Forcing hit rates

[Emperor's Child]

I've been tinkering around recently on a Battle Fleet Gothic (ie: Warhammer 40k background) mod and am trying to figure out a way to get a direct fire weapon system to hit its target 50% of the time NO MATTER the range in order to get the "Lance" weapons to work similiar to how they do in the miniature game. I want to do this in such a way that I can put other weapons onto the ship that are unaffected by the lance's alternate hit rate so that the other weapons are subject to the normal range to-hit degradation.

Has anybody done something like this?

[douglas]

Not possible. Without changing the universal range penalty to 0, the only to-hit chances that can be forced are the extremes of 1% and 99%. 100% can also be done with the Talisman ability, but that affects everything on the ship.

[Wolfman77]

Even with changing the universal range penalty though, wouldn't the ECM and combat sensors still change the % up or down?

[Alneyan]

The closest effect you can get is by creating a weapon dealing damage on even numbers only (or odd numbers), and 1 damage on the other numbers. For example: 100 on range 1, 1 on range 2, 100 on range 3... The reasoning is to have a 50% chance of dealing real damage, with the weapon being virtually useless the rest of the time.

It will not work if the strategical AI is cunning enough to use the "good" damage only; it will also not work in tactical battles, as the average player would try to attack the enemy at the "correct" ranges.

Of course, regular penalties and bonuses will still apply to the actual odds of hitting the target, but you can work around that by giving this weapon (and this weapon only) a silly accuracy modifier, around +200% or so. The weapon will still miss 1% of the time, but it shouldn't be too bad.

[Wolfman77]

Or just cut the damage done in half for all ranges, I know it isn't the same thing as what you are trying to do but in the end it will average out to 50% that way.

[Emperor's Child]

Wolfie wrote: "Even with changing the universal range penalty though, wouldn't the ECM and combat sensors still change the % up or down? "


Yes, but in this mod I'd been planning do do away with them in order to keep the play close to the original Battlefleet Gothic's game flavor.

[Wolfman77]

Then changing the range penalty, like douglas mentioned, is probably you best way. You can mod your weapons with any to hit modifiers you want. Like -50% for the "lance" weapons. Just remember small ships and fighters have to hit moddifiers built in, as do weapon platform and base mounts, if you are going to use them. I've never seen Battle Fleet Gothic though, and I'm not sure how much you are going to mod. Also ship and fleet experience will increase hit %, the maximums can be changed though.

[Emperor's Child]

I think you guys have helped me solve this. While I can't actually make the weapons hit at a 50% rate, I can change the damage tables to make them give damage at that rate.

As long as I keep the base percentage to hit some value other than the minimum all the way out to the max weapon range, I can scale the one weapon's damage to have the same effect. In single ship or small unit engagements it may be less of a constant depending if you land a few hits at long range quickly, but in larger battles and over the long haul the result should be close.

My max weapon range is 12, and my intended value of to-hit in that range for normal weapons is 75% at point blank to 25% at max range.

I'll change the system settings to the following:
Combat Base To Hit Value := 75
Combat To Hit Modifier Per Square Distance := 4

This will give me the following percentage to hit:
Range............1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9 ..10.11.12
Base %to hit 71 67 63 59 55 51 47 43 39 35 31 27

In order to correct a weapon to give an average damage as if it were hitting 50% of the time, the damage would need to be changed by the following percentage:

Range.................1...2...3...4...5...6....7.. ..8.....9....10...11...12
Damage % mod 70 75 79 85 91 98 106 116 128 143 161 185

Thanks guys, I think this will get me close enough to make it work.