SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[PvK]

PD thoughts:

For a simple balance mod, I don't think it's necessary to remove the existing interesting choice and trade-offs between PD ships and PD on every ship.

Current suggestion:

1) Use the new settings.txt entry for Seeker Defense Bonus to give seekers a chance to get through PD. I suggest about 60%, though this will get stomped by ships training and deploying Combat Sensors stacking with the PD bonus. Maybe for higher levels, the seeker damage resistance could be increased, and/or have the PDC damage taper off at range as Tesco mentioned.

2) Increase the effect of Small ECM for fighters. The unmodded game has it at +10/+20/+30, which gets outstripped by ships with +65 Combat Sensors +20 Ship Training +20 Fleet Training. Ideally, fighter defenses would be able to keep up via research, perhaps by giving Afterburners a defense bonus, adding more ECM levels, increasing the ECM levels' effects, and/or adding other defensive components for fighters (e.g. stealth/scattering armor?). By adding stuff at the end of the tech tree, it won't make fighters dominate low-tech ships. However, for this mod, it's hard to add stuff without seeming to re-do things. Personally, to make up the +70 advantage of high-tech ships, I'd split the Troop and Fighter Versions of Small ECM (to avoid causing balance problems with troops), and then make fighter Small ECM give +20/+40/+60, and then give Afterburners +10/+20/+30 defense.

PvK

[Edit: TDM->Tesco]

[ July 29, 2003, 21:58: Message edited by: PvK ]