Shrike's Ultimate Overhaul (DEV)

[Song]

Woohoo. I'm still alive.

I've had my computer in for repairs....and it's now dual-booting. So as soon as I migrate stuff over to the windows partition, I'll be developing stuff for SUO again...I've also been busy getting the paperwork done for University. It's not DONE, but it's getting there.

[Song]

SUO is getting split up into pieces. Probably. I'm currently overhauling several weapons, and I'm shelving the Lamprey Project until I can find someone to help with graphics (again, any volunteers?). I'm also dropping some of the more troublesome features, for now. I've got Orientation next week, so packing is ongoing for the move North. My suitcase is awesome. proper 1930's design, complete with some of the original stickers from boat trips back pre-WW2. Hopefully it holds up. Development Hell is a nice place.

That said, I can finally test again, so once I've gone through the code to see what I've done, haven't done, and dummied out because it was broken....things start getting fun again.

[Song]

I've got a new and ambitious weapons project that I could do with help with (as people who know me will know, I am terrible at scripting.).

As you know, ingame we have degenerative nanos, used for ship deconstruction. You can probably tell from that sentence exactly what I'm planning.

The decay cannon (at least, that's the name until I have a better one) does not fire barrels of nanos at targets. That would be silly. It fires shells that contain the same sort of nanorobots, causing damage over time. And stripping off armor enhancements/adding the +Decay "enhancement" to any segments it hits (maybe not EVERY segment, but a reasonable proportion/chance). As one can imagine, this is not going to be an entirely "legal" weapon, and getting shells for it may be rather difficult. On the other hand, they can be made by tinkers (not that you'll have the gun at that point, probably) out of those wonderful barrels you just love applying to your armor by accident.

Be aware that failure to avoid armor contact with your (or anyone elses) nanomachine shells may result in unsatisfactory blemishes on your hull, followed by death.

SO...anyone who wants a hand making peoples ships crumble around them (And yes, I mean crumble. If ships are killed by this things timed damage, they need to shatter. No looting the wrecks for YOU), I'd love to work with you on this. It's for SUO/whatever I'm calling the next mod, but might get released separately if it's done fast enough. The basic idea is an OnDamageArmor event that sets up an invisible overlay that damages over time, and runs the RNG to determine if it strips armor coatings/applies degeneration with each hit. it seems fairly simple, but I am the worlds worst T-whatever coder.

[PM]

I considered building a weapon with nano type damage using degen barrels as ammo (probably adding charges like the longzhu does for a Qianlong), possibly adding decay on hit, but decided against it for being a bit too gimmicky. Since you seem interested in it, I may try to build something.

[PM]

I am nearly finished with a ship flaying nano cannon. I will upload the code soon.

[Song]

In terms of actual practical work, I've made a few tweaks to the charon system:

-Korolov base has slightly fewer Ronin/B's.
-Korolov Base has some turrets and a few orbiting EMP-sentinels. Or it will do, when I find the right XML to add to the folder....I've misplaced the tenhove XMLs so running this tweak means instacrash right now. EMP sentinels will be set to not have friendly fire, because otherwise the battle will just be hilarious.
-Slightly increased the time before the drakes turn up. I'm considering giving them a few vikings as an escort.
-Made the Mk.5 deflector turn up as a possible reward.
-Removed omni-particle cannon as a reward. Will be replaced with dual-flenser until I think of other useful weapon/device/whatever...because I have a really low opinion of that gun, and thus giving it as a reward is just plain cruel.
-Charon fortress now has point defense (bwhahahahaha. It's only ICX though, so missiles WILL work if you fire enough of them. Unless I decide to make it harder, in which case...well, yeah.)
-Charon fortress now has Viking II guards. What? You thought this was going to be easy? Well I've bypassed the ship tables for this one. You're GOING to get dual-turbolaser spam from these guys. AS WELL as the randomised defenses you'd normally get in vanilla. Just to make life more interesting. (Don't feel bad about it though. You can already run into marauders before charon and have to face Viking IIs.)
-I'm also thinking about maybe giving the fortress a missile launcher as well. Just to see what happens. I mean.....players are up for a little more challenge, right? I can promise it won't be firing Brutes or Lucifers. Or XM300s. It'll either be the KM100, 110 or 500.

And to korolov/charon in general:

-Freighters can now have manticore escorts
-Korolov bases now have turrets and/or autosentinels on patrol.
-Korolov bases can now have EI100/m vessels for defense.
-Charon Pirates....well...nothing's really changing, yet, but I might make drakes a little tougher. Maybe replace that laser cannon with a customised autodefense weapon that targets the player AND incoming hostile missiles.


I'll be doing some testing to see what this does to charon. I'm hoping to make saving the base easier....and defeating the fortress harder. MUCH harder.


I'm also working towards giving more stations point-defense. This will involve a brand new PD weapon, possibly 2 or 3. I'm aware this immediately nerfs howitzers and missiles, and makes the Lancers/Starcannon much more attractive....I'll have to see what to do about those. And tweaking the weapons on a few other stations.


The use of turrets and point-defense on stations is mostly to make killing them a bit harder. Turrets are vulnerable to long-range fire (unless they temselves have decent point-defense, which I might add on one model), but stations with point defense are NOT (within reason, you can beam-spam them as much as you like). Autosentinels are weaker than turrets, but move around in an orbit and will usually start shooting you before the turrets. They also have the potential to be EMP-capable.

Currently I've started work on adding these changes into:

-Outlaw Miners (who are also getting a much-needed buff to their guards in the late game. I mean, hammerhead II's? Really?)
-Korolov
-Charon Pirates
-Ice farms (because I changed sentinels, I took the opportunity to buff their defenses a little)

I'm planning to possibly alter in the same way:

-Arms caches
-Auton dealerships
-Corporate trade posts
-Black market stations/shipyards
-One or two Outlaw stations.
-Possibly militia stations
-Weapons dealers
-CW stations (The big grey ones with lots of Tev9s)
-CSC's (they get whatever new PD-weapons I come up with that best stop missiles)
-Some Ares bases, PERHAPS.
-Gaians and Xenophobes


Oh yeah, and one type of turret has a Mk.1 howitzer. You might want to be careful of those. Especially if there are also EMP-sentinels around. There's a set of parameters that I'm using for the design:

-You need a really cheap one, for the really poor customers. This is the basic autosentinel, the auton that happens to be called an autosentinel (which may get renamed) and it's turret counterpart (which has slightly better armor, but it basically the same)
-You need a dedicated defense/battlefield support model, like the 1M/i auton, or it's relative: the EMP sentinel.
-You need an all out offensive model that's fragile, but packs a serious punch. This doesn't really have an auton, yet, and it doesn't have a sentinel either. But the turret DOES have one, the aforementioned Mk.1-firing T7 (development name),
-You need a very robust model that doesn't actually do that much damage. This is the 1M auton, and has both turret and autosentinel counterparts.

[Song]

New Changes list as of present untested version (I'm feature-freezing soon, then testing):

-Added some new point-defense stuff. The Longreach II Autocannon fires a spray of pellets (yes, it's modified from the PK25, but I did some other things to it as well) at incoming projectiles, and if given to the Aegis auton, would make them insane killing machines. Of you and your other autons.
-Korolov stations buffed, now with turret/robot defenses.
-Charon Korolov base buffed considerably, making the base easier to save. In theory.
-Charon fortress now insane.
-Kronosaurus now has point-defense.
-New very-rare Corsair II varient with DM600 launcher. Just to liven things up.
-Gaians have new armor/guns. Some of this stuff may be ditched though.
-Messenger Missiles finalised and ready for balancing.
-SM&M rework started, removed some of the S-series missiles.
-Bollide Blaster tweaked: It's now possible to buy/sell them, and the range is slightly higher than other laser weapons.
-Turrets still missing, although I've worked out where the XML got to. I just need to retrieve it.
- IXC and Longreach now have higher interaction values, which should make them better at stopping missiles.
-Other stuff from this thread. I can't really list everything.

Planned changes before freezing features for next testing cycle:

-Finding, examining and completing Turrets and Autosentinels
-Adding turrets to militia stations
-Adding minefields
-Adding turrets to arms caches.
-Adding turrets to various corporates.
-Experimenting with other equipment on stations (shields)
-Adding point defense to several major enemies (heh......heh......heh...you're gonna LOVE this. To death.)
-Rebuilding Kytryn Launcher and making it kill you.
-Rebuilding the Drake so it's a battering ram again. This may involve it using its two laser cannons to shoot down incoming missiles ala Half-Life gunships, heavier armor, or just plain cheating.
-Buffing the ranx gunship, but making it explode satisfactorily.
-Working out point-defense for late-game ships, adding it if possible.

At that point, it's off to testing, and then once all that lot is nice and sorted, it'l be time to work on the tricky stuff, like missile HP rebalancing.

While it probably won't be an SUO feature, I'm tempted to work on revitalising the big "mission systems" of the game. Because they do feel a little samey at times:

Charon: Defend Base, kill stuff.
Point Juno: Defend Base, kill stuff.
Hauramauca (yeah, I can't spell it): Defend Bases, Kill stuff.
Heretic: Defend bases, kill stuff, do hacking minigame I've never got the hang of, kill more stuff.

[Song]

SUO is, for the first time in over a year, actually working as designed. Testing is showing a few pricing and balance issues in the early game (although given the item in question is a missile launcher that can fire ANTIMATTER by the end of the game, a high price might be understandable), and there's a potential crash bug that may or may not exist. One major issue is the increase in difficulty in the Tenhove sentinels on the primer-game (first few systems post-Eridani) mining stations. Currently they're a little too hard, too accurate, and have too high a DPS. ONE of those would be fine, but not all three. The main issue is balancing the expectations, so that people aren't hammered when they encounter harder sentinels later on in the game, but at the same time don't get instakilled by the first station they come to.


Oh, and I *really* need to buff the wolfens starting reactor to be more fuel efficient. Or have a higher power output.

Edit: Well I fixed the crash bug. On of them, anyway. I suspect there will be more. However a problem with my tabling and a possible typo in my korolov tweaks has had some unintended consequences.

The good news is that Operation Make Korolov Stations Safer has been several times more successful than planned.


Final count: 14 turrets, 6 sentinels.

I'll just go ahead and tone that down. That said....would YOU attack that in a corsair II?

[Atarlost]

I'll just go ahead and tone that down. That said....would YOU attack that in a corsair II?

Unless those turrets mount lancers or flensers, yes.

[Song]

I'll just go ahead and tone that down. That said....would YOU attack that in a corsair II?

Unless those turrets mount lancers or flensers, yes.

It's turbolasers in those ones, but once the code's working then some of them will have Mk.1 howitzers. And unlike the vanilla tenhove, these guys are insanely accurate even by AI standards.

Although admittedly, there's currently some really weird issues cropping up:

-The game seems to ignore the probability tables for the satellites, so it's always the first type of turret in the list.
-The game is ignoring the number of turrets specified, even if I remove the table, and goes with ~14 every time, and not making them equidistant.
-The game seems to be forgetting a little line in the turret/autosentinel code that says "Nofriendlyfire="true""

As a result, the turrets are worse than useless right now. They work very well against anything smaller than a drake or frigate, and they'd definitely damage one of those two as well (I've been leading maruader raid formations into them, and the platform would clean them out if it wasn't distracted by my ship and the guards)...but they damage the station, kill the docked frieghters, and blow each other up.

And the korolov base in charon is just plain crashing the game. I'm not sure why though....

[Song]

I've actually got a really BIG problem with the current version of SUO. It's broken.

As well as the aforementioned problems with korolov turrets.....the korolov station in charon is just breaking the game instantly on system generation. And the charon fortress isn't hard enough, and the zerg rush of pirates is just annoying. So in the next few days, in between doing an assignment from class....I'll be trying to find the bug, or posting that version of SUO to Xelerus in case anyone wants to lend a hand. And I'm making the fortress even more psychopathic. Think it was bad with randomised defenses? Well, I'm removing those entirely, and giving a fixed defense. No kill like overkill.

[Song]

To Do List:

-Make Charon Fortress Fun Done! Hope your setup's good when you get here. (Note 1)
-Make Korolov Stations actually WORK
-Make defending the Korolov base in charon easier
-Make fighting the Charon Strongholds interesting
-Rebalance the first autosentinels you come across that shoot at you to make them a little less lethal.
-Do 'Best Case Scenario' run against fortress (Hiro'd Quasiarmor, collimated +fast X-ray laser, duralloy armor) Done!
-Do "Average Loadout" run against fortress (Solar armor or light blast plate or similar, dual turbolaser with some form of light enhancement, fewer missiles.)
-Do "Shrike's Average Playthrough" run against fortress (Hahahahahaha. Advanced reactive or similar, crap shield, crap guns, very few or no missiles)
-Test howitzer performance against strongholds and fortress

I'm using the Osaka class transport as a heavy gunship, with missiles as a secondary (at least in the "best case" test).


This ISN'T the first test battle for the fortress. It's a few minutes afterwards (next time, I'm taking a picture during the battle). An interesting effect of the way the station is set up in this test was to cause the more intense fighting to occur at some distance from the station: There are no wrecks less than 40ls or so from the station, and not many less than 60 away. As you can see from the wrecks, and the fact that the fortress is still off the edge of the long range scanner (it's somewhere to the right and a bit down from that industrial station on the scanner)....there are a LOT of ships that are trying to kill you here.

Note 1: Please don't try complaining when you instantly die to the charon fortress if you try sitting at 95ls and sniping it with a howitzer or NAMI launcher. That simply won't work. I'm nerfing the layout slightly to make it more fun (and faster), but you really need to think the battle through BEFORE charging in. Or get really lucky.

[WillyTheSquid]

So this is your idea of fun?

[Atarlost]

Hopefully the middle road. Nothing can be as "fun" as Dwarf Fortress without a deliberately crappy peon AI.

[Song]

Eh, it's NOT dwarf fortress, that's for sure (Losing's only fun when you have fun in the details of your death). It's also not really hardcore either: When faced by huge formations of RED on your scanner, please do not charge at it (doing so will result in a hardcore experience, but that's more you being stupid than me designing it wrong). But it's more hardcore than "Sit at X distance, hold down button, YAY BATTLE OVER!"

Besides, this game is partly based off Nethack. Meaning, a Roguelike. So we need some insanity.

Edit: If I was aiming for dwarf fortress in space, I'd add dwarves. And BUFF the defenses rather than nerfing them to make it better.

While there are VAST numbers of ships trying to kill you, unless you do something really stupid (Like, run into the middle of a vast orbiting defense network and try to kill the base without picking the defenses off first.......), you don't get them all at once. Usually. Plus the average corsair gunship is made of magnesium, cleaning products, nitroglycerine and tissue paper.