Balancing act: A fix for a mission

[CagiVasu]

I have been a silent fan of this project since its very early years. I remember checking this site every day for new models in my misspent youth. I especially love how you aren't just updating the models, but reforging them to fit better with the canon. One of the unfortunate side effects of this is it can throw mission difficulty out of balance. This has happened with Mission 6 "Rebel Rendezvous: Aid to the Alliance". It is now unfortunately impossible to complete. Until Now!

The main issue was the ISD2 raining death on the escaping rebel fleet. The ferocity of that raining death has been increased, and as such, it is impossible to have more than a small minority of ships escape when the mission calls for two thirds to escape to be successful. The secondary issue is the X-Wings. They have always been grade a morons in this mission, going after ships that kill them before they make a scratch. I believe the original intention for this mission, and how it behaves in vanilla, was as long as you prioritised bombers and were a decent pilot, you'd get your two thirds at least. I wanted to fix this by making as few changes as possible. I didn't want to add or delete any craft.

How I have fixed these issues is firstly by changing the direction the rebels are travelling to escape. Originally, they all head toward the ISD2 to make their escape. Now I have them flying away from it. I extended the distance they must travel to not make it too easy, giving any bombers that slip through your net more than enough time to do serious damage. The point where the rebels slip away into hyperspace is juuuust within reach of the ISD, so they are still taking damage, just much less of it. Secondly, I reprioritised the x-wings goals. They now are on TIE fighter/Bomber duty only. No half a wing of fighters is going to even try going after such massive prey, it's loony they even tried. They do not prioritise bombers, however, that again makes it too easy. It's up to you to be tactical, not the AI as much.

Here is a link to the mission file : http://www.filedropper.com/1b0m6fw


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
Simply paste and overwrite this file in the "Missions" subfolder in your X-Wing Alliance game folder. It should be a list of .tie files.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Mark_Farlander]

The main issue was the ISD2 raining death on the escaping rebel fleet. The ferocity of that raining death has been increased, and as such, it is impossible to have more than a small minority of ships escape when the mission calls for two thirds to escape to be successful.

It's just WAR (sarcasm).
Did you play the mission with the 256 simultaneous weapons patch installed?
In this case most missions with Star Destroyers become impossible to complete since they are killing machines.

The secondary issue is the X-Wings. They have always been grade a morons in this mission, going after ships that kill them before they make a scratch.

Going after Lancer frigates as soon as they exit hyperspace is OK because TIEs do not exit hangar immediately.
The problems are caused by the jump to order 2 in R3 condition: the X-Wings will only attack the TIEs after launching all their proton torpedoes.
The bug is that first the X-Wings don't use all their torpedoes in a single pass, and second if you position your craft properly so that you can immediately destroy the Lancer frigates (before the X-Wings launch their torpedoes), the X-Wings will continue with their first order (permanently disabled) for all the mission because the jump to order 2 condition cannot be triggered.
So I think the least invasive solution is adding an alternative jump to order condition (using OR).

I have a WIP updated mission for the Mission Update Project where I use as alternative jump to order 2 condition "...OR 100% of GU 7 must arrive", so that when all T/F Gamma have exited hangar, the X-Wings will attack the TIE Bombers (GU 6 or GU 8 ). This would give them time enough to attack the Lancers with a torpedo attack and also would not make the mission too easy.

The point where the rebels slip away into hyperspace is juuuust within reach of the ISD, so they are still taking damage, just much less of it.

I have just played your mission on hard level and most evacuation crafts escaped without a scratch, so I think you definitely tested the mission with the 256 simultaneous weapons patch installed.

I really appreciate your ability to accurately make waypoints and we need someone with your skills, so why don't we team up to update missions?

There is a thing you must know: we are not the only ones who are modifying missions.
There is also another project going on: DTM's Super Backdrop Pack v2. It's still WIP.

[CagiVasu]

I think you've hit the nail on the head with the 256 laser count. The fact it was a mere 64 before is shocking. It explains why some missions felt a little less than they could be.

So my main issue with x-wings was more about them being jarringly stupid. Ultimately, going after the Lancers serves no benefit, they only put a small dent in its shields, but puts the fighters in range of many turbolasers. I can't imagine red 1 in this situation doing this, even Emon says there aren't enough fighters here and he's got all the tactical sense of an angry boar. I see red 1 saying something like stay away from the big ships, keep the TIEs away from our ships. So while my forst goal is balance, my very close second is cleaning up the stupid AI. It just pulled me out of the immersion to see them behave that way. Thinking about it now I should probably remove their torpedoes. I bet they are using them the TIEs now. Another idea that just came to mind is how the x-wings stick around until they die no matter what. If you manage to have an x-wing or two alive once all the TIEs are down or most of the fleet escaped, they should escape too. Rebel pilots are ready to die for the cause, but they don't necessarily have to die here every time. They should get to live if the conditions warrant it, maybe for bonus only, not to count towards evacuated ships. Maybe fewer x-wisngs are in order, it might be too easy still.

This was my first experience with AlliEd, and it was deceivingly simple to change. I just click and dragged the existing waypoints and reeeeally simplified the x-wings orders. So don't overestimate my abilities, haha, I have all of a few hours experience under my belt. I'm thinking of writing a short campaign to learn it. What kind of changes are you folks making to missions?

[Mark_Farlander]

The Mission Update Project (http://xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12036 ) is essentially bug fixing + minor improvement.
For bug fixing I intend solving problems related to arrival/departure conditions, orders and jump to order conditions.
The strange behavior of the X-Wings in B0M6 is an example, but there are many more and in some cases it's even possible to earn bonus points for destroying a craft which had never appeared (see B1M4).
There are also unwanted collisions caused by wrong waypoints (in some cases it's still possible to work on jump to order conditions instead of waypoints to solve these ones, see B0M7) or "singularities".
For singularity (we are science fiction fans after all) I intend when all the crafts are placed in the same point (0, 0, 0).
As for minor improvement I intend a few text edits (keep an eye on the Goal Summary in B0M6 while the Alliance crafts are escaping, do you notice anything strange?), squadron numbers for fighters which don't have it, and also some "hidden dialogue" as bonus content as long as this doesn't alter the mission (look at the message section in B0M2 as an example).

The game balance must be affected as least as possible after the fixes (this should be the objective), so the least invasive solution is recommended.
I explain what I mean: the problem with the X-Wings Red in B0M6 is that the jump to order 2 in R3 condition (100% of X-W Red [1/3] must run out of missiles) doesn't trigger, therefore even after the Lancer frigates have been destroyed they will not attack the TIE Bombers.
They will continue performing order 1 (permanently disabled) or order 4 (circle and evade).

I think the least invasive solution is adding an alternative (OR) jump to order 2 in R3 condition, so it becomes "100% of X-W Red [1/3] must run out of missiles OR 100% of GU 7 must arrive". In this way the X-Wings will have time enough to launch the torpedo attack against the Lancer frigates and then they will focus on TIE Bombers, which is what the original mission designer (David Wessman) intended I believe.
Of course there will always be a bit of personal taste on what's the least invasive solution. That's why we (me and Phoenix Leader) are writing a file with the complete change-log, so that if a change should be considered "too heavy", it can be reverted with no efforts.

[Phoenix Leader]

There is a thing Mark forgot to write: our project is designed for 64 simultaneous weapons, we are not adding support to 256 energy weapons any time soon.
That's an optional feature for new custom missions. It's there if someone is writing a custom campaign (would you like to try?) with large scale battles I think.

There is a very simple way to complete Prologue, Mission 6 even with the 256 energy weapons patch installed though.
You know that ISDII Corrupter will always exit hyperspace at the same coordinates.
And you know it will abort mission when it's at 25% shields.

[keiranhalcyon7]

To be honest I would love to have a version of the campaign rebalanced for 256 or more lasers, to let the ISDs actually be as badass as their weapon loads imply.

[CagiVasu]

To be honest I would love to have a version of the campaign rebalanced for 256 or more lasers, to let the ISDs actually be as badass as their weapon loads imply.

3P0 never told us the odds of surviving a direct assault on an imperial star destroyer in a comparable vessel, but I can't imagine them being very good. If you're a player like me, more in it for the story than the pew pews, you'll give the star destroyer the room the canon dictates. I accept the suggestion of fighting it as a workaround, but it's not a solution that fits within the canon at hand. I'd like to rebalance the campaign for 256 lasers, but I'm still new at editing, so I'm going to write my own campaign before touching any more of the main game. My solution I posted was simple, it took a lot of complexity out of the behaviours that I'd like to retain. I'm just not proficient enough with the editor yet. I've got most of it down, but I need time with it to find best practices and the creative emergent stuff you can only figure out with hands on time.

[evilmark]

Is it possible to just reduce the rate of fire for capital ships? I have the 256 laser patch installed and capital ships just look silly firing tons of lasers from a single hard point, there's so many and they are fired so quickly that they blend together and almost look like a single beam.

[Trevor]

If you guys test 256 weapons thoroughly and then re-balance both missions and ships I would be interested to try it out. If it proved successful it might even be good to consider it defacto XWAUP standard - after all XWAUP has other hook improvements.

Trev

[Jaeven]

That would require a major, major rebalance. For instance, the mission where the Liberty engages an ISD to protect the Redemption would be nearly impossible. Even at present, the ISD will do heavy damage to the Liberty. With 256 lasers it will absolutely annihilate her.
Evacuting Dunari's casino will also be very difficult, as the Corrupter will easily demolish the casino and/or the evac craft.

In fact, getting 256 lasers to work might just require a total rebalance of stats across the board to make sure ships such as an ISD don't instawipe certain ships.

[Bman]

Keep in mind, just because the ceiling has been lifted to 256 doesn't mean it will happen. It depends how the .opt models were released meaning how many hard points they have, and even the mesh types, and then AI level of the capital ships per mission file i.e. Novice, Officer, Ace, etc. and I believe it has relative relationship to the rate of fire. There's various factors involved.

[Darksaber]

For everyone's information you'll no longer have the option to install the "Laser Count from 64 to 256 Option" from the craft pack installers, I've removed it, as if applied it puts the missions way out of balance and usually unplayable. If you still wish to apply the patch you can do so via JérémyaFr Xwa Exe Patcher.

[keiranhalcyon7]

The laser count patch isn't in the copy of the XWA patcher xml file I have from the downloads page zip file. Is there a more comprehensive version available somewhere?

[Darksaber]

I suggest you download it again then from XWA.Exe Patches once you run it look for "lasers count" it's defiantly there

[keiranhalcyon7]

Thanks, DS. I was just using what was on the downloads page. I guess the moral is "always check the thread link".