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Operation Shadow Hand - Take two


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#1 Aizen Teppa

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Posted 12 August 2014 - 05:04 PM

OK, ditched the problem of units causing problem with loading. It was simply impossible to keep tracking this stuff. It would take far too long and I have better things to do in life. 

 

So I went with my another 'brainstormy' idea. Removed from GC map ALL fighters [*], transports (bulk and shuttles), and useless CR90s. Disabled also World Devastator's infuriating ability to destroy base defenses before battle even commences - added planet destruction ability instead and few light corvettes and Shadow-droids spawned from WD belly.

 

[*] - only one exception with few special Shadow-droid squadrons.

 

And you know what? It works like a charm. PR/OSH never worked so nicely. No lag, no hangs. Scenario loads in perhaps like 5 seconds. Wow! For now finishing Rebel-OSH campaign. So far, so great.  Will test that with GFFA next.

 

As for adding Eclipse for Empire. Hmm it didn't worked too well. Ship is defenseless as it is basically only super-laser platform and it requires serious escort vs big fleet. Modded it with Sov and then Exec HPs to see if it'll behave as normal ship but no. It also didn't spawned fighter contingent I created. Real bummer... In the end added one Executor for it instead. 

 

Anyway... to be honest I frankly didn't noticed ANY need for buildable fighters. I would support the motion to remove fighters (exception for few elite hero formations) from build menu entirely and permanently. Existing capital ship fighter complements are more than adequate to defend planet or attack enemy. Freeing so many units/research slots, oh well... just think of the possibilities for the future. Example:

 

Tier 1 shipyard: [troop]transports and fleet support ships (tenders, carriers, resupply)

Tier 2: frigates & corvettes

Tier 3: cruisers

Tier 4: heavy cruisers and battleships

Tier 5: dreadnoughts and super weapons



#2 johnchm.10

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Posted 31 August 2014 - 05:05 PM

I'm on the fence with the fighters right now, actually. yeah they don't help the lag issue (although 1.3 may rectify this somewhat), but it's nice to have the option. and sometimes it works out better to have a few squads of fighters instead of a capital ship

 

i'll give you the CR90. bear in mind that i'm using chih's submod, so our ships may be a bit different. once you have the DP20 and Marauder, there's no point to it. you could group a DP20 and a Marauder and have the equivalent of at least 3 or 4 CR90's. the best way, imo, to make the ship useful at this point would be to have it act as either 1, a sensor platform, featuring sensors of a greater range than other corvettes, possibly frigate or light cruiser range; 2, drastically change its armaments which is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. the Wookie article on the ship only gives 8 turbolasers (likely the stock 4 single mount guns and 2 double mounts), 6 lasers, and 4 ion cannons as the armament. it says nothing about their yield. you could upgrade the guns to heavies and you'd make the ship a viable option again. 3, you give it something really special to actually make it a worthwhile ship

 

Eclipse looks like she needs a lot of work. i will say that having looked at the Wookie page, she is very underarmed for a ship of her size. same for Sovereign. I realize that a lot of her power generation facilities and other things of that nature would be probably tied up in by the Super Laser, and, as the Emperor's Flagship, she likely wouldn't be supposed to go anywhere without an escort, and her super laser can be used as an anti-ship weapon, but for a ship that seems to be about as massive as 4 to 6 executors, that it's conventional armament is only about a quarter that of a single Executor, unless we make the assumption that the guns are either multiple mounts or exotic models, or both



#3 Aizen Teppa

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 09:17 AM

Well ... fighters (&shuttles, fighter-transports), no question asked are primary reason behind the lag. When all junk is removed and not built in large numbers game behaves totally different. Furthermore another observation from OSH game as Rebel I think 2nd problem are Rebels itself. Empire does not rely on fighter buildup while Rebels do. I do have problems even with Core Worlds if playing as Empire. Despite prohibitive cost I set on all fighters AI still insist on dumping on me 50-100 K-wings. That's bloody 450-900 units on the tactical map. I'm not sure if game-engine treats each fighter from a fighter sqr wing separately on GC map. Certainly it looks that way, because fighter buildup always grinds game to a halt.

 

After finished OSH campaign (first time since 1.2 was released!) I went with GFFA as Empire and sure enough run it into the ground ~130 week. Long before finish... Meh. Some may say why I do play so slow. Well game is made to enjoy. I find no pleasure in 50 week rush & crush approach. Good turtling goes a long way towards enjoyment goal. If other mods can support 300-500 weeks so should PR.

 

Another observation is code. I don't recall CTD during save in ICW/TR which happens quite often in PR. I read post about that on Alliance mod page. Nem_Firefox decided to trim code decisively because it's primary reason behind such issues (CTD with 0 size file). As such PR team should go the same way in 1.4.

 

Looking from 1.2 perspective. There are few areas for improvement, like ditching fighters from build menu and moving them to complements (probably Tie-Defender and Skipray should remain for Empire and E/K-wings for Rebels - all of that capped), slashing some units and number of upgrades. Of course 1.3 will curb buildup of all ships greatly, but I hope we will not get more speculative upgrades like any of CR90s - it's example of a ship which should not have any upgrades. CR is last item on research 'to do' list even behind tugs and Action transport.

 

As for Eclipse. Well generally in agreement, but game model is Eclipse 2 not 1. 

 

Eclipse 1 close-defense armament&complement are laughable (Wookie data) for ship of such size and importance. Eclipse 2 was just super-laser platform (again Wookie) which is outright moronic. It's incomprehensible to create ship of such magnitude without any means to defend itself. Escort is all fine, but if escort is gone what then? Next piece is that because of Eclipse gargantuan scale even large scale assault is not needed. (SW creators/authors persist with the vision that Empire is just basically bunch of retarded misfits which didn't learned anything from Death Star destruction) Just pick a spot to pierce and of you go. Can do that with that thing whatever you want - best way to obliterate is target super-laser aperture just like in CW Skywalker&Plo did with Malevolence (although Grievous ship was super-heavily armed for close combat). Job done, dreadnought vaporized - beer for everybody! :thumbsupcool:  Or even better send shuttle with Kyle Katarn, he will obliterate anything just by looking at it. It's no secret that KK is my most disliked Rebel/NR hero, but that's another matter entirely... 

 

Apologies again for bit chaos - jumping again from work and it does not help. lol



#4 johnchm.10

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 05:31 PM

Again, I think we should consider reequiping the Eclipse and Sovereign with heavy variants of the guns, as well as turning them into multiple gun mounts. Figure that they should be quadruple mounts at least. That way the armaments are much closer to the Executor, at 4500 guns to the Executor's 4750, not counting tractor beams or missile launchers.
Additionally, the Eclipse was created during a time when the Executor was only 8 kilometers long and not 19, called the Super-class, and was armed with far fewer weapon emplacements. I think it had about a thousand guns back then. When you take that into consideration, the armaments issue is more forgivable

#5 Aizen Teppa

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 07:11 PM

Again, I think we should consider reequiping the Eclipse and Sovereign with heavy variants of the guns, as well as turning them into multiple gun mounts. Figure that they should be quadruple mounts at least. That way the armaments are much closer to the Executor, at 4500 guns to the Executor's 4750, not counting tractor beams or missile launchers.
Additionally, the Eclipse was created during a time when the Executor was only 8 kilometers long and not 19, called the Super-class, and was armed with far fewer weapon emplacements. I think it had about a thousand guns back then. When you take that into consideration, the armaments issue is more forgivable

Yeap, but with a proviso. Super-laser need some serious recharge-nerf. Right now obliterating everything in 20 seconds flat is a bit idiotic. There is no need for any escort - never encountered AI fleet big enough to pose any critical danger to lone Sovereign.

 

To be honest I'm not very fond of this super-laser (S-L) Emperor obsession. Much more prefer straight fight between ships like Executor or Assertor-class ( :w00t:) than just camping at the edge of the map and pointing S-L cross-hairs at anything big enough to target. Just plough (uhm.. wait don't need even that) straight through effortlessly. It's fun once or twice, but conquering all planets that way is you know what....



#6 Hanti

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Posted 30 September 2014 - 10:23 PM


Yeap, but with a proviso. Super-laser need some serious recharge-nerf. Right now obliterating everything in 20 seconds flat is a bit idiotic. There is no need for any escort - never encountered AI fleet big enough to pose any critical danger to lone Sovereign.

 

To be honest I'm not very fond of this super-laser (S-L) Emperor obsession. Much more prefer straight fight between ships like Executor or Assertor-class ( :w00t:) than just camping at the edge of the map and pointing S-L cross-hairs at anything big enough to target. Just plough (uhm.. wait don't need even that) straight through effortlessly. It's fun once or twice, but conquering all planets that way is you know what....

 

 

Could you please post a link to your version with increased SL time recharge and only some fighters buildable?

Looking from 1.2 perspective I think that buildable option for non-hyperdravie ships/fighters was a mistake. They should be put into space structures as garrisons limiting options but removing some lag.

Some more advanced fighters/bombers should be implemented as complements of level III+ capital ships.

Yes, Tie-Defender and Skipray should remain for Empire and E/K-wings for Rebels. I will also stay X/Y-Wings and Xg/Xm boats as they were intended to work separately from ships. All other TIE models were on board variants.

From transports there could be also 1 or 2 for side buildable (ATR/Delta perhaps).

I would just increase building time of them, so there will be problem with spamming them.



#7 Aizen Teppa

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Posted 01 October 2014 - 06:26 AM

There is no version with removed fighters from build menu  - I just increased population required to build each one. Since 1.3 is coming decided against reworking 1.2. Raising pop cap for fighters is trivial. All you need is good text editor (with backup option in case something goes wrong). Then in XML folder click each fighter squadron  and find string like so:

 

<Population_Value>1</Population_Value>

 

and replace it with number of your choice. I've picked 5. Suddenly AI start to build something else - although it try to deploy K-wings swarm, but it's tiny swarm of 50 not 500. Each file has 2 instances of  <Population_Value>x</Population_Value> so easiest is just select find&replace. Of course you can adjust build time too. Everything is in the file.

 

As for super laster. Another trivial editing job. Find in xml folder file: Namedherounits_darth_sidious.xml

 

Then find part about superlaser:

 

[defualt is like so]

<Unit_Ability>
<Type>SUPER_LASER</Type>
<Mod_Multiplier>SPEED_MULTIPLIER, 0.001f</Mod_Multiplier>
<GUI_Activated_Ability_Name>Sovereign_I_class_Star_Dreadnaught_Superlaser</GUI_Activated_Ability_Name>
<Expiration_Seconds>10.0</Expiration_Seconds>
<Recharge_Seconds>15.0</Recharge_Seconds>
<SFXEvent_Target_Ability>Unit_Superlaser_Emperor</SFXEvent_Target_Ability>
<SFXEvent_Special_Ability_Loop>Unit_Death_Star_2_Fire</SFXEvent_Special_Ability_Loop>
<Alternate_Description_Text>TEXT_TOOLTIP_ECLIPSE_SL_DESCRIPTION</Alternate_Description_Text>
</Unit_Ability>

 

Just change recharge to # of seconds, but frankly even 300 seconds is not big deal. AI is dumb, it cannot deal with threat of Sovereign.



#8 Hanti

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Posted 01 October 2014 - 08:16 AM

Thanks for fast response. So to summarize:

To remove lag I need:

- add higher pop value to all fighters

- remove fighters from garrisons

And that's all?



#9 Rhakorii

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Posted 01 October 2014 - 11:10 AM

This sounds perfect, so I have a couple of questions.

 

1. Does this logic apply to GFFA - or, even better, Operation Skyhook?

 

2. As a total novice modder, what would I need to do to replicate your success?

 

As in, how did you remove the tranports, fighters etc from the map? It seems to me that the game starts off laggy as hell, so I'm presuming there's a way to vastly reduce the number of units right from the start?

 

(I'm a particular fan of Skyhook, as it at least adds an extra element of caution for the Empire)


Edited by Rhakorii, 01 October 2014 - 11:19 AM.


#10 Aizen Teppa

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Posted 01 October 2014 - 03:55 PM

Well sadly GFFA is a bit extreme example. It will help for a bit. Never tried playing it with even higher pop cap for fighters. Perhaps it would work better. GFFA in current setup was running fairly fine for ~130 weeks (and all of that on i7 920). Which is the best result I ever got. Of course DeFreezer tool is a must to regularly 'sweep' saves. 

 

Right now not playing PR in anticipation of 1.3. To be honest 1.2 is a bit tiresome with all it's issues. 

 

For smaller campaign it works well. In particular when scenario files are edited to remove all useless ancient junk. Editing campaign is simple matter, just chop the junk from the entire file. Of course there is drawback - much, much less easy money from salvage bonus on pirates.





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