MDYRL:SWO Project - Weapons Analyst Wanted

[Cdr Fokker]

Alright, I'm going to make this short for now (just lost my whole original post )

It would be much appreciated if someone could lend a hand to the MDYRL:SWO HW2 project in the role of "Weapons Analyst".

Not somebody like Nanashi (a technical consultant to the project), but someone to go over and set appriopriate damage, penetration, armor, health, etc values for weapons and ships. Right now things are a bit jumbled in that area, with units that were put in at the same time being in scale with each other in these respects (thus leaving us with sets of units which "make sense" in these terms, but each set conflicts with the others making things a bit incorrect)

Basically, we would like someone to go over the current lists of ships and weaponry and assign appropriate values to all of them (not saying all values - just the aforementioned basics: health, armor, damage, and penetration). We've got our hands full at the moment with other aspects of the project as well as real life, and would appreciate the effort.

[The_Major]

I really like this idea, and i agree whole heartedly. Having someone do this would do us a lot of good.

[Boxer]

Probably the most difficult thing to do in the MOD.

Beware of Bias, please, after all everybody wants to see unit xyz prevail over abc because it's a fan favorite, or the sheer ZOMG It's a killer unit! factor.

If/when you make stats PLEASE try to be balanced and fair? I think the major agreement is that the Zjent/Melt capital ships are powerhouses, while the UNS fighters have anit-ship warheads (And thus the good counter). Human ships as whole without reaction weaponry are going to be pitiful against Zjent/Melt ships, which are obviously superior in space combat.

Just two cents before you continue.

[Neova]

Ug... I wish I could help you after working in the gaming field not so long ago. Game balance is key and I remember spending a big portion of our development time on that. Its a continuous process that never seems to end, even after shipdates (read: patches). But I do not possess the Weapon's table knowledge like Nanashi, Egan Loo or even Graham.

If you want I can help go through it but it would have to be after the first week of Feb. My day workload is crazy right now (yet I find time to post on MW during work). hehe

[Roycommi]

I would like to help if I may. I cant draw like boxer or lestat, and have too short an attention for codeing.

[Akilae]

I'd love to help, but when do you guys need this done? Same story as everybody else, work and stuff... tax filing season can get pretty hairy... then again, I've been waiting for this mod long enough to feel the need to push things along, lol.

[one_klump]

Heh, wow, back in the same position from 1 year ago

I'll take the challange of balancing out the weapons/armor/speed values.

That'll give me an excuse to log back on to ICQ again too lol

send me an email ( one_klump@yahoo.com ) and we'll get started

[chrono]

Personally I always cheat when it comes to balancing ships across races.

Seriously though I give same class ships an equal value number, but change the values that equal the number. Pretty much a 1+2=3 situation where 3 is a number that is unchangable and where the class is theorically equal across all races. However adding in the 3D element throws alot of chaos into the equation.

The worst problem is the balance of missile/fighters versus CIW's. Don't wanna end-up with 'super scout' syndromes!

Also another number to be considered should be "range".

A good example is the Zjent's amount of missile fire. Having a longer range, less durability, less damage and would benefit Spacy's CIW's and Vert's. Spacy would then have slightly shorter ranged, higher durability and higher damage missiles to off-set the lower amount of missile fire they would have.

Oh and sometimes having plain graphics with weapon layouts is easier then just number crunching. Used that alot when I was MOD'ing SFC stuff.

[Cdr Fokker]

To all those who want to help: I will be compiling a list of all ships and thier weaponry and posting a link here. It may be best to have several people working together, as it will be boring, pain-in-the-ass type of work (well, at least IMO).

[one_klump]

Its not that boring, I enjoyed plugging in the damage for a GU-11 and comparing it to the normal mass driver found in HW. I think our biggest problem (stat-wise) with the HW1 version was that we pretty much made our own damage table, instead of following what was already laid out for us. In HW, the normal mas driver did about 5-8 damage, where the GU-11 did about 45-55 damage. That happened to everything in the mod, because we wanted everything to be so superior its HW counterpart. In reality, I can't see a GU-11 being more powerful then a high-speed mass driver

However, I can see the beam weaponry of Macross being WAY more powerful than the ion cannons of Homeworld. Although we don't know exactly how the beam weapons work, we pretty much know from the animation that if your hit with a large beam cannon, its game over for you. In HW, even corvettes could take 2-3 beam hits before going down. I propose makeing the beam weapons for Macross more powerful than the HW ones, but not by too much. its a thin line to tread

[Lestat]

Tough to say. In DYRL, Milia 639's ship, which is slightly longer than the macross, fired a beam across it's bow and disintegrated its main cannon. A direct hit can destroy a ship, head on, but it takes alot more to puncture something, such as Bodolzaa's fortress...

I agree, more powerful. Enough to destroy a thuverl salan in one shot, but maybe not a nupetiet vergernitzs...

[one_klump]

Yeah, I agree. The beam weaponry in Macross puts out an amazing amount of damage, and the Ion Cannons of HW look like laser pointers compared to them.

However, for the sake of gameplay, I don't think we should make any of the beam cannons that powerful. It wouldn't be any fun when your shiny new SDF-1 Macross gets vaporized in a single shot. Thats why I wanted to put a restraint on the beam weapons. In HW, they were potent damage dealers doing only 12-18 damage per second, and when we upped the damage to around 800 per second, well, things got real quite on the battlefield real fast. It cut down on the dramatic fights between cap ships, no lucky shots, no getting away, just zap, boom, bigger ship wins. I personally would love to see beam weapons have a minimum range, that way when a smaller ship came in too close, all energy would go to close in weapons.

Another thing, beam weapons in Macross were mounted on every avaliable surface on most cap ships, but they had the accurracy of a monkey throwing bananas at tourists... they seldem hit, and when they did, it seemed to cause minor damage, unless it was a scripted event, like Milia's ship blasting the Macross when they caught them with their pants down.

[Akilae]

lol, we're gonna ignite the flames here with everybody arguing about the damage values... might be a good thing though IMHO

[Cdr Fokker]

Another thing, beam weapons in Macross were mounted on every avaliable surface on most cap ships, but they had the accurracy of a monkey throwing bananas at tourists... they seldem hit, and when they did, it seemed to cause minor damage, unless it was a scripted event, like Milia's ship blasting the Macross when they caught them with their pants down.

This is already pretty well replicated with how I have the weapon accuracy, positoning, and "aim box" (I forget wtf HW2 calls it, but its the percentage of the extents that ships aim for). There are also allotments of different "caliber" beam weaponry; that is, there is allowance for varying effectiveness for the beams, so few can be very powerful, some can be pretty powerful, and the bulk can just be alright.

The other thing is, I suggest disregarding HW2 values altogether, and base everything on a totally new, arbitrary scale. This prevents trying to scale things in any way to stuff that's already in existence.

[Boxer]

Another thing to consider is, with the Macross aside, UNS capital ships are going to be tin-plated gunships with laughable weaponry (in the eyes of the Zjents and Melts) because frankly the UNS is a young space power that has little in the terms of destructable space weaponry....unless you include reaction warheads.

I have never seen any documentation that says the Zjents or Melts use any form of nuke and/or reaction warhead in their arsenals *Checks the Compendium* yeah. The Zjent/Melts mostly use their beam cannons as mass-destruction weaponry, with thier monitors and command ships using the heaviest ones. Otherwise it seems most of thier weaponry is beam-based medium particle cannons with supplimentary missiles (normal warheads)

The Macross on the other hand uses a particle cannon on the scale of the flagships and monitors, with large-scale rail guns(1) (usable only in cruiser mode I think...) and possibly the option of reaction warheads for missiles (though I think these should be restricted to strike valks...unless you want to arm ALL uns ships with them...) The Macross in itself is a threat to Zjent Capital ships unless it's overhwelmed by enemy capital ships. Supplimenting the Macross is the Uns Gunship, wich is mankind's second attempt at replicating the macross's main gun (And as a result is not as powerful, and the first was the main guns on the ARMD carriers).

In short, generally Zjent-Melt capital ships are FAR superior in cap v. cap ships against the UNS (Macross being the exception). The reverse is true for smallcraft and fighters, with the only exception being Melt power armors.

BTW, are the pin-point barriers going to be rendered in-game?

(1) I don't think the rail cannons have ever been used in Macross (other than the generic red beam of pretty much every gun in the TV series) In a fanfic re-write of the series (Which includes my Tuliqui-Sovis...) one rail cannon shot almost blew a Zjent Scout ship in half with one blast. However, these cannons must be accurate in order to make that kind of damage....

[Cdr Fokker]

Do not forget the UNS Oberth and Calliara destroyers. Eighteen large vertical launch tubes for reaction-warhead missiles. With forward observers to locate and identify the targets, these would/could be very powerful indeed. (Recall that the Oberths and ARMDs got the crap blown out of them partly because they had effectively no advance knowledge or warning of the enemy forces.)

Edited February 7, 2005 by Cdr Fokker

[chrono]

The problem with that Cdr Fokker is that unless you have TONS of those ships firing and HEAVY ECM behind them their missiles are pretty meaningless against the sheer weight of anti-missile/mecha fire that the Zen have at the larger ship levels.

It's not gonna be an easy thing to balance out.