[MOD IDEA] Refine Carrier and Station Combat Gameplay

[MrDGY]

Carrier and station combat are the two points that bother me in X4. Carrier is a thing today because a single stealth jet bypassed enemy defense can deliver devastating damage and carrier significantly expands jets' operational range to the whole globe. In game there's nearly no good reason to put fighters in a carrier. Loose fighters can reach anywhere in the X4 Universe, even much faster and safer than in a carrier. If a damaged fighter can successfully escape and reach the carrier for repair, it can also safely fly to anywhere else for repair. Station combat is also problematic IMO. Being much less mobile than fleets, defense stations are actually meaningless if they also have considerably shorter range than fleets. It has no chance versus fleets due to the shorter range. This might be part of the reason why Egosoft is reluctant to give AI the ability to take full advantage of range superiority? Otherwise a single non-Xenon fleet will quickly push over a whole sector with little cost if not countered immediately.

To give carrier a unique role in game, I suggest focusing on and highlighting the two main concepts of carrier:
Protection/Projection: Storing fighters in a carrier should be a means to prevent the power of fighter from being wasted during transfer and ensure as much such power as possible is deployed to the target.
Necessity of Fighters: Fighters are the weapon of carrier. A carrier is meaningful only when fighters are not obsolete.

To enforce necessity of protection the idea is to create a death zone for fighters at long distances but let them be more safe at close range. This way fighters are in the biggest danger when flying to the target but once they reach target and open fire, they can operate normally. Carrier thus fill the role of shielding fighters to bypass the dead zone and deploy them directly to target at close range. One possible to way to implement such death zone is to make anti fighter turrets have long range, fast projectile but low rotation speed and relatively low damage. This way these turrets have pin point accuracy when fighters are far away but fail to track them at close range. For example beam with range longer than plasma can fill this role. If carrier relies on launch tubes to deploy fighters, then several fast and nimble light carriers which only holds a small number of fighters each is preferrable for the job, because they require shorter time to bypass death zone, deploy fighters and withdraw, meaning less time under hostile fire.

Then it is necessity of fighters. For necessity, fighters do not have to be the strongest ship category in game. It is enough that they have obvious advantage in certain scenarios. Here the idea is to identify this "certain scenario" with station combat. As mentioned before, defense stations with weapon range shorter than ships become meaningless once you give AI pilots the ability to take full advantage of range. The proposal is to buff all turrets mount on station in range and other stats, reflecting the fact that immobile stations can have larger generator, more efficient heat dissipation system, etc than ships. The goal is to make proper defense station outrange ALL ships so that it indeed is a formidable enemy to any fleets. So now defang station becomes a sensible choice for any one who do not want to taking heavy losses for station siege. And here comes the necessity of fighters and carriers. With buffed range the long range anti fighter turrets on station are even more deadlier to loose fighters and carriers are now necessary to get fighters safely to close proximity of target station. The fast light carrier idea proposed in previous paragraph still works in this scenario, but I want to introduce a new role called heavy carrier for station siege. Compared with light ones, heavy carriers are large and slow but holds much more fighters. They are more like a static anchor of the whole fleet. More importantly, give heavy carriers the ability to batch warp fighters directly to large objects, e.g. the target station, and warp back endangered fighters under emergency. In conclusion, while light carriers fire and forget about fighters, heavy carriers project fighter power from a static point with warp and prevent potential losses with emergency warp. Heavy carrier represents the ultimate of Protection/Projection and is better suited for station combat. This is because station siege is usually quite lengthy due to the shear number of turrets on stations thus you still risk heavy losses if using the fire-and-forget approach with light carriers. On the other hand, light carriers are more adaptive in fleet combat.

A picture is worth a thousand words. To help convey the mod ideas described above, I created a demo scenario which is available as a mod here https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/988. The enemy station in the demo implements the idea of dead zones for fighters and capitals. You either counter that by shear numbers or by fielding a proper carrier fleet. The demo includes three fleets for you to try out both possibilities. For the carrier fleet, tactics described in the previous paragraph can be automatically performed using the new "Station Siege" command, which will appear alongside "Coordinate Attack" if you select the carrier.

=====================
Some side notes irrelevant to the main idea proposed:
1. The demo also includes a concept called "defense slot" which only allows for a limited number of defense modules on a station. Any defense
module that exceeds slot will be greatly nerfed. Slots can be increased by claiming sector ownership and making the station a proper
defense station (i.e. removing all production modules and adding an admin module). For example, you can immediately defang the station in
the demo if you find some way to destroy the admin module in one shot. This concept is meant to add some use to sector ownership and give
you a practical reason not to ignore defense stations.
2. Proper defense stations, e.g. the one in the demo, disrupts travel drive. It is yet another trick to make it more dangerous to fleets and give
you a reason to attack it.
3. Building speed is shortened to aid your testing.

[Moonrat]

2. Proper defense stations, e.g. the one in the demo, disrupts travel drive. It is yet another trick to make it more dangerous to fleets and give
you a reason to attack it.

I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive? I have defence stations in deepspace being created by my "Encounters" mod and having them on occassion disrupt the travel drive of passing ships would be a good thing.

[euclid]

....
I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive?
....

In the past we had the Yaki disruptor missiles

Cheers Euclid

[Moonrat]

....
I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive?
....

In the past we had the Yaki disruptor missiles

Cheers Euclid

Yes, I've already introduced the possibility that some outposts and even encounter vessels might now have EMP, interceptor & disrupter missiles to counter fast-moving ships but was wondering if this new mod had found some other way to achieve the desired result. Not sure as well that even if a ship or missile turret has access to the required ordinance does the AI make appropriate use of it (and if not, how one might persuade it to)?

[MrDGY]

2. Proper defense stations, e.g. the one in the demo, disrupts travel drive. It is yet another trick to make it more dangerous to fleets and give
you a reason to attack it.

I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive? I have defence stations in deepspace being created by my "Encounters" mod and having them on occassion disrupt the travel drive of passing ships would be a good thing.

There is a script function to disable the travel drive. Following copied from libraries/common.xsd (despite the description, boost seems unaffected)

Code: Select all

      <xs:element name="disable_travel_mode">
        <xs:annotation>
          <xs:documentation>
            Aborts travel mode and boost of ship and disables usage for specified duration
          </xs:documentation>
        </xs:annotation>
        <xs:complexType>
          <xs:attributeGroup ref="action"/>
          <xs:attribute name="ship" type="ship" use="required"/>
          <xs:attribute name="duration" type="expression" use="required">
            <xs:annotation>
              <xs:documentation>
                Duration in which travel mode and boost cannot be activated. If 0s is specified, possible to immediately reactivate travel mode or boost.
              </xs:documentation>
            </xs:annotation>
          </xs:attribute>
        </xs:complexType>
      </xs:element>

You can have an MD cue to periodically check for ships in your station's radar range and disable travel drive use the above function.

[Moonrat]

Many thanks for the information - something for me to mull on I think...

[MrDGY]

IMPORTANT UPDATE

In the initial version uploaded to Nexus I messed up with the folder name which made the demo impossible to start. I have fixed the error in the new version, which is available at the same site https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/988

[moonandstar99]

I like the idea. We need more mechanics to combat than just "doomstack and steamroll."

[kasan]

....
I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive?
....

In the past we had the Yaki disruptor missiles

Cheers Euclid

I see the MD script function listed above that works. I'm not a modder, but I'm curious; could a capital sized ship with a main gun that fires a point blank "projectile" that has an AOE effect that calls that script to disable travel drives? In the old BBS door game Trade Wars 2002 there was the Interdictor Cruiser that essentially did just that. It plops into a sector, turns on a button, and disabled autopilot and automatically engaged in combat with what ever was trying to pass through the sector. The rest of that doesn't really matter, but the idea of an Interdictor seems like it'd be a pretty good fit for the X universe.

[euclid]

....
I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive?
....

In the past we had the Yaki disruptor missiles

Cheers Euclid

I see the MD script function listed above that works. I'm not a modder, but I'm curious; could a capital sized ship with a main gun that fires a point blank "projectile" that has an AOE effect that calls that script to disable travel drives? In the old BBS door game Trade Wars 2002 there was the Interdictor Cruiser that essentially did just that. It plops into a sector, turns on a button, and disabled autopilot and automatically engaged in combat with what ever was trying to pass through the sector. The rest of that doesn't really matter, but the idea of an Interdictor seems like it'd be a pretty good fit for the X universe.

It should be possible via event_weapon_fired as you can add a condition on the weapon (and bullet) used. In combination with event_object_attacked this could trigger the "AOE" to disable the TD. However, this will only work if the ship (aka object) is hit. Alternatively one could use the bullet's speed and lifetime to calculate the max distance and trigger the said AOE effect there.

Cheers Euclid

[MrDGY]

....
I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive?
....

In the past we had the Yaki disruptor missiles

Cheers Euclid

I see the MD script function listed above that works. I'm not a modder, but I'm curious; could a capital sized ship with a main gun that fires a point blank "projectile" that has an AOE effect that calls that script to disable travel drives? In the old BBS door game Trade Wars 2002 there was the Interdictor Cruiser that essentially did just that. It plops into a sector, turns on a button, and disabled autopilot and automatically engaged in combat with what ever was trying to pass through the sector. The rest of that doesn't really matter, but the idea of an Interdictor seems like it'd be a pretty good fit for the X universe.

The station part of the demo is in fact a more complete version of my another mod https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/963 which automatically assigns buffs to every station according to its configuration. In principle, without much effort (I did not try, just from the top of my head), such a system can be adapted to ships to have them periodically disable travel drive within range if certain conditions are met (e.g. the ship is equipped with some sort of interdictor weapon).

[user1679]

2. Proper defense stations, e.g. the one in the demo, disrupts travel drive. It is yet another trick to make it more dangerous to fleets and give
you a reason to attack it.

I am curious... from a modding perspective, how do you disrupt the travel drive? I have defence stations in deepspace being created by my "Encounters" mod and having them on occassion disrupt the travel drive of passing ships would be a good thing.

Another option are the interdiction probes in this mod: Sector Satellites

Interdiction Probe:
- this probe disrupts and damages engines of l and xl ships if they pass through the 8km wide range of the Interdiction Probe. (may take a minute for the effect to start after deploying the probe)
- probes only disrupt ships if the player is in the same sector (this may change in the future if requested)
- shorter range of 8km (may need more balancing)
- affected ships will turn hostile towards you, but won't open fire unless attacked (probably not enough yet)
- no other features including price updates, this is soley a piracy tool (and not too cheap, so better don't leave them behind )

The only drawback is that you have to be in sector for them to work. But maybe with permission from the author you could use those in your mod and remove the in sector requirement.