Modding SW3?

[Goblin Wizard]

All parameters are much too high for any ship. Check the other ships. None of the fighters in SW3 has more than 15 speed or maneuverability. AI can't handle speeds like 70 or 50 maneuverability.

[Sing_In_Silence]

Edit:
This part is now irrelevant. See below.

So, as part of my effort to rebalance combat in SW3 (since I have no idea how to go about rebuilding it), I've come to meddle with the weapons, and I need to get a common measurement of damage over time.

I'd been fairly pleased with how I got it atm (zipped .xls included; contains original and modified carcass and module infos, for any who care.
Note: I haven't gotten around to tinkering with corvettes, MSes or MS-gear), but I haven't done comprehensive testing yet, and then I discovered that how I thought weapons work, isn't.
Oh. Ow.


The terms of relevance, tmk, are Recharge Rate, Rate of Fire Burst and (under 'Bullet') Damage.

Damage is obvious.

Burst as well. Each time the criteria for firing are met, it fires # projectiles in a burst, where #=Burst value. Duh? Alright, onwards.

Recharge Rate is a cooldown. If firing criteria are met in less time than the RR, it won't fire. That simple.

Where I'm stuck is what exactly Rate ot Fire is.
(And if you know how RoF is calculated, that'd be a plus :p)

~ Irrelevance ends here ~

I messed with it shortly this morning, and all I can figure thus far is that it's not part of the displayed RoF in the weapon info.
I thought it might be the spacing between shots in a burst, but I can't substantiate that.


Edit: so, update.
In the above-
A) every single instance of RoF should be RR aside from the calculation question.
B) both are used in the RoF formula.
I can only plead industrial fatigue.

For any interested, RoF (in the weapon tooltip) is: 60*Burst/(RR+RoF).


I'm glad to say that the weapon rebalance is now taking on a shape.
A rock-paper-scissors sort of shape, but that's okay too.

Lasers and plasmas are high single hit damage, miniguns are low single damage but high DoT, and p.lasers and Cannons are somewhere inbetween.


I've been considering standardizing base fighter speed (to, say, 1), and create a set of moving_force_ratio-modifying 'engine's to actually determine your ship's speed.

Three problems.
* I can't limit this, so there's nothing stopping you from putting the best one in every ship.
Maybe I'll put some thought into disincentives, i.e. built-in maluses.
* will almost neccesitate adding another system slot to every ship, and I haven't gotten a sufficient hang of modding the gui yet.
* will ABSOLUTELY require that I manually mod every single ship in shipdescriptions.xml, and lord knows where else.
I'm not up to that right now.


Oh, and I added a Smilodon mk2 (lower maxspeed, higher manuverability, 1 extra system).
Can't get it to sell, for some reason, so I patched it into GW's maintenance station script.
That'll do for now.