Mini-mod: LRM to cluster missiles

[Trucidation]

Edit:
This is now officially my Missiles mod, I've tweaked the weakest missiles of each category instead of replacing all the LRMs like I originally did - apparently some people like sniping with LRMs :-P

Also as promised, this read will include the results of some digging around in the rocket definitions. Hardly did much actually, it was mostly an exercise in figuring out what the entries do and moving stuff around. Feel free to pick it apart and use it in your own mods!

Out of the 20 existing missile types, 8 of the weakest ones have been modded. Be advised that missiles are now dangerous! Yes, you missile specialists out there should have a great time, but this also holds true for the AI. Put a wingmember on missile defense or invest in passive countermeasures - you'll regret it otherwise. Don't be put off by the high missile total - the game counts every warhead in multirocket designs. I'm the kind of guy who likes balance (or even harder challenges) so don't worry about this mod turning the game into an easy boring clickfest.

You may experience some lag in large battles. Game basically slows down to a crawl <5fps during endgame engagements. It's hugely annoying. Accordingly I've speeded up the warheads so they die faster (less objects to clutter space), and I'm reconsidering the MultiRocket MIRVs. This mod, after all, largely started as a proof-of-concept, and most of the values used were more along the lines of "let's go wild and see what this can do!" rather than "this should produce a reasonably balanced effect". I'll probably lower the warhead count and up the damage.

Thanks to Goblin Wizard who clarified some stuff, and all you guys in the modding thread who gave me the idea to poke around the scripts. Also thanks to Aleksty and the guys in the english-language thread at the StarRover forum, he mentioned some things I didn't notice before. The inspiration for this came from Touhou, what else? :-P

There shouldn't be any game-stopping errors, but let me know about balance issues. Prices, damage, effectiveness, etc. Yes, the missiles are actually weak, vulnerable to countermeasures, and expensive. However, this means missile expert pilots are now viable heroes unlike in the original unmodded game; remember, all your missile bonuses apply to every single missile, thus quantity > quality.

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How to install:
1. Unzip the archive. There's a \Data\ folder in there.
2. Copy-paste it to the game's folder. It will overwrite a few files so just say yes when it asks. This mod is NOT compatible with the Fleet/Mothership mods if you download it from here. A compatible version of this mod has been included in Mod Pack 1, see the mods thread (http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=15283).

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Updates:
[ Version 3/June/2010 ]
- increased explosion flare live time for all 4 danmaku types

[ Announcement 7/June/2010 ]
- Ha, sorry for the delay. Had to balance some stuff especially prices versus bang-for-buck - it was too easy to simply load a Bident and own everything. I've confirmed that the ones I've put in (half done actually) work as planned, so it's just a matter of finishing the rest and doing some final testing.

[ Version 7/June/2010 ]
- Alright, it's up. Fully compatible with Goblin Wizard's mothership mod v0.24. An unmodded game is also fine.
- Screenshot 1 added. Damn, I'm getting my ass handed back to me. Hard mode rocks.

[ Announcement 7/September/2010 ]
- No update, just a reminder that this mod is NOT fully compatible with the latest mothership mod. Download Mod Pack 1 from the Star Wolves 3 Mods thread (http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?p=179400) instead - I have handpatched my mod there for compatibility.

[ Announcement 26/October/2010 ]
- No update, just a progress note. Been experimenting with a missile type where the purpose isn't to inflict a lot of damage but to blast ships out of their flight path. Creative players should note the possibilities for breaking up formations. UPDATE: the effects weren't quite as useful or interesting as I'd thought them to be, most of the time it just prolongs the already longish combat. Breaking formations required an absurd collision distance so it was impractical. Plus it provided yet another way to screw with the scripts like for example if you hit a trigger-carrying target out of range.

[ Announcement 10/September/2011 ]
- No update, just an observation. The standalone expansion should be out in October - within a month or two from now. Depending on how similar it is I'll likely mod the crap-end missiles in that game as well. Not sure whether to go along with the (ill-fitting) danmaku theme or try for an in-universe (which may likely end up reading very dull) theme.

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Looks kinda messy in the screenshots but that's because I suck at taking pictures. In the first you can see the blooming green-white explosions in the far background. In the second you can see the first few seconds of a head-on engagement (enemy on the left, player on the right). You can see the enemy missiles flaring around the player ships (deflected by ECM) while on the enemy side they hit and detonate, scattering whites and blues and reds - the missile explosion flares have been coloured a bit and the bloom time lengthened so that you can see the flames linger for a couple of seconds before fading out.

I know you can "snipe" targets outside of their range but I consider that a bug because they don't respond to getting hit.

[Trucidation]

[ Screenshot post ]

Apparently there's a 5-attachment limit, heh. Just some screenshots to show the missiles in action in case anyone was wondering. Yay fireworks in the 5th one, lol.

The balance feels okay to me but feel free to comment. They're close range, they're not cheap, and the total damage is comparable to the other missiles. One happy (and intended) side effect is that if you have an expert missile specialist his skills should apply to all of the warheads. So these things are okay in the hands of an unskilled user and deadly in the hands of a missile specialist.

Edit:
Yeah I know the funky colours may be too fruity for your tastes (b-b-but it's danmaku!) but before anyone start yelling "omg FFFFFFFFFF" at me, please note that you can always edit the FlashLiveTime back to normal values and change the RGB hue to something more to your liking ;) A quick fix would be to open up Rockets.xml and then pointing all four missiles' explosion tags back to the generic rocket_explosion instead of the custom danmaku ones.

[Trucidation]

Moved the discussion from the first post to reduce clutter. This post will be updated as I figure out more stuff about missiles.

Note: It's possible to add new missiles and not just replace LRMs like I did (because I felt they were not useful). I don't think there are any hard limits and in any case there aren't that many missile types anyway. I don't have enough graphics to do that however, as you can see I managed to dig up 4 unused graphics but that's about it, there isn't really any more so you'll have to recycle graphics from existing missiles or import your own.

Custom sound effects for each explosion are also pointed by the esc file referenced by the related explosion script. I wanted to do this too but I don't have any good explosion sfx currently. Damn, where was that Crusader: No Remorse sound pack...

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1) The bulk of the work is in \Data\Game\'s Modules.xml and Rockets.xml files. Each missile has one entry in Modules.xml, this is like the entry for the trade interface so you have stuff like cost in here. By the name you can also figure out it's not just for missiles so there isn't much here. Each missile entry references a missile definition and detonation definition.

2) Continuing from (1), Rockets.xml is where you define the missile and the detonation. Since I created cluster weapons, I needed two pairs of definitions: one for the parent delivery vehicle, then another for the payload.

3) \Data\LocData\English\ merely contains an edited m_modules.loc, which is basically the text descriptions which show up in trade. That's what you read in the screenshots below. By the way, the missile icons are in Modules.xml mentioned in step (1), look for the flat_image line in each entry.

4) The rest of the mod is new files for the custom explosion colours. It's very simple actually. In Rockets.xml mentioned in step (1) each detonator has an explosion script linked to it. So what I did was simply clone the default rocket_explosion script and the exp file that script points to, and then edit the RGB colour value of the flare. There are 4 because I created one for each missile type, so all four of them have different colours.

Very straightforward :)

5) In the explosion exp file referenced by the explosionscript esc, editing the FlashLiveTime will change how long the flare stays (we know it's the explosion flare because that section has a reference to a dds which you can view). Below it, FlashLiveTimeSpread seems to be how long each frame of the flare lasts. Since there's only 2 frames, simply divide the FlashLiveTime by 2.

6) Some rocket and detonator definitions are shared. This can be a huge gotcha as I deleted the detonators from rocket definitions I replaced. The game didn't complain because I suspect it doesn't actually check the script until you actually fire the missile. You'll probably get a CTD. There'll likely be an entry in ScriptErrors.log or LOGfile.txt, so if this happens to you please post the contents of these files here; thanks!
Update:
This should not happen anymore because I only add new entries now, without deleting existing ones. Just remember this note if you're making your own missile mods.

7) The game actually has code to handle multiple missile launches, not just single-parent-with-multiple-warhead MIRVs. They're named MultiRocket and they're basically defined the same as other rockets except with the addition of a rocket_slot entry, which defines how many rockets are subtracted from the total in max_rocket_count per launch. So if you have max_rocket_count=20 and rocket_slot=4, you'll fire 4 rockets per launch for a total of 5 launches (4 x 5 = 20). By the way, MultiRocket's RocketParams can be set to launch MIRVs and not just regular rockets, so you can actually create multiMIRV launchers. Better beware of the total damage though :p

8 ) Explosion sound effects are also in the explosion exp file referenced in step (5), it seems you can assign one to each fx frame.
NOTE: All sounds must be in mono format or the game will not play them! So if you have any stereo sounds make sure to mix them into mono.

9) MultiRockets appear to be logged - they will show up in LOGfile.txt. The problem is timestamps are not attached. They simply show something like:
[MULTI_ROCKET] - IDLE
[MULTI_ROCKET] - SEEKING
[MULTI_ROCKET] - FIRE
[MULTI_ROCKET] - IDLE
...and it goes on for literally hundreds of lines. The original game didn't have any working MultiRockets, I assume there were bugs they couldn't fix so they took them out. The only bug I've seen is most likely performance related - I only experienced in the large endgame battles when there were like 100+ ships in the entire sector. Game CTDs but LOGfile.txt doesn't mention any specific error, it just complains about "memory access violation blahblahblah". WARNING: You may want to avoid using the salvo skill especially if you have MultiRocket MIRVs installed. No, I haven't tried it - but have you seen how salvo works? It launches like half the entire missile pod in one shot, especially noticeable if you're using those 32x dumbfires. I imagine if you activate it with my high-end MultiRocket MIRVs (the HR or the KS models), you'll most likely notice an immediate drop in the framerate and I assume you may even CTD. (I bet if this happens you'll see a lot of those MULTI_ROCKET entries and a final "memory access violation" complaint at the end of LOGfile.txt).

10) There is a limit to how many MultiRockets can be launched! Maximum observed appears to be 10. You can define a larger number in rocket_slots but the game will only ever 10 at one go, and less if the target happens to fly out of firing angle/range.

11) Missile speed has an effect on the impact - kinetic energy appears to be transferred, I've seen stationary targets get blasted aside when hit by multiple warheads travelling at high speed. I use pretty small warheads though (I simply cloned existing ones), but if I'm not mistaken there are values for mass. It may be prudent to keep those values low otherwise your targets will scatter as if hit by a bowling ball when the missiles hit them.

[StarShatter]

Haha! Beautiful. I was thinking this exactly!

I had been using Hailstorm and cheap targeted missiles (even the worst MIRV) to try and get some of my standard missiles to hit more. I had been toying with the idea of a MIRV that sprays lots of little targeted missiles to pre-occupy AM systems. While the real payload does the job.

Modded the game a little so far, nothing big. I'll definitely be trying these out! Going to make them more of a Special-Use missile by lower the damage.

1 damage, 30 warheads, Deadly Missiles 5. Is still 150 damage.
I dominate hard enough as it is with a standard MIRV.

However I use LRM! :(
So if no one else does, I'll be modding to make it a buy-able separate item.

(Note: Wireless is on the fritz, its taken soooo long to get this post up :???:)

Edit: A bit of colour isn't too bad! Makes the explosions a bit more noticeable.
Edit2: Notepad++ FTW! Alt+2 makes navigating through all this weapon stuff so much easier.

[Trucidation]

Thanks, glad to help!

Ya, my main complaint about the missiles was their relative un-usefulness. I didn't really like the concept of making them just give more damage, because the player is still left with only possessing a measly amount of them.

You know what. I could just replace the standard MIRVs instead and leave the LRMs intact. After all, with these cluster missiles installed the regular MIRVs look very plain. Would this be more agreeable?

(Originally I modded LRMs because I didn't use them, but also I was attempting to teach myself whether I could change a single missile into MIRV. If I simply edited the MIRVs I wouldn't have learned as much as I did.)

Edit:
It struck me that I should stop screwing around and just make them entirely new items, and not replace anything. Haha. The only issue with this is that the AI ships will be stuck using plain missiles. And you'll really be crushing them. Until some other modder with experience with flight generation can help me figure out how to randomise AI ship items instead of forcing them to use the fixed definitions, I think I might go with 2 versions of this mod.

[StarShatter]

Just did the mission where you get the final mother ship (non-faction MS) with these pods installed. Lowered the damage to 1-3, and the number of missiles per pod to ~10. They were insane, I simply can't image what they are like without being nerfed! Alone they were pretty damn powerful, but these were just hard difficulty mercs, nothing serious.

In combination with 2-3 Short Range missile pods they did a lot of work.
Do the better ones still have AoE? Or was it the 2nd tier MIRV I fired that killed all my guys? (Hero shot some at point blank and killed himself, cant remember which pod exactly though)

They do pretty well on those non-missile spec characters, that need that extra bang a missile provides. Might use some Puma for once! You can put these spray like mad missiles on your non-missile specs just to counter the counter-missile systems, while your missile spec does a lot of damage.

Gonna go over the balance a bit later, look at the scripts some more.
Got some balance stuff if you're interested. Damage/Projectiles/Pod size/Costs, that kinda stuff.
Can post/PM the working out as well.

Edit again: Never mind the quote. That was from the Mother ship Mod thread... :)

[Trucidation]

Did I miss a post? I can't see the one you're quoting.

I just realised if I add them as new items, I'm going to have to get them to show up in trade and I haven't gotten around to looking at that -__-"

Edit:
D'oh, and I keep forgetting that if I add new items, the AI won't be using them unless I fix ShipDescriptions.xml and that means hand-patching every single fighter type I want to install them on. Ugh. Right now I can simply change something and watch the AI use it against me as well.

[StarShatter]

I just realised if I add them as new items, I'm going to have to get them to show up in trade and I haven't gotten around to looking at that -__-"

I refer you to this post (http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=149992&postcount=13) by Valky on the second page of the modding thread.
Apart from making a ship I'm fairly (haven't tried personally) sure this is all that's needed.

I'll quickly PM you the rough stuff I've done so far. Just suggestions on initial balance.

[Trucidation]

Thanks for both the link and the PM.

I keep most values similar, like pod size and refire rate, so that I get a somewhat steady barrage of missiles. A small pod size doesn't work for me, they run out too fast. So I need to keep it high but lower the damage per warhead to compensate.

They're meant to be mostly a deterrence rather than a primary kill option so they're unlike traditional missiles. In the several test battles I've played I noticed that guns still do most of the killing so I haven't gotten them entirely wrong, but they're still chewing up armor pretty fast. The values I use actually add up rather higher than the ones you sent through PM; you're right, and I intend to lower them.

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There's also the ECM (jamming) value to consider, if we keep it low then targets have more chances of not getting hit. Currently I simply arbitrarily assign Seeker_A to Seeker_D from LRM1 to LRM4, in order. Haven't really put much thought into it actually.

Do you know how well ECM / AMS works? We have the values (10,20,30,40), but what exactly are they, percentage? Doesn't look like it though, the ones rated 40 stop too many missiles to be 40%. Or perhaps it's a straight value, stopping everything rated below 40 and randomly stopping some of those rated 40?

[StarShatter]

I should really be asleep right now. But since I'm not.

The answer to the ECM/AMS question would be that there is a chance that they are confused/shot down.

JamRocket.script

function JamRocket(jamPower, antiJammer)
local pomeha = jamPower + 10 - RAND(30);
return pomeha > antiJammer;

So if you have a +30 system, its something like 30+10-R(30), and if thats greater than the "antiJammer" (this is stored on the rocket? and is modified by character?) the rocket will miss?

Hopefully you know the values/location of "antiJammer" and can make sense of this. lol.

And yeah, they should have a low "antiJammer", so they can tank the ECM/AMS.

[Trucidation]

Yeah, I've seen those. Jam value is assigned to ECM and AMS modules, while rockets all have a seeker reference which has a antijam value. Since you've shown that the jam equation works like that, we can insert intermediate jam values as well, e.g. 17, 25.

...

All this mention of jam is making me hungry :o

Edit:
I think I'll keep my cluster missiles antijam values average. My goal is to have them saturate the battlefield, not for quick kills -- you have gunnery and piloting specialists for that. This is more of a nod to the underappreciated missile specialists and gives the systems specialists something else to do when they're not repairing teammates.

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I still want to replace some existing missiles instead of just adding new ones. I'm fine with guns having 4 different levels of power because even the weakest guns are at least usable. You buy them once, then you use them forever -- until you replace them with better guns. Missiles, on the other hand, need constant replacing. Weak ones will just be a waste of money so I'm pretty sure most players realise this and simply save up to buy the better ones.

We have:

#M_Name_DF = S-4 Dart (4x unguided, 50 dmg)
#M_Name_MM = S-16 Mini (16x unguided, 50 dmg)
#M_Name_SM3 = S-18 Lance (16x unguided, 100 dmg)
#M_Name_SM4 = S-32 Hailstorm (32x unguided, 150 dmg)

#M_Name_SRM1 = SRM-6E Piranha (3x guided, 50 dmg)
#M_Name_SRM2 = SRM-8M Dagger (3x guided, 100 dmg)
#M_Name_SRM3 = SRM-15 Warhawk (3x guided, 150 dmg)
#M_Name_SRM4 = SRM-24 Scorpion (6x guided, 200 dmg)

#M_Name_AlienSRM = Alien Missile Launcher (5x guided, 200 dmg)
#M_Name_AlienPoisonTorpedo = Alien Nano Torpedo (1x torpedo, 50 dmg; 20 dmg x 45 sec)

#M_Name_LRM1 = LRM-7 Starshark (2x guided, 75 dmg, 350 range)
#M_Name_LRM2 = LRM-9 Avalanche (2x guided, 200 dmg, 450 range)
#M_Name_LRM3 = ALRM (2x guided, 300 dmg, 600 range)
#M_Name_LRM4 = LRM-12 Hornet (2x guided, 500 dmg, 600 range)

#M_Name_T1 = T-4 Eraser (1x torpedo, 500 dmg)
#M_Name_T2 = T-6 Hellbringer (1x torpedo, 1000 dmg)
#M_Name_T3 = T-9 Supernova (1x torpedo, 2000 dmg)

#M_Name_MIRV1 = MIRV Swarm (1x, 4 warheads x 80 dmg)
#M_Name_MIRV2 = MIRV-2 Tornado (1x, 8 warheads x 120 dmg)
#M_Name_MIRV3 = MIRV-3 Reaper (3x, 10 warheads x 200 dmg)

Of course, damage isn't the only consideration; some of the better missiles are simply just hard to find. That excuse doesn't work for me though, I'd rather that they be buyable anywhere. With that in mind, I'll be tossing out and replacing the ones coloured in grey.

My reasoning: with unguided rockets most of the time you don't hit anything. If you save them for capital ships that means most of the time you're flying around with rocket slots occupied by something useless (unless you enjoy watching missiles wasted shooting at fighters and missing all the time). So it's an easy decision to toss the 2 most worthless unguided missiles.

The short range missiles were also an easy decision. They're all very similar, only difference in damage. So why have 4? I'll drop the first two.

I'm leaving the alien types alone. They're (1) not buyable, and (2) very rare, only carried by aliens. So I'll just ignore them.

LRMs. I guess some people like the sniping range. In that case I'll just drop the weakest one, and the best one since it shares the same range as the second-best one. You can break some scripts by sniping the enemy before getting close enough to let the mission script trigger them, you know - I'm actually doing you guys a favour :-P

Torpedoes. Do we really need 3 types that essentially only differ by damage? Seriously? I'm ditching the weakest one.

MIRVs. Mmm, blame these things for getting me interested in fixing missiles. I'm not even sure I want to keep any of these originals around. Then again, some people may prefer damage rather than cloud the screen with missiles, so I'll just ditch the first one.

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That means out of the total 20 base missile types, I'm replacing 8. They'll all be whack multiwarhead types, and I'll try not to follow the same big-bigger-biggest style. Mostly I'll probably vary the number of warheads and explosion colours. It occured to me that I could borrow the alien torpedoes' poisoning effect but I'm not really a fan of that. All this editing will mess up the balance, of course, but that's where your comments come in ;)

Edit:
Fixed wrong stats

[StarShatter]

Small Note: If this missiles do a lot of damage (relative), and are fired by a missile specialist. It's VERY easy to take out one of your own allies.

45% passive bonus to damage, and X5 from Deadly Missiles... The ever so humble 20 damage projectile becomes a hefty 145 damage spray of doom! And considering how many missiles there are in 1 pod you can fire A LOT of them in the duration of Deadly Missiles. Also adds a fairly large boost to AnitJamming. (With 5 uses of DM per system, its pretty easy to keep up)

I'd give cheaper ones with more warheads to System Specs. Just to distract enemy ECM/AMS. Unless of course you don't have a Missile Spec, but I love Missile Spec. The ammount of damage you can do with 1 Warhawk is amazing, take out entire groups in 1 missile.

Even short range MIRV like this, with 4 med damage warheads would be cool. Ones made more for killing few weaker targets, or doing big damage to one hard target in the middle of a dog fight. But games in space need to be somewhat over the top.

For my game I reduced the costs for all missiles ~25% :grin: just to make buying so many less of a pain. Considering doubling the pod size (& .: availability, as shops stock in pods). Though I found a way to get unlimited money using 1 ALRM and 1 Cheap Ship. :cool:


Edit: Considering following valky's little guide to add in a T-5 Smilodon, I prefer that style of ship to the Hrimthurs-T. Even with just armour bonuses its a better ship! If it goes ahead, I'll have it done this weekend. Add a system slot or two for a radar & something.

[Trucidation]

Whoops, my huge edit came in while you were posting.

I know about the ally damage thing, that was another huge thing which really annoyed me about missiles. Especially if you activate the salvo skill; good god, that one seems friggen' designed to kill the attacking pilot half the time as well.

Which is why I like the tiny multiple warheads; they've got really small blast radii so unless you fire one point blank or an ally is stupid/unfortunate enough to get in the way, we should have less of those incidences.

I don't really have an opinion on those ships, although I preferred the Smilodon since it has two guns to the Hrimthurs' single gun (plus the name Smilodon refers to that cool big cat). Of course, now that we're making missiles less useless I'll have to reconsider many things.

Wait, wait... isn't Deadly Missiles X5 an active perk? It's not too bad compared to if it were a passive perk that was in effect all the time. Still, you're right, it's something to bear in mind. Which is why I prefer more warheads, so I can make the base damage really small. I recall using Deadly Missiles X5 mostly to give torpedoes that extra punch when attacking stations during the endgame missions, but that's about it. Most of the time I was more afraid of friendly fire, ugh.

Edit:
I need to restore the original data files because I mixed too many scripts up. Ugh. I've been playing with Goblin Wizard's Mothership mod, and while the stuff it changes doesn't overlap much with what I'm poking around, I did screw up restoring some scripts from a clean game instead of his.

[StarShatter]

Scorpions have a pod size of 6? </nitpick>
And SRM-8M Dagger are never to be doubted, they are some what better than the Warhawks in battle since they don't have such an AoE. But I don't care too much about Dagger, I usually snipe anyway :D pewpew. SRM Snipe into crowds is pretty neat. :O THIS ISN'T A MISSILE STRATEGY THREAD!

Earlier enemies that usually have poop missiles, and will now be getting these better, more advanced, crazy missiles. Which will effect difficulty, but not so much balance if they don't become tooooo good. Simply raise the importance of good missile defense, and putting EXP into it.

And yes, deadly missiles is active. If it was passive, I wouldn't get it at all... Useful for snipes or in loose combat where you can avoid the blast radius. Very devastating... Though it often leads to F8F8F8F8F8, until you get a decent hang of it (Or stop using it haphazardly, I use it like I can 1v30 pirates :D). Definitely prefer it to the 100% Launch Speed one.

Using DM-3 with LRM/SRM/MIRV makes them into superweapons. Using with a Torpedo is probably overkill/useless, not being able to spread the damage out so much (LRM+DM-3 is basically a torpedo). MIRV-3 with deadly missiles dominates everything. Mother ship deals with Capital Ships better than fighters, so it's more efficient (kills/time) to spend missiles on fighters. Hailstorm does more damage to single target (per pod) than torps anyway.

I guess I went off topic on random missile strategy. :(

[Trucidation]

Oh yeah, Scorpions are a 6-pack, I forgot to edit that line when I copypasted stats from the other missiles. You're right about the Hailstorms too, and since they're already in a nice large 32-pack that's why I'm leaving them alone.

Missile strategy discussion is good actually, it helps us understand how other people play the game. Otherwise I might just go crazy making changes that break other strategies. I want the mod to be fun, not overpowering. Although I still think the strategy of sniping enemies from outside their radar using LRMs is cheap ... :-P

I hardly use the active missile skills actually, far too many bad experiences with the blast radius hitting self / allies as well. I use torpedoes on stations, it takes like 20 Supernovas to actually destroy one, ugh... so the DM skills aren't overkill there. I've never used torps for capital ships, just focus all your fighters on them and they go down. Think about it: depolarize, hacker attack, (gun) burst attack... gunnery skills are just too strong. Not to mention the few times I fight capital ships my own team is all over the place, using torpedoes will pretty much guarantee someone gets caught in the blast as well.

Then since I noticed most gunships have heavy guns but no rocket slots, I figured I might as well fix rockets, at least that will bring support ships up to par a bit. Because, really, light guns are pathetic. I did think of modding the light guns, but the guys on the Elite Games forum said they're meant for support ships - and that is a valid point. Meh.

We'll only have a problem if gunships start packing multiple rocket slots. Which the Matarice does - and I'm totally exploiting it for testing, hehe - but its shield/armor/system slots aren't good so I suppose *one* ship like that is ok.

Edit:
I've solved the MultiRocket thing (see "Modding SW3?" thread) so now we've got even more options to play with. We have the basic MIRVs, now we can launch multiple rockets directly, or even combo them and make multiple MIRV launches. The skies are going to be bright with the light of fireworks tonight, lol.

[StarShatter]

This great MIRV spam so far really gives the game a Robot/Scifi-anime feel.
Missiles going absolutely everywhere! The coloured explosions really help.

[Trucidation]

I'm having a little trouble with MIRVs; you buy X amount, but if you attach it to your ship and then remove it, it get back Y amount. So you end up with a different number of missiles than you should have. I wonder what the heck is going on. Other than that little problem, everything else is fine. Should be up by tomorrow.

Update:
Ah, I figured out what was wrong. I previously had some missiles of the same type but they were defined differently. Apparently if you change the amount you should always get rid of old stock, re-dock with the station, and then only buy again. Works perfectly now. 3 more missile types to go!

Edit:
Almost done. The problem is when large fights occur - it only takes several missile boats loaded with modified MIRVs to totally screw up the framerate. Shouldn't normally be a problem but the endgame battles are going to resemble stop motion animation.

Edit:
Okay ladies and gents, it's done - refer to the first post for the download. Let me know what you think, lol.

[Sing_In_Silence]

Okay ladies and gents, it's done - refer to the first post for the download. Let me know what you think, lol.

A bit late to the party but here goes:

This mod is awesome.
It's worth the download (imo) just for the missile descriptions, but the mod itself is a wonder.

I admit, I miss the t-4 Eraser torpedoes, as with Deadly Missiles 2 they're enough to take out most patrols for 800 cr a instead of 4k a pop.

That said, by the time you get Grayhair, you can manage just fine with just any of the basic missiles.

I mean, with Deadly Missiles a Missile Gunner was dangerous in the vanilla game.
I'd consider saying that missiles are overpowered now, actually.

I mean, for one thing, I felt secure sending my guy, solo, against equally-geared opponent wings.
And he won, reliably, in the 30 second DM duration.

For another, I don't dare trying to stick around... whichever Station (where you get the Heavy Transport) to loot the MSF/NESF fight, since the scripted anti-scavenging MSF leader carries Hourai Volcanos.

For another, after getting the Mastiff, I need to be very careful getting to the portal to Hepheastus, as the MSF patrols also carry them, and can ruin your day very fast.


My only issue with the mod is that my toaster of a computer lags with even a single of the modified MIRVs :<


Oh.
And you might want to reduce the missile prices a bit.
Without too much grinding, I have some 50k worth of (looted only) Gen1 missiles, triple that of AM Cetus Omicrons, and I only just finished Dickens' mission (for InoCo).



Overall:
It's not perfect, but it easily warrants a two thumbs up anyway.
Good job!

[Trucidation]

Hey, it's been a while. I remember you from the dust clouds thread, heh. Dang, I thought you were getting a better pc? I just got a new i7 laptop myself a month back, heh. Haven't reinstalled SW3 on it yet though - been kinda busy playing SupComFA games with my buddies (now that my machine doesn't lag, hehe). I'd be playing this game except that I tend not to replay games if there's an expansion on the way - else I'll burn out too fast.

Yeah, I didn't really do a proper balance of the stuff here, more or less a few quick fly bys a couple of systems and that was it. Couldn't help solo high end ships being too godly though, since late in the game the numerical odds against you are ridiculous.

I don't remember much about the prices, but I think if I made them too cheap they'd be too easy to buy. On the other hand, too pricey then it's easy to get rich selling them. Plus there was the whole everything-needs-to-be-rebalanced thing hanging over our heads and I figured it wasn't worth the effort, especially with the expansion coming -- soon? next year? :/

Generally though I play this together with those other two mods, the mothership one and the one with more populated systems. Forgot the names, d'oh, but I think there should be a pack floating around the forums here.

Couldn't also figure out how to decouple the damage-to-blast radius thing iirc, as well as the launch sounds - comments should be in that large modding thread. Most likely won't be touching this anytime soon but I'll drop by from time to time. I'm waiting for the expansion actually. I hope the other modders are sticking around too, I never really got the hang of editing the scripting.

[Sing_In_Silence]

Hey.

Yeah, I've been putting it off for ages now. I can't afford the timesink it'd be if I were suddenly able to play new games11! >_>

Heh. SupCom is one of the games I have sitting on my shelf, unopened, waiting for me to upgrade.
From everything I hear, I should love it. I hope to, and your endorsement is promising :)

Yeah, no, Just putting my 2 cents in, for the consideration of anyone interested.
I didn't expect you to 'fix' anything, I'm doing that for myself (;)), and this thread's been helpful in that regard.
(Next up: Splitting shields into 'screens' (+#SP) and 'batteries' (+#SP/sec). 'Boom! Headshot' weapons are too much better than 'death by a thousand cuts' weapons.

Wondering if I can cannibalize the oneshot systems for that purpose. We'll see.)

Yeah, I got your pack (this mod, Goblin Wizard's Mothership mod and Nanaki's Fleet mod).
Thanks for that, btw.
Saved me much hassle working out the edits needed for compatibility :)

Good to know - if a shame -, ditto and ditto.

[Xantar]

Been a while since i played this, totally forgot what my login for the site.

Tried to install your mod, overwrite the data dir, but the game just crashed now whenever try to run it. So not sure what going on =/

> Latest version of the game, window 7 64bit

[Trucidation]

Yo, sorry for the extremely late reply. Whenever your game crashes, check out the LOGfile.txt file it creates in the main game folder - the last line there usually tells you what exactly went wrong (more games should do this, it makes modding sooo much easier).

My mod may not be compatible with some other mods if you have them running, that's probably it; if you don't mind playing a mod pack, the Mod Pack 1 in the mods thread contains my mod plus a couple of the more popular ones.