Guns, Guns, Guns.

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Digital Anvil's game design doesn't make sense , either for SP or MP. It makes a lot more sense for SP than for MP, but it still doesn't make sense. I have designed many, many games of various kinds at this point, and here are just a few things that make no sense to me, and how I've re-approached solving them. You can argue that my solutions are unneeded, of course- most FL players don't seem to really give a hoot, since cheating and lag are both major drags on online play anyhow. But I decided to take a long look at fixing things anyhow, because... as a player... it has always bugged me that this huge, sprawling game design is so full of absolutely useless crap and genuine bona-fide deadwood.

For example, because of FL's aiming system, weapons that are slow velocity won't track correctly, if you have a weapon that's faster-velocity mounted. This is because the lead indicator works off of the weapon with the highest muzzle velocity. If DA had really thought the implications of that through, they probably could've made multiple lead indicators show up... each one a little smaller, more transparent, or whatever... to show where your slower guns were actually going to hit. But... ah well. The point is... this is a serious problem, and needs to be addressed by any modder claiming to have "improved" the game's balance in any substantive fashion.

So, not only are slow-velocity weapons penalized on their effective range (these weapons, without any exceptions I can think of, use a lifetime of 1) and their time-to-target (if a target is 300M away, it takes a weapon moving at 750 only 0.4 seconds to get there, as opposed to 0.46 seconds for a weapon moving at 650... and a twentieth is a long time against a human opponant), but they're also penalized by not aiming right- a lead-indicator curve that's perfect for a weapon moving at 750 is wrong by a large amount (we're talking missing entirely here) for a weapon moving 650, when both weapons start firing at maximum range. This effect is a lot less noticable at close ranges, of course... but it's a penalty, and DA's designers didn't seem to take it into account. Not only that... but slow-velocity weapons are often the ones that fire more slowly (which, again, penalizes them on hit-rates)... and their damage/energy ratios, while usually favorable... aren't THAT favorable. And in a few, utterly-bizarre cases, it's actually un-favorable... please, somebody explain that to me... how can anybody designing a game make a gun that has absolutely zero going for it?

The good news... is that this issue is easily fixable, with three different methods:

1. Make all guns use the same velocity, but different rates of fire, and then give bonuses in terms of damage/energy efficiency to weapons with lower refire_rate/lifetime. This cancels out most of the problems all at once, but leaves in some guesswork- just how many shots miss when ships pass between the rounds fired at lower refire rates? I don't know, and I don't think anybody can answer that definatively- obviously, skill on both sides matters a lot here.

2. Use different velocities, and give an additional bonus to weapons with low-velocity shots to reflect their accuracy disparities when mixed with high-velocity weapons. I rejected this, mainly because I felt like this was continuing to beat a dead horse... DA tried it, and failed miserably. Liberty plasma weapons were just cool until you realized that shieldbusters were a lot more effective...

3. Make the gun mix so that for every weapon "type", there are low and high-velocity versions with different damage/energy ramps... to reflect the lower hit-rate of lower-velocity weapons. This has the noted disadvantage of making a really messy set of balancing curves... and you're never going to get it "perfect". Sounds like a good way to let twinks have a field-day... and DA tried some of that, too. Speed 700 weapons, anyone? Yeah, uh-huh... no.

...or you could just leave well-enough alone, and have some weapons continue to be patently useless from a hardcore player's perspective. Which, quite honestly, is how things stood after my last balancing attempt. I was quite annoyed with the final results, which were only off by a small amount... but still wrong. I thought I'd gotten it licked, until I began to really torture-test things, and saw those small but important flaws that any hardcore player would immediately start to sort out. It was a little exasperating, but I went back to the design, and here are my current solutions.

When I finally analyzed my options (and yes, there are more ways to game this out, but they're essentially different permutations of 1, 2 and 3, above)... I decided to settle on no. 1, because it makes the most sense to me. Players will mainly notice that weapons seem to be more consistant about hitting what they aim at, but it won't really bother them otherwise. And I'd already gotten pretty close with my previous ratios of energy/damage, so this approach would just involve one big find-and-replace to get all of the energy weapons at the same speed... and then a lot've hand-tweaking.

This is my current, best-guess attempt to finally make all of the guns balanced:

LASERS
refire_rate = 0.12
hull_damage = 25 X Level
power_consumption = 5 X Level
lifetime = 1
muzzle_velocity = 750

As you will (hopefully) see, Lasers are the "default" weapon. Every other weapon type deviates in one or more ways.

So, time to assess bonuses/penalties. Here's what I've ended up with:

First off, a note should be made, for clarity's sake. "Weapon type" refers to the generic damage categories I made, when I was trying to roughly model DA's original curves, but get everything to a 5:1 damage/energy ratio for a better balance. So, for example, this means that a Plasma gun has a base damage at Level One of 150, and costs 30 points to fire. Any bonuses it gets are, therefore, applied at 6X of a Laser, which is the default, because that's the ratio of their damage.

Here are the formal notes:

Basic Stats

Laser, Tachyon and Photon: 25 damage X level, 5 Power X level.

Plasma: 150 damage X level, 30 Power X level.

Neutron and Particle: 75 damage X level, 15 Power X level.

Why these levels? Because, in short... I'm trying to stay roughly near what DA did, so that players aren't utterly confused. Using a simple ratio like that gives me plenty of room to move around in, too.

Refire_Rate

0.12 means that hull_damage = 0 + weapon type damage X level.
0.25 means that hull_damage = 2 + weapon type damage X level.
0.35 means that hull_damage = 4 + weapon type damage X level.

Note that this curve goes very sharply up... and means literally hundreds more damage with some weapons at the high end. Accuracy decreases rapidly with lower refire rates, so something had to be done, and this is the curve I'm working on now.

Lifetime/Effective Range

0.8 means that Power_Consumption = -1 + weapon type Power_Consumption X level.
1.0 means that Power_Consumption = 0 + weapon type Power_Consumption X level.
1.2 means that Power_Consumption = 2 + weapon type Power_Consumption X level.

IOW, a Level 1 Plasma gun, which has a lifetime of 0.8, would've eaten 30 Power before... and now eats 24. Big whoop, right? Well, at the high end... level 10 Plasma eats only 240, instead of 300... 60 Power per shot in savings. Add that to the damage bonus for having a lower refire rate, and... ouch... those are going to hurt, if they hit. Let's look at a level 10 Plasma gun:

150 base damage X 10 + (24 X 10) = 1740
30 Power X 10 - (6 X 10) = 240

1740 / 240 = 7.25... therefore, a Plasma weapon's damage/energy ratio is 7.25:1... which beats the heck out've 5:1. The real question in playtesting therefore becomes one of whether it's enough, too much, or too little... and obviously a very small change can have a very large impact here.

Tachyons get a major hit. Costing 7 points to fire at Level One, as opposed to 5 for Lasers, they cost 20 more at the high end. Better make that extra range count... because otherwise Tachyons are horribly inefficient killers. 4.2:1 is not a very good ratio... it means that you get 4.2 points of damage for every point of energy you put out. The high refire rate will help you hit at long range, but still... it's a poor choice if your aim sucks, or your ship lacks enough manueverability to stay away from enemies. On the other hand... for PvP dueling with engine-kill in play, Tachyons could very easily let you get a lot of extra shots in while your opponant closes. After all, that 1.2 lifetime translates into a range of 900...

Photons get a lower range, but have the same refire rate... so they get a distinct bonus.

4 energy per 25 points of hull_damage may not sound great, but at the high end, we're talking 40 points per shot, as opposed to 50. That can quickly add up, at 8.33 shots per second, with 6 guns:

Laser, Level 10: 50 * 6 * 8.33 = 2499
Photon, Level 10: 40 * 6 * 8.33 = 1999

Either weapon is pretty energy-friendly, to be sure, but Photons can fire a lot longer, and that translates into a LOT more damage. If you look at the example above... the Photons get to fire just over 12 more times there... and at 250 per shot at level 10, this means that you've (theoretically) done 3000 more damage. Yikes. But you've got to get close, and stay close to your enemies.

Neutrons are "more of the same". They get a damage bonus for their lower refire rate, but it's minor. Once again, it does pile up at the high end, but it's not gigantic.

Particles, on the other hand, are kind've whacky. Having a range advantage and a refire disadvantage... here's how it stacks up at Level 10:

damage = 750 + (6 X 10) = 810
energy = 150 + (6 X 10) = 210

Final ratio for Particles? 3.9:1, damage/energy- worse than Tachyons, which is sad. And guess what? I can't honestly decide whether that's "fair" or not, because at that range, the refire rate probably hurts more... but at least you can engage. And because the damage curve is set higher to begin with... any hits you get are going to hurt. One volley from 6 Particle guns is perfectly capable of shredding most ships' hitpoints to zero, or putting a big dent in their Shields- 4800 damage isn't a joke. I just don't think I'd use them, myself.

Ships... whatta pain in the donkey.

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Since, if you bothered reading the first two posts, you probably have a rough idea of how I'm going about business here (or think I'm certifiably insane, for taking this kind've thing on in the first place)... here's the raw math. This has, in fact, been playtested... and I am satisfied that the results were actually quite fair.

Ship Stat Changes

PHYSICS

MASS

Reference Mass = 100. This goes up or down, depending on the following factors:

100 + 1 for every 100 points of armor over 1000. A fighter with 8000 hitpoints, therefore, weighs 170. This includes subgroup hitpoints!

TORQUE ("turning speed"

Torque references go up or down, depending on the following factors:

20 X (Mass - 100)
Standard... Mass 100.

torque = 17500
drag = 10000
inertia = 1000

Therefore, a fighter with a mass of 250 has stats like this (or a multiple, for things that can turn quickly but where we want them to have "stiff" collision behavior):

torque = 14000
drag = 10000
inertia = 1000

Things with really super-high Mass should add 3-5 zeroes to the ends of everything, and multiply drag by at least 1.5... and inertia by 5 or more. Battleships and other large vessels look extremely lame if they can switch vectors like a fighter can

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POWER

Charge Rate = (Mass - 100) * 3, minimum = 100. Therefore, a ship with a mass of 250 would have a Charge Rate of 550.
Capacity = Charge Rate * 10 + 1000. Therefore, a ship with a mass of 250 would have a Capacity of 6500.

Freighters and Cargo Space:

Very simply... under the new balance rules, Missiles get buffs on price (i.e., it's lower), but take up cargo space. Therefore, fighters with more than a minimal amount of cargo space can carry more missiles. Obviously, such a bonus requires a penalty, if I'm going to make this a fair system.

In addition, if I apply the previous rules about Mass to Freighters... then they'll generally be quite zippy and un-Freighter-like, unless I buff their hitpoints to really extreme levels.

So... both problems will get solved at once... and here is the solution:

Any cargo space over 20 will add to the Mass of a ship, on a 1-to-1 ratio. This Mass will apply to both steering penalties and to Power bonuses.

This means that Freighters that carry lots of freight turn and accelerate more slowly than fighters, even if their total hitpoints are the same, but get a Power bonus to compensate. This means that Freighters can have quite a bit of Power... and ships like the Liberty Rhino will be quite a bit more manueverable than previously, or get its hitpoints (and final cost) buffed.

So, here is the final (and tested) formula for making game-balanced ships for this balance:

Ship Physics

Mass = 100 + {(total hitpoints - 1000) / 100} + (cargo space -20)

Steering_Torque = 17500 - {(mass -100) * 20}
Angular_Drag = 10000
Rotation_Inertia = 1000

Power Output

Charge_Rate = {(Mass -100) * 3} -100 Minimum of 100!
Capacity = (Charge_Rate * 10) + 1000

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So... let's look at a practical example of all of this- the Liberty Rhino.

The Rhino has 2134 total hitpoints (267 + 267 + 1600).
It has 80 cargo space.

Therefore, it has 1134 hitpoints over 1000, and 60 cargo over 20.

Final Mass = 100 + 11 + 60 = 176.

Steering Torque = 15980

Charge_rate = 128
Capacity = 2280

As you can (hopefully) see, the Rhino is quite underpowered (for a ship with 8 guns), and quite manueverable (people will definately note the un-freighter-like handling, I can assure you). Both things can be fixed, without making it unbalanced... by either adding more cargo space, or adding more armor- either will make the Rhino slower to accelerate and turn, but have more power available. If we go the "freighter-fighter" route... we can buff the armor quite a lot, and turn the Rhino into a formidible fighter with decent cargo and lots of power available (that'd fit the Rhino's description in FL).

Or we can go the "freighter-freighter" route, and make the Rhino a big cargo hauler, but very easily destroyed, if enemies can get past the shield. Either way, it's going to steadily lose manueverability and acceleration. Or we can leave the Rhino alone... and it'll be a very interesting alternative to the Patriot.

But as it stands... it's very close to the original figures that DA used, with the notable exception of having more power capacity (but note that it's almost exactly 1000 more... hmm):

charge_rate = 126
capacity = 1300

I have to admit that i haven`t read all of your post (i will most likely tomorrow), but i have done a similar thing with the ships.
My formula is;
Armour value /100 + engine type, a basic of 50= LF, 75= HF, 100= VHF and 150= FR.
This is due to the engines being buyable, i`ve also added 4 types of engine per class which variations to its volume and mass value. Also commodities have 0.1 mass as well, so that an empty freighter isn`t penalised for being a freighter.
As an example,
Patriot (1300/100) = 13 + Basic LF (50) = 50, total of 63
Hawk (3300/100) = 33 + Basic LF (50) = 50, total of 83
Falcon (6200/100) = 62 + Basic HF (75) = 75, total of 137
Eagle (9900/100) = 99 + Basic VHF (100) = 100, total of 199
Dromedary (3600/100) = 52 + Basic FR (150) = 150, total of 202
I think it works pretty well, I think it may need to have the max steering values generalised between the classes to so that all of the LF`s have the same abilities which should hopefully be affected by its mass value.
Just some ideas..

I started with a system like that, but rapidly ended up discarding it, because of the effects that I saw on the various fighter classes. Basically, if you take away weapon levels, then you quickly end up realizing how dependent FL's balance was on them. Take away weapon and Shield levels, and you quickly see... or, at least, I did... that FL's ship classes make zero sense. A Titan, for example, ended up looking very powerful, but very unmanueverable... and easy meat for smaller, faster ships.

So I stripped everything down... got rid of everything and started over again. The key was to tie all of the important ship variables together into one system. This current compromise system isn't perfect, but it's actually pretty good, I think, and gives all of the different classes a fair shake.

I've left the Shield types (LF, HF, FR) in the game, because I think that that gives things some small variety, but they have disadvantages and advantages that are fair for everybody- basically, a LF ship's eating less power than a HF/VHF, and it, in turn, eats less than a Freighter. This way... people who want to make new ships with this codebase can feel free to experiment and come up with the best possible designs- everything from a pure combat vessel (no cargo at all- just armor to buff Power) to a Freighter with just enough armor to survive running into something... and enough spare power to run some very nasty weapons

Oh yeah... and one last note. Giving Mass to cargo doesn't work- FL's engine doesn't count it towards the ship's mass. I proved that with the early work I did on FL's physics system (which you can read, in great detail, if you search this Forum),

The only reason why guns and other equipment have Mass is because they may become seperate objects when a ship dies, and then people can run into them. In short... what you've done there would've been the perfect solution, if the game engine would've only cooperated... but it doesn't

Edited by - Argh on 4/24/2005 7:54:09 PM

I haven`t changed the weapon abilities of the ships they should remain for the balance.
I did do some work on balancing frontierspace by going through the shield classes. Basically, a typical shield is class 1 for 1000cap, 2 for 2000cap etc. This means that the bigger more powerfull ships aren`t quite so powerful against the earlier ones.
Also, the shield types all have more similar capacities. I`ve said starting with all shields with 1000, 2000, etc. Then, gravitons get 110% capacity but reduced recharge, molecular are 90% capacity with improved recharge and positron are the 100% normal recharge. Then, to make things more varied light fighters have reduced capacity from that and improved recharge, HF and VHF are the normal ones and freighters have added capacity and reduced recharge.
You end up with a great deal of flexibility, you could chose a light fighter molecular shield to have the best recharge available to supprt hit and run type attacks, or a freighter which a graviton shield to make the very best capactiy available, though not being able to stay in a fight for very long.
I did have some thoughts about your weapon changes as well, I agree with most of it, But there is also the "coming under fire value".
If you have rapid shooting weapons of lower yield and you hit the enemy, the enemy responds and tries to turn evasive to prevent more damage (mostly on the lower pilot skill). Whereas, if you were to hit an enemy with a slower moving plasma weapon, then the damage is done and the enemy can`t respond, chances are a piece of their ship has been blown off i.e. Wyrm 2`s from outcasts have a nasty habit of blowing chunks out of your ship reducing your ability to fight back.
Just some ideas..

I think doing stuff like that is what this mod's codebase is all about. I've also come up with a relatively-simple way to allow people to add power-supply changes very easily, using an XML script an slightly modified CMPs. It's very similar to what the Evo team did, but it doesn't involve permanent changes to the INIs, which means that if you don't like that feature... just delete/change the XML, and you're done... no more hunting through the Shiparch. That's what the mod's about- while I've been adding a few fun things here and there to make the mod a fun player experience, the mod's mainly about teaching people about XML/FLMM... what it can do, how to do it... and why it's a superior approach to many difficult issues. Doing so has involved a lot of INI editing, though, in order to "prepare the ground" for easier editing. It's much easier to sit down and re-balance things if you have a handy set of ramps that you can look at and compare against- re-balancing the weapons was one of the ways that I've tried to provide this for people.

I've also put pain-free XML scripts that put the various "left-out" FL ships back into the game... and I'm going to be building some final ones that put them into Factions, much like I did with my H-Fuel Tanker mod.

This mod's not so much about addressing FL's obvious MP balance issues (although that's been a concern) as it is about providing a better codebase for modders to work with. Starting from a balanced position that's clearly defined is a good place to start, I think... people can take what I've done and rework it into whatever they want. While I think that I've ended up with a better game design than FL's original, that's just my perspective, of course. I have a burning anger towards game designers who favor people who sit around on a server making money all of the time on low-skill missions against the computer completely outclassing even the highest-skill players in less equipment... it just rubs me completely the wrong way. In this mod... that's not going to happen- high-end equipment will give a player many advantages, but it's a lot less difficult for a low-end player to win against high-end opponants. For example... take a Titan to Liberty and start a fight now... you will be amazed at how different things feel. It doesn't mean that your Titan can't kill just about anybody there with a couple of swipes of its neutron guns... but you will not be able to just sit there going "muahaha" like you used to. And to do this... I didn't have to change much, really... just re-ramp the weapons so that they were fair for their levels, not just for their Faction, and gently buff the AI in small ways. It's not a gigantic thing, nor an unfair one- I also hate games that are patently unwinnable... or unwinnable unless you have to do something lame.

I'm almost done now... I'm just tweaking and re-tweaking some of the sounds and things... I've found that you can do some really cool stuff with sounds, if you buff them carefully...

Here`s another one, you could make lower level guns more effective against the higher level shields, meaning, the titan goes to liberty again, but the justice 3`s have a weapon mod of 1.5 against them.
There`s no chance of a ship with class 9/10 weapons attacking a ship like that normally so it shouldn`t affect the game`s balance too much.
I do find FL a bit of a disappointment in some ways, once you have gone through the game and got the eagle with the best weapons, there really isn`t many worthwhile paces to go to. Any one eagle could reign a plague of terror against any of the house systems. You could wipe out countless ships with no real risk to your ship
How can it be that a single freelancer could be stronger than any of the house millitaries? Thats got to be changed, and in my mod it has.

I'm with you on those points, Mace, and I've been trying my best to solve the issues without it being too weird. Some of it's fairly easily solved- for example, you could put Liberty Cruiser and Liberty Dreadnaught encounters around Liberty worlds, and the same for the other Houses, and make their power a bit better (it's really cool, btw, that you can make them weak for SP and strong for OpenSP or MP very easily). I haven't done that, mainly because I'm looking at ways to do it that make sense, and automated methods to add Battleship and Gunboat Encounters without hand-modifying INIs all over the place (I think it's possible to do this with XML, but I'm still working out some simplistic methods). Most of the INIs included in the mod's codebase, thus far, are optional componants, which people could take out without causing any real harm.

Mainly I solved it by looking at Shields, and making the curve a straight ramp actually solved most of the problems. So did bumping their power usage- it actually helps make things work out on the power ramps quite a bit better, and means that players can weigh their priorities carefully.

The hardest part, once I stumbled upon my missile-damage solution, was balancing the hitpoints for the various sub-parts of the various fighters. Some fighters put really vital Equipment on sub-parts... and I've gone ahead and fixed those CMPs whereever it was appropriate, so that you don't, say, lose your Thruster when the tail of your Crusader falls off, or lose your Shield Generator and Thruster when flying the Liberty's Torch (also known as the "Juni Special"- I've re-written its backstory and included it in the game as a buyable military ship). I've also fixed the Titan's non-sensical Turret hardpoint and other little things as well.

I'm really excited by the stuff I've been doing with sound, though. It's actually a lot easier than I would've thought to make sounds work "better"- better being, in my case, a lot more loud and chunky for things like Rumbles, and a lot less annoying for the Cruise engine sound effects (am I the only person who thinks that the high-pitched whines are totally annoying after awhile?).

With the difficulty levels it has taken me a while to sort through them for my mod. I have changed every system in the game and added about 70 more.
I realised that the fact that the person is running a mod means that they are most likely experienced and have some understanding of the game. New york dosen`t need to be D1, if the player has gone through the game got a bit bored and downloaded a new modded version. It depends if the mod is going to be opensp based or not. If so then kusari could have regions where there are falcons and even eagles in the furthest reaches. There`s no restriction.
And if you are able to script the encounter files for the system (maybe by affecting npcships.ini?) then you could raise and set the levels for the system to match the mod type.
Another fun idea is addind the weapon_mod to be set to the weapon class.
Class 1-6 are -20%, +20%
Class 7-8 are -30%, +30%
Class 9-10 are -40%, +40%
Might make the game a bit easy if you have all the weapons, but at least the player would have to change the weapon type to match the enemy.
One of the worst things for me in FL is that each faction only uses the same weapons and shield types. I`m going to kill B_Hunters so i`ll pop on either a graviton or molecular shield and some salamanca 2`s..
Its just too predictable, multiple loadouts for each difficulty setting are almost essential for a more interesting mod. You could have a bounty hunter themed from bretonia (u could add an entry in shiparch if u wanted for Bretona Piranha or something), they would be armed with weapons a mixture of BH and Bretonian. Or maybe, a loadout based aroun pulse weapons? or missile heavy.. You get the idea.. Together in an encounter, especially with the low ship encounters like BH_scout you could have a mixture of ships that are far more effective than they could be on there own.
For one of my factions in Frontierspace, there are 14 loadouts overlapping from D11 to 19. They are a special faction of a millitary secret operations and they are just horrible to fight against. You can`t put on a Molecular shield and bring out the salamanca 2`s.. And its much better for it.

Well, since this is intended to be a codebase, I've been pretty gentle and subtle about gameplay changes, I think. I have tweaked difficulty up some, and added greater range to the Random Missions that are offered, for example, but I've tried to keep the ramping the same way, so that the SP storyline still feels about right. It's all more challenging- but it's not "OMG THIS IS HARD" until you're fighting against VHFs and other really nasty stuff, near the tail end of the difficulty scale.

I have tweaked it so that it's definately "OMG THIS IS HARD" at that end, though- I figured, based on previous experience with playtesting, that if I found it hard... most people would find it very hard. Some won't, of course... but I've removed a lot've the crutches even high-end players are used to, like Cannonballs that insta-explode most ships and having your ship's fall-offable parts be magically stronger than everybody else's

The logic to DA's code is that everything in the game was designed specifically for the story (SP). In order to make the story work and not make things too hard for the player they built things based on a linear difficulty level. In the beginning for example are the order anubis ships (opening sequence) that are so weak even weak weapons can kill them.

It is the same with the actual factions and the systems, you progress from Liberty (Lvl1-3) to Bretonia (Lvl4-6) to Kusari (Lvl7-9) to Rheinland (Lvl10-12) to the Nomads (Lvl13-15). Everything in the game was designed this way.

Check out the latest beta's of the Freelancer S.D.K. 1.5 and Freelancer Explorer v2.x

Thanks Louva, but if it was based around the story then thats pretty weak. The story isn`t very long anyway.
It isn`t the "free"lancer that you would expect if you didn`t know the game. Maybe i am asking too much, but when you look at Elite or Fronier (Elite2) and see the vast possibilities of some clever programming i can`t help but ask why isn`t there more?
Once you have finished the story, there is hardly any point to go back to bretonia or kusari, or even liberty (if u weren`t there already). Because you already have a ship which far out classes anything that is in their systems. I feel they should have a trigger at the end of the story which increases the level of the story systems. It might seem weird, but it would make for a much better game.
Still, i guess, its nothing that some of our dedicated modders cant fix?
(i`m not moaning at u Louva, i`ve got high respect for your work)

It’s interesting to see how others have tackled the balance issue that DA did such a very poor job with.

What I have done with the Hunters Mk II mod is to take out the weapon and shield class level limits. I then based most ships into a size category based on how big the model is and how many weapons it could mount. Because I was also revamping engines and power as player buyable options that take up cargo space I had to increase cargo size. From there I based armor on agility of the ship and how many weapons it could mount, the more agile or HP mounts a ship had the less armor, cargo room and botts/batts. Light fighters have between 1 and 10K armor, Heavies 10K-20K and VHF 20K-30K. The smaller the cargo hold the smaller the engine the slower you would fly and the smaller the power plant the less often you could fire your weapons. I did much the same thing Mace did with his shields for capacity and recharge, but mine were at plus or minus 20% to his 10%. Shields and engines now also draw power and so you must not over tax your power plant by just assuming you can mount the biggest shields and weapons in your light fighter and the smallest power plant and still fight. The power drain off a class 10 Grav LF shield is higher then the power output of a class 3 power plant. Sure you can mount 4 coded weapons on a Drake now, but don’t expect to be able to fire them very often. The power recharge rate (depending on the type of power plant you buy; 3 different types 3 different max capacity and recharge rates) can be about the same and the shield recharge rate, so you have to make every hit really count or go with a slightly lower grade weapon that you can fire more often.

I don’t think my system here is as precise as what Argh is working out and I don’t have the beta testers I need to really combat test it, but I think it ends up being a lot better balanced then DA’s attempt at it. What I have now is the ability for a light fighter to go head to head with a VHF and have chance if it is handled right. The light has speed and agility on its side; the VHF has power and armor on its side. If the LF is used right and stays out of the guns of the bigger ship long enough it can take out the VHF, if the VHF get a piece of the LF it is going to leave the LF really hurting very quickly.