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 PDS 7.3.1 available
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| hsuuperman |
Posted on 30-06-2006 22:21
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 Posts: 18 Joined: September 28 2005 |
I was trying out the option of just calling out ships in the first x seconds (forgot what it was called, but brilliant idea) and i was playing around w/the unit caps. the small, normal and large caps don't seem to be any different... is this a mistake? or is it gonna get updated in a later version? btw, for the player vs cpu stuff, any chance we'll get to see stuff like carrier/battlecarrier only options w/the shipyard disabled? been watching a lot of BSG lately and thought it'd be kinda cool to standalone ships w/o massive buildsupport nearby. great job tho 
Edited by hsuuperman on 30-06-2006 22:24 |
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| Sun Tzu |
Posted on 02-07-2006 14:30
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 Posts: 528 Joined: September 08 2005 |
Thanks for feedback! Silent_Assassin: there was a good deal of fighter rebalancing between v7.0 and v7.1. I think it is normal that fighters do not eat enemy bombers because the fighters' roles are not as specialised as in vanilla HW2 and many other mods. Blades and Avengers are even a bit too powerful to my liking, compared to their Vaygr counterparts. Anyway I'm currently working on a redesign of the duel gamerule to make it possible to choose starting squadrons through UI. When this is done, systematic benchmarking of ships will be more easily done. So the discussion is not over hsuuperman: I did not touch the unit caps so far since the plan is to redesign them from scratch (like full fleet, task group, recon force, strike group, etc). I guess that will address your point re a game ? la BSG, since we could have an "expeditionary force" unitcap with only one carrier and one or two other capital ships. To address specifically your concern, I never checked if the option for unit caps is correctly put in the 'simple.lua' gamerule. There might be a bug if the strings are case sensitive. If you want to check it out by yourself, you can edit the line 23 of data:leveldata/multiplayer/simple.lua and change the line { "Small", "small", "Normal", "normal", "Large", "large",}, }, by { "Small", "Small", "Normal", "Normal", "Large", "Large",}, }, And then see if that changes anything to in game caps. I won't have a look at this by myself before I start the bigger work on the unitcaps. Edited by Sun Tzu on 02-07-2006 14:31 |
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| hsuuperman |
Posted on 02-07-2006 20:04
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Posts: 18 Joined: September 28 2005 |
Yeah, the Blades, Avengers and Hawks are rather insanely powerful.. I was thinking, maybe change the AIC's on the fighters to pulse ions, and leave the beam ones on the bombers? I think that would tone down the overly powerful hiig fighters and make them more a match for the Vaygr ships... with the exception of the pioneer which isn't much more than target practice |
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| Silent_Assasin |
Posted on 03-07-2006 17:13
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Posts: 43 Joined: June 28 2006 |
Being able to choose which ships to fight with in Duel would be awesome. Looking forward to it.  USMC Pilot candidate |
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| TelQuessir |
Posted on 06-07-2006 13:46
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 Posts: 2598 Joined: August 30 2005 |
Hmph, I would think the PDS community were larger than just a few regular posters on this highly successful independent update. Or does my chain (whip, rather) of command attract more followers?  |
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| Aiyel |
Posted on 06-07-2006 22:27
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Posts: 6 Joined: March 10 2006 |
I figure if we pretend to ignore this, you'll throw out another Third Era update to make us happy. Also; Loving 7.3. Making Evil Plans (TM) To LAN it this weekend. And introduce some friends to PDS. Those poor souls. They'll never see it coming. |
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| Silent_Assasin |
Posted on 06-07-2006 22:43
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Posts: 43 Joined: June 28 2006 |
:sighw: I wish I could get some friends to play pds on a lan with me. All of them got scared off by the utter chaos when I showcased it last month . I did have one guy who was willing to play with me, until he remembered his horror the one time when I siced my Liir Hra Block 17 on his lone Al Khalid... Told me that the game lacked tactical depth :rolleyes: just because he got completely owned. USMC Pilot candidate |
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| hsuuperman |
Posted on 07-07-2006 09:04
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Posts: 18 Joined: September 28 2005 |
Any chance we could also see a unit cap for bombers only? I never end up deploying the Tbolt IV just cuz it's completely useless when compared to the Avenger and I'd rather use the Avenger for the heavy fighter units. |
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| Sun Tzu |
Posted on 07-07-2006 09:34
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Posts: 528 Joined: September 08 2005 |
FYI I'm finishing the new duel gametype with a graphical UI enabling to select up to 3 squadrons for player and CPU. Release tomorrow at the latest  Relaxation: thanks for the nice feedback, but don't forget that this is joint work with Inert! 1.weapons on strike craft: I'll try it. I was also wondering about the HVM settings on strikecraft, because they are automatically searching for targets like CIWS. Perhaps they should be modified as pure attacking systems. 2. stealth: I'll give it a try as well 3. hyperspace: I never looked into this but it seems to me there is a variable for that in the hyperspace command ability and in the race lua. On top of that I'll enable hyperspace for strikecraft (usable only when close to a cap ship) to see if that solves the lone-hyperspacing-CPU-battlecruiser 'bug'. hsuuperman: we agree that fighters need a bit of tweaking. Unitcaps may not be the best way though, since it somewhat limits the player options. Tweaking weapon loadouts and build costs might do it. |
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| Silent_Assasin |
Posted on 07-07-2006 13:47
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Posts: 43 Joined: June 28 2006 |
I agree with sun tzu on the unit caps. I'd rather have the Avenger rebalanced to make the Tbolts a more viable option. As far as the balancing goes, its really just the weapons that need to be rebalanced contrary to what I said earlier about their health. My avengers still got owned by the pds of a Vaygr cruiser. Torpedo Bombers are a nice idea. Another thing I was thinking of; is it possible to add armor to a missile/torpedo? Seems like the only way to get by the pds of a capship with missiles is to spam them, or get too close for comfort. I'm going to lose a lot of sleep once that new duel gametype is released .
USMC Pilot candidate |
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| TelQuessir |
Posted on 07-07-2006 14:19
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Posts: 2598 Joined: August 30 2005 |
Quote I did have one guy who was willing to play with me, until he remembered his horror the one time when I siced my Liir Hra Block 17 on his lone Al Khalid... Told me that the game lacked tactical depth just because he got completely owned. Ha, on the contrary, tactical depth is what allows a ship of inferior tonnage to defeat a superior opponent. That and the point of PDS is the chaos - being a newly self-appointed sower of discord in RL I'm tempted to start playing my work again For missile survivability look at the data/missile folder. |
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| Aiyel |
Posted on 08-07-2006 02:34
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Posts: 6 Joined: March 10 2006 |
.... is it possible to have special warhead types for missiles specifically designed to counter the murderous volume of defensive fire some ships crank out? Like, oh, bomb-pumped x-ray laser warheads? Or have a missile break into a dozen or so kinetic rounds at a certain range? Even if they're less effective on a per-missile basis, it'd be useful of a bunch more got through. Plus, laser-heads would look cool, and that's sometimes just as important as effectiveness. |
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| Ar-Khanis |
Posted on 08-07-2006 06:58
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Posts: 41 Joined: September 02 2005 |
Long time since I actually posted here. Sun Tzu, I've not had much time to explore its' depth, but this reworking of PDS 7 (where my main interest has always lain) has been enough to coerce me to reinstall HW2 on this new machine to try it out. Needless to say, in those brief moments between working and sleeping, I am not being dissapointed Constructive commentary may follow at a later date. If I can find time between working, sleeping, and playing it |
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| hsuuperman |
Posted on 08-07-2006 11:04
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Posts: 18 Joined: September 28 2005 |
I fully agree with Relax's view on how the strike craft should be played out. Fighters should be fighters, bombers should be bombers. Under the fighters, I would stick the Blades and Avengers under those (currently at 8 total squads), making the Avenger prohibitively expensive until mid/late game. I think by toning down the fighters' firepower against capships (the Avenger was a killer against cruisers, corvettes and fighters) and keeping the Avenger in that group would help balance. For the heavy fighter squadrons I would imagine putting the bombers there, with the Tbolt I's serving as the initial bomber early game, and later perhaps evolving to the IV's later game. Perhaps have a heavy missile/energy weapon loadout and have a higher damage modifier against capships thus solidifying/separating bomber and fighter roles. As of now, how exactly do the LSF's and the Hawk drones stand? I never used the LSF in any of my games, though that may be due to my own lack of expertise with them. The Hawk's seem ridiculously overpowered... is there anything going to be done about toning them down? For something so cheap and so easily accessible in the game, they seem REALLY powerful Edited by hsuuperman on 08-07-2006 11:11 |
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| Sun Tzu |
Posted on 08-07-2006 13:52
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Posts: 528 Joined: September 08 2005 |
Wow! Thanks for all that! That gives me additional incentive to prepare a 7.3.1 soon. I attach the patch for the new duel gametype for testing and feedback. I don't think such a UI trick has ever been used before, so I'll keep sunglasses until someone proves me wrong  Btw this trick can be used for all sorts of things, such as selecting whole divisions or customising ships or game options within the gamefile.
Sun Tzu attached the following file:
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| Mostly harmless |
Posted on 08-07-2006 16:00
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[118].jpg) Posts: 141 Joined: September 15 2005 |
Anything to give the corvettes a bit more life would be nice. They seem to have some trouble docking to some ship types and therefore get wiped out in the process. Amazing job so far. |
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| Sun Tzu |
Posted on 08-07-2006 22:22
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Posts: 528 Joined: September 08 2005 |
Thanks I attach a modified version showing the total build cost for the squadrons.
Sun Tzu attached the following file:
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| Silent_Assasin |
Posted on 09-07-2006 15:32
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Posts: 43 Joined: June 28 2006 |
Are individual weapon damage ratings set or can there be damage values set against each individual ship? For example, an assault ion cannon. Lets just say its damage value is 5. Now my question is can it be set at 5 against an al khalid and 7 against an assault carrier? Aside from the corvette problems listed above, i cant see any other problems so far. I'm about to go and systematically benchmark the ships. Awesome job on the new dueltype. Cheers :beer:. USMC Pilot candidate |
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| Sun Tzu |
Posted on 09-07-2006 15:49
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Posts: 528 Joined: September 08 2005 |
If you want to see how weapon damage works, take a look at the .wepn files in the weapon folder. Then you can get hold of a copy of the RDN docs; it contains a weapon tuning Excel spreadsheet with lots of useful info. Unfortunately, I don't think there is such a file for PDS weapon stats, unless Tel maintained one. And to answer your primary question, weapon efficiency can be tweaked by accuracy (depending on ship classes like fighters, corvettes, etc) and armour penetration (depending on armour classes).[EDIT: you can have thinner distinction with a more detailed family classification (see script/family.lua)but I do not know if that is worth the effort] I have little to no experience modifying weapons but I think it's good policy to make very limited changes at a time and then test the result. Edited by Sun Tzu on 09-07-2006 16:52 |
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| Mostly harmless |
Posted on 10-07-2006 00:35
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Posts: 141 Joined: September 15 2005 |
Is it easy to restrict technology? Much as in the campaign so to create skirmishes of a lower tech level? Just thought it could be an idea to force the player to use what he has and get still have some larger, non rebuildable, units. Replace fighters and such. |
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