Changing Motherships
 

Looking at the motherships, I am a bit dissapointed in that they all seem the same... the early ones have the exact same loadout, 2 Big guns, 3 Turrets, 3 Systems, while the later ones have also, the exact same loadout, 2 Big Guns, 4 Turrets, 4 Systems (although the KFNI and Corporate motherships seem to be lacking one big gun...)

I have been thinking about changing the motherships so that they are more distinct, but at the same time I would like to also balance the late-game motherships (At the moment, the Manticore and the Lion cruisers seem to outmatch everything else).

Here are the list of motherships, Catigorized.
Naturally, the HMQueen and Arba are not included as they are not motherships.

Initial Mothership:
Mastiff

Optional Early-game Mothership:
Astarte

Final Motherships:
KFNI Star Wolf
Triada Rhino
Lion Cruiser MK3 (Yes, I know it is listed as a MK2 prototype, but all the game's internal files list it as MK3)
Lion Cruiser MK2 (MSF)
Manticore

Mission Specific Motherships:
MSF Supply Ship
Pirate Mastiff

Not used:
Lion Cruiser MK1
Military Transport
Lion Cruiser MK2 (Grey)? (This one may be used, not sure...)

my feeling
excluding the price, there are following areas to deal with:

Maneuverability:
--speed
--turning rate
-- there are some upgrades, but all according to %, which is stupid for further development

Durability
--shield
--shield regeneration
--hull
--hull repair
-- there are good upgrades, but lack other parameters for futehr development

Fire power
--Main Gun
--AA(anti-attacker) turret
---accuracy/hit effect/range/rate of fire/warhead speed
---kinetic warheads need a total upgrade, but may be too big a task.
--MS launched Missiles might destroy the total balance?
--may be extra droid pod?

There are one major area not covered:
Power Generator
-Power core
--the total amount of energy all systems can use
--what ever tech they are using, no refueling need
-Charger
--some extra energy reserve for emergency

--If we can add Power core and Charger to Mothership, then all the systems (propelling/sheild/repair /guns/radar/auto-pilot) can be power sensitive, then u can balance everything accordingly, and build speciallized versions.
--eg. laser can still be the most deadly weapon, only they eat a big part of energy.
--same thing can apply to fighters
--it will be a new game, so, not likely to happen

Auxilary system
--radar
--missile defence
--laser proof
--auto-pilot
---speciall designed for specific mothership?
--basically good as they are

To clarify what I am intending to do, I am not intending to go real deep into this, my objective is simply to change the mothership stats around (number of GK Guns, Turrets, Systems) so that each mothership is distinct, and has its advantages and disadvantages.

Of course, I am not 100% sure how to go about this, which is why I am avoiding specifics.

MS launched missiles would be too much a hassle to be worth it... Even if they somehow worked on motherships, you would have to go to a station every time you want to refill your mothership, in addition, you cannot control weither your mothership fires or not so your mothership will be wasting all of its missiles on the first engagement every time. I do not even have to try it to know that it will be a bad idea.

Kinetic warheads are actually not too shabby. The -only- reason I prefer lasers is the extra range they get, and if I had a mothership with enough turrets I would probably mix kinetic weapons in there. Admittingly, it helps that anti-laser fields are extremely common as well.

How would you like to change guns? especially kinetic?
and what is droid pod?
You listed the modules and parameters but not many reasons why they are wrong.

EDIT:
Balancing motherships is hard. For example you can make fast, maneuverable ms at the cost of shield and armor (and maybe firepower) but it probably won't survive fixed close range storyline encounters. If you give ms more firepower the game will be too easy. I really don't have good ideas how to change them.

I actually wanted to avoid messing around with health, shields, speed and manuverability too much. What I am looking for is changing the amount of system slots, turret slots, and GKGun slots. For example, I am thinking of adding two System slots to both the Star Wolf and the Rhino to allow them to better compete with the Lion and Manticore ships.

IMO due to the power of kali/tungsten modules every system slot is a huge change. It's worth to try but may follow to undestroyable ship. Making of "perma tank everything" ship is a straight way to easy and boring game.

Hmmm... an idea!!! What about making mothership only carrier-like ship. No main guns. Fast and manoverable. Only 3-4 small turrets (eventually we can make medium caliber guns which use GKturrets graphic). In case of big ship confrontation add heavy fighter like butcher.
Thing to check is: can fighters use main caliber guns? This may follow to evolution of heavy fighters to two main types: 1. heavy escort fighter like it is now and heavy assault fighter equiped with one main gun and small turret.
What you think about it?

EDIT: Even if main gun fighters aren't possible we can add normal heavy/small gun with enough power to blow things up. If recharge time will be set to high value (like 5 sec or so) it will be useless against fighters. Others option is to make low accuracy guns so they can only be useful against big/slow ships. All to not make uber "good against everything" gun.
I think this game is about fighters dogfights so let's focus on them.

it is not about what is wrong, it is about they are all the same.

Nanaki is working on build convoys and change mothership settings.
But, if you have 4 turret slots, your fire power is all the same, and always stronger than a 3 turret ms.

So the question is why those smaller motherships want to fight with you? Because they are not only less powerful, but also slower.

The only way to make difference, is rebalance from power core, not just systems. When you have less fire power, you either have more energy to run, or thicker shield.

If we go through the Star Wolf settings, older generations are weaker in everyway, and those pilots are still fighting fearlessly, that is wrong.

The thing is, power core is not going to happen.:(

well, droid a unmaned fighters, something between missile and turret
it could be an option, not something must.

if we do not introduce power core to set the limit, a mothership with 6 speed booster will dominate:cool:;)

The Rhino and Star Wolf both have 5000 Health, 1000 Shields

The Manticore has 10000 health, 5000 Shields
The Lion MK2 has 12000 health, 4500 Shields
The Lion MK3 has 10000 health, 4000 Shields

Each Kali adds 3000 to Shields

So even if the two additional system slots went to Kalis (Extremely expensive, mind you, your looking at spending bout 1.4 million) the Rhino and Star Wolf only have 5000 Health, 7000 Shields, so they are still behind, just not rediculously so.

Not without looking completely rediculous. GK Guns are huge, about the size of a small corvette. You could literally have a gun that is nearly as big, or bigger, than the ship it is bolted to.

The problem here is that you never really fight a competant, well-equipped enemy. More often than not the heaviest your enemy has is a single Butcher, and most people have never even seen anything bigger, nevermind fought them. With exception of the Super Chimera, which is more an oversized corvette (it is only armed with six turrets and nothing else) than an actual capital ship.

The nastiest capital ship battle I ever been in was against Pirate walruses when you rescue Ternie. Those walruses, armed with GK Guns, tore through my fully upgraded Astarte very quickly and I am pretty sure I lost my Astarte (or came close to it) due to being cought with my pants down (Who expects a serious battle from Transports?).

You have Stalingrads, Stone Arrows (There are versions of both Stalingrad and Stone Arrows equipped with GK Guns), Pirate Mastiffs, Lion cruisers, and the worst you will face is a Super Chimera unless you actually -try- to pick a fight with everything you see.

Hell, you do not even see Stalingrads unless you play on hard difficulty.

TL;DR: We need more opponents in capital ships, especially those armed with GK Guns.

I fully agree and I think it's up to you;). You should add some to your mod.

Adding bigships is easy enough... the problem is adding the escort fleet of fighters, I have honestly no idea where to begin. The original randomcontact script is specifically designed to handle only single squads, not multiple squads.

The only guide I have is the RealSW2 mod made originally for SW2. It has a fleet script already made, but the problem is that it would likely require extensive modifications to properly work with SW3, and as I said before, I am not that great with lua.

I haven't analyzed spawning functions or your mod yet but "flight_group:Escort(ship);" function isn't enough? When you can spawn group of fighters this function should be enough to attach them to big ships. It's probably obvious to you but you can try analyzing functions contain this code. If i don't know what to do I always start with something like this.

It is a lot more complex than that, my work with the specials.script tought me that you also have to assign scripts to the escort fighters as well (everything in the game is scripted, from exiting a portal, to entering back into it, its all scripted). Just adding that line without adding anything else, for example, will just make the escort fighters float by the gate without dissapearing long after the capital ship it was escorting has already exited the system, because the randomcontacts script commands that was given to the capital ship, was not given to the escorting fighters.

The biggest problem comes when you have to randomize the fleets. When you spawn a fleet, its power will be randomized, when the script recieves that power, it has to take that power and translate it to every squad in the fleet, it also has to decide how many squads to assign to the capital ship in the fleet, and I think thats all just scratching the surface. Most of the SW2 Realmod fleet code consists of randomization, I believe.

Trader fleets get around this by assigning the capital ship and its escorting fighters to the same squad and I did the same thing with the Convoys. But I would rather, in this case, the capital ship and its fighter escorts be completely seperate squads.

Going back on topic, here is what I have come up with... This sort of necessitates Goblin Wizard's Mothership purchase script in order to work.

You initially start with a Mastiff, Mastiff mostly remains the same as it is now, with exception of losing a major caliber gun and gaining a slight boost to top speed. Using Goblin Wizard's script, I am thinking of adding these motherships as purchase choices:

Mastiff MK2 - Same as the Mastiff, except with an additional major caliber gun (bringing it back to two) and heavier armor/shields (1800 armor, 400 shields). Cheapest of all the motherships.

Military Transport - Basically, the same thing as Heretic's Base/Mercenary Mothership, armed with 4 turrets and 5 systems, 4000 armor and 200 shields. Tough and decent speed, but lacking major caliber guns.

Astarte - The same as it is now, the most expensive purchasable mothership.

A Lion MK1 will replace the Astarte in the optional Mothership mission. Will be armed with 6 turrets, 4 systems, no major caliber guns, 10000 Health, and 5000 shields.

How expensive motherships should be? I think about something between 5KK and 20KK.

btw I removed buying motherships from maintenance stations. Now ms can be bought just anywhere in the space. Script can be attached to any object.
Max two more days and mod will be ready (at least working beta:)).

The game's only hint is about 300K for an Astarte, and about 150K for a Mastiff... Obviously that is kind of low, but those numbers are what the game gives you.

Personally, I think it should start off as 250K for a Mastiff MK2, 500K for merc mothership, and 750K for an Astarte. In order to purchase the Lion Cruiser from the Mercenaries, you would have to pay 1.5 million (or, if you have the Intuition Perk, you can knock that down to 750K)

End-game motherships like the Manticore, Lion MK2, Lion MK3, Star Wolf, and Rhino are unbuyable.

Also, I am thinking about making GKGuns a little more important in Capital ship vs Capital ship combat, and doubling the range of all GKGuns (not GKTurrets). This will allow GKGuns to really put the hurt on an enemy capital ship at a considerable distance, and necessitate use of strong sensors or forward scouts in order to maximise the effectiveness of your Mothership.

Alongside this change, I may add 1 GKGun slot to the Merc mothership, the Lion MK1, and the Super Chimera. The Stone Arrow and Stalingrad already have GKGun equipped versions, and the Chimera is too light a ship to equip a GK Gun.

I think it's much too low. Comparing to a good fighters that can cost @500K mothership's price should be at least 10 times greater.

This will allow to blow up entire enemy fleets without being noticed. If something is out of their scanners it doesn't exist. AI is not smart enough to fly in the direction of incoming fire.

If motherships were really that expensive, nobody would ever buy them (nobody would even have the money to consider buying them, apart from power gamers), they would just use the money to buy state of the art fighters, guns, and systems instead, wait until the Astarte mission, and get whatever mothership comes out of that for free.

Remember that we are just talking about hull prices, not even including the cost of turrets, major caliber guns, and systems. Not to mention we are talking about ships that are mostly just modified transports (Mastiff, Mercenary mothership) or failed experiments (Astarte). The Lion MK1 is considered outdated at the start of the game, and is the only true warship available that early into the game.

My current pricing scheme idea is enough to impact someone's wallet, but cheap enough for someone to consider getting.

I do plan on giving handicaps to enemy capital ship fleets. Either with longer-range sensors, or with having sensor modules

A cool thing would be if you could have more pilots, like 8 or 9 pilots and the ability to buy a mothership at a space station.

Check tomorrow. Just finishing my mod. Pilots slots are hardcoded but you can write about it in Wish list thread. Maybe devs will hear you.;)

Hehe nice. I can't wait to play your mod what other things does it have included? And could we download it tommorow?

well...? it's been "tomorrow" for a few days now, dont want to pressure you but did you succeed? We are really dying to turn SW3 into something a bit more appealing, please understand :-P

You were probably misleaded by the old (v0.1) topic title. Unfortunately, I can't change it so you'll have to check it from time to time. I'll bump the topic each time after uploading new mod version.

Awesome!