What to do about the gunboats...(or, what purpose do they ac

Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:28 pm by robocop

We're about 90% done with our mod that allows the buying and flying of the capships. We're trying to make this mod an optional mod for the server. In other words, you'll only need the mod if you wish to buy/fly the capships. Any mods we do on our server have to be compatible with the unmodded player.

I think we're good with cruiser/destroyer class ships and battleships but the gunboats kind of have me perplexed.

They can be PWNED by VHFs!! I think they should be destroyable by a single VHF but that fighter should have to work for it rather than having it so easy.

The stats for the Bretonia gunboat for example are:
1 Forward Gun
5 Turrets
Speed 50
Hull 50492.596 (using armor_scale_17)

No shield, thruster, CD, CM, Mine, Torp, etc.

The guns have significantly more output than any fighter's guns. Each gun does about 10,000 HD/sec with a refire rate of 8.33 and the turrets have all been adjusted to provide a complete field of fire around the ship so there are no dead spots.

I can't add a shield because it would be transparent to the unmodded player. I can't increase hull hit points because that will also appear odd to the unmodded player. The gunboats all come with different hull hit points and I'm trying to use armor scaling in such a way that they're all about the same strength so I can't just boost the armor_scaling. (Bretonia Hull = AS_17: 50,493; Kusari Hull = AS_11: 50,615; Rheinland Hull = AS_10: 50,471 ) These settings seem to be the only ones available with stock armor scaling that will allow them to all have about the same amount of hull strength. Putting multiple armor scaling on the ship of course doesn't work.

This kind of has me leaning towards custom armor_scales. So, here's question 1: How would a custom armor_scale setting affect the unmodded player? Would they see it as not existing and thus have an even easier time taking the ship down or is armor scaling all server side?

The other question would be: Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to make this ship more effective against VHFs?

Sat Jun 02, 2007 6:08 pm by runtman

Well, on the server I like to play on, it has the same kind of thing (but only a few capships) as you are thinking. It's solution is to have a health of (with armor, etc)350000 or so, along with massively powerful guns. They also have shields though, so I'm not sure why yours doesn't work that way... the Bretonian Gunboat has a shield hardpoint (two, actually) so that really shouldn't be a problem to add a shield... The only other two capships were the Kusari Gunboat and destroyer, both of which had shields equipped to their cloak hardpoints. *shrugs* That mod is optional, and it works fine with non-modded players. I'm not sure how they did it though...

Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:21 pm by Liddy

make the gunboat more maneuverable? I always thought that Gunboats were 'sposed to be pwned by VHFs, but the gunboat should be able to destroy a Capship... maybe im wrong, i dunno

Wed Jun 06, 2007 9:25 pm by OuterStar

Well i thought its a support unit in combat.It should take out the fighters which in battleship is harder.

Wed Jun 06, 2007 9:49 pm by Question Asker2044

Yes, a Gunboat is support for capitals. In my mod I have battleships hitting above 1 million hit points so they aren't so easy to destory, gunboats have around 500-700 k hitpoints. Seems high but it works fine.
You can change the value of the armor upgrade to give much more HP. I am not sure if it will work serverside. But it's worth a try.

Edited by - Question Asker2044 on 6/6/2007 10:51:27 PM

Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:25 am by Cold_Void

if you're into Honor Harrington/Weber's Honorverse you're already familiar with how gunboats are used there -> basically as blocking forces for capitals against fighters. this is the most sensible answer, for how the gunboats actually are.

gunboats, if looked at like torpedo boats in WWII, would make sense: fast, maneuverable, with a strong complement of AA guns. Give them special minedroppers that actually do cap-level damage for real 'depth charges' and make that weak little gun on the front a torpedo launcher, and they might actually have a role to play in any battle.

the GB's main disadvantage is that it's just too small to cover with weapons, and any slower ship needs a 3:1 advantage on fighter power just to survive the death-of-a-thousand-cuts.

Thu Jun 07, 2007 12:21 pm by robocop

All of these are great suggestions and in accordance with my thinking but some of them sound like EVERY client will HAVE to run the mod in order for things to work properly. It's of course understood that the client flying the gunboat/capships would need to run the mod but I want these ships to be completely cooperative with the unmodded client. In some cases I've added HPMounts for guns on ships that seemed to be low in defensive capability. The unmodded client can't see these guns although it seems they work on the unmodded client which is fine I suppose. It's just that the unmodded client can't target those guns to reduce the destructive output of the capship.

Shields added to ships that don't have HPShield mounts obviously won't work because the unmodded client's guns will work as if that shield isn't there. I haven't tried to add them to an existing HP like a running light. The same would go for a Thruster.

As I stated above, I'm using armor scaling to increase the hull strength but don't know whether or not adjusting the values server side would change anything against the unmodded client.

Thu Jun 07, 2007 4:34 pm by Liddy

ur telling me... we(Me and a few other players on the server) 'disarmed' the liberty dreadnaught while Justice was using it, and then proceeded to shoot at it. Me in an AT2, had very little maneuverability although a high damage output. No sooner do i stop to start torping the capship, that i blow up from some invisible gun mounted onboard lol

Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:44 am by runtman

As I've said, the mod on my favourite server has gunboats, with shields, and they're still compatible with un-modded players... not quite sure how they managed that one. If you're interested, the mod can be found on the site, at moo-fl.com.

Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:15 am by Mace_166

I didn't think you could do that. Adding modified models for unmodded players.
In Freelancer.ini, it mentions performing checks on the archetype to see if they match and i would have thought that adding hardpoints would be enough to cause problems.
For balancing the capital ships, i tend to regard ginboats as being anti-fighter ships, maybe with different versions that perform different tasks.
Cruisers are not as good against fighters, but a lot better against other cruisers and Battleships are ok vs other battleships and good against cruisers/gunboats, but a bit weak against fighters.

The only way that i can do this is by adjusting the weapon abilities, including the turn rate of the turrets. But all of these things only work for modded people..

Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:29 am by robocop

Well, as long as the changes are in both the client and server mods you will be ok. The problem is when the server mod has something different than the client mod. For example, adding a HPShield mount on a ship will work if the client mod includes it but the unmodded player's files won't know that there's a shield. Their guns will treat the ship as if there's no shield. I don't know why it works that way but we had that problem when trying to add a shield to the armored transport.

Someone once said that if you mount the shield on an existing hardpoint such as a running light you would be ok but then you couldn't mount/unmount the shield.

I imagine if you added the hardpoint to the shiparch and assigned the shield to it that might work but I haven't tried that yet. (Too busy working out other details in my very limited spare time).

Sun Jun 10, 2007 10:40 am by Mace_166

Yeah, in shiparch the hardpoint needs the shield_link entry in order for it to work as a shield and you need the shield sur as well so i can't see that one working.
Its going to be tough to have capital ships in a mod for unmodded players and not have them totally lame, as their weapons are comparable to starflier-esque abilities. So you can give them decent armour through the loadouts but they would still be a bit rubbish at the actual fighting.

Sun Jun 10, 2007 11:59 am by robocop

Oh, I'm not worried about that. A single battleship can take on up to a dozen VHFs at once and make each of them die more than once before going down. And that's without using any regens....

The only thing I'm worried about at this point is trying to figure out a way to keep the gunboats from being totally lame.

Right now they are set to do long range damage with those forward guns. Each gun does about 10,000 damage per shot and refire at 1 shot per second. If they can just keep out of range of the larger capships they can hold their own for a while. 50,000 armor is nowhere near enough for these ships though. Their armor needs to be more like 100,000 to 250,000. (They are a capship after all...)

Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:48 am by Liddy

Gunboats r Capships?! never knew that

I rekon that 50K armor is a fair bit, even if they are Capships. Look at the AT2. It has 37K armor, and mounts 9(i think) level 9 turrets, and 2 torps. And its slow as all hell. In that, an experianced At flyer can take out any VHF relatively easy, and even the inexperianced can take a few VHFs of their own. Now, the Gunboat has a whole extra 13K armor, a few more guns - and theyre better than simple little Lvl 9 turrets... arent they? And it has brilliant maneuverability. It is a better ship all-round than an AT, so it should be able to take on at least 2 or 3 VHFs before it has too many problems. Thats how i see it, anyway.

Sat Jun 23, 2007 1:53 pm by robocop

Follow Up:

Armor scaling is server side. I just took an unused armor_scale (-5) and changed its value to that which I needed. Then I assigned it to the package.

That worked just fine.

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