SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[Ed Kolis]

An idea to balance offense vs. defense (and PD vs. ftr/skr/sat to boot!)

Cut ALL entries in the data files that affect to-hit chances in half.

This means:
1. Reduce base to hit chance at point blank (in settings.txt) from 100 to 50
2. Reduce to hit chance reduction per square distance from 10 to 5 (so weapons over range 4 are still useful )
3. Reduce offense and defense bonuses/penalties of hulls by half
4. Reduce to-hit bonuses of base mounts by half
5. Reduce to-hit bonuses of Combat Sensors to 12/22/32
6. Reduce defense bonuses of ECM to 10/20/30
7. Reduce defense bonuses of Scattering/Stealth Armor to 3/5/8
8. Reduce to-hit bonuses of certain weapons (WMG, PDC, HEM, etc.) by half\
edit: 9. Reduce offense and defense bonuses/penalties for planets and seekers in Settings.txt (yes, planets DO get an offense bonus, that's why your WP's always seem to hit! )
edit: well, maybe not the defense penalty for planets
And anything else I may have forgotten - essentially, do a global search for "Combat To Hit" in the data files and edit those lines

These changes essentially have the effect of reducing the chance for any attack to hit by one-half (not 50%, but one-half - a 70% to hit becomes 35%, not 20%). This way, ships survive longer in combat and the weapons that go over 99% and get cut off (PDC? WMG? ) get toned down to something in the 50%-99% range.

Of course, this would make the Talisman even MORE powerful but I'm assuming we're going to balance it in some way anyway

[ July 28, 2003, 00:44: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

[Fyron]

That is an interesting pic in your sig there Ed.

[Ed Kolis]

Yeah, I figure, I come up with all these cool ideas for mods but I never get around to implementing them, so I might as well make something of it

[J.]

Phew, managed to read the pages I missed since Last wednesday... A whole lot of them

I've another suggestion for the PPB: make it do half damage against shields? I don't know how it works but I'd guess it wouldn't cut it's damage in half when skipping normal shields would it? I for one want it as a sort of a niche weapon since it's special. Making it do half damage against shields would mean it would still be very very deadly against ships with normal shields but would tone it down against phased shields. It should also be changed to improve more steadily as has been suggested. Along with the idea of getting phased shields at the same time with normal shields instead of getting phased shields after researching all the normal shields this would make PPB's a choice, not a substitute for the APB.

Some Posts ago a suggestion was made that the talisman could replace combat sensors for religous players. This way you could have multiple tech levels of the talisman and religious players could get them earlier. If combat sensors give 25/45/65 bonus maybe talisman could also be three levels and have bonuses of maybe 45/75/105 or something? Comments on this? Also, it wouldn't cripple the AI would it?

I also have to vote that the big guns like WMG, acid, HEM, tachyon cannon get range increases, maybe some to-hit bonuses. Just make them have longer range and differ a bit from each other, like some having better damage/kt/turn, some better to-hit and some faster re-load. Torpedoes could be their baby-brother, having a range of 8 at max tech and having better damage/kt/turn.

I like the idea of the graviton hellbore skipping all shields. It makes the ship implode right? Maybe shields shouldn't protect against this?

Damn, I'm beginnning to post frequently on these forums

[ July 28, 2003, 11:40: Message edited by: Lurk4ever ]

[Loser]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
... Armor III, since it has a better ratio than the Stealth/Scattering armors.

Do not underestimate the power of Emissive Armor. Please excuse the following self-quote.

The amount of 'soak' on Emissive Armor III makes it exactly equivalent to Armor III: 40kt structure/10kt for Armor III and 50kt structure + 30kt 'soak'/20kt for Emissive Armor III. If you increase the amount of 'soak' on Emissive armor I think it would be proper to decrease the amount of structural kt, as this balance seems appropriate.

[edit: here rather than another reply.]

I think lowering the damage on the PPB would make other weapons more attractive, but the same thing could be accomplished by reworking the other weapons. There should be one weapon with the best damage / (tonnage * rate), but it should be the one without all the other goodies, like superior range, low supply usage, to-hit, and other special abilities.

For this one, best, all-around weapon I think you could just tool-up the DUC, make it the moderate range heavy D/TR. Make PPB a little more specialized, maybe lower its D/TR. Make APB the long-range moderate D/TR direct fire weapon that this game is more-or-less lacking, you might need to add a to-hit bonus just to make it actually hit things at those long ranges and that's all the more reason to lower it's D/TR. Or maybe we already have this long range, better to-hit, moderate D/TR in the WMG, and the APB is meant to be used a moderate ranges, it just penalized the heck out of you for misusing it...

I'm not going to try to address the other entries on Taera's List, but I do think Shield Regenerators need to be fixed. (Or maybe someone just needs to tell me how they're meant to be used.)

I think Armor is fine, except for maybe the way the AI treats it. But then the AI designer should be able to call for Emissive, and it's the best non-Racial protection offered.

[ July 28, 2003, 12:47: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Suicide Junkie]

The problem is emissive dosen't stack.

What you really want is one emissive to give the effect, and lots of standard armors to absorb what's left...

AI, when given a call for armor, will pick the one with the highest tech requirements, furthest down the list in components.txt
All the other armors have a special ability to call for, so the reccommended change is to move the standard armor down in the file, and add copies of S.A. III that have tech levels 4 through 6.

Given the above, a token improvement for levels 4 to 6 would look better than exact duplicates.

[ July 28, 2003, 13:03: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Loser]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
The problem is emissive dosen't stack.

It kind of does. The first 30 points are taken off the damage when it hits the first Emissive Armor III. Let's say it goes over that, and has enough left to destroy the remaining 50 points of actual structure. Then it hits the next Emissive Armor III and 30 more points are taken off, before the shot is allowed to damage the next Emissive Armor III.

This makes each 20 kiloton Emissive Armor III equivalent to a 10 kiloton Armor III in protection per kiloton, with the added bonus of negating some trailing damage now and then. Of course, it's significantly more expensive, so I wouldn't use it on suicidal ships or Weapon Platforms. As well I'm not sure the Emissive ability works on WPs.

Please correct me if I am mistaken.

[ July 28, 2003, 14:52: Message edited by: Loser ]