By the way, I'm currently flying a Rhino with 3000hps and 150 cargo capacity.

I should be handing you your lungs.

Well I'm working on a balance mod myself. I sure could use a wingman on this one since i'm a 3d modeler and not a codder.

I understand how to mess with shiparch.ini and goods.ini and I've even added my modded patriot without replacing the original one for testing basis.

My idea consists on granting any flyable ship in the game the possibility to stand up against the class 10 Titan for instance but on diferent grounds. LF's will never rely on damage absorbtion like the Titan, instead they'll become faster and much more maneuvrable. The VHF's will be powerhouses of weaponry and armor at the cost of being slower and less maneuvrable, while the HV's will be balanced in between them. Think of X-wing... the A-wing is a fast and agile interceptor while the Y-wing has more powerfull and more weapons for his function as a bomber, and the X-wing stands in the middle as an all purpose fighter. Same thing on my idea.

Rather than having static values for this balance and also allowing for game improvement, all ships are relatively weak when they start. One will be able to buy new engines, scanners, batteries to feed the more energy hungry weapons... all these just like you upgrade your shields.

Obviously there will be class specific items. A LF will never have as much shield and armor as a HVF...but the VHF will also never have as much maneuvrability and speed as a LF will be able to no matter the best thruster it has.

There is also room for the freighter types... they will have the strongest hull of all but will be slugish as a snail and will maneuver very poorly. The base cargo capacity will be upgraded and it will probably be upgradable by buying cargo modules or something. The freighters however will never be good in a battle and WILL require escorts to cross the hotspots.

Well making a long story short:
* Upgradable ships.
* All ships can make a stand to one another but on diferent grounds and depends on upgradfes.
* If possible, new random missions:
** Protect the freighter (escort a cargo freighter or convoy like the first mission in SP)
** Deliver cargo (for freighters. If mission is considered high risk, and the player is not part of a group, NPC fighters will be deployed as escort)
* Hyperdrive system. Jumps to the last waypoint in the present system or an adjancent system. Can only perform one jump before needing refuelling at a station. Takes 20 to 30 secs to charge up.

I dont mean to steal you thread... I want to know if you are insterested in my project. I can do the ship balancing stuff but I'll need help for the upgrades so that the balancing doesnt become static. Also need help for the hyperdrive and new missions.

Cheers.

Edited by - BloodRiot on 05-08-2003 14:36:46

Be very carefull here.

Remember everybody is a noob when they start playing freelancer or a new mod online. If you make it too difficult nobody will be able to get started. You have to have some noob system to allow them to earn the cash to make the upgrades and get better ships. Otherwise it will be a total desaster.

However. As long as you dont hike the price of cheaper ships up or give the AI the better ships you should avoid most of the problems.

BTW i dealt with this very issue my self, so the above advice is from experience and user feedback.

Giskard

In my idea, the ships are not supposed to be uber right at start and aren't that expensive.

The titan could even be available at the start but it would be quite weak. The ships are to become better throught upgrading and that's where the money will go.

ket's say all ships in the game start +- at the same level as the liberty stats on the base unmodded game. So a Dagger would be quite similar in stats as a patriot... the legionaire as the defender. As more money is earned and the ranks raise, one can buy better engines, better shields, better energy bateries to feed the better equipment. In this system, a fully upgraded defender could be on equal footing to a base game unmodded legionaire ship.

Much like fitting an imported car with turbo chargers, better injection systems, racing tires and NO2 systems a la fast and furious

Cheers.

Now, see? That's how I thought this game would be when I bought it, but I was a quite disappointed to see that it wasn't. If you can pull this off, then I would love you forever and want to have your babies. But, since that is an impossibility, we could always adopt

I like Bloodriot's ideas alot.

However, I was thinking about straying away from relying on upgrades too much. I want the npcs to actually be a threat to me instead of bothersome flies. This would include upping the Lib and Bre's pilot levels. I mean I'd like it so that in all factions rookies are low-level while the aces are hardcore bad mothers.

I thought about tinkering with Rheinland's ships to make them more on par with Liberty's, but I changed my mind. The Valkyre is simply a better ship than the Defender. Some factions have better ships, some don't. And I want everything in between to be balanced.
Also thinking along the lines of making powerplants for light fighters weaker than any given heavy/VHF power plant, as the CIVILIAN Hawk being more powerful than the Patiot or Cavalier is just plain silly.

Bloodriot: I'm interested in how you can create cargo capacity upgrades.

Xenogear: WOAAH take it easy stud.. you might wanna try asking me out on a date first. lol

Thomas: I get what you mean... but that wouldn't be hard... did you notice in game that every npc pilot has a rating? like rookie and so on? each rank can have diferent settings...and I'm sure that's already in game cuz the same weapons cause diferent damage to the same ship with diferent ranks. It's the shield types. It changes according to the mission level.

Well... either way... I wont steal your thread anymore. I just haven't started my own cuz i'm still calculating the balance between the ships. However I still ask that anyone willing to help me... PLZ DO or maybe thomas wants to join forces ;p

On the upgrades: The engine and so forth upgrades I'm sure it can be done cuz I've seen something like it before on a mod... new gen I think. The cargo upgrades I'm no so sure... some values are in the shiparch.ini like the max level gun settings and shields and the ability for torpedoes mines and CM's the cargo space is there as well... The buyable upgrades are in the goods.ini and that is possible. To make certain things work... like upgrading the ships maneuverability, change the max weapon class level, and all values in the shiparch.ini probably requires some other form of upgrade.

If No one with the knowledge to make such a thing work doesnt help me I'll probably have to do it the hard way and create all possible levels of a ship... so instead of having just one ship and upgrade it... you'd actually buy higher class of the same ship. It would mean alot of boring work and the shiparch.ini would grow tenfold. then you'd have to make them available at places. So as you can see... It's gonna be tricky. I know I can't do it alone.

For this game I wish i was a codder instead of a modeler ;p

Cheers.

Edited by - BloodRiot on 06-08-2003 11:27:53

Edited by - BloodRiot on 06-08-2003 11:33:08

Hey guys, it's a good idea, I've been working on that in my mod for a while and there are a few problems I encountered but overall the "balanced" ships work fine. The big thing is that you'll never be able to do it without changing a lot of aspects of the game.

- AI loadouts will have to be changed, even if you redo the weapons "instead" the best Liberty ship uses a class 4 shield (I think) in the original game. You're better off leaving the weapons where they are and just adding a few more to get some factions up to par. And, this usually involves much more than simply making a few changes to existing loadouts, as Giskard mentioned you can't make it too tough from the start so NY needs to still be an easy n00b system. With that in mind you'll have to duplicate many of the Liberty AI loadouts so you can have easy ships in NY and balanced ships in the other systems. This involves a number of changes to npcships.ini and faction_props.ini and can be quite a headache if a sudden crash develops over a little typo.

- Encounters will have to be changed if you want more challenge from the AI, otherwise you'll still be up against the really easy ships in Liberty and the tougher ships in the Edge Worlds. The two dozen or so encounter files unfortunately aren't the ones you need to change, that would be too easy You have to go in each system and replace the difficulty levels of the encounters with something more appropriate.

And, it's a seemingly endless struggle to get the balance right, until all the sudden one day...

What about just changing the weapons stats so that a Justice MKIII would still be class 3 but with much more power?

What I was thinking of doing was making certain weapons better, and bumping up their classes, as well since I also upped the powerplants and max classes for the ships in Liberty.

God this is complicated...Can someone lay out the basics of what I need to do?