Mini-mod: LRM to cluster missiles

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

[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% 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.


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.

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 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 ). 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.

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 ...

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.

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]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

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!

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.