That certainly looks like a good balanced system. The only thing I'd suggest is lowering the cargo capacity of gunboats and possibly cruisers to below that of freighters. They may be bigger ships, but I'd expect much of the space in a gunboat would be used to support the weapon systems etc. Otherwise you could find players ignoring freighters completely in favour of the far more heavily armoured gunboats.

thnx Accushot, your approval means a lot to me - i have nothing but admiration for everyone at Pathfinders and Evo 1.3,which is my main inspiration for stats as it is pretty much the only mod i play

i don't think its an issue really,as you have to make your money in a freighter before you can dream of buying a gunboat,and while the gunboat has enough cargo capacity to make it a decent freighter the sacrifices in armor,power,and engine would make it a sitting duck like the rest = ) - besides which,freighters just get ignored in favor of trains anyway right?

started work on the toolkit,armor and engines are done, although i haven't made any new engines just yet; armor, power and engines now have goods entries and engines are sellable with the engine patch-i'm still contemplating how to do the engines, whether i should leave the stock ones as is or replace them all w/ classified engines instead of ship-specific ones(ie coe_fighter_engine_01 etc)

i notice the toolkit doesn't have battleships so i have some major work to do - i love battleships, and i 'm not of the same opinion as Argh when it comes to battleships,they can be powerful and balanced, at least when done correctly as in Evolutions (kudos guys, i'm really enjoying the new version and the greater variety of ships i'm seeing now)

right now i'm working on giving all the capital turrets classes(thanks to Argh freeing up slots in hp_turret_specials)so there won't be any battleships firing 21 flak *shudder*, also considering fixing the size issue of different turrets looking terrible on other houses' hardpoints by making 2 of each type,large turret\small turret and in a little experiment i'm giving primary and secondary turrets individual shields to protect against missiles/torps and flak while allowing hull damage to occur normally elsewhere on the hull...

Actually, the only reason why I don't have Battleships in the current version of the Toolkit is because I've been working on solving all of the docking problems- which is very nearly done now- the next version of the Toolkit Mod will feature them, including player-flyable ones.

I think Battleships can be balanced regardless of cost (which is the one of the things I do *not* consider in balance- cost is pretty much irrelevant, imho, except in SP). However, for them to act like Battleships and be balanced, I've had to nerf them in various ways- basically, they'll be very slow, and they'll have turning issues (I'll be turning their damping down quite a bit, among other things).

Other things I don't include in costs, but which are arguable propositions:

1. Scanners. My feeling about scanners is that they should all be the same for player ships. IRL, I would find it a bit odd if spacecraft with the energy levels required to power big lasers and energy shields powerful enough to defeat them didn't have enough spare juice for active scanners with a maximum useful range (which, if we're talking space combat, is about one light-second). Radars that powerful are mainly a function of the technology used to gather/interpret the returning bounces... which is mainly about the efficiency of the antennas and the computers used to sort out the hash. I would have to assume that in the Freelancer future, where spacecraft are cheap enough that petty criminals can buy them... that scanners are pretty much opti-maxed technologies.

And that is why I don't bother offering scanner upgrades, and instead have pushed Scanner ranges up to the practical maximum (which is 10K). Anything higher than that doesn't seem to work right, no matter what you do- I have yet to see Scanners detect anything farther away than that, including hidden Solars, in practical tests.

2. Thrusters. Thrusters offer lots of special problems, because they make zero sense from a "realism" standpoint. If we wanted totally realistic Thrusters, then we should have a formula stating the exact ratio of thruster vs. input energy (i.e., Thruster drain) and use that to make each type of Thruster balanced- in short, Thrusters that offer more speed should drain energy more slowly. I don't *quite* go that far- I didn't use a formula- but I did some quick-and-dirty practical playtesting, and I think that the Thrusters in 1.3, when released, will probably actually use a final, balanced formula. I don't see any point in going further with that, unless Thrusters become things that cannot be upgraded- an issue with serious, SERIOUS game-balance-wrecking possiblity.

3. Weapon hardpoints. I don't include these in balance calculations, because so long as Energy is being used up, there's a direct, 1:1 tradeoff here- in short, the more Hardpoints you have, the faster you use up energy- you still fire the same number of shots (actually, if you do the math, you fire MORE shots with fewer HPs, but it's subtle). The only exception to this rule are Missiles. Missiles are going to be completely reworked for 1.3. Basically, I've decided that Missiles should all use the Torpedo/CD slots (which I'll rename to "Guided Weapons", and that every ship gets at least one. This will allow me to use my custom weapon CMPs for these weapons, and I can put them on "cool" places (like wingtips), and also make them stronger overall in terms of performance but less unbalanced on average compared to the FL versions. The changes introduced in 1.1, where I took a long look at their area effects (and how they affect FL's gameplay- i.e., why Cannonballs are so unbalanced in the stock game) really took a big bite out of this problem, and this set of changes will further alter these dynamics.

Lastly... I am pretty much convinced that instead of using the arbitrary distinctions between "light fighters", "heavy fighters" and "freighters" which currently exists in FL, which makes zero sense (a Rheinland "light" is more than equivalent to a Liberty "heavy", I'm going to redefine things so that we have meaningful classes that make sense- not divided in a meaningless way with arbitrary classes, but based on mission.

Basically, there will be three Shield variants:

1. "Pulse" Shields, that eat terrific amounts of Energy when recharging, have low hitpoint values, but reset very quickly to 100%, giving opponents a very short time to do Hull damage- IOW, you've gotta hit enemies constantly, and Missiles will probably not work well, but you don't need Shieldbusters to defeat them. Typically, these will be used by Light Fighters and combat ships that intend to defeat opponants going Missile-heavy. A good Shield type to have equipped when taking out Capships, with their slow refire rates and heavy missile batteries... not so good against opponants with Lasers or other high-ROF guns. Pirates will like them, typical players will sometimes use them, military ships will sometimes use them.

2. "Normal" Shields, based off of the current Heavy Fighter shield levels (in short, these are the defaults) which have default rates for the most part, but slightly improved reset values over current values, resetting to 10% of full. Typically, you'll see these on general-purpose Fighters and other craft. In short, these are what everybody thinks of as "shields" in FL, and I've decided to just eliminate the other two categories, which did more to arbitrarily limit ships to artificial classes than any practical good.

3. "Heavy" Shields, which will have better resistances to weapons, higher recharge, power usage and top hitpoints (ala the Freighter shields now in the current balance), but which will have much slower reset times (say, 20 seconds), but will reset to 100%. These are for Freighter pilots and military capships, where having a strong Shield with a strong recharge rate is worth the high energy costs. I'm going to include Energy drain as a practical side-effect on Military-class vessels in the next versions of the Toolkit Mod, so that capships can go "all out" with their weapons until their Shields take damage- a side-effect of having higher-ranged weapons than other ship types. Basically, Freighter pilots with these Shields will want to run while the running's good, though- the Energy lost while recharging will put a crimp on weapons use, but the recharge and resistance mean that they might be able to reach Cruise or use Engine Kill to escape.

I'll keep the current balance between Armor and Cargo and Energy production as-is. I think that it works just fine- right now, you can have a Starflier with Class 10 Shields and weapons, but you also need a Powerplant Upgrade to use them without running out of Energy all the time, because you can't store much Energy, and the Starflier produces very little. This gives you a Starflier which is technically able to defeat a VHF... sort've. The VHF can still win on sheer firepower... but the Starflier's got manueverability to spare. And since both of them can use Engine Kill, Reverse Thrust and Strafe, the VHF's usually going to win no matter how good the Starflier pilot is, if they're both equally well kitted-out. Now, if the VHF pilot only has Class 5 weapons... he's actually (stat-av) probably better off against a Starflier, because while he can't do nearly as much damage per salvo, he's going to be able to spam a lot more, which is important against a speedy, manueverable target.

Basically... long story short... I intend to get rid of the final arbitrary areas of the original FL ship classes entirely. I've always thought they didn't make sense, and I'm going to fix them fully, and let players decide what they want. It's taken more playtesting and a lot of thought to get this all sorted out, obviously, and I think that this is a pretty good solution, and the three Shield types will give players genuine tactical choices- not just optimax against a given weapons system. Given that I intend to play with the Loadouts of the AI-driven ships a lot more, and that Missiles will have a more "tactical" feel to them, I think this will all add up to a superior package.

I will not be making changes to flight speed. Changing that makes very little sense, in my opinion. For one thing, whatever drives they're using in the FL universe aren't really reaction drives- otherwise, there wouldn't be ANY top speeds short of the speed of light. So I have to assume they're using "traction drives" or something like that, which have some arbitrary top speed. Plus it gives light fighters some inherent advantages, in MP, which I think that most people don't see the full implications of. So I'm not going there- it's more than enough, in my opinion, that lighter, less-armored fighters with small Cargo holds are much more manueverable and accelerate much more quickly than their opponants, which, coupled with the changes introduced in previous versions of the Toolkit (i.e., no more arbitrary Weapon levels) adds up to considerable advantage, which I countered with lower Energy production to keep them in check against their heavier, less-manuevable breathren.

Sooooo... in 1.3, you can expect me to tackle the remaining, arbitrary balance distinctions of FL. Cold_Void... I understand why you're taking your path, but I really do think that instead of emphasizing the LF/HF balance, it's better to just give players the freedom to define how they're going to define a given ship's role. Given that players cannot alter certain fundamentals (handling, hardpoints) because of the nature of the game engine, it makes sense (at least to me) to give players meaningful choices about all of the other areas, instead of limiting them or pushing them down a given path- and that's what I intend to do with the next version of the Toolkit.

well thats the whole point - not leveling the ships so any ship can defeat any other by itself but making an equipment system that allows lots of upgrades while being equitable to every class - i love your torpedo idea, i for one HATE missile spamming where people load a ship with energy missiles and torpedos and get away without using hardly any basic fighter maneuvers.however i also feel that allowing them to trade armor for cargo space to hold those missiles is an equally good solution.

my proposed new shield type:vampyre shields - these have a constant power drain that nearly disables a ship,but when that shield goes down it reroutes energy back into the drive and gives a boost to that ailing fighters weapon systems

turret shields:individually linked shields, these protect the primary and secondary turrets on capships from torpedo blasts since no shield generator has ever been designed to cover such a large area as a battleship.this means that while torpedos can do massive damage to a capital ship one must still get close to destroy turrets

@Cold_Void:

My only questions here would be:

1. So far as I am aware, mounted Equipment takes up zero Cargo. I have done multiple experiments with this, and am rather curious as to how you're going to get around that problem.

2. Also be aware that Equipment's Mass is not used at all for the physical flight characteristics of ships. That is why my equations in the Toolkit work the way that they do for Mass- I had to come up with an alternative method of calculating total Mass, including the theoretical Mass of cargo, etc., because the ship's Mass (not the parts, not the weapons... nothing else ) is a constant, not a variable that can be changed through user behavior.

Therefore, in the Toolkit's balance, Freighters have the most Energy for their Armor, because Energy is calculated from total Mass... and they gain a great deal of Mass from their Hold_Sizes being as large as they are. This all works out a lot better than it would appear from just reading one of the formulae, of course, because Mass is also directly tied to manueverability stats, which means that Freighters can mount very powerful weapons (for their Armor levels) but are much less able to out-accelerate opponants and manuever very poorly against opponants with similar Armor levels. Yes, this does mean that there is a certain opti-max point where it's "better" to have more Cargo than more Armor, if one is building a combat-only ship and one wants maximum Energy output, but that's a teeny slice of the range, and let's just say it's near the very low end of the curve People have not really written to me about the Armor vs. Shield levels, but I think that they work pretty well for the "normal" Shields, and hopefully the changes I'm proposing to make to the game balance will give players more meaningful choices than the FL shield system, which was pretty obviously designed to be obtuse (either that, or the FL design team didn't realize how many Shield categories were utterly useless, which is entirely possible, given how the Weapons were designed).

#1.you're mistaken about equipment not taking cargo space - the only mounted equipment that does take space is internal(sensible huh?)which is the last category going left-to-right in your equipment inventory.this is armor,engine,power,and scanner. me'thinks you should have been more thorough in your testing

#2.by giving armor a proportional amount of displacement i have solved the handling problem imho, because a faster better handling battleship engine will displace the armor that should make it handle poorly.if you armor up to 1 million points you will have a fortress,but it will be slow,turn poorly at speed and be nearly defenseless with no almost no power to spare for weapons

Edited by - Cold_Void on 8/15/2005 2:48:35 AM

@Cold_Void:

1. I can see where you're going with the engines vs. armor, but it won't work quite as expected. While you can change the acceleration ratio and top speed, which will have noticable effects on "true turning behavior" per my articles on FL physics, you will not be able to alter the rotation parameters defined in shiparch, so far as I am aware. If, perchance, you've found a way around that issue, I'm all ears- but basically, the Battleship in your example will spin on its Y axis the exact same speed regardless of its acceleration behavior- in extremis, it will have a negative velocity, but that's all that's going to happen there. Not to mention that, in practical experiments (I wrote a thread about this somewhere down below here) I have found that there are some real, maximum numbers which you should not exceed for Mass vs. Linear_Drag if you want FL ships to be able to do things like dock, because the docking AI is really, really dumb.

2. I've seen Internal equipment work like that- the only problem being mounting/unmounting said equipment reliably, and the fact that then you're basically making Cargo a variable that people can game their ships with. The practical upshot is that people could then very easily have Battleships that could carry millions of units of Cargo, leading one back to the not-so-rosy path of having arbitrary ammunition limitations (which, in turn, makes ammo-using weapons a big, hairy issue because of the way that they're treated by the game engine), not to mention the inherent difficulties presented by the fact that you need valid Goods entries, and thus Hardpoint assignments, in order to swap things in/out. See other mods with Armor Upgrades such as Evo to see the practical implications.

Basically, while I think you can make some of this work, I'm kind've skeptical that you can make it all work smoothly and without removing a lot of valuable game design space. And I'm pretty dubious about letting players mess around with armor values, to be perfectly honest- I show people how they can do upgradeable and mountable non-standard Equipment in the Toolkit, but I didn't include Armor Upgrades for the same reason I didn't include Shield Boosters- both things are inherently unbalancing and favor heavier ship designs, when you look at stat-av effects.

Your proposed system would be a nightmare to game-balance, I suspect... especially because what you're proposing in terms of Engines could lead to people building ships that had practically zero Armor but were faster than anything else and had almost unlimited Energy (which is precisely opposite of what I did with the Toolkit, for very good reasons imo). I purposefully put the Nomad ships into 1.3, with very odd stat balances, to sort've show off how alternate strategies for balancing something as odd as a non-Shielded ship could be worked up. Getting those two (roughly) balanced was ... a wee bit tricky. Trying to make it all work out no matter what twinks did with it... is very much more tricky. Having built a complete game design from the ground up that features such ideas (see Silent Dark, on my website) ... it went through months of playtesting with lots of people before I was satisfied that it was reasonably well-balanced and fair.

Edited by - Argh on 8/15/2005 3:19:20 AM

i'm very much aware of the problems with armor - you must have missed what i said about Evo earlier game design space? one thing i've thought about is giving all ships the same basic hitpoints, then letting people decide if they want to fill their cargohold to the brim with it..based on the theory that all hulls are built for one thing - to hold air and occupants reliably - armor is an upgrade applied to the inside of the hull in air-tight modules of tough metals, ceramics etc that prevent all air leaks until total hull breach - now that i've thought about it i think that really is the way to do it, instead of basing the hold's size on ship class

**after some expermenting with it i realized that ubiquitous hitpoints results in very large armor multipliers for capital ships - therefore they'll be based on some sort of ship class**

Edited by - Cold_Void on 8/15/2005 9:09:00 AM

*bump* updated the armor stats

*i've got a purrfect bretonian battleship set up with destructible hull-subparts, i.e the engine can be shot off,turret positions can be destroyed(note,not the turret the actual part of the hull it's on - well ok its just the front primary but still), the front half of the ship can be shot off,etc. now i'll just put all the fancy fireworks back into the fuses because i tore those out to make reading it easier on my pagedown key ... Argh if you would like to look at my code and possibly use it I'd be overjoyed to share it with you*

does anybody know if armor scales the [CollisionGroup hitpoints?

also- i solved the capital ship bump problem where a tiny starflier can send your ship spinning out of control(not sure if it is only affecting NPC, needs MP tests)-

the solution is very simple actually. open your capital class ship in UTF editor, select the root and add a node,name it "Rigid Body" add two subnodes to that, Mass Properties and Extent Tree respectively - now under Mass Properties add three nodes;Center of Mass,Inertia Tensor,Mass.Under Extent Tree create a node,name that Sphere 1 - give it three nodes;Name,Radius,Transform

here are the Mass Properties figures i've plugged into the bretonia battleship, numbers are all float values be sure you put them in that way.

---

Center of Mass:
-0.000538
0.000169
-200.000000
0.000000

Intertia Tensor:
100.249069
0.000101
0.000101
0.000101
100.249077
-0.000101
0.000101
-0.000101
100.905914
0.000000

Mass: (reaally high, don't worry it doesn't affect flight)
9999999442119689800000000000.000000
-10.000000

---

now, the Extent Tree/Sphere 1

---

Name: BR-BS Sphere 1

Radius:
650.500000
0.000000

Transform:
1000.000000
0.000000
0.000000
0.000000
1000.000000
0.000000
0.000000
0.000000
1000.000000
0.000885
-0.221800
0.000000

---

now stupid NPCs that don't turn before they hit you will just bounce off, only pushing your ship a little bit

Edited by - Cold_Void on 8/16/2005 12:18:55 PM

@Cold_Void:

I'll have to take a look at that solution, and I'm very curious where you found this stuff- among other things, it leads me to wonder if there aren't similar variables for SUR hit-detection radii that we could use- that would get rid of certain problems that remain with the current exporter.

I've been solving that problem another way- by raising the numbers for turning behaviors quite a bit. So long as the *ratios* are the same, the turning behaviors (radians/sec) is exactly the same. The only difference is, these higher numbers directly counter-act the spinning effects caused by collisions. In the next version of the Toolkit, I've basically added four zeros to the end of the turning calculations.

This means that when you impact things, you spin very little, unless the value of these variables differs substantially from that of the thing you're impacting- i.e., when you ram a Battleship (which has a few more zeroes at the end), you're going to spin, but if you and another "regular ship" were to collide perfectly head-to-head (which is just about impossible, given the way SUR collisions work, but nm) you'd both stop, facing each other. In practice, this totally gets rid of "missile spin" and that annoying bounce given to ships by the teeny-tiny asteroid chunks that make high Cruise speeds somewhat dangerous

its from the nomad equipment\hardware models - all of them have individual mass properties and inertia tensors - also bh_flute4.pte has one...this is interesting because its apparently a discarded effect,it looks like a rosetta stone to ALE effects to me-if i could remember the CRC reverse signature# i would attempt to put it back in the effects and see what it actually does when its equipped to the blackhole,could be really cool

your solution for spinning sounds very good but i'm not sure those same stats affect npcs collisions, stopping player collisions is more important of course for large ships

Edited by - Cold_Void on 8/17/2005 4:27:58 AM