EAW: Star Wars Realism v1.1 (Space Combat)

[MistenTH]

EAW: Star Wars Realism v1.1 (Space Combat)

 

Description

EAW v1.2 mod to bring space combat more in line with my experience from the movies and the EU novels (particularly Rogue Squadron), as well as balancing gameplay elements. Fighters are now more useful, and broken / overpowered units such as the Ion Cannon / Assault Frigate have been balanced. Modded for Skirmish, but all space unit changes transfer over to the Story / Galactic Campaign modes.

 

Download Link

http://www.filecloud.com/user/files.php?category_id=386624 (128kb .zip)

 

Installation

Unzip the zip file, transfer the XML folder inside to your EAW/Gamedata/data folder. To uninstall, simply remove / rename the XML folder.

 

Major Changes from v1.0

Capital ships are now deserving of their name (more health).

Many minor tweaks to damages, heroes and more health to buildable structures.

 

Elaborated Changes (Some, not all)

Fightercraft overall more useful - able to last longer against Corvettes.

Corvettes actually killable by bigger ships.

Ion cannon now balanced - drains 3000 shield instead of 45000.

X-Wing fires proton torpedoes! (non-penetrating)

A-Wing fires concussion missiles! (non-penetrating)

Y-wing's mounted turret actually fires 360 degrees now.

TIE Bomber fires concussion missiles! (non-penetrating)

Power to Weapons / Shield Regen abilities modified to be more usable.

Frigate class vessels now have better firepower and health.

Tweaks to heroes.

 

History

Decided to play around to satisfy my urge to see a more Lore-linked space combat. Eventually the changes kept growing until I decided to make it accessible to everyone for feedback and to enjoy a better game. Can't stand ground combat though.

 

Future Plans

Additional ship types to diversity gameplay, such as fast moving capital ships for flanking, ships that fire devastating broadsides but then have to recharge and missile boats etc.

 

Getting new models etc in once people make them (cuz I can't).

 

Whatever ideas or suggestions I get  ;D

 

~MistenTH

[Bel_Iblis]

in the Y-Wing Squadron you made it this

Nos

was Nos intentional because I haven't seen nor used Nos before

[Lion]

Nice mod MistenTH!  I've made your mod available for downloading at PETRODEN. If you object to this, please let me know and I'll take it down.

[MistenTH]

Bel Iblis > The bombers have that as a default setting, I have no idea what it does though.

 

Lion > Sure!  I'll let you know of any updates in future.

 

And just to let everyone know what I'm doing right now: Going to try adding in new ships with differing abilities to increase strategy.  Such as the TIE-Interceptor, Carrack Light Cruiser (mass ion cannons), a ship similar to the Hapan Battle Dragon with its massed energy fly-bys and a repair ship that repairs small craft.

 

To those who tried, what do you think of the capital ship and fighter balance so far?

[Lion]

Thanks Misten...I check these forums several times a week, so I'll make sure I have the latest update on my site.. I played your mod today...no problems.

[veldrin]

Nice mod!

 

When playing online I assume all players must have the mod installed?

 

When playing Campaign are the modifications present?

[MistenTH]

Yes Veldrin, everyone must have the SAME files in order to play any mod. 

 

When playing campaign, the modifications are all present.  However, skirmish settings which I changed such as skirmish build costs will not be present.  And for the moment, I am introducing new ships in the next update, which I can enable production in Skirmish, but have no idea how to enable production in the campaign.  Help, anyone?

 

Also, since the larger capital ships take as long as 5 minutes to be destroyed in my current build, I'll be gearing the mid-range ships to be better at taking them out, while reducing fighter build times so that massed fighters can be used to take out capital ships.

[ShockMeSane]

Tried it out, really like it Misten.

 

If I could make a suggestion for skirmish.... if there is any way you could disable the option to make Interdictors, that would be great. I don't see being able to play this mod with too many people outside of my group of friends, but when I play against the computer, I get annoyed to death that it builds Interdictors instead of Victories, and loses every time because of it. Its sad that you can easily beat 2v1 against the Empire just because of this.

 

Also, if there is any way you could increase the cooldown on Hypervelocity and Ion Cannon for Campaign mode, that would be freaking great. The Ion Cannon practically assures that any fleet without the Death Star in it is doomed to fail with its firing every 10 seconds and effectively destroying a Star Destroyer per shot.

 

Lastly, you might want to do something about Luke's Lucky Shot. It will one shot your shield generator, and 1 hardpoint every 60 seconds or so thereafter, and on certain maps with nebulas near the starbase, there is basically nothing you can do about this.

 

So far, very nice. I'd wait about adding in new units until some new models show up, though, as otherwise it'll just look too lame imo

 

I'll play some more with it and see if I have anymore thoughts.

[MistenTH]

Sure shock, I can change the cooldowns and the interdictor limit.

 

However, I can't find a way to modify lucky shot, it's not in the usual places.  I'm afraid until then the best way is just to agree on rules or disable heroes.

[Redeye_pff]

Well I have your mod installed but something is funny.

 

The acclamator is missing it's nose. I tried it out in both galactic conquest as in skirmish but everytime an Acclamator shows up it is missing  it's nose.

 

I put your xml directory inside C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars Empire at War\GameData\Data\XML

 

just as the readme says.

 

What is up?

 

Redeye

??? ???

[MistenTH]

Ok figured out why the Acclamator spawned with it's nose blown off. I initially wanted to make the concussion missile launcher a non-destructable hardpoint, and deleted all the lines that made it appear. I did not place a substitute, so there was no data to build the nose.

 

But the concussion missiles work, so no problems.  It'll be fixed in my next build, coming soon!

 

I realise now that capital ships are truly engaging in slugfests, with the larger ships taking as long as 5 minutes to be destroyed even while being fired upon by say, 1 Mon Cal and 1 Assault Frigate.

 

To compensate, I'll be reducing fighter build times so that more of them can be used to better kill capital ships, and the mid-range ships will be designed to speed up destruction of capital ships.  I'm introducing the Carrack Cruiser (using tartan model) for the Empire, and a Light Torpedo Boat variant (using Corellian Gunship model) for the Rebels.  Should make things a lot more interesting.

[Necro]

what about slowing down the travel speeds in the galactic map?

[Redeye_pff]

I figured it out. I compared the hardpoints.xml with the original and added the lines. The nose is back!!

 

Redeye

[MistenTH]

Nice one redeye, it's quite easy to play with the XML.  Feel free to play around if you want. 

 

Necro > Well I was initially interested in just modding space combat, but I'll see about modding hyperspace speed later on.  It's quite simple.  Every single space unit has a Hyperspace Speed.  You just need to change the value.  Of course, you need to change every single unit's speed, but they all travel at the speed of the slowest unit in the fleet.

[Necro]

you could take a peek frmo the warlords mod, in that the isd goes around the speed of the deathstar (maybe a tad faster?) of the original...although maybe a bit slow, but it's nearly there!

[ShockMeSane]

Changing hyperspace speeds is highly relative, unfortunately. The only time I'd want them slower is in multiplayer, and even then, not much slower. I totally forgot about the Acclamator nose thing, meant to bring it up, glad someone else noticed.

 

After further testing, I came up with a list of observations/suggestions. It is your mod, so I won't take it personally if you completely blow all this off.

 

1) I think you will either need to lower the cost, population value, or slightly increase the health of Corvettes. They just aren't worth building right now. They die way too fast if your opponent has 3 or more VSDs/Assault Frigates. My personal reccomendation would be to slightly increase the inaccuracy of the large weapons against them to a more moderate value, though there are many ways you could handle it. They were certainly too difficult for large ships to hit in the release version, but I feel they are just a little TOO frail, now.

 

2) Assault Frigates and VSDs feel too weak in comparison to ISDs and MCs now. I realize you probably did a static increase accross the board, but Assault Frigates and VSDs go down very, very quickly compared to their larger counterparts. I would either increase the costs of the two capital ships (on campaign as well, if you don't mind), OR slightly (maybe 10% each), increase their hull and shields.

 

3) This is a kind of off the wall suggestion, but it has to do with Ion Cannons. The ship mounted ones, that is. Right now, I feel like they just don't have much of a place in the game. They are easily the least important hardpoints on any ship, and I feel the Assault Frigate is nicely boosted by not having any. I'm not sure if its possible, but if you could increase the damage they do to shields, and slightly decrease the amount turbolasers do (not by much), AND upped shield regeneration considerably accross the board, I think the gameplay might be a bit more interesting. As it is now, a Nebulon-B can keep a Star Destroyers shields from ever regenerating with its 1 Turbolaser and 2 regular lasers. I think a small shield strength boost, coupled with a 25-30% shield regeneration boost (For all ships Frigate+) might make Ion Cannons significantly more desireable. Because they cannot disable things as they are meant to, all they do is damage shields, which collapse in most cases with 10 seconds of concentrated assault even on a capital ship.

 

If you ever do something about land battles, which I agree are not a priority, you might want to consider either making the Turbolaser Batteries significantly harder to kill, or making them way less expensive (or both). As it stands, under no circumstance will they repel 4k worth of units, and the entire idea behind static defenses in strategy games is that they are a financially sound investment as long as someone actually attacks them. However, right now they have 3 problems. 1: A turbolaser battery is destroyed by one group of the large alliance tanks, a what, 500 investment or something? Destroying only 1-2 individual units before it is destroyed. 2: You can easily find the power generator, and on most maps are able to destroy it without ever engaging the turbolaser batteries, thus completely circumventing 4k worth of enemy expenditure. 3: Their cost is retarded. You could have a Star Destroyer or a Turbolaser Battery. In no circumstance whatsoever is the latter EVER a wise investment, especially considering that it takes up a valuable build slot on the planets surface.

 

Anyways, just my thoughts. The main issue I see with the mod right now is that assuming a 20 population cap, 5 Star Destroyers is always your best bet of a fleet. Great job so far, keep up the good work!

[MistenTH]

Shockmesane > Yah, I agree that corvettes were a little weak and I was tweaking it a bit.  But I think that that is the way I want them to be.  They shouldn't be on the front lines, and should be slightly behind the big ships to provide support.  Otherwise they can move out front, smash all the fighters at little risk.  But I have given them a small health boost.

 

I'll check out the Heavy Frigates vs Capital Ship balance.  Probably I'll increase the cost of the Capital Ships.

 

My modded ion cannon still drops movement speed, and fire speed by 60% for 60 seconds, so it is still useful to use it.

 

Also, I am introducing the Carrack Cruiser for the Imps, which is excellent at downing shields.  And a torpedo boat for Rebels, to take down the tougher Imperial Ships.  I think I'll want the big ships to be lumbering giants, and pretty boring in what you can do with them.  It will be the smaller, more fragile support ships like corvettes and fighters that will determine whether an equally matched capital ship force will win.

 

I may not up shield regen - it may cause problems for a rebel ship against the acclamator since it can penetrate their shields.

[Bel_Iblis]

I love this mod because I don't liek Capitol ships much. I like reanacting Rouge Squadron and such and with this mod X-Wings amd A-Wings are usuable agian.

[Necro]

i think you should raise the shield dmg of the ion cannon to atleast 6000, as it SHOULD take out the shields of whatever it hits, just make lengthen the recharge time (same with hypervelocity cannon)

[MistenTH]

The ion cannon does 3000 shield damage.  No capital ship has more than 3000 shields, so they will be totally drained anyway.  I didn't want it to be higher because it's too unfair an advantage for the Rebels when they use it on the Empire's station, which at level 5 only has 9000 shields.

 

Oh yes, one more thing on ship mounted ion cannons.  Once shields are down, they will attack the ship's energy.  And the ship requires energy to recharge shields (5 energy to 1 shield) and usually, 10 energy to fire 1 shot.  The ion attack will reduce the ship's Rate of Fire as a result, and if sufficient ion cannons are firing on the ship, it will have 0 energy, which causes it's movement to drop to like 50%, and not be able to fire at all.

[ShockMeSane]

Oh cool, never knew

[ShockMeSane]

Misten, I think the issue with the capital ships atm, is that the increase in hull strength does not scale. For example, a Star Destroyers hull was increased to 1000 per hardpoint, from 350, a 286% increase. Whereas Acclamators went from 160 to 250, only 156% increased. Especially considering the larger guns ability to hit smaller ships, I definitely see the issue. Unfortunately, building any ship other than Star Destroyer/Mon Cal is a non-viable option. Their cost either needs to be DRASTICALLY increased, or other ships ought to be brought into line. I know you mentioned increasing their costs already, so I'm mostly typing this for my own benefit

 

Personally, I'd prefer a more happy medium, with the smaller ships-of-the-line getting a bit more of a boost, and the larger ones costing more.

[Necro]

i thought ion cannons were useless after losing shields, good to know!

 

also whats the point in the ion cannon special now that you gave the y-wings they're rotating ion cannon?

[MistenTH]

Shock > Actually, I didn't arbitrarily raise the ship's total health just like that.  I actually looked at the original Ship's tactical health, then simply totalled the hardpoints up to meet that number.  Also, in my upcoming build, the Skirmish income is now halved, which means that saving up for that large ship might cost you badly.  But I think I will give a health boost to the Vic and Assault Frigate.  Cost wise, the largest ships cost 1.5x the heavy frigates, which I think is ok.

 

The heavy frigates don't really lose out that much.  The AF2 has 3 enhanced turbolasers and 2 laser cannons, and the Vic 3 fast-firing heavy turbolasers and an ion cannon, and TIEs. 

 

Necro > The ion turret on the Y-wings does shield damage ONLY.  It used to be like the normal ion cannons, but when attacking ships, I noticed that a Y-wing swarm would simply ion a ship to uselessness, which is why I removed that ability.  So the ion shot ability is still useful.

 

Keep those comments coming.  I should be able to release the next version tomorrow, so if you see some major problem, let me know so that I can tweak it!

[Necro]

what about the ion cannon special? i mean if normal ion fires take shield?