. At some point I'll look into it, but the game is too fluid right now.

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I like the idea very much. Right now the whole weapon system/ship function system seems flawed and flat. I'd like to research different types of weapons, and also have to choose between disruptor cannons and plasma beams etc. . Laser1/2/3/4/5 in GC2 wasn't that fascinating, but its better than I research stingers, and 100 turns later, Harpoons, and thats it.

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I'm currently on turn 300 of a large-map game. I've eaten the Iridium Corp and the Yor, am fast-friends with the Iconians and have a stand-off with the Drengin.

Elerium and anti-matter are so common that I've needed nothing better than positron beams and harpoons to supplement the prototype beam and missile weapons. In fact, I haven't had to research any defense tech past titanium (and the shield and point defense techs of the same level).

I wish for qualitative techs (as I said above) to make the player sweat the quality versus quantity versus strength questions. So I'd scrap the prototype weapons and drives, and require 'resources' for the better power and information-systems modules.

Unrelated, but I also wish there was a way to control resource generation such that players could corner the market on a resource - or invest (heavily) in a starbase module to synthesize them.

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The problem of getting "different" weapons instead of "more" is that in the current combat system they all boil down to average damage/sec. The only moving part in addition to damage is the range and that is not used to its fullest as a differentiator. All other weapon modifiers ultimately just modify the average damage/sec value.

Assuming no major changes to how combat works are going to be introduced, it's still possible to get a bigger qualitative difference between the weapon types. Since the range is already there as a difference we could keep it simple and use that. One possible way to create a paper-rock-scissors effect could be:

- Make short range weapons more destructive but reduce range or accuracy or both so that you need to get really close making it the space equivalent of a knife-fight. The tactical choice for ships with short-range weapons is, of course, to close quickly.

- Make long range weapons less destructive. Missiles are generally more powerful so we should keep the damage but we could make them easier to defend against. Decreasing accuracy and making counter-measures more effective would do the trick. The tactical choice for ships with long-range weapons is to keep as much distance between them and the enemy as possible while still within range. I think this is now missing entirely and no ship actually tries to move away from the enemy. They should which would obviously also increase the usefulness of increased tactical speed.

- Tie the above two together by making medium range weapons add to the defense against long range weapons but less effective against short range weapons creating a loop where "beams beat missiles beat kinetics beat beams". The after-the-fact rationalization to this game-balance modification could be that the beam weapons are used as point-defense weapons to shoot down the missiles while the rail-gun style weapons use a similar trick to create an obstacle cloud to disperse the beams. Yes, you need to squint your eyes a little to suspend your disbelief here but the real justification here is, of course, to create that power loop between the weapon types making the more interesting and opening some strategic choices. The tactical choice for these ships is to close within range but no more if against kinetics and run the gauntlet if against missiles.

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Quoting Petri Kokko,

reply 6

The problem of getting "different" weapons instead of "more" is that in the current combat system they all boil down to average damage/sec. The only moving part in addition to damage is the range and that is not used to its fullest as a differentiator. All other weapon modifiers ultimately just modify the average damage/sec value.

I disagree.

One thing that we need to note is that actually, damage per volley is a different and equally important thing. For example, a ship which fires many low-damage shots in a short space of time will be more effective against multiple small targets than a ship which fires single huge-damage shots - even when the DPS of the single-shot weapon is much higher. Since ships only target one enemy ship per volley, very high damage-per-shot weapons can waste large amounts of DPS on small targets - hence why so many people were complaining about OP carriers decimating their missile-heavy alpha-strike vessels. Carriers were indeed somewhat OP, but an effective counter would be rapid-firing weaponry with a low damage output per hit, minimizing wasted damage.

This is important if we are to have an effective counter to carriers. In IAB, for example, I have made Kinetics fulfil a kind of flak role by giving them a very rapid refire rate with low damage. This makes them more effective against numerous small targets than, say, missiles, which have a huge range and cause a lot of damage, but are very slow to reload - such ships are great alpha-strike vessels, able to knock out large ships before they close into range, but are hopeless against numerous small enemies.

Vanilla could capitalize on this a lot more than it presently does; the differentiation between the various weapons is not very much right now.

The mechanics I'm using are missiles as long range, fairly accurate, slow weapons, Kinetics as mid-range, low accuracy, rapid firing weapons, and lasers as short range, medium recharge, high accuracy weapons. This makes for missile ships as strike cruisers, good for hammering big powerful ships, kinetic ships as flak barges, great for dealing with swarms of enemies, and lasers which are brutal close-in brawlers, pumping out highly reliable DPS against nearby enemies (if they can survive the longer-range attacks of their opponents).

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Quoting naselus,

reply 7

Since ships only target one enemy ship per volley, very high damage-per-shot weapons can waste large amounts of DPS on small targets

Uhm... And I completely forgot that.

You are, of course, right. The "only one target per round" rule has a big effect. The base game should capitalize that and create system combinations that give you qualitatively different choices.

Your solution sounds actually more interesting and as a game concept more mature. I really must try your IAB mod some time!

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The other variable currently available to us is accuracy... which I still think could use a tech line all to itself.

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Quoting Petri Kokko,

reply 8

Your solution sounds actually more interesting and as a game concept more mature. I really must try your IAB mod some time!

Yeah, it's not perfect yet, though I've spreadsheeted it and ensured that all weapons of the same tier have the same DPS/weight, adjusted for range and accuracy so it's not far off

Quoting Director,

reply 9

The other variable currently available to us is accuracy... which I still think could use a tech line all to itself.

Only if Jamming gets one too. Problem is, Jamming is one stat effecting all 3 weapon types, which really throws the DPS calculations into disarray.

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Quoting Director,

reply 9

The other variable currently available to us is accuracy... which I still think could use a tech line all to itself.

As far as components boosting accuracy go, I'd tend to suggest adding that to sensor components, or at least to the sensor technology line. It's natural that a counter to jamming is better sensors, after all, and this would also provide an actual reason to put a sensor component on something other than a dedicated surveillance or exploration vessel, and would provide an incentive independent of map size for developing the upper tiers of sensor technology.

I agree with naselus that if you're going to add an accuracy-boosting line you should probably also add a jamming-boosting line; for that, I'd suggest creating an ECM/Chaff line and renaming the existing ECM/Chaff related techs, modules, and components in the Point Defense line with something more in line with the other point defenses (which all appear to be weapons of one type or another) and how point defenses are shown operating in the battle viewer (where, if memory serves, they all appear to be some kind of weapon intercepting incoming missiles rather than simply making missiles miss despite this being more what I'd expect of a chaff or ECM system).

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I vaguely remember that in the old MoO2 or MoO3 you had PD as a mount modification option for all weapon types. Maybe a similar arrangement would work here, too? Not as mount modifications as such don't exist in GC but the PD components could be tied to the same tech i.e. as you research the different weapons you get both a standard and a PD variant of that weapon: point-defense lasers, metal storm rail guns, anti-missile missiles etc. Technically they would just be your defense booster components but it would give some justification as to what they actually are and do. Then you could have the actual ECM/Chaff/Jamming stuff as a separate tech line representing the modifiers to these defenses.

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The problem with incorporating accuracy into sensors and jamming into point defense is that it requires you to research something you may not want or need. So I'd favor separating them out.

I'd also favor not making accuracy and jamming scale at the same rate/same time, so that one might be better than the other at a given time.

My preference is still to have each defense type provide 'some' coverage in all areas, so that a shield might be strength 8 against beams but 2 or 3 against missiles and mass drivers and so on for armor and point defense.

Anyway, I'd like to give the player decisions such as, "Should I research better armor against those Drengin mass drivers, or shields against those Altarian beams? Maybe just go for better jamming and try to dodge both."

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Something I think is not clear to most of the folks in this thread is that all modifiers are additive.

This means that when you put a jamming module on a ship that adds 20% jamming and add another that add 30% jamming you get 50% jamming.

The same goes for accuracy. Weapon range, cooldown, and damage are added per damage type to ALL weapon on a ship so if you add beam range on a specific weapon not only will every instance of that weapon add additional range it will add it to all beam weapons on the ship not just the mount it is included in. This is pretty much the case for every last ship component and stat modifier.

Therefore you cannot simply add accuracy to sensors as every instance of a sensor added would compound the problem, all ship modifier stats are currently attached to "one per ship" modules with limited availability to prevent bonus stacking to ludicrous degree's.

Anyone modding anything with an effect on ship stats MUST keep this in mind at all times.

So while some of us like Naselus are trying to mod ship modules to improve the game please be aware it is a finicky business that does not follow the common sense logic of "add accuracy to a weapon it makes that specific weapon more accurate" etc.

I would in fact implore the dev's to change the logic for ship modules, simply add a set of GLOBAL stat modifiers which do what the current modifiers do and revert the current modifiers to effect only the item they are set on. Not entirely simple I understand but it would be a HUGE benefit to the modding community and would serve the game itself for quite some time to come.

As to the OP's points, they are valid and it would be nice to give players a distinct choice between options which produce some profound differences. I personally despise the "oh I have particle beams now screw lasers" approach of the game currently. The TC mod I am currently working on tries to address this from multiple angles but t is requiring an almost complete overhaul of the combat system. The result so far is much more robust than the original system, though still sadly limited by the currently oversimplified combat system.

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Quoting Deathwynd,

reply 14

Something I think is not clear to most of the folks in this thread is that all modifiers are additive.

This means that when you put a jamming module on a ship that adds 20% jamming and add another that add 30% jamming you get 50% jamming.

While this should be kept in mind when making alterations (particularly the fact that range, rate of fire and accuracy are weapon-type specific rather than individual-weapon specific, and jamming is ship-wide rather than based on any given weapon), it's not necessarily a problem to put a stacking modifier on sensors, as long as it is countered exactly by a stacking jamming modifier.

For example, if T1 sensors each add 5% accuracy, and T1 thrusters each add 5% jamming, then they can counter one another. The main issue becomes the AI's inability to choose a counter effectively, rather than the bonuses themselves - though it is a very important issue in it's own right.

It's also important to remember that significant adjustment to Accuracy is much more powerful for Kinetics than other weapons, since Kinetics have the lowest accuracy (likewise, improving laser RoF is more useful than kinetic RoF, since lasers are very accurate, and increasing missile range by 10% is hugely beneficial compared to increasing Kinetic range); benefits are NOT equal in this regard. The rough DPS balance between the weapons can be wildly distorted through this, which may lead to an 'ultimate' combination.

Remember, simply finding a weapon's DPS is already a matter of (Damage*accuracy)/rate of fire; you must also multiply that by range in order to determine how long the weapon is firing for, and the actual score that must balance properly is (DPS*range)/mass - I have a large, detailed spreadsheet set up to allow me to calculate the correct balance. Altering accuracy universally by just 10% throws this into disarray (Kinetics become much more powerful pound-for-pound than lasers).

This is why Jamming must also be present if there's a universal targeting improvement; jamming will be much MORE effective against Kinetics than Lasers because losing 10% accuracy has much less comparative impact on high-accuracy lasers then on low-accuracy kinetics.

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Quoting Director,

reply 13

The problem with incorporating accuracy into sensors and jamming into point defense is that it requires you to research something you may not want or need. So I'd favor separating them out.

I wasn't suggesting tying jamming into point defense. I was suggesting renaming the chaff and ECM technologies, components, and modules in the point defense line to something else and then using chaff and countermeasures and the related component/technology/module names in a jamming line. I don't see any particularly good reason to create an entirely new line for boosting accuracy, however; sensor technology is a natural place for that.

As far as being required to research something you may not want or need, so what? That's the nature of technology in video games; I don't "want" basic lasers from the initial weapons tech when I'm trying to develop missiles for the ships I intend to build, but I get them anyways because they're along the way and I'm not going to get my missiles without researching lasers anyways. Besides which, if the existing sensor line of techs merely had an extra component attached to each tech, then I see no reason at all to complain about being "forced" to get the regular sensors when you pick up the more advanced ones. It's not like I had to research additional useless technologies to get these.

Quoting Deathwynd,

reply 14

Something I think is not clear to most of the folks in this thread is that all modifiers are additive.

This means that when you put a jamming module on a ship that adds 20% jamming and add another that add 30% jamming you get 50% jamming.

Not entirely. You can use <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>, and while the bonuses granted by the component will be additive with one another, they will be multiplicative with some base value; +300% jamming as a multiplicative bonus isn't so powerful if the base jamming level is only 5% or 10% or something like that, though you'll still need something to actually give you that base jamming level (yes, the +300% jamming in the example would be problematic with the existing faction trait that gives jamming, but remember, this is just an example, not a suggestion for actually-attainable values).

There's also the option of creating components that have both flat and multiplicative bonuses to the same statistic to create a (rather poorly implemented) stacking penalty; to take your example of components granting 20% and 30% jamming, I could add a 10% penalty to jamming on each and get them to add up to 40% jamming instead of 50% (granted, doing it that way would result in 18% and 27% jamming as the real value of each component; you could go for a -17% multiplier and use 24% and 36% for the component values to get ~20% and ~30% as the real component value while getting ~40% as the combined total). I don't particularly care for the stacking penalty option as it's going to be rather unclear what the real component effects are, especially if seemingly strange numbers (such as a -17% multiplier with 24% and 36% flat bonuses) are chosen, but it's one possible way of handling stacking issues. And if you really want a "one component of this type" (rather than the "one of this specific component" granted by <OnePerShip>True</OnePerShip>), you could have all components of this type provide twice the flat bonus you want them to give while also carrying a -50% multiplicative bonus of the same effect type; two components add up to -100%, and as far as I know there aren't any multiplicative jamming bonuses in the base game to counteract tha, though this might have some complications for the fleet-wide jamming modules (on the other hand, it's not like it's terribly unrealistic that a ship already producing noise worth 30% jamming wouldn't get the same benefit out of an EW ship spewing out noise worth 25% jamming that a ship not creating its own jamming coverage would get).

An alternative to the above stacking penalty would be to make the components inconvenient to stack due to size; if each jamming component requires 30 capacity and only provides 20% and 30% jamming, stacking both is not going to be particularly appealing until you have a significant hull capacity bonus (and even then it may not be appealing for any but the larger hulls, for which you could compensate by giving larger hulls a multiplicative jamming penalty; spending 60 capacity to get 0.75*(0.3 + 0.2) = 37.5% jamming might not be the best of ideas). Another alternative is to design the components to be stacked; a size-3 component that gives 10% jamming is neither particularly strong nor particularly weak, and if there are 4 of these with unique names you end up with something where the individual components are not terribly weak and so may be worthwhile individually, are practical to stack even on somewhat small ships, and don't stack up to a ridiculously large jamming bonus (assuming you remembered to put <OnePerShip>True</OnePerShip> on each; even so, it'd probably be desirable for there to be a component or set of components to boost accuracy to counter this, as while 40% jamming might not be huge it's not small either).

Quoting Deathwynd,

reply 14

Therefore you cannot simply add accuracy to sensors as every instance of a sensor added would compound the problem, all ship modifier stats are currently attached to "one per ship" modules with limited availability to prevent bonus stacking to ludicrous degree's.

Or you could be a little less simple and do something like this:

<ShipComponent>
    <InternalName>NavigationalSensors</InternalName>
    <DisplayName>NavigationalSensors_Name</DisplayName>
    <Description>NavigationalSensors_Dec</Description>
    <ArtDefine>Sensor_01</ArtDefine>
    <Category>Modules</Category>
    <Type>Sensor</Type>
    <PlacementType>Sensor</PlacementType>
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>Value</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>0.25</Value>
    </Stats>
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>SensorRangeManufacturingCost</EffectType>
      <Scope>Queue</Scope>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>13</Value>
    </Stats>
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>SensorRangeMass</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>8</Value>
    </Stats>
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>SensorRange</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>1</Value>
    </Stats>
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>Accuracy</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>0.20</Value>
    </Stats>
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>Accuracy</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
      <Value>-.1</Value>
    </Stats>
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>Maintenance</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>0.25</Value>
    </Stats>
    <Prerequ>
      <Techs>
        <Option>TechTree</Option>
      </Techs>
    </Prerequ>
</ShipComponent>

The accuracy of the weapons will be ([base accuracy] + sum[flat-typed bonuses])*(1 + sum[multiplier-typed bonuses]), if I'm not mistaken. The above version of a Navigational Sensor would therefore leave a vessel with the following (beam/missile/gun) accuracy for the number of navigational sensor components shown at left.

108%, 99%, 90%
112%, 104%, 96%
112%, 105%, 98%
108%, 102%, 96%
100%, 95%, 90%
88%, 84%, 80%
72%, 69%, 66%
52%, 50%, 48%
28%, 27%, 26%
0%, 0%, 0%

If you're at all smart about how you implement things, even putting theoretically-overpowering bonuses on components which are not one-per-ship is not going to be problematic. Lasers, missiles, and guns have base accuracies of 100%, 90%, and 80%; I'd be more inclined to say that the above component with its 20% flat accuracy bonus is too weak than too strong, particularly for the more accurate weapons.

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Yes apparently I'm not at all smart for not wanting to create a system whereby the user needs a spreadsheet and an algorithm to figure out what components to use on their ships.

Next time you care to insult someone try thinking first.

Just because you can do math doesn't begin to make your math worth using.

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So anyway... I modded the components so that the first 2 levels of defense techs give some benefit to all categories. For example, the bottom-level shield tech is 2 armor, 8 shield, 2 point defense and the next level up is 2 armor, 12 shield and 2 point defense. Higher levels are not modded.

It's a subtle change but it does give some flexibility early in the game... I like it.

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