Changing Motherships

[Nanaki]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Making of "perma tank everything" ship is a straight way to easy and boring game.

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.

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Nanaki

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.

[Nanaki]

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.

[Goblin Wizard]

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.

[Nanaki]

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.

[Nanaki]

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.

[Goblin Wizard]

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).