[MOD] [TC/AP] X3 Rebalance Mod (XRM) - Total conversion - v1.30d (02.12.13)

[Drockt1]

Do you have improved boarding installed Drockt? I noticed that with that script running... always very well trained marines so I switched it off

I do have it installed but i have the game/AL plugin of add marines to NPC ships turned off so it SHOULD NOT be doing this.. but sounds like in ap/xtc its not turning off like it should maybe? Cause trying to take tls with 20 well trained marines is stupid.. not worth the loss of your own marines at all.

I really hate having to have a m7m to board(and space walk in x3 sucks), so if anyone knows of a way i could delete a script file on this mod to stop Improved boarding from adding marines to ships id be grateful.

EDIT gonna delete plugin.boarding.al.marines.xml and see what happens ;

[Lord Dakier]

I've always preferred faster firing, slower reloading. Its similiar to todays and yesterdays naval sense. Fire your shots in volleys rather than a mixed order. I think the idea was that when it come to fleet vs fleet combat, if you could take down 1/5 sooner than later then they're total effective fire would diminish. Ofcourse this left yourself open shortly, with ship shields however, it seems even more viable that you would fire a heavy attack barrage first.

[mr.WHO]

Hey it looks like AP improoved AI.
In pirate sector I created hostile Xenon I and like 20 my Excaliburs and 4 Skirons. I gave the "attack all enemies order" and instead suicide mission againts Xenon I, my fighters decide to do their job and intercept pirate fighters , TS and M6s. They stayed way from Xenon I, even if it was the nearest target. Because there was constant supply of pirate targets I think that my fighter would eventually start a suicide misison only if they run out of other more aproprieate targets.
Skirons performed suprisingly well avoiding Xenon I fire, sticking to the rear of it (I think it's coincident, AI can't me that smart, can it?) and shooting CIG like no tomorrow.

The only stupit AI was Xenon I AI that decided I'm the best target in whole sector - it's turret were firing at me at every possible ocasion even if there was 4 skirons in firing range.


BTW I love the new reskin of Xperimental shuttle - is it AP reskin or XRM?
400 MJ of shield so I think that i found my new anti-capship assault gunship (aka bullet-magnet so that M3B could do their job safely).


EDIT:
Why Fusion Beam Cannon range is so short range? this weapon perform best as long range (10km) weapon coz from such range ships move slow and steady in relation to each other while in short range this weapon is useless due to constant turns and fast movement between ships.

IMO:
PSP - standard anti-capship weapon - good at short and mid range.
FBC - long range artillery - powerful and long range but slow fire rate and quite weak at short-medium range agaist anything smaller than M2.

EDIT2:

What is this ship - It supose to be OTAS intelligence service, but the type name is unknown:
http://i.imgur.com/2f76p.jpg

BTW this image reminds me a mission from Freespace 2 - "the clash of Titans" where Collossus faced Sathanas:
http://i.imgur.com/r8vBa.jpg

[Nick 031287]

Paul, as i pointed out earlier you really should make capital weapons Velocity speed a fair bit faster, doesnt have to be mad speed like 2500ms, but alot faster cause when i went into a battle, the projectiles were sooooo slow


why cant you just do that?

So we have vanilla like for decade (reunion and probably older games) and XRM up to version 15 with weapons as they are and now you cheerfully ride in with "make it faster, pleeease!" request. Just like that saying...

Agreed, XRM is based on the SRM and CMOD4 and has been developed and refined over several years.....it's the best balanced combat mod out their, it's quite arrogant for some new players just to ride in with "let's rip it up and start again" lol, general rule of thumb is the bigger the bang the slower it goes, it's elegant and simple!

And as for doing Player vs AI tests is frankly ridiculous, the only way to really field test is AI vs AI and trust me all the races M2 and M2+ balance out very nicely!

im just saying that instead of having REALLY slow projectile Velocity, which looks rediculas in a battlefield and unrealistic

if you try work out a balance of Switching from slow velocity to a more realistic high velocity and make up with a Slower moving turret, i mean they are Capital ship guns there gonna be hard to move around arnt they. and to try Track fighters with it would simply be impossible without occasional luck if it catches a fighter flying in a straight direction.

and maybe if you simply cant make that change maybe its possible to put a script for anti capital guns to simply not fire on Fighters.

like a Battleship would waste enermy/ammo on trying to hit a fighter with a massive gun lol

this must make some sense?

take a look at this Battlescene i recorded last night for example, an watch how Anti capital projectiles move, its silly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohGfo86X ... ature=plcp

[Sn4kemaster]

BTW I love the new reskin of Xperimental shuttle - is it AP reskin or XRM?
400 MJ of shield so I think that i found my new anti-capship assault gunship (aka bullet-magnet so that M3B could do their job safely).



EDIT2:

What is this ship - It supose to be OTAS intelligence service, but the type name is unknown:
http://i.imgur.com/2f76p.jpg

BTW this image reminds me a mission from Freespace 2 - "the clash of Titans" where Collossus faced Sathanas:
http://i.imgur.com/r8vBa.jpg

The re-skin of the Xperimental shuttle is XRM, it was done about 4 months ago.

The OTAS ship you are looking at is the Sirokos, the model come from a guy call Puffneki http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... t+artellia and it was originally designed it to be a Split version of the Hyperion, but Paul thought it would make a excellent advanced, lighting fast, agile M6 for the OTAS corp...looks cool too....was put into the SRM about nearly a year ago-ish.

[paulwheeler]

As has been said, the weapon balance has been honed over not only XRM, SRM and CMOD4 by me, but also CMOD3 by Ulfius over a period of a few years across TC, and Reunion. So nothing drastic is going to change.

Please bare in mind that we are limited by the game engine. Capital ships will aim their super heavy weapons at M5s and there's nothing we can do (except install mars...). Also the max range of a bullet in X3 is 10km.

[Benticus]

I just have to tell the team that i've been waiting for this release since someone mentioned it in another thread a while back. I have to let you guys know that this mod is f'ing amazing. Honestly, i've never had this much fun with this game ever.... Everyone did a beast job on this mod, you guys have my thanks for getting me into the X series. Keep up the good work.

[NeverSnake]

The old Sirokos is called the Aquilo now.

im just saying that instead of having REALLY slow projectile Velocity, which looks rediculas in a battlefield and unrealistic

Not at all, you've got projectiles firing at close range at large slow moving targets whose damage doesn't depend on their velocity, why waste energy pushing them out them any faster than you need to?

Think WWII-type missiles, the V1 rocket or Panzerfaust for example, both were very slow because they were aimed at large targets that had no way to shoot them down.

Plus of course, the projectiles ARE doing circa 1000mph, they're just travelling several kilometres instead of a couple of hundred metres.

[dougeye]

So i thought i would see what my rig was capable of with XRM and the new AP improvements. I decided to engage Pauls Terran war fleet head on with a small AGI Force!!!

[ external image ]

[ external image ]

As you can see i had about 30 -40 destroyers,carriers,frigates. 80 m6's and hundreds of fighters going at it. now of course even with my rig it went down to about 10-15 fps but the point is that if i had tried this with the old tc it would have died just spawning the ships lol in fact it may even of BSOD'd my PC lol. I was in sector obviously during this battle and it was epic to say the least. The terran fleet lost but it was also a good experiment as to how big a fleet i would need to take on one of the war fleets! The only other slight tweak i have made is i doubled the sheilding of all M1/M2/M2+/M7's. The m2+'s across all races now have 15-20 2gj sheilds in my game, weapons i left the same so in terms of gameplay the only effects are prolonged battles and more expensive ship loadouts. Try taking on a large orbital weapons platform which has 20 2gj sheilds!

[Erenar]

@Mkrco

Yeah it's just the Terran plot, you still get to do OFF, ANH, Hub, HQ, Treasure Hunt etc As for the Solar system access, your ATF access is set to Earth Access when you start, you only see that rep when you come across an ATF ship (I went to ATF Forseti and comm'd a trainer there).

Just means you don't have to continually do the boring terran mission if you do quite a lot of restarts (like I have done in order to get the right balance in the configuration of the various mods I use).

[Erenar]

Oh and nice screenshot Doug lol.... Looks a little insane but something I wanna try

[Nick 031287]

The old Sirokos is called the Astraeus now.

im just saying that instead of having REALLY slow projectile Velocity, which looks rediculas in a battlefield and unrealistic

Not at all, you've got projectiles firing at close range at large slow moving targets whose damage doesn't depend on their velocity, why waste energy pushing them out them any faster than you need to?

Think WWII-type missiles, the V1 rocket or Panzerfaust for example, both were very slow because they were aimed at large targets that had no way to shoot them down.

Plus of course, the projectiles ARE doing circa 1000mph, they're just travelling several kilometres instead of a couple of hundred metres.

you do Realise that an actuall space battle would span out for 100s of Miles? maybe even a 1000. im speaking of Realism here.

Weapons now days can fire from miles away to hit there target..

in the real world if a Fighter group tries to attack a Carrier, they would fire missiles at it from about 4 or 5 miles away and same as defences on ships can fire missiles against fighters from a dozen miles away

[Erenar]

But with that argument you might as well start the game in a M2 because if you start in a M3/M6 and you had a game like i had start.... Advanced Destroyer 15km away from me the second the scripts stopped loading, it would have been game over.... super fast super powerful super range projectile up the ass within 5 seconds of game start

Slow powerful projectiles for cap ship destruction, fast pellet guns for fighters.... sounds about right tbh or there is no point in anything less than a destroyer/frigate.

[A5PECT]

you do Realise that an actuall space battle would span out for 100s of Miles? maybe even a 1000. im speaking of Realism here.

Paul just told you the game's engine limits projectiles to 10km. Realism isn't going to happen, at least not to the degree you're asking for.

Since realism is out of the question, the only thing left is fun. Turning every capital ship weapon in the game into a Gauss Cannon is the opposite of fun.

Sure, it might be entertaining for awhile, but ship balance and variety would be thrown out the window and most players would quickly tire of every capital ship fight playing out in the same exact way.

[Erenar]

Besides, capitals can equip PRGs, PACs etc so with a script like MARS or SMART it would just auto change the turret to anti-fighter weapons and nuke... at least mine works that way. Just don't starve the ship of weapons.

I equip my caps with every weapon possible... ie a thresher with 26xID/IPG, 4x IRE/PAC, 8xPPC, 18xPRG/CFA and 8xIC.... works like a charm <3 Costs a lot but hey... with factories churning out the money they do, what is money if it is not spent?

[deca.death]

you do Realise that an actuall space battle would span out for 100s of Miles? maybe even a 1000. im speaking of Realism here.

Speaking of realism as justification in argument in just about any case considering computer game is completely worthless. We are speaking about game in which capital warships fly by dazzling speeds of 50m/s and fastest missile is 10X slower then missiles existing today. Russians have super cavitation torpedo that goes fasted under water then any of X3 missile in vacuum :) Once someone said that perfect explanation for X3 physics is that that whole setting occurs under water :) sounds stupid until you start thinking about it for a little longer :D

[robalexhall]

Real space combat would be kinda boring.

Looking at dots (if you can see anything at all)... and then you die without knowing wtf hit you.

[Falcrack]

in the real world if a Fighter group tries to attack a Carrier, they would fire missiles at it from about 4 or 5 miles away and same as defences on ships can fire missiles against fighters from a dozen miles away

Actually in the real world, we would be talking about firing at carriers from distances of several hundred miles, and ships firing at fighters from ~60 miles.

[robalexhall]

WW2 was probably the first and last cool war.

No doubt that's why we return to it for inspiration.

[NeverSnake]

you do Realise that an actuall space battle would span out for 100s of Miles? maybe even a 1000. im speaking of Realism here.

If you want realism then we could make them all invisible. The most likely form of space battles using near future technology is very small near-lightspeed projectiles as they're both easy to create and impossible to detect, and also impossible to avoid unless you can spot ships really far away (specifically, far enough away that your ship's random walk covers a larger area than they have projectiles for).

But that's irrelevent, as is current technology. The closest to realism for X3TC you're going to get is to work backwards the assumptions and limitations of the game, and they include short distance battles and slow moving ships.

If you do want to make fast-moving capital weapons then I'm sure it could be done with solutions found for the various balance problems other people have brought up. Obviously now Paul has stated he doesn't want to do all the rebalancing it probably won't be in XRM, but there's no reason your mod couldn't be XRM compatible.

-------------------------------------

On another subject, I've isolated a Xenon Z so I can board it but boarding pods seem to have ridiculously high priority for the anti-missile script (MDMK2). I jumped in a Pteranodon and fired the boarding pods from the same axis and the Xenon Z decided the pods were a bigger threat to it that the 24 gauss cannons shredding it's shields.

As deca.death was saying a few pages ago, it's hard to think of any way to get boarding pods through given that they're the #1 priority and when launched every turret will stop what it's doing and focus on the pods.

I could try up close, but I don't have any hull packs installed so without a working 'attack shields' command it's going to be very difficult to keep shields below 5% (incidentally, is that an XRM change? I'm sure it used to be 10%) without also blowing the ship to Kindgom come and Cycrow's improved boarding script doesn't recognise my boarding ship as being capable of boarding, so I'll also have to launch the marines through the menu.

The Z 'only' has Dark Matter Beams and Quantum Shockwave Cannons installed so at least the refire isn't that great and if I can get close enough it only had to miss once.

Hmm... Perhaps I can call in the Ion Cannons, I guess the megalodon may have sufficient shielding.

What ship do you currently use as your boarding ship deca.death? I'm wondering if I should buy a Carrack for the attempt or just take the reliable Brigantine instead.