Capital Ship Mod idea

from Sins Forums

I'm a navy freak.  Anything that has to do with Navy, both modern and historical, I've always been intrigued by.  But what impresses me the most about any navy, is how massive and powerful battleships and carriers are compared to their escorts.  Battleships and Carriers were the primary source of firepower in any fleet composition (Battleships of course being retired in more recent times and Carriers completely overshadowing them in terms of efficiency).  In this game, the capital ships typically serve as more of a support role of a fleet and are typically not very efficient to research and build over just basic units.  What I want to do is make a mod that focuses more on Capital Ships as the primary strength of a fleet, and have frigates and cruisers play more of a support role for them as escorts. 

The question though is, how is this done? 

1. First of all, I think the range and damage done per projectile is very important.  A Battleship class vessel should be able to lob a projectile at least halfway across a planet system, but have a slower rate of fire for its main guns which will deal a great deal of damage. 

2. Frigates and Cruisers should have their range shortened slightly, and typically do less damage against capital ships by either lowering their armor penetration or raising capital ship armor values.

3. All ships and capital ships should go slower, or all planet gravity well radius' increased, so that closing the distance is no simple task.

This is my first mod which I will attempt to make so if you could share your ideas i'd greatly appreciate it.  I also am wondering if there is already a mod out there that tries to switch the focus to capital ships.  If there is I'd like to know what it is and see how they decided to balance it.

modding
5,279 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I am not sure of any existing mod that does exactly what you want it to. But the changes you want to make are very easy to do.

If you haven't already, download the mod pack for 1.05 (we don't have an updated one for the beta patch).

All capital ships files are prefixed with CAPITALSHIP_ (CAPITALSHIP_TECHBATTLESHIP for the Kol, for example) and frigates/cruisers are prefixed with Frigate (FrigateTechLight for the Cobalt).

Tech is TEC, Phase is Vasari, Psi is Advent.

These files contain the ships' speeds, weapon ranges, weapon damages, and allow you to modify how many "rounds" the ships fire (so for example, you can make the TEC's autocannons either railgun-like, spitting out few projectiles every so often or a constant stream of fire).

Speeds and ranges are straight forward. Damage is set for each bank, since capital ships tend to have weapons on 3 sides (front, left, right). The weapon cooldown is tagged "preBuffCooldown" in the files. Frigates (except anti-fighter like flaks, and the Advent's Illuminator) only have frontal firing weapons.

If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask :)

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks for your help.  I was thinking of actually implimenting broadside guns for many ships, and maybe even a slow firing, high armor penetration torpedo launcher, by changing all ships weapon count from 1 to 2 or 3.  I imagine I just have to look at the capital ship text data and copy/paste its second and third weapon text data, and edit the weapon behavior to be more suitable for a smaller vessel.  Is this easy as I am thinking?

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Unfortunately not quite. Weapon hardpoints are set in stone on the model itself, so you can't give frigates broadside weapons without altering their models and adding firing points on the sides.

There's also no quick way to give a weapon x% armor penetration, but there are some possible workarounds.

You can add additional weapons, I believe, but again without adding the firing points for the additional weapons (each weapon is allowed 10 firing points anywhere on the ship, for a total of 30 for the 3 allowed weapons) they're most likely just going to come out of the dead center of the ship and it won't broadside or anything. I haven't actually tried it, so I'm not sure exactly what kind of behavior it'll create, but to make real broadsiding ships out of frigates you'd need the set points on their sides so the game knows where to shoot from.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

There's also no quick way to give a weapon x% armor penetration, but there are some possible workarounds.
End of quote

 

Shield negation via research is one.  Messy, but pretty useful b/c I don't think mitigation is applied to shots that negate shielding.  So that *could* be armor penetration in a way.

 

Anyways Manick, I really hope you get this mod working.  It will be good to have a mod with naval battle type battles in it.  Especially the larger gravity wells and longer-ranged and more powerful shots.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I think the easiest workaround I can think of is to make a generic ability to stick on the frigates that uses "AFFECTS_ONLY_HULL" as the damageAffectType. It'd be like a mini nano-disassembler from the space whale, only you can make it to one time direct damage.

But yeah, research would work too, though I think the phase missile stuff still is mitigated by armor, and AFFECTS_ONLY_HULL should bypass armor too.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

But Affects_Only_Hull won't let it do shield damage.  So it will be near useless as a weapon, and as an ability it will be OP.

 

BTW Annatar, does AFFECTS_ONLY_SHIELDS ignore mitigation when doing shield damage?

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Well, he wanted armor piercing, which for me assumes shields aren't a factor either :P

I am not sure if AFFECTS_ONLY_SHIELDS ignores mitigation, my gut says no.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

I guess my terminology used in my previous posts was a bit confusing when speaking about the game, so I'll explain myself a little better.  I don't really fully understand the game mechanics either myself, and even though I understand the concept of shield mitigation I don't really want to bother myself with it.  It sounds way too complicated because of all the ways it can change during a fight.  Shield negate from phase missiles I understand more, but I am not sure how to use it for balancing things.  What I basically want to do is have the capital ships be tough enough to withstand many more shots than they currently do against small vessels, but still be vulerable to other capital ships, torpedos, and maybe even bombers just like in real life.  In contrast to real life, a WWII destroyer, if it was lucky to even get in range, probably wouldn't penetrate the armor of a battleship since the belt/deck armor was thicker than their shells, but it could launch a torpedo at it and really mess it up.  The easiest thing to do would be to just raise the stats of all capital ships dramatically and make them only vulnerable to each other, and somehow torpedos.  I was thinking about doubling all their stats, and effectiveness of their abilities, and start balancing from there.  But I would have to think of a way to make torpedos deal a great amount of damage to capital ships if a frigate/cruiser was fortunate enough to get close, but also not be so overpowered that it can even be abused against other small vessels.  I don't think simply adding a long cooldown would do the trick, because if it was designed to just deal a large amount of damage compared to the ships primary weapons, it could be used to wipe out small ships quickly without any effort. 

 

I wish their was an ability in the game that caused a percentage of damage per second instead of a set number, that way it could proportionally do way more damage to a capital ship.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

I am not sure if AFFECTS_ONLY_SHIELDS ignores mitigation, my gut says no.
End of quote

 

Crap.  There goes this epic mod idea I had.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

But I would have to think of a way to make torpedos deal a great amount of damage to capital ships if a frigate/cruiser was fortunate enough to get close, but also not be so overpowered that it can even be abused against other small vessels.  I don't think simply adding a long cooldown would do the trick, because if it was designed to just deal a large amount of damage compared to the ships primary weapons, it could be used to wipe out small ships quickly without any effort. 

 

I wish their was an ability in the game that caused a percentage of damage per second instead of a set number, that way it could proportionally do way more damage to a capital ship.

End of quote

Well, you can make an ability only target capital ships, and do splash damage. So you could keep the frigates' normal weapons, and give them an ability for anti-capital torpedoes in this manner. It could only be targeted on capitals, but it would also do splash damage to nearby targets, regardless of what they are.

The only unfortunate thing about it is that all ships are limited to 4 abilities, so you would not be able to do this for capitals unless you took out one of their existing abilities.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Well from what I hear capital ships are going to be actual capital ships.  You are going to be very afraid of them.  So they don't need anti-capital torpedoes, being equipped with very powerful guns already.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Its just as Sparda says, especially since the main guns on the capital ships will already deal a great amount of damage and have a large range.  More modern battleships, after pre-dreadnoughts, rarely used torpedo launchers anyway. 

And great idea Annatar11!  I never would have thought of implimenting a torpedo attack as an ability.  I almost forgot that abilities had target type limitations, which makes it perfectly viable. 

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, makes sense :)

I'm just in the habit of making sure I mention all relevant info so folks know any and all limitations/side effects :)