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Old December 5th, 2001, 01:10 AM

devnull devnull is offline
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Default Re: Devnull Mod is back!

quote:
Originally posted by dogscoff:
A few things I remember about the changes you've been discussing:

Devnull's original intent when reducing the size of supply storage was simple: He thought it illogicakl that a 10kt engine stores 500 supplies but a 20kt supply storage component only stores the same amount. I don't know how (if at all) that afects your files.

Secondly, the fighter damage: This may have been introduced to counter the patch 1.35 fighter stacking bug. (remember that one?)Obviously that no longer apllies. Playtesting may be required to rebalance fighter damage.




Hi there, long time no talk. I'm amazed at how much interest this has, to resurrect what I thought was a long-dead mod =)

Anyway, as to my intentions for these changes when put in:

1) I did not know about the supply minister bug where it would choose engines instead of supplies. I vaguely remember finding that happening in playtesting, but not knowing why or how to fix it. Glad someone has found a fix for it. As to why I made them 10kT, it was because they filled gaps in ship designs much better and were generally far more useful that way than at 20kT. I even considered making them 5kT. I also considered leaving the amount of supplies held at 10kT the same as at 20Kt (thus actually doubling the supplies stored for the weight), but didn't think that balanced as well.

Now the big issue, fighter damage. No, the reductions were not because of the 1.35 fighter-stacking bug, which I knew would be fixed soon (and it was by the time the mod came out, I think). The reductions were part of a wholesale balance modification to small weaponry. After extensive playtesting with small weaponry on troops and fighters, I came to the conclusion that fighters were just plain too powerful for their cost. A stack of 10 or so of the largest fighter hulls at old small-weapon damage could easily take out most large ships in one shot, even when the large ship had a fair amount of PD. This was not at all balanced, IMHO. So, I experimented a lot with new damage for small weapons and it seemed that cutting them all by a factor of 10 made combats between fighters and large ships reasonable. Both sides with equivalent costs had about equal chances.

Yes, this may have been skewed by the fighter-stacking bug, but I tried hard to discount those effects in my testing. It's been a long time so I don't remember exactly what I did, but I do remember being fairly satisfied with the new balance, though I also wanted to get a good amount of playtesting from others to see if I should maybe raise the damage back up somewhat.

Anyway, as of the time I tested, I was pretty happy with fighter game balance. If new patches have made fighters and small weapons useless due to the low damages, then by all means, raise them to make them worthwhile. However, my intention in lowering the damages was general game balance.
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