SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
I might be a bad player since I often have troubles to cover fleet with dedicated PDC ships in auto combat.

Usually such ships end up in one end of the battle while my other ships get slautered by missiles few sectors away. Making ships to stay in formation helps but it introduce even more troubles. Now I simply put extra PDC on every ship just to be safe !

I wouldn't say you are a bad player, just maybe not using enough of them. You are right about the AI combat. To counter that I'd suggest more then one PDC ship per fleet. Three or four for a decent sized fleet should give you a good chance of having one in the right place.

Of course putting some on every ship works too.

Geoschmo

[tesco samoa]

sj preference....

[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 ]

[Captain Kwok]

4 days later and nothing is decided! Ha Ha Ha!
Some good ideas throughout, but who is going to start making some decisions?

[Suicide Junkie]

Any more comments on Point Defense? or the Talisman?
Would a significant defense penalty on the Talisman be a good idea?
How about The Hyper-optics/Anti-cloak sensors?
Perhaps a larger cost or size for non-racial sensors?
How much should Climate Control Facilities be improved?
What should be done with intel ops?

Summary
Unsorted Issues

• Fighters & Missiles too weak / PDC to powerful
• Climate Control Facilities too weak
• Medical Lab plague prevention effect too low
• Talisman too powerful
• Quantum Reactors too powerful
• PDC, PPB too powerful
• Torpedoes, Graviton Hellbore, Incinerator, too weak.
• Ship Training too powerful
• Not enough room for Weapon Platforms
• High level Intel ops too effective
• All of the new damage types not used
• Fighter Rocket pods -> Seekers?
  

Trivial Changes:

• Add redundant tech requirements to Standard armor allowing AIs to call for it in design creation.
• Reduce Price of Quantum reactor to benefit AI
• Separate Normal and Phased shields component family. (Split them in terms of "Show only latest" and the upgrade button)
• Add ability descriptions for weapon to-hit bonuses
  

Minor Changes:

• Smoothing of low level PPB improvements as below.
• Increase range of WMG & HEM to 10
• Reduce strength of Ground Cannon
• Reduce size of Supply Storage to 10kt. Count supply storage as cargo area.
  

Moderate Changes:

• Make standard Training Facilities System-wide for the benefit of AIs. Psychic Trait Version trains 2x as fast to keep it worthwhile.
• Scale up damage of ROF 2 weapons
• Increase Planetary shield strength by 5x
• Graviton Hellbore changed to Skip All Shields
• Double Effect of Shield Regenerators
• Individual resource bonus facilities 50% more powerful than all-in-one facilities.
• Small CS/ECM doubled in effect to keep up with ship-CS/ECM.
• Small accuracy bonus for torpedoes (~10%)
• Small accuracy penalty for PPB (~10%)
  

Suggestions of note:

• Phased Polaron Beam Average Adjustment
  

code:

---

Research Cost: 15k

Weapon Damage At Rng := 30 25 25 20 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Weapon Damage At Rng := 35 30 30 25 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Weapon Damage At Rng := 45 40 40 35 35 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Weapon Damage At Rng := 50 45 45 40 40 40 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Weapon Damage At Rng := 60 55 55 55 50 50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

---

[/list]
[ July 30, 2003, 22:45: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[spoon]

How small were you thinking for these two items:

- Small accuracy bonus for torpedoes
- small accuracy penalty for PPB

[Suicide Junkie]

Probably around 10%

If anybody is strongly against any of the items, feel free to speak up.
I'll run them all by Aaron before implementing it.