Modding SW3?

[sidius]

with all these opinions, you just want a bunch of rookie pirates in hammerheads to kick your ass..

everything that has dispersion higher than 0 CAN miss, depends on pilot. how do you want to miss with all those perks? 30% accuracy+10% damage from weapon specialization, up to 95% more accuracy from Gunner skill, + Ternie has even cannon adjustment, count critical hits to it and your pilot is deadly even with crappiest weapon in the end of the game.

LASER damage is so heavy and so accurate because you can mitigate up to 80% of it (which is very nice considering at least 2 of enemies you HAVE TO fight uses lasers - berserkers and aliens).
and, depending on storyline you choose, you can eventually end up ALONE agains all SAM's berserker hordes and several Chimeras, and that is hell of a massacre..

increasing HP/shield regen of fighters would be nice, but who would possibly want to do that? I mean there is some 150 of them (at least)

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by sidius

everything that has dispersion higher than 0 CAN miss, depends on pilot. how do you want to miss with all those perks?

Dispersion and accuracy are two different parameters. Even 0 dispersion and 100% accuracy bonus is not guaranteed hit. There are some modifiers like:
- speed of the target
- maneuverability of the target
- number of the enemies - if your team has less pilots that enemy your pilot's chance to hit is reduced and enemy chance to hit is increased. Perks like Tactician and Wingman work with this parameter. They virtually increase number of your pilots when the perk is active. High level enemy leaders posses these perks too.

[sidius]

I'd rather say that more dispersion + large amount of grouped enemies = massacre. Try it with rapid-fire cannon on some berserker fleet

even though it doesn't have to be caused by that.. maybe it's just targeting new targets within 1 shooting sequence (16 bullets with rapid fire cannons) so you actually kill the drone with 4 bullets, another 4 bullets find another drone and so on.. dunno how it's made.

btw I don't know how (haven't done anything), but ingame music is no longer playing..

error: attempt to call global `InitMusic' (a nil value)
<string "DATA\Scripts\Locations\aurora\location.scri.. .": line 116>

gotta love those self-destruct scipts..
(it's just "InitMusic();" written in that line, like in the end of every location script..)

Hmm, I do see the kinetic guns doing decent damage in crowded fights. It's just that they're balanced enough (?) to not do that all the time, unlike lasers.

Have you tried manual targeting + activate "pause when target is destroyed", using lasers? Works especially well against berserks. At the last pause it look like your ship's lasers are firing at all 5 berserks in the pack simultaneously. I think I posted a screenshot a while ago. Haven't tried it with other weapons, not sure if they fire fast enough.

The AI doesn't fire like that; usually after destroying a target it seems to pick a new target that requires it to waste time flying past and turning around.

Originally Posted by sidius

LASER damage is so heavy and so accurate because you can mitigate up to 80% of it (which is very nice considering at least 2 of enemies you HAVE TO fight uses lasers - berserkers and aliens).
and, depending on storyline you choose, you can eventually end up ALONE agains all SAM's berserker hordes and several Chimeras, and that is hell of a massacre..

increasing HP/shield regen of fighters would be nice, but who would possibly want to do that? I mean there is some 150 of them (at least)

By the way, I remember those endgame battles. Freaking brutal.

Like I said, lasers are too strong, and even on hard mode not enough enemies are carrying laser defence. Wait, do you mean every single ship in the game has manual values for things like hp regen? They don't share a base value?

Edit: Wait, Aliens use lasers? I thought they used those funky blaster thingies? Their capships do appear to use lasers though but you don't really need to fight those. Well, except maybe that one time.

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

I don't know the exact dispersion formula but afaik:1 - maximum dispersion, 0 - no dispersion. Probably all more than 1 is considered 1. E.g. function called by "Cannon Adjustment" perk.

[ . . . ]

This perk simply reduces dispersion by 99%. It doesn't improve accuracy when the target has significant angular velocity but bullets are not sprayed all over the sky.
Imo this perk has no sense to me. Pilot can improve his accuracy - ok. Pilot magically controlling gun parameters - no. It should be a system which does this or one time (for each gun) buyable improvement (gunsmith or something).

Hmm, basically what that does is:
- Does pilot have perk? Return dispersion * 0.01 (i.e. reduced 99%)
- Else return dispersion * 1 (i.e. unchanged)

You're right, this logically shouldn't be a perk (we can think of better things for perks).

Do you have any idea if non-gun (i.e. missiles) dispersion also goes through this function? I'm not sure how I can test this.

Edit:
Looking through perkDispatcher.script shows the effect of the passive perks. Hmm. I suppose missiles simply ignore the dispersion value :/

Edit:
ObjectInfo.script has something more on weapons. Apparently for gun dispersion, <.5 is "high accuracy", >0.5 to <1 is medium, and >1 is low. There's a similar section on missile jamming but that's more straightforward. The very first function in that script, CalculateRateOfFire, i don't exactly understand.

function CalculateRateOfFire(recharge_time, rate_of_fire, burst_count)
	local ck = (burst_count * 60) / (recharge_time + rate_of_fire);
	return ck;
end;

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

ObjectInfo.script has something more on weapons. Apparently for gun dispersion, <.5 is "high accuracy", >0.5 to <1 is medium, and >1 is low. There's a similar section on missile jamming but that's more straightforward.

Function CalculateGunAccuracy simply changes displayed text for accuracy (Low, Medium, High). Nothing else. The same for missile jamming.

Originally Posted by Trucidation

The very first function in that script, CalculateRateOfFire, i don't exactly understand.

This function calculates rate of fire showed in the gun info window. What you don't understand?

That burst count value, I don't think I've seen it mentioned. There is already rate of fire, right? I thought that already shows the firing speed. Hmm... is burst count a limit on the number of attacks?
Edit:
Ahhh it's in the guns' definition, sorry x_x Something like how many shots fired per attack, like that? The thing is... there is already a rate_of_fire value, so that's why I don't understand why need a function to calculate it again.

I'll try the calculation with the alien blaster gun ("ASG") and see what I get.
ck = (burst_count * 60) / (recharge_time + rate_of_fire)
= ( 6 * 60 ) / ( 1 + 1 )
= 360 / 2
= 180
Hmm. I guess that number is the one displayed on the trade screen when we view a weapon. I see... I wrongly assumed we don't need the other values; in that case we'd get a steady stream of bullets every X seconds, and doesn't account for weapon bursts.

@sidius:
Ah, I see what you're referring to, the energy_restore tags in Carcasses.xml. Actually, that's not so large a problem - i can simply write a PHP script to recalculate all the values. We're assuming the default ones are all balanced though Personally, I'd like slightly less shields, higher shield regen, and higher armor hp.

Whether this is a good thing or not is up for debate though, I'm just making guesses from my experience in the game.

[sidius]

lol I've checked it now, Alien blasters are kinetic (Impact, Small)... they have just longer bullet of different color (think it's made by <bullet_length> and <sfx_index>)

hmm nevermind that, I've removed Alien tech requirement long ago from Alien weapons since noone could use them outside mission in Precursor system, which suxx. So since now I'm giving these blasters to those with Light weapons specialization, not lasers specialization.

one would think that if Alien Turrets are Lasers, blasters will be too..