Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Okay.. I'll have to come out and say that I haven't gotten to a stage where the enemies have improved their firepower but is there a way to make it so that the enemy doesn't improve their cabalities with you based on your equipment rather based areas.

I mean, certain systems have power enemy ships whereas others have weak pressence regardless of you ship. Just wondering whether this is possible... I have a gut feeling it isn't at least not without serious modding...

Please dont get me wrong, I know it's a feature and all, but I am just curious.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Not sure exactly what you're asking for there...

You could set the experience required for level 2 to be veryvery high, so you get a static tech universe...

You could also place extra ships in some systems (homesystems) like the starbases get placed.
I'm not sure about how to add more random per-visit ships to certain systems, but I haven't done too much modding in that area.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Not sure if this would be practical or even work... but what if you made "high tech" and "low tech" Versions of each race - gave them the same color on the galaxy map and everything, or just assigned all the systems belonging to both to one of them; made them friends with all the same races and with each other; and made duplicates of all the components, so that the high-tech race's components were normal, but the low-tech race's components had all the "increase per level" stuff set to zero, or half that of the high-tech race, if you just want them to advance more slowly?

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

The problem with that is allied races will not support each other in combat- so if you fired on the high tech race, the low tech one couldn't care less, and vice versa.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Let me explain my point.

I worked ages to get a pretty well kitted out Destroyer Mk III. But it seems that all the baddies have roughly equivalently capable ships to mine now too. They all seem to have roughly about the same tech level of weapons too... but thats okay I guess. But...

So I played aroung with fitting the destroyer with better shields and lo behold the baddies have better shields too... damn. I thought all that extra money was supposed to buy you an advantage. I seems I'm just were I started 4 hours ago though the equipment change. And I get pirates using Cruisers even when I still using the Destroyers... (Level 10 right now, forgot the rank just know I have 45 points to use up).

I'm guessing the equipment level matches your char level since I'm getting level 10 equipment as well.

What I'm trying to say is when I spend a tons of creds I expect to have some good advantage. So far the only advantage money has given me is allowing me to buy those shield/energy/armor rechargers so I don't die too often in batles.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

What that money does do is prevent you from falling behind. So yeah, in this sense you're just playing catch up. To diable that..hmm. Can't think of a way offhand, actually..

EDIT: I should point out that as you level, the enemies improve. Period. Actually buying anything doesn't affect their power.

[ December 01, 2003, 04:24: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

One way to assure that buying equipment puts you ahead in the tech race is to raise the level offset in the shops.
Perhaps mod a few spacedocks that sell for high prices, but give you equipment that is several levels higher.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Another way would be to lower the increase of abilities per level on components. So it doesn't matter that much, if you are behind.
And at the same time increase the effects of command points. So superior tageting, evasion, and repair rates will give you an edge.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

If you still fly around with a destroyer, you'll get slaughtered in no time anyway. According to my playing experience, it's highly advisable to earn yourself enough credits for at least a cruiser before even reporting to Yorkshire III in campaign 1. Not too difficult with Pirate trading missions and a destroyer with 800+ speed. Stay out of combat using superior speed. And I found it also highly advisable to save for a battleship before moving on from campaign 1 to campaign 2. I finished campaign 1 in an Abbidon cruiser 2 MK III with little trouble. The very same cruiser already got owned in the very first mission of campaign 2. You certainly can't expect to get ahead in tech in this game, but you can even out the odds by packing more of that tech into a bigger hull. 4 weapons do cut through shields and armor faster than two, and 20/40 kt shields do take more damage than 10 kt ones before failure.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Interesting. I'd always wanted to play a small fast ship going against bigger ships beating them with skill/strategy versus firepower so thats why I stuck with the Destroyers...

Kinda like a space shooters where Interceptors can still whack Heavy Fighters due to the speed & Maneuverability advantage.

The way you put it bigger ships are the only way to go... Oh, how/where do you get other than Terran ships anyway?

Whats so good about cruisers anyways... only 2 Lasers face front and Missles & Torps get bLasted by Point Defence too easily...

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

To fix this, in a way, try the following.

Open Main_Enemies.txt. Near the top, you'll find this :

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Enemy Base Resist All Start := 0
Enemy Resist All Modifier Per Level Added Amount := 3</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Change the 3 to a 1. This gives that element of satisfaction without raping the gameplay outright. Well, it works for me anyway(1).


(1) Note that the fact that I have A) removed all mines / mine layers from the game(2) and B) added some heavy beam weapons for all and sundry may have an effect on this.

(2) A failed attempt to fix the Terran hostility issue. Kept it anyway because it improves the fighting - enemies no longer cruise along aiming their buttholes at your weapons array.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

You can stick with smaller ships; I didn't move past an Abbidon Cruiser 2 until near the end of the third campaign!

But it will be harder, especially when you go up against multiple ships. The cruisers may not have more forward weapon points, but those side points are more useful than you might think, and they have more space for defenses.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Impressive....
How did you deal with Xiati battleships in campaign 2 ? With them being able to fire at least 2 light and 3 heavy weapons in any direction, I found myself overwhelmed all too quickly in a cruiser.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

@Stone-D

What exactly does the change that you mentioned do. It's not quite clear what the is supposed to do...

Does anyone know if your can mod the ship so that the 4 weapon slots in the front fits Light Weapons rather than 2 + 2 in its current configuration...

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Please ignore my question about the light-heavy weapon mod. Someone had already answered in my other thread "Having problem with Campaign 1 first mission". Thanks anyways.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They were a pain, but if you stay tight on their rear you can stay out of the firing arcs. It not exactly easy though.

It helps that the abbidon Cruiser 2 III has only 1 or 2 hundred kT less than the Xiati battleship..

EDIT: as far as stone-d's comment, what that does is reduce the resist all gained per level. In other words, it reduces the enemies's ability to negate the special effects of things like Tachyon Cannons. By default, each level you gain improves their protection by 3%; his mod changes that to 1%.

This protection is above and beyond anything you could get.

[ December 02, 2003, 21:49: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Now that you explained it, it makes soo much sense. If the baddies gain resists per level, do you?

Speaking of stats, I went and check the CharStat.txt in the Campaign 1 folder. I was wondering what exactly does Attack do & Defense actually do... Sure it probably has to do with the combat but how.

What the difference between ECM & Jammer? One gives you defense and the other reduces the enemy’s ability to target you (-XX Targeting or something in the description). If the enemy misses when he shoots those beam weapons at me, is it due to the Defense or unable to target (Jammer).

And while we are at it, what are the difference between Standard shields and Advance Phased Shields. They’re more expensive for the same amount of shielding but don't see any discernable difference.

How can we make the beam weapons (for both enemies or mine) for accurate. Both of us miss soo bad that I simply just stick to Meson BLasters for the mean time.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

"Now that you explained it, it makes soo much sense. If the baddies gain resists per level, do you?"

No, you don't. You get other things..

"Speaking of stats, I went and check the CharStat.txt in the Campaign 1 folder. I was wondering what exactly does Attack do & Defense actually do... Sure it probably has to do with the combat but how."

Probably adds to the attack and defense values like combat sensors.

"What the difference between ECM & Jammer? One gives you defense and the other reduces the enemy’s ability to target you (-XX Targeting or something in the description). If the enemy misses when he shoots those beam weapons at me, is it due to the Defense or unable to target (Jammer)."

They do the same thing effectively. The effect ends up stacking.

"And while we are at it, what are the difference between Standard shields and Advance Phased Shields. They’re more expensive for the same amount of shielding but don't see any discernable difference."

If you're hit with a Phased Poleron Beam or other phased weapon, you will. Normal shields provide NO protection against phased weaponry.

"How can we make the beam weapons (for both enemies or mine) for accurate. Both of us miss soo bad that I simply just stick to Meson BLasters for the mean time. [/QB][/quote]"

Up the values for Combat Sensors, master computers and/or up your attack rating and/or decrease the defense values for ECM, master computers, scanner jammers and the like.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

When I interviewed Aaron ( LINK ), he said that not only does experience level affect the opponents' abilities, but that the size and power of your own ship does as well.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Anyone found a way to mod out the effect of the player's ship power on the enemies faced?

PvK

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

If "Enemy Resist All Modifier Per Level Added Amount" is 3, this means that at level 30 (where I ended the first time I played), enemies will resist 90% of all damage.

I clicked onto this modifier because, although a Sithrak throwing a Null-Space torpedo up my rear end will send most of my internal components into the red, MY Null-Space torpedos did negligible damage to them. I find this most unfair, especially as the enemies benefit from whatever normal components they use.

As a side note, I noticed that the game supports resistance modifiers against toxins/psychic attacks - but no components exist that use them. So I modded the lifesupport/crew quarters to have those capabilities and made them level based.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Are you certain about that? That can't be right... That would just make the game close to impossible the higher level you got. I can't believe Aaron would do that... I think. It just seems too drastic.

I thought by checking on the config files your max level is 22...?

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Anyone found a way to mod out the effect of the player's ship power on the enemies faced?

PvK </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The tech level of enemy components is based on the tech level of components you can get. At higher difficulty settings the enemies get an extra %size and % resistance bonuses/penalties as well.
You can change the amounts per tech level (and maximum total) of each in enemies.txt

The relative tech level of stuff for you to buy is set in each store, while you can adjust enemy level offsets in the enemyGroups file.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

That's just the Last *predefined* level. Note the preceeding line in Main_CharacterStats:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Experience Added Past Last Level := 200000
Number Of Experience Levels := 22
Experience For Level 1 := 0
Experience For Level 22 := 1000000</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Using that, for level 23 you need 1,200,000 XP. For level 30 you need 2,600,000 XP. Wasn't difficult because I had browsed the datafiles before finishing the game and thought the Sithrak Dreadnoughts weren't included in the game... so... um, I modded them in. All over the place. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

However, as I said, by level thirty the enemies were resisting 90% of all my 'special' damage... not sure about weapon damage. By 'special' I mean null-space, psychic and the amonkrie virus torps. Those weapons did next to no damage. Which sucked, even more so when you note that PD cannons only aim at one target at a time. I was getting 5+ null-space torps chucked at me on a regular basis.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Couldn't have been TOO bad, as you got to level 30 somehow... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For one thing, you can have one of each on a ship - you can't have two ECM's or two jammers. Also, I might be misreading this, but the jammer ability description (-X *target* attack rating) seems to imply that it only works against the ship you're currently targeting, though I really have no way of testing that out (well I guess I could create a super jammer with -1000 target attack rating... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Phased shields block phased polaron beams, and any weapons you mod that have the damage type "Normal Shield Piercing". Or at least they're supposed to - I'm not sure if the bug that prevented them from working was fixed yet. In any event, just like in SE4, all the shields on your ship have to be phased for the effect to work. Yeah, it's probably a waste, given the scarcity of phased weapons, but then you never know when you'll run into one of those PPB-armed pirates who effectively halves your hitpoints http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Most (if not all) ships are equipped with Combat Sensors and ECM, so increasing the effectiveness of the CS or decreasing that of the ECM would do the trick... or I think you can add attack and defense bonuses or penalties to hulls, but that would require more modifications http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ December 03, 2003, 21:32: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">After testing quite a bit, since I was using a smaller ship, putting Jammers rather than ECM saved me from getting shot from BEAM weapons the most. I believe all enemies are affected by the Jammer and not just your targeted enemy since I found that in a big fight 3 on 1. All of them missed me just as much.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So phased shield block those shield piercing damage so it doens't get to the hull directly... Never really noticed that until you mentioned it.

Anyhow, about the torps, I found that even with 1 PD, I can sometimes shoot through multiple torps if they're coming from the same ship. Though I've yet to get 5 torps a coming...

About the Targetting computer & Combat sensor thing... Even with the best equipment and (I think high... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif )high Attack Stat about 25 I still miss with beam weapons. Its as if they can't hit the broad side of the barn ( relatively speaking).

[ December 04, 2003, 00:51: Message edited by: Din Ahmed ]

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">LOL, not too bad... but I was limited to the mundane weapons + tachyon. I was in a modded Fazrah Cruiser V. 800 speed, 1200 hull (used 980, stuck to 20t shields/armour). Two AP cannons front accompanied by two Antimatter Stream (modded AP for heavy mount and major whoopass on par with incinerator) and 4 (yes, four) tachyon cannons to the rear. Lots of wobbling.

I still died alot, because I had modded the dreadnoughts into the game proper, not just as an end game boss. Those turds are scary.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Looks like the jammers are..not working consistantly. They certainly effect more than your target.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

What do you mean modded "Dreadnoughts" into the game? What class of ships are dreadnoughts anyway... End of Game Boss???? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif How did you enabled them or did you created one.

[ December 04, 2003, 12:34: Message edited by: Din Ahmed ]

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Erk. Sorry, keep forgetting some folks haven't finished the game. Its a small (as in, not very much of one) surprise for the Last mission. I would strongly suggest you finish the game once first before doing heavy modding like I did... kinda killed the ending for me, you see... not that there's much of one, but still.

If you're determined...


...then take a look at the sithrak section of the enemy purchase ships file in campaign three. Search for dreadnought. Check out those stats.

Nasty.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, but the silly things only have 200 crew, same as a Cruiser. Battleships have 400. They die too easily to toxic stuff.

Re: Does anyone know who to disable the auto-difficulty
 

Looks like an oversized cruiser with a slightly heavier tonnage... Kinda weird actually.

I persume your talking about the speed & the tonnage right?