M6 what to do about them?

[Pirate's Bane]

I think this discussion is not only what role the M6 should play, but the bigger question is how should the game react to the player?

An example:

You are a pirate. You are allied to another race. You raid everyone else.
You can buy factories from your allied race, build them, but the other races don't gang up and kick your butt and the allied races butt.

So you can raid in other's space, but they can't raid your space unless they are Kha'ak or Xenon.

Why does the game allow a pirate to build factories and not let other races retaliate against them? Isn't it absurd that a pirate would build factories in the first place?


Does anyone else find this unnatural??

[Scorch]

Well in TC, sometimes you will find race ships within pirate sectors messing up any and all pirate ships that are stupid enough to attack, in pirate alley in one of my games I even had a constant stream of Deimos and Cerberus patrols, but they weren't actually targeting pirates, just passing through the neighborhood.

It would be nice to have specific raids from the Major races into pirate space every so often, but there are other aspects of the game which are more important to ego at the moment, and as for the XTC team, well you'll just have to wait to find out won't you?

It is not absurd to think that pirates are able to build factories when you take pirate factions like the Yaki into account, considering they have a shipyard and multiple capital ships, I think its safe to say that they have the capability, and there isn't a reason why they wouldn't sell to other pirates.

[blightedmarsh]

There are scripts which effect this. Using RRF I found a huge paranid task force siting in Brennan triumph blasting any and all pirate ships. Using IR with cap responses within 2 hours I couldn't find any pirate stations within the race spaces in the starting area.

There is a community of modders out there who love to work this game over. I think this is because egosoft encourages it to prolong the shelf life of their game. people still talk about fronteir elite, if that could have been as modifiable as this one is I think that it would be still being actively played and not just by the retro community.

[Anon loyalist]

There is a community of modders out there who love to work this game over. I think this is because egosoft encourages it to prolong the shelf life of their game. people still talk about fronteir elite, if that could have been as modifiable as this one is I think that it would be still being actively played and not just by the retro community.

Very true.

Egosoft were very cleaver in righting the software to be modified by such wonderful people as the XTM-TC teams members

Thanks for that comment

[Scoob]

Hi,

As a point of interest (maybe) I've balanced the M6 class as very much the super-heavy fighter in my game.

The basic front-gun heavy M6 has been given a substantial boost in rudder so it can bring it's guns to bear more readily, add to this a ~50% increase in weapon energy recharge and you've a pretty powerful ship. In addition to this any M6 with a single rear weapon got this doubled up (easy thanks to the two barrelled gun model) meaning they can now hurt pursuing M3's, or at least make them think twice.

For the heavy M6 I decided to give it a minor rudder boost and a good weapons recharge boost. The better turrets of this class (thinking the Heavy Centaur) made me want to ensure that it could fire it's turrets pretty much constantly without any energy issues. While it cannot engage fighters with it's front guns quite so readily as the basic M6, it can do decent damage via it's turret weapons. Generally I've tried to enhance the crafts stengths, Heavy Centaur is about balanced firepower, good turret coverage, others are more front weapon biased.

As an overall balance 'fix' (in my eyes) I also boosted shot speed by 2 to 4x - light weapons now hit all but the fastest / most distant targets and PPC shots can only be strafe-avoided in larger (m6) class ships at a distance. To balance this I gave all shields a recharge boost; 1mj charged fully VERY quickly so if it survives a hit it has a good chance of recovering before the 2nd hit that would normally spell the end. 5mj has a lesser recharge boost, again less for the 25mj shield but still enhance survivability massively. 200mj (m6) got a slightly better boost than 25mj as it is the shield used by the M6 - which is a big target. 1gj got a slight boost and 2gj doubled as it had basically the same 'shield points per tick' as the 1gj - not right in my eyes.

This slight rebalancing on my part has made the M6 and Heavy M6 a much more worthwhile craft - certainly in the hands of the AI! An m6 will now be able to better 3x M3's in a direct fight which is what I was aiming for.

My BIG problem is that I cannot balance things (without substantial changes) so that M7's, M2's and M1's don't totally own the M6 class. An M3 has better survivability chances against a huge ship than the M6. This however is an AI issue that cannot really be balanced out with stat changes. If the M6 chooses to direct-line charge a huge ship that has very damaging long-range lasers equipped then it's bye bye M6.

Sorry for the slight drift off-topic, most of my effort in my own modding has been for balance and for M5, 4, 3 and 6 I think I have it perfect (almost) for me, huge ships are a law to themselves due to AI contraints - I mean how ships (m6 in particular) attempt to engage such craft with no thoughts of their own safety - or awareness of the glowing balls of PPC death approaching them. Note: there was an AI mod in Reunion which made ships aware of incoming fire - this is needed in TC methinks...Fight MkIII was it?

Cheers,

Scoob.

[Galder]

Yes, but it was never finished.

Anyway, balance is always a matter of standards, and it is always needed to check the already existing settings/values for rogue results. You went a very complicated way, as you increased the values, but you already saw the connection between ships and bullet speed. There are more connections like this, and it's a whole mountain of work to balance this I've been there also, but there are some different solutions, which afforde the same amount of work, but which are more easily to handle

[Scoob]

Hi,

Actually I thought changing a few numbers was the simplest way to get near the gameplay I wanted. Bullet speed compensated for the AI's inability to hit targets quite nicely (fighter vs. fighter & 'light' turrets in particular), shields changes meant scraps lasted a little longer, and the M6 enhancements on top of this gave this craft a place in my game. It also allowed the admittedly flawed AI to 'work' in many situations and has kept me playing.

I could have attempted to script something to enhance the AI - but I'm rubbish at scripting having not played for ages.

I must admit, I see games like the Homeworld series and wish the X series had similar behaviour... fighter vs. fighter, capital vs. capital, special classes designed to be anti-whatever, large ships manuevering to deliver broad-sides, small fighter wings staying in formation etc. etc.

Sorry, drifting OT once more...

Cheers,

Scoob.

[dalin80]

I have been doing a little playing with the m6's to balance / adjust them to my desires, I tried the heavy fighter thing like scoob but felt it was too much of a difference from what the m6 originally was a 'corvette'. il pass on what i believe works for me, this is mearly a suggestion for some things that may work with what is the weakest of classes.

I have made no real major change in roles for any of the m6's but simply hoped to make them more imposing against fighters. The m6 should be a shining beacon for the next stage up when your combat focused, as is asides from a couple of oddly balanced examples they are simply not. I have made many adjustments over the years with various tweaks but have never been really happy until running with the following adjustments, previous attempts often ending up whacking extra shields into the m6's but this often turned into knock on balancing as such i have avoided altering shields and firepower.


Tripled m6 hull value (other cap ships x2)

*This was to make the m6's a bit more durable against fighters packing one of the many mighty anti-shield guns, as we all are probably accustomed too, as soon as your shield value hits 0% you might as well hit the 'load game' button, even with what sounds like a very large jump the hull can still only survive a few seconds of sustained fire from a m3+ before crumbling, a greater hull value gives the player extra time to not die and get frustrated and also the loss of equipment is much more drawn out producing a more immersive fight.


Added at least two variants of each model for most of the races.

* There is a lot of fun with the lower classes of choosing your ship variant, the m6 does not have this making it much harder for players to find the one that 'clicks' with them. I added variants which i believe suits each founding race-

osprey- hauler and sentinel
dragon- raider and vanguard
centaur- vanguard and hauler
hydra- raider and vanguard
nemesis- sentinel and raider
P- sentinel and hauler**


Rearanged the ship speed scale.

* A quick play with the ship speed groupings to allow room for each class as needs be, the slowest m5 is still just a bit faster then the fastest m4 and so on up the 'M' scale, in order not to compromise the m7 class on speed the average ship speed has probably gone up about 10% on average up to the m6 group and the m7's fly mostly at stock. This rule only applies to the standard version of each ship as the variants vary based on the stock figure.


More fluid flight

* Each m6 has had a single extra rudder upgrade added (except springblossom and osprey sentinel) the boron m6's have had a extra 2 on the grounds that the are so painfully ugly that they need something to give someone a tiny bit of encouragement to buy one.


There are as always exception to the rule, for instance the springblossom is still very fast but knocked down to a square 300, the osprey sentinel has 2 gj shielding and horribly ignores my speed grouping rule being much slower then the fastest m7. Overall though i am happy with this, fighters still have a major speed and agility advantage but m6's can hold up much longer and just because the shields have failed no longer means that what is essentially a small capital ship is out of the fight. The larger capital ships are mostly untouched, the extra hull they have is for longer cap ship fights and has little impact on the world of the m6.

The different variants probably add the most to the mix.


You could argue that I have horribly abused over powering to improve the m6's and you would probably be right as to be honest they needed it, prices have been adjusted slightly to try to justify the differences between the classes. The m6 now is a literally a class above a m3 and is a obvious step up, the m7 still has a large gap over the m6 as well.

costs-

M6 +15%
M7 +20%
M2/1 +25%

other balance notes-

I took the deimos 6th shield slot and gave it to the argon m7. The panther has been declawed a little with a 10% drop in energy reserves.
The hammerhead (it will never be a 'thresher' to me) is a bit more agile with a extra rudder tuning.


** more converted to a freighter then a combat ship to stand in for the xenons complete lack of freighters.

[Scoob]

Btw: anyone noticed how M6's (and probabaly other ships) don't seem to turn at their max rate when in combat. What I mean is if I ask my M6 (Vanilla one, that I'm sat in) to engage a target it appears to lazily turn in the direction only to be too slow and have to adjust course again. I kill the autopilot and can turn at DOUBLE the rate easily.

It's odd as sometimes you'll see a ship do a fast 180 and tag you...seems random.

This is why I boosted the rudder tuning in my own game further than I intially thought I needed to, purely to compensate for this odd behaviour.

Cheers,

Scoob.

[Draxis]

Interesting script idea here...

Take M6, load with marines, missiles, and hacking software. Attempt to board station. If your attempt fails, selfdestruct and blow the station to kingdom come...

Though i would like a kamikaze feature, because lets face it, at times thats all the AI is worth...