Burianek's Laser / Economy Rebalance v1.0 *Update*

[Burianek]

Deutsch


***Update*** By popular request, I've included a lasers only rebalance to this package. It is called Burianek's Laser-Only Rebalance, and it only makes the combat changes to the lasers and does not affect the economy or factory prices at all. If you'd like to use the laser only rebalance, simply choose this version from the x2 selection screen instead of the full version.

edit 10/19 - As a caveat, many users have noticed that under these new parameters, OOS defense ships have started getting annihilated by khaak clusters. This doesn't make much sense to me, as I've not increased khaak effectiveness (I actually think I've downgraded them slightly). I haven't done extensive testing, but wanted to comment for what it's worth.


Get from the site in my signature.

right click on:

X2LasEconRebalanceBurv1.zip

and save as . . .

[shameless plug]
Works really well with my scripts to add 2ndry production lines for the player
[/shameless plug]

excerpts from readme:

******************
I. Combat Changes
******************

A. Lasers
**********
Lasers have globally been increased in speed to make combat a bit more challenging in this mod. As laser fire is more rapid, you'll find it more difficult to dodge incoming enemy fire. The AI is going to hit a lot more often. Percent increases in speed vary from a modest 50% increase to 150% increases, or 2.5 times the original amount. In general, beam weapons, like ion disruptors and khaak weapons did not receive increases as they were already nearly instantaneous. Particle weapons, like the IRE, PAC, HEPT, and PPCs got the larger speed boosts. PSGs, as a spread weapon, only received the 50% speed upgrade.

Range has also generally been increased slightly to allow ships to combat from greater distances. This, combined with the improved combat skills and collision avoidance in 1.4 allow the enemy AI to set up longer strafing runs, and keep them firing on your ship for longer periods of time. Most weapons got roughly a 50% increase in range. Notable exceptions are PSGS and Khaak fighter lasers, which actually received a 10% decrease in range (the khaak capship weapon is still comparable in range to a GPPC). The mining laser received roughly a 200% increase in range. You should be able to mine from a TL now. Lastly, the ion disruptor has had its range reduced by 25%. I don't feel this nerfs the ion-d, its range after the reduction is still a respectable 1000m, plenty of room to work with. Reducing the range more properly sets the weapon into its niche, that of a close range subduement weapon. When faced with an enemy with ion disruptors, it is now a viable strategy to try to keep within the 1000m to 1.5 km range so that you can fire your weapons at him, but he cannot hit you. I think this is a desirable added tactical layer. The other side effect is that it reduces the nasty tendency of the weapon to jump from ship to ship and damage friendly units. PSGS have had their range slightly decreased for similar reasons, most would agree they were too powerful in the original game. Now they serve a purpose, that of a closer range "shotgun" type weapon so to speak.

Note that the common combination of 150% speed increases with only 50% range increases will make the bullets feel like they are flying much faster in the game. This is the desired effect. It's a bit harder to simply strafe around a capital ship firing ppcs at you now. You're going to have to work much harder to avoid enemy fire, especially at close range.

On to damage. In X2, once a ships shields have been depleted, combat is pretty much over. It usually just takes a couple of shots to rip through an enemy's hull. In many other combat sims, once the shields are down, that's just when combat starts getting exciting. In these other games, ships can take repeated shots to the hull before they are destroyed, and if it's the player ship these can be tense, exciting moments playing defense, desperately trying to nurse your shields back up to stength before re-entering the fray. To try to fix this, lasers across the board have had their hull damage reduced by about 50%. Hulls now mean something. Shield damage is largely unchanged, with a few minor exceptions. After this global reduction to lasers, a few weapons which I felt were unbalanced versus each other were then adjusted.

APACs had their shield and hull damage increased slightly so that they are marginally better than GIREs but still well below BPACs.
PSGs have had their hull damage only reduced by 25% instead of the standard 50%. (Playtesters agreed that reducing damage by 50% for them made them too weak)
Rather than decrease it at all, the mass driver has had its hull damage increased by a little less than a factor of 2. It was way underpowered in the original game, and is now 'just about right.' Feel free to disagree and let me know, but I think they're worth trying out now.
HEPTs received an extra reduction on top of the standard 50%. Under the original rules, HEPTs did the same amount of hull damage as PPCs. That didn't make any sense to me that a fighter class weapon was as powerful as a carrier class weapon. There was a huge discontinuity in damage between PACs and HEPTs. BHEPTs used to be 4 times as powerful as a GPAC. They are now only twice as powerful. I think you'll like the change.



********************
II. Economy Changes
********************

This mod incorporates my economy fix version 0.25 (with minor changes to the racial balancing of factory prices). The relevant thread is http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38452. I chose this version because it makes the most changes and balances the game as much as possible without any annoying side effects. If you're familiar with that economy fix there is virtually nothing new here, and the majority of the rest of this readme is cut/pasted from the readme included in Burianek's Economy Fix v 0.25.

[desius]

Sweet...
Thanks Burianek.. I was waiting for this update before I really got into my new 1.4 restart.

Any chance for a econ v3 mod (with laser)? I actually prefer the V3 changes.. regardless of the needed workaround.

[matthewfarmery]

I do have a question, do I need to disable this mod if I place high tech factories, like another mod i've seen?

[desius]

actuallly no, you don't.

The one I was talking about - v3 version of Bur's econ mod is the one that requires that work-around.

[matthewfarmery]

Thanks for that

[Burianek]

I hadn't planned on porting my econ v3 mod up to version 1.4. (but I'm glad you enjoyed it) Most people actually were turned off by the workaround. (I play with version 0.25 myself, or this laser - econ thingy, whatever) Version 3 should still work if you want to fire it up though. The only things I can think of off the top of my head that will conflict with 1.4 are the changes made to the lasertowers (I think they're stronger in 1.4) I can't guarantee that I'm not missing something else though. It took me quite some time to completely update version 0.25.

If you want to be patient, I'm trying to develop something that will take all the good things about econ v3 and not require a workaround to function correctly. It's potentially a long way off though, I dunno, we'll see. If I can get that to work, I definitely will. Like you, I'd like to eventually be able to set an individualized profit for each type of factory. Let's cross our fingers.

[matthewfarmery]

That sound very good, I hope you can pull it off

[desius]

Definately don't port v3 over solely on my account. Thats a lot of work. I figured a lot more people than just myself liked it. =D Anything else you can fit in from v3 would be great.


One can only hope that one day (perhaps the expansion.. hint hint devs) they will move some of those hardcoded formulae that force stations to auto-adjust to the files we (read: Burianek) can more easily modify... If they unlocked that stuff as well as an easier way to add wares, price limits, etc... it would be a whole new economy.

I'm using the v.25 now... it affects enough change to help the economy not seem so flat at the top.

[Zakalwe]

Hi there!

Just two days ago i worked out how damn easy it is to alter the laser speeds simply by editing tbullets.txt, well after the decrypting-unpacking-cascade. First (and only) thing i did was to increase laser speeds, cause all projectiles were way too slow for the AI to hit anything. So basically i doubled all speeds except for the Kyon-Ion-PSG stuff and also doubled the ranges for all weapons. Test fights with HEPT carrying ships showed a great improvement in AI battles, no more circling around for ages but a quick and sudden death for my Dragon vs. 2 Centaurs and 3 Novas, as you should expect. Since i have only little experience with Ion and PSG weapons (always flying Split stuff), i looked out for a mod and found this. I´m pretty sure it is well balanced, so i´ll try it together with the economy rebalance, which sounds also pretty good to me. Finally... to come to the point... a question. Do i get it right that you only changed parameters in the tbullets file, except for some price margins in the other tlaser tships, txxxxx files? Or is there also a hidden change in tships or wherever?

ah, and thx in advance

[Burianek]

correct, the majority of the changes are in tbullets - lasers speeds, and tfactories - prices. the edits in tlaser, shields, etc. are all price variation adjustments, nothing too substantial.

[Zakalwe]

Ok, gave it a try yesterday and yeah... that´s it! In sector fights are so much more fun now, and AI, which wasn´t able to hit the side of a barn before, now gives you thrilling fights.
I really recommend this mod or any other faster beam mod if you don´t like this one. Well, i´ll use this for now, because Burianek seems to care about balane which is important to me.

Zak

P.S. i doubt it, but is there any effect on out of sector fights?

[Burianek]

P.S. i doubt it, but is there any effect on out of sector fights?

Nope, OOS (out of sector) combat is mathematically calculated based on various ship statistics (weapon energy being very impt) I haven't changed any of these stats.

[rhohltjr]

Reading your readme file I think everything you put in was fine,
however it would have been nice to be able to selectively pick and
choose which 'T'file to implement or not. Personally I would have only Not selected the TFactories.

Putting changes in via the 'Mod' folder seems like the best way
for us users to change things without trying to edit the 'T'files with
unpacking and packing. Too many ways to make an error there.

Sure wish your Mod was selective.

[Burianek]

Is somebody missing their cheap SPP's?

[rhohltjr]

Sure wish your Mod was selective.

Maybe I can answer my own question.

Any reason why I can't save game, exit and deselect your Mod, then restart and buy a Solar Power factory at the old price,
save again, exit and reselect your Mod and continue? If there is no problem with this method, then I have got a
workaround for my only issue.

[Burianek]

nope, you could do that

[rhohltjr]

nope, you could do that

By the way I have 20 or 21 factories(so far), only 3 are SPPs.

[Burianek]

I don't believe anything like this currently exists in the german scripting / modding forum, so I'm going to be posting it over there.

If anyone who speaks german wants to take a crack at translating any portion of the readme, I'd be eternally grateful

[DDM_Reaper20]

Burianek,
e-mail me if you need somebody to do a translation of your readme. I'll be available until the 31st (moving then, and it might take a while to get my internet connection back up).

Not wishing to toot my own horn, but my English isn't shabby. Neither is my German.

Regards,
DDM_Reaper20

[Spitfire79]

How about upping the mass driver damage a bit further in your mod? In 1.4 they seem to be pretty much useless against anything else than an M4. There's currently discussion going on in the DevNet forums about the issue and the general consensus seems to be that they are either horribly overpriced or underpowered.

In my opinion, anything that uses up ammo should be a lot more powerful weapon than other weapons of the same price range. Yeah, I know it skips shields but still a G-PAC kills a Nova in less time, the time for depleting shields included.