Mini-mod: LRM to cluster missiles

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...

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]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

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 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.

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.

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

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

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