[ModPack] dZ_Consolidated_Company_Commander

[n3ctaris]

Ok guys - questions on accuracy and evasion...

Do people feel it's too hard/easy to hit things? I kind of feel things are pretty good, but I'm always looking to tweak.

Ideas:

Could reduce the class hit penalty by 1
It's currently 1,2,3,4 (assault, heavy, medium, light).... could go to 0,1,2,3

Could knock evasion back to linear scaling per pip (vanilla)
Currently 2,4,6,9,12,15.... could go back to 2,4,6,8,10,12.
or we could go to 2,4,6,8,11,14
or do some scaling at both ends with 1,2,4,7,11,15 or 1,3,6,9,12,15 or 1,3,6,8,10,12, etc


Looking for general feedback..... as a philosophy do we think a light with 6 pips of evasion should ALWAYS be hard to hit? Even with a 10 gunnery pilot with high accuracy weapons? Like what value should we aim for there? (Personally, I think maybe around 50 or 60%?)

I really like where it's at. You need to use different tactics to kill a high evasion target or concentrate fire. Not a bad place for lights /fast mediums to be in.

Multishot has a good place with a pot shot at one target, full volley at another

Sensor lock is super effective at -30% (for 2 pip reduction), even -25% going from 4 to 2.

I have no MW's over 6 gunnery and I'm not having any issues dealing with high evasion targets. Just bring a 'light' killer (high movement, close range weapons) or a couple sensor locks... 2 of those plus 2 other shots = dead target. Bring a high movement melee focused mech, knock pips off create stability issues, punch damage through.

Lots of good options for 'dealing' with high evasion targets, if you just want to have a game where we stand toe to toe and fire guns, probably better to play the vanilla game!

 

[me987654]

I really like where it's at. You need to use different tactics to kill a high evasion target or concentrate fire. Not a bad place for lights /fast mediums to be in.

Multishot has a good place with a pot shot at one target, full volley at another

Sensor lock is super effective at -30% (for 2 pip reduction), even -25% going from 4 to 2.

I have no MW's over 6 gunnery and I'm not having any issues dealing with high evasion targets. Just bring a 'light' killer (high movement, close range weapons) or a couple sensor locks... 2 of those plus 2 other shots = dead target. Bring a high movement melee focused mech, knock pips off create stability issues, punch damage through.

Lots of good options for 'dealing' with high evasion targets, if you just want to have a game where we stand toe to toe and fire guns, probably better to play the vanilla game!

Thanks - good feedback... I pretty much feel this way too; but I'm only one dude

 

[Gliese58i]

Bug: I have a Kickstarter Pilot "Scrub". He is getting 99% xp instead of 90%. So when others get 540 he gets 594 etc. A typo or oversight in the Less is More mod? He started with 2/2/2/9 in skills when I hired him, don't know if that is relevant.

 

[don Zappo]

Any needs/wants for a build tonight? If I can find some good AI tweaks I will put those in. What else you got? Last night was basically two updates in one. That financial overhaul was a crazy last minute idea that went on until the early morning.

 

[don Zappo]

Bug: I have a Kickstarter Pilot "Scrub". He is getting 99% xp instead of 90%. So when others get 540 he gets 594 etc. A typo or oversight in the Less is More mod? He started with 2/2/2/9 in skills when I hired him, don't know if that is relevant.

Are you sure about this? It scales it for every 10,000 XP per pilot. So, if he happened to not hit that threshold, yet, he would get more XP. Can you verify his XP totals?

 

[don Zappo]

For tonight I was thinking of adding a fork to incorporate the InnerSphereMap mod. I have had multiple requests for this and it seems fairly popular. It would also give this ModPack more legs for use after the campaign. Theoretically we aren't just going to keep playing the story mission over and over. Looking at the code I think it would be easy to mix them together, actually.

Other things to add: we now have the code for randomized starting mechs at the start of the campaign. We should discuss limits on the pool and what settings to use. This is going in in the near future.

 

[don Zappo]

One thing to point out for the weapon to-hit balance discussion is that the global starting to-hit value works as a to-hit maximum as well. This IS modified by gunnery. So, we have a current value of 0.75. with 10 gunnery it can be 0.95. No matter what buffs you have it will never go higher than this. So, if we want to cap maximum to-hit values then we have a tool to do this.

 

[n3ctaris]

Any needs/wants for a build tonight? If I can find some good AI tweaks I will put those in. What else you got? Last night was basically two updates in one. That financial overhaul was a crazy last minute idea that went on until the early morning.

I sent you the stuff for random mechs and random mercs to start the campaign. Can you put those in tonight? I'd like to do a test run in about 4 hours.

 

[don Zappo]

Absolutely, @n3ctaris I will put them in before your deadline.

I am also quite interested in adding GT_Weapons (or whatever its official name is). I think this is a great companion piece to JK_Variants. It may seem like a big burden to out upon @me987654 but I actually think it is quite easily doable if he's using the Java weapons editor available. Thoughts on this?

 

[me987654]

Absolutely, @n3ctaris I will put them in before your deadline.

I am also quite interested in adding GT_Weapons (or whatever its official name is). I think this is a great companion piece to JK_Variants. It may seem like a big burden to out upon @me987654 but I actually think it is quite easily doable if he's using the Java weapons editor available. Thoughts on this?

How many weapons are there? I do all my balancing on a spreadsheet to start.

BTW - have some updates for you.... but I think I may have finally cracked something so I'm holding off packaging them up

 

[don Zappo]

How many weapons are there? I do all my balancing on a spreadsheet to start.

BTW - have some updates for you.... but I think I may have finally cracked something so I'm holding off packaging them up

I don't want to answer this question...

Contains (new stuff):

• 4 Machine Guns
• 3 Flamers
• 5 Small Lasers
• 19 Medium Lasers
• 9 Large Lasers
• 5 PPC's
• 1 AC/2
• 2 AC/5s
• 2 AC/10s
• 5 AC/20s
• 4 LRM5s
• 4 LRM10s
• 3 LRM15s
• 2 LRM20s
• 1 SRM2
• 4 SRM4
• 5 SRM6

Examples for Medium Lasers alone (G indicates an HBS weapon renamed):

• Martell (new)
  
• Aberdovey Mk III (new)
  
• Argra 3L (new)
  
• Ceres Arms (new)
  
• Defiance B3M (new)
  
• Diplan M3 (new)
  
• Diverse Optics Type 18 (G)
• Harmon Starclass (new)
  
• Hellion-V (G)
• High Burn (new)
  
• Ichiba 2000 (new)
  
• Intek (G)
• Irian Weapons Works (new)
  
• Jackson Model 17 (new)
  
• Magna Mk II (G)
• Maxell DT (new)
  
• Omicron 4000 (new)
  
• Photech 806c (new)
  
• Sorenstein IV (new)
  
• Sorenstein V (new)
  
• Tronel II (new)
  
• Victory 23R (new)4

Installation Steps:
Ensure that you have ModTek and BTML installed!

(https://github.com/Mpstark/BattleTechModLoader)
(https://github.com/Mpstark/ModTek)

After you installed BTML and ModTek

1. Create a "Mods" folder if you haven't already in your "steamapps\common\BATTLETECH" or similar GOG folder. (this is also where "ModTek.dll" will end up residing)
2. Extract contents of file to the "Mods" folder you created
3. Determine which version you want to use, navigate to its folder and open the "mod.json" and set enabled to "true". Both are set to false, choose one or the other and save the document.
4. Launch the game, voila!

Other Info:

• Please note if you use this mod in Single Player or Skirmish and save configurations with these new weapons and then disable or delete the mod, then attempt to load your saves again, you will find that they will not work.

Possible Future Plans:

• Adding variations of same Mech chassis to encounter in campaign; for example encountering a rare Komiyaba Type VIII Hunchback 4G or a more recent Crucis Type V Hunchback 4G (same weapon loadouts, different brands).
• Adding a PlusPLUS version to integrate JK_Variants
• Adding a PlusCBT version to integrate CBT Balance Overhaul (for purists)

All feedback and testing is welcome.

 

[don Zappo]

So, what makes it easy is that as long as they are tagged correctly then with the Java applet if you change the stock weapon then ALL of the weapons based upon that are instantly updated. It is a really amazing tool.

 

[me987654]

I don't want to answer this question...

OMG that is insane....yeah I mean just getting all that shit in a spreadsheet would be very, very painful.

Honestly - does anyone really want that many weapons? Seems kind of well crazy

 

[me987654]

So, what makes it easy is that as long as they are tagged correctly then with the Java applet if you change the stock weapon then ALL of the weapons based upon that are instantly updated. It is a really amazing tool.

Yeah so I've been thinking about using that Java thing... haven't done it yet as I'm not sure it would work with how I change certain things.

Honestly the stock weapon list I mod is easy anyways

I'm still avoiding mods that make changes to the versionmanifest

 

[me987654]

GOT IT!!!! I FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO CHANGE THE MIN RANGE PENALTY!!!

Score one for DNSPY!

 

[don Zappo]

OMG, did you ctually make a .dll? Did we finally step across that line?!?

 

[don Zappo]

Yeah so I've been thinking about using that Java thing... haven't done it yet as I'm not sure it would work with how I change certain things.

Honestly the stock weapon list I mod is easy anyways

I'm still avoiding mods that make changes to the versionmanifest

Phhhbt. You old school modders and your "version manifest." ModTek kicks that problem in the face.

 

[me987654]

OMG, did you ctually make a .dll? Did we finally step across that line?!?

No - I didn't have to do that (although I do know how to program...never done C# however). I found the function that calcs the range penalty and found the name of the modifier. Turns out you can't just modify constants....those only get loaded once. Luckily there is a function that gets a "MinRangeModifier" and then multiplies the min range penalty by it. This is apparently something you can set on a weapon (I didn't see it in the JSON, but it's a weapon property so you could probably put it there).

I then had to change the JSON to set this modifier to .75 and .5 for the two levels (giving us a 6 and 4 to hit penalty)

 

[me987654]

Phhhbt. You old school modders and your "version manifest." ModTek kicks that problem in the face.

Oh yeah that's right.... but your save games could still break if there's an update right? In any case I'll go there eventually. I just haven't found anything I really need to mod that requires it yet... LOL

 

[n3ctaris]

Absolutely, @n3ctaris I will put them in before your deadline.

I am also quite interested in adding GT_Weapons (or whatever its official name is). I think this is a great companion piece to JK_Variants. It may seem like a big burden to out upon @me987654 but I actually think it is quite easily doable if he's using the Java weapons editor available. Thoughts on this?

Which one is GT weapons? On nexus?