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

[TrixX]

Simple rules for hardware and X3TC/AP:

Case - Good cooling is essential. With a decent ambient temp cases from Corsair and Lian Li, some Antec's and some Coolermaster's are ok. When cooling is more important (say in Australia with no Air Con) Silverstone Raven RV-02E or Temjin TJ11 are essential with their far better air cooling setups.

CPU - Highest Ghz Possible with min of dual core. Quadcore allows background apps to not interfere with X3. Intel wins the CPU war at the moment, so grab an i5 2500K or better and Overclock it as high as you can (4+Ghz is more than enough).

Motherboard - I use Gigabyte mainly for quality reasons, though some like other brands. Make sure you get the feature set you need and a minimum of 4 RAM slots. I don't usually go lower than the UD3 level boards for Gigabyte and DON'T get one with onboard gfx. For gaming they just slow you down.

RAM - More is better. 8GB is more than enough, 4 is borderline with Vista or Win 7 installed. 2GB is possible with XP, but don't expect stellar performance.

GFX - AMD or nVidia is irrelevant. There are certain cards better than others. AMD 6950 = great budget card as well as the nvidia 560Ti. If you can though the 7970 is the steal of the century and makes mince meat of any game curently. Always go for the High performance range even if it's the lower card as the mid range and lower cards are NOT designed for gaming despite the PR guff about affordable gaming cards.

PSU - Get the best you can afford. I exclusively use Corsair, but Silverstone and high end Enermax PSU's are also very good. 7yr warranty on the Corsair AX series is a clincher for me though.

That's the general short version...

[jack775544]

(say in Australia with no Air Con)

That's me, and I get along fine with this terrible case i am using.

[Jack08]

~~Quote removed because quoted post was deleted~~

You ran into the common misunderstanding: Good Hardware != Expensive Hardware

You can buy good hardware without spending thousands of dollars, you just have to know what your looking for.

X3TC/AP really needs a good CPU to run properly (2ghz is just not enough), and it also needs a high (4+gb) ammount of ram to not stutter constantly due to memory unloading/loading on a 64bit system (X Seems to have issues handleing memory on 64bit due to LAA).

Trust TrixX on this one, he builds computers for a living

[nap_rz]

how much is 6950 and 7950/7970?

if I'm giving advice I'd rather tell someone to buy GTX460/560 + 120GB SSD than single 7970 + HDD

[Vhyle]

Yeah what TrixX said is pretty much what any consultant would tell you and they'd charge you for the information that TrixX gave for free.

At any rate, I did turn off AA and that other A word I always fail at pronouncing and spelling, and everything runs just fine. I turned them both back on to x2 and runs fine so I'll leave it at that.

My old comp died system by system, so I'm using my bro's old laptop, which actually is 100x better than my old comp, so that's saying something lol. Once my economic situation in the nation of Adam Land is stabilized and looks better than the China-US Trade deficit, I'll be able to get a nice computer. I already have the parts I want, just need the hard currency to be able to get em.

XRM is awesome btw, earned 181k just from killing Argon ships. Doing my part to advance the Terran cause, one crap Argon ship at a time. Flying with Terran Defense fleets help in the fire power department, however the Thor is no slouch when it comes to owning M6's and fighters, just as long as the M6 isn't focused on me that is . The fighters are a synch though.

[Vhyle]

how much is 6950 and 7950/7970?

if I'm giving advice I'd rather tell someone to buy GTX460/560 + 120GB SSD than single 7970 + HDD

Last I checked on Newegg.com, the 6950 was 150-170 somewhere around there. It will have dropped in price with the new cards that came out, so might wanna look again. The 560TI is around that price too, might be lower, but again this was back in February when I did the research, so they may have dropped even more. BTW, that price range seems pretty good, I was told you are basically stealing those cards for that price, because they are excellent cards to use.

[Mizuchi]

Trust TrixX on this one, he builds computers for a living

I don't need to trust him: I've been building them since the Pentium 166.

I stand by my original - albeit deleted seconds after posting to prevent the XRM thread turning into a hardware discussion topic - opinion.

[paulwheeler]

I would also like to chime in at this point to say up until very recently I was running AP on an ageing Core 2 Duo running at 2.7Ghz, 4GB of RAM under Vista 32bit and an NVidia GTX 560 TI.

While performance wasn't amazing, the majority of time it ran just fine, with stuttering only in the largest of battles (that blasted Terran Task Force - curse them!) and when large capitals jumped in to the sector.

OK I had to drop texture quality to medium and the AA and filtering settings weren't as high as I would like, but it was perfectly adequate.

A lot can be done to optimise Windows, freeing up the CPU and RAM for the game - this is especially useful on single or dual core systems). Have a look on the net for various tweak advice (although be careful - some of it is absolute tosh, especially relating to which services you can and cant turn off - if in doubt leave it on).

Make sure that Windows is doing as little as possible when you're running X3. On a low end system even turning off your virus checker can help (at the very least exclude the X3 folders from the scanner). Also the Aero interface is a resource hog - turn it off. Uninstall any programs you don't need - especially those annoying system monitors that come pre-installed on laptops these days (HP - I'm looking at you here. I've never seen so much bloatware before!) as they are nearly always set to constantly run in the background.

If your motherboard has on-board graphics and you're using a dedicated card - turn the on-board graphics off in the bios otherwise you're wasting RAM. Also, X3 seems especially sensitive to sound card issues (have a browse through the tech support forum).

Of course, with my new system (i7 2600k @4.5 GHz, 8GB, 64bit win 7 and the same graphics card), stuttering is non-existent, even in the largest battles.

And you can trust me - I build computers and manage a fairly large corporate network for a living, I'm two exams away from being a Microsoft Certified IT Professional, and I'm a darn good cook, so my wife says, and I play the Saxophone pretty well too! - but I'm ugly as hell, with large beer gut and my wife found my first grey hair the other day...

And when people say "you can trust me", as a rule, run a mile!

[TrixX]

Glad I didn't say trust me then

I'm only starting a business dealing in mid-high end gaming PC's built to budget and tweaked/stress tested for the customers. But don't trust me, go check your info for yourself, you'll learn a lot more in the search than actually finding what you want.

@Miz - can't see what your opinion was, but it seems to be related to price=quality, from my experience that's not true and knowing the products leads to much better results

Thanks for the compliment Vhyle, I really wish I could charge for consultancy as I would be rich, but I can't so I'll stick to building gaming rigs and games

[Sorkvild]

Good to know that AP requires a stronger setup to run in full scale. My stationary pc has c2d@3.0, Gts250 and four gigs of ram and such setup allows me to run TC on high details with 4xAA 8xAF. I forgot to mention that my XP has 3.5 years, the older the better
What can I say, the game runs smooth with little stuttering during large battles with many ship firing their lazors. I can imagine that AP will cause me to drop the graphics settings to ugly medium. How much system memory AP drains in your computers?

[swatti]

I used to run with clocked out EVGA 8800GTX, didnt run too smooth, lucky for me my friend does over-clocking records and seems to do quite well... Well enough that hes "upgrading" his rig to some fancy version of HD7970s, "since these work better in QUAD crossfire" (like in WTF!?)

Anyways, for my luck he's "old rig" running triple xfire with normal HD7970s needed a retirement home.
I was happy to supply such ^^
He dropped the over-clocking back to stable levels but i imagine they are in between insane and mind-melting, not sure about most of the parts. 16gb of ram, 2 SSDs and water-cooling, the processor wont register with W7 for some reason.

I'd imagine the retail-price for this kinda monster is between 5-9k'ish. I got it for the price of engine overhaul and some trackday-settings to his car so i i'd say we are even.
Still get a twich every time something big happens in XRM but everything else or fairly decent runs at max settings. Cant recommend this setup for many tho, i can turn off my heater and play BF3 in the winter and still have to keep my AC at max just cool my room, also the new nuclear power plant they build might come in handy.

[Brahemino]

Hi Paul!
Do you think to port any of the newest expnobody's ship to your mod?
(i'm talking about his USC m0, m1...and his m2+ with revisited bridge)

Nice work by the way.

[swatti]

Projectile sizes need to be looked at, seriously!

Just had a rather humiliating battle.

FIVE Teladi Kea PARs vs ONE Xenon LX. Result, xenon too nearly no dmg, keas toast. Intended?
Energy Bolt Chaingun bullets miss WAY too much.

There were talk about PRG having the same issue of not hitting anything, well, its there and ive mentioned about it long ago.
Weapons used as anti-fighter seem to have immense problems hitting smaller or moving targets.

If they did have 100% hit-rates, fighters would get shafted bigtime. Thus, i suggest lowering their 'in-sector' DMG to compensate. Or if possible, lower the dmg caused at maximum distance if thats possible.

In fighter dogfights ranges are rather long, so i'd imagine anyone would rather want the AI to hit their target, even for small dmg then just miss all the time. This way a large number of fighters can eventually take out a target even if flown by the AI

M6s would benefit from this too. They could actually be the "gunships" and do some dmg even at longer ranges. Now they shred anything close into pieces and are next to useless when shooting longer distances. Long in this case is max range of PRG & EBC.

I'd say 3 x 5million cr fighters should not be able to take down a 20mil+ corvette. Right now most vettes take it up the pooper bigtime since fighters use same weapons as they but the M6 cant hit them back.

[paulwheeler]

The decision to make fighter weapon hitboxes smaller was taken a long time ago back in the Combat Mod 4 days.

This was deliberately done to make dog fights last much longer.

I am not going to be reversing that decision just because one or two people have a hard time hitting their targets.

Personally, I fly a fighter mounted with PRGs and have no trouble at all in hitting targets, and the EBC has a much bigger bullet.

Make sure you have auto-aim switched on - especially if using a joystick (the "k" key).

And LXs are deliberately over-powered as are all Xenon ships.

M6s do not use the same weapons as fighters. All M6s can mount medium weapons in at least their main guns.

[swatti]

I did offer a valid alternative, one that improves M6 quite a lot too.

I dont want to sound like "im right and your wrong", i can imagine its not that easy. While your way works, it might not be the only or even the best way.

The problem we both have is AI, when AI flies my Keas they dont hit a damn thing. A PRG-armed centaur against ANY M3 will be annihilated by the M3, again AI.
Any way you put player in this, player wins of cource atm.

Lower fighter damage, increase combat time. Something we both want. Increase bullet size, increase AI hit-rate.
Player would have auto-aim on ofc so nothing changes there.

I see no drawback, i only see benefit. Sadly im not the one having to do that. Just try it, dont throw me off that quick

[Master of the Blade]

The thing about corvettes is that they're not so great against fighters, but are devastating to frigates and to a lesser extent M1s and M2s, because they evade heavy weapons but only take light damage from flak while dealing good damage to a target too large to evade. Fighters outmanoeuvre them, and their turrets aren't powerful enough to kill fighters so they lose to fighter wings. The way I see it, corvettes are weak to fighters because fighters are their hard counter.

[swatti]

A corvette SHOULD lose to a fighter-wing, indeed. But right now a corvette loses to a SINGLE fighter.

I just did a small test. Argon Eclipse against a Teladi Kea.
Been at for 10 minutes...

If they were hitting each other, one or the other would have won by now, they only hit when they fly close to each other and turrets score some hits. If the turrets were hitting all the time, one or the other would have blown up by now too.

Increase hit-rates, lower damage, balance stays same. M6 power against fighters increase. Stats for fighters and numbers of said fighters defy fighter-combat, not hit-rate of weapons like now.

[paulwheeler]

A corvette SHOULD lose to a fighter-wing, indeed. But right now a corvette loses to a SINGLE fighter.

I just did a small test. Argon Eclipse against a Teladi Kea.
Been at for 10 minutes...

That is absolutely NOT the case.

How are you spawning your "test" ships? If via the cheat script, then they wont spawn with any weapons most of the time due to the way XRM has reworked weapons - also a fighter is all about its main guns - not its turrets.

Seriously - this mod has been going for quite a while now. Don't you think if what you are saying is true, everyone would be complaining???

Yes, an M6 has a hard time against a wing of fighters, but against a lone fighter its no contest.

Anyway - it is the way it is. I'm not changing the balance now, just because one person says so. Do you have any remote idea how hugely complex balancing this game is? In nearly 800 pages, there is probably less than ten posts complaining about fighter weapons.

If you don't like the mod - then don't play it.

[Scoob]

Hi,

Overall balance I'm very happy with. One Heavy / Sentinel varient corvette can usually stand toe-to-toe with your typical 5 fighter Wing. Two such corvettes would mop the floor with them - assuming they are appropriately equipped of course. Turret weapon switching can really help here.

Three Heavy / Sentinel Corvettes work well vs. a Corvette + Fighter Wing that the Xenon like to use. The Corvettes often getting some good hits in with their heavy main guns on the slower maneuvering enemy Corvette, while the turrets can switch to lighter weapons for the fighters.

I think generally the balance is pretty much spot on here - with even larger M6 wings being a danger to M7's, while still being very effective at fending off any fighters with thier turrets.

My only problem has been with PRGs equipped turrets in Argon Corvettes constantly missing their targets. Seeing a Terran M6 with three two-gun turrets (EMPC) being a far more effective fighter killer than an Argon Centaur Sentinel with EIGHT left and eight right guns over four turrets (plus addition turrets of course) being far far less effective suggests something isn't quite right. OOS all is fine of course as bullets always hit there.

I'm not complaining, it's just an observation after many obsessive hours building my combo Heavy Centaur and Centaur Sentinel wing and seeing them largely ineffective in anti-fighter duties.

The key is that the PRG shots should be hitting their targets much of the time, but instead appear to go right through the model. Possibly, being a fast bullet, PRGs need the hit box length increasing slightly rather than the width? This used to be the key with fast bullets, especially in low-fps situations. Generally however my FPS is now a steady 60, except in the largest of fights.

Still loving XRM Paul, dont' take my observations to be in any way disrespectful of all the work you've done., it is much appreciated
Cheers,

Scoob.

[swatti]

Plenty of ships around. Cheat-package can change their ownership directly. Do so, dock to carrier, find nice empty space, change ownership into say argon and pirate.

Ive taken quite some time to see the weapons are indeed what i want to test.

I'd dare say lot of ppl are flying big capital ships, not using carriers or fighters at all.
Bombers might be the largest player owned M3 in this mod. Thats just me quessing tho, enough of that.

I do like the mod, i like it VERY much and its incredible what you guys have done. What im hoping to contribute are improvements or ideas to such. This isnt some kid yelling buffs and nerfs in a korean MMO here, i have been thinking what these do and what they effect.

Do some tests. Teladi Kea PAR or Argon Eclipse against some other M3. Worse would be a Paranid M3 with frag bombs or HEPT.
A 200MJ shielded, twin-turreted fighter should come up top easy, right?

Then put a Blastclaw against a Argon Centaur with PRGs
M6 vs M3, "easy!" right?

I dont know how hard these things are to change, if they remain as they do, i will simply be forced to try out another way to overcome the mechanics as they are not in my favor or in my honest opinion, they are broken in the way i would use em.
My simple goal is to find a fighter that in AI-hands can take on other fighter and come on top. Due to my weapons not hitting their target a dozen or so Yaki fighters can take out my 20 PAR Keas. Intended?