XWAU Balancing - Feedback needed

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Re: XWAU Balancing - Feedback needed

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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:02 pm

Thank you to all for your works for refound the original gameplay. I was very disapointed by the laser speed from the corvette by exemple. And in past member just say to mee fly better, better skill. But it was not so difficult in the original game. I agree too have new 3D model, new cockpit new effect but i think we didnt touch the balancing. Very good initiative to all !

I remember when i replay the original campaign the falcon was too big in B6M5 in the station with shuttle by exemple

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Post by Ace Antilles » Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:13 pm

eddyfurax wrote:
Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:02 pm
Thank you to all for your works for refound the original gameplay. I was very disapointed by the laser speed from the corvette by exemple. And in past member just say to mee fly better, better skill. But it was not so difficult in the original game. I agree too have new 3D model, new cockpit new effect but i think we didnt touch the balancing. Very good initiative to all !

I remember when i replay the original campaign the falcon was too big in B6M5 in the station with shuttle by exemple
So are you saying you find it hard fighting against a XWAU Corvette?
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Post by Griffin » Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:40 pm

Ace Antilles wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 9:12 pm
TIE Zeta never leaves the hangar because he's still eating his lunch.
Didn't think anyone noticed :D

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Vince T
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Post by Vince T » Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:48 pm

TLDR and look what I missed :D

Well played!
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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:11 pm

Ace Antilles wrote:
Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:13 pm
eddyfurax wrote:
Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:02 pm
Thank you to all for your works for refound the original gameplay. I was very disapointed by the laser speed from the corvette by exemple. And in past member just say to mee fly better, better skill. But it was not so difficult in the original game. I agree too have new 3D model, new cockpit new effect but i think we didnt touch the balancing. Very good initiative to all !

I remember when i replay the original campaign the falcon was too big in B6M5 in the station with shuttle by exemple
So are you saying you find it hard fighting against a XWAU Corvette?
Yes i find the corvette in Xwaupgrade very hard! I know it exist a death angle to atack them and sometimes i win but i didnt remember it was so hard :D
But i realise that in TFTC/TF conversion It is an other subject

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Mark_Farlander
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:27 pm

General_Trageton wrote:
Sat Jun 27, 2020 7:35 pm
I'll address the issue with the additional SSD shield generators. IIRC those were added under the premise of movie accuracy and if I'm not too wrong Dragon and I may even have a had a discussion about it. Nevertheless, with regards to mission balance those sure are a step up in difficulty. a factor whose scale and implications we didn't fully grasp back then.

True, the falcon's additional lasers slightly compensate, however they upset the balance somewhere else. It's like importing a non-native species to fight another non-native species that's gotten out of control.

From my point of view there's a rather easy way to fix it, by changing the additional ShieldGens' hitzones to something less critical like MiscHull That'd be a fairly quick and easy-to-do fix.
I'm curious about this: will the additional shield generators be removed? To be honest I really like them, and they remind me of the Annihilator in Empire at War.
My humble proposal: is it possible to keep all 6 Executor's shield generators, but make them start at 100% each instead of 198% each?
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Post by Phoenix Leader » Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:55 am

I also like so much those additional shield generators on the Executor. And I think they have become part of the game since the release of General Trageton's Executor OPT.
I appreciate Mark's idea to set the shield generators at 100% instead of 198% to make sure the player can complete the mission in time.
In the vanilla game the Executor has 2 shield generators starting at 198% each, so 396% total.
In the modded game the Executor has 6 shield generators, therefore with this "100% fix" it would be 600% total.
It' still 50% more, but the Falcon's additional laser cannon compensates for it.

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Post by Phoenix Leader » Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:40 am

I've just completed B7M2 at Medium difficulty with the Executor OPT coming with the XWAUCP v1.6.
Now that there are 6 shield generators on the Executor starting at 198% each (so 1188% total), I find this mission (at Medium difficulty) already a joke to complete.
However, if some players have lamented difficulty and in case it is not possible to decrease the shield generators percentage from 198% to 100%, I suggest increasing the time limit from 10:00 to 12:00. That would be enough to have every single Rookie pilot to complete the mission.

The problems are when you play at Hard difficulty because all the components are shielded. For this reason B7M2 at Hard has always been impossible, even in the vanilla game.

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Post by Vince T » Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:44 am

People did you actually read what I wrote?

I didn't suggest to remove the additional Shield Generators but to simply change their Hitzone to MiscHull. That way they're still there visually but will no longer act as shield generators returning the difficulty back to vanilla.
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Post by Phoenix Leader » Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:48 am

If they are no longer targets and they no longer act as shield generators, they are removed for me.

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Post by BenKenobi » Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:37 am

General_Trageton wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:44 am
People did you actually read what I wrote?

I didn't suggest to remove the additional Shield Generators but to simply change their Hitzone to MiscHull. That way they're still there visually but will no longer act as shield generators returning the difficulty back to vanilla.
I don’t really like that idea, if you see a shield generator, it should act like it and destroying it should result in a lower shield for the craft.

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Post by Ace Antilles » Sun Jun 28, 2020 10:27 am

This is why we are gathering feedback guys.
Everything right now is preliminary ideas which we will discuss and see what is best for everyone.
Obviously different people have different skills.

So we will think about the best outcome. Maybe a test mission with 109% shields would be a good way to start
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Post by Will T » Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:33 pm

Phoenix Leader wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:55 am

It' still 50% more, but the Falcon's additional laser cannon compensates for it.
The Falcon shouldn't have an extra laser cannon, though, that's the thing.

It messes up the balance in B7M1 and B7M3. And arguably B7M4, as there are sections of that where you might use autofire.


I'm really not sure why people want to keep six shield generators. All it does is make the mission more difficult, and if you extend the time limit all you're doing is dragging out the same gameplay loop.

A quick, ten minute mission where you take out the Executor's shield generators is a fun, themey little slice of the films (even if it isn't supposed to be the Falcon that does it). Having to do the same thing six times turns it into a chore.
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:45 pm

You actually do not destroy all 6 shield generators of the Executor alone. You usually only destroy 4 of them, the other 2 are taken down by the Alliance fighters.
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Post by Ace Antilles » Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:59 pm

Will T wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:33 pm
The Falcon shouldn't have an extra laser cannon, though, that's the thing.
It messes up the balance in B7M1 and B7M3. And arguably B7M4, as there are sections of that where you might use autofire.
It's already on the list of things to investigate.
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Post by Will T » Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:34 pm

Ace Antilles wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:59 pm

It's already on the list of things to investigate.
Yeah, I know.

I'm just saying I don't think it's current state should be used to justify different issues.
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Post by Darth_Binks » Mon Jun 29, 2020 12:05 am

B0M6 is insanely hard right now, it's the one where you drop off the bacta and get ambushed.

I feel like it needs to be hard, but as is it's really frustrating. It may need another flight group of defenders, or the "escape %" for friendly ships lowered a bit, or the ISD II nerfed just a hair.

I tried it on medium 15-20 times, got frustrated and just turned on God mode so I could see the rest of the campaign.
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Post by Jaeven » Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:35 am

Darth_Binks wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 12:05 am
B0M6 is insanely hard right now, it's the one where you drop off the bacta and get ambushed.

I feel like it needs to be hard, but as is it's really frustrating. It may need another flight group of defenders, or the "escape %" for friendly ships lowered a bit, or the ISD II nerfed just a hair.

I tried it on medium 15-20 times, got frustrated and just turned on God mode so I could see the rest of the campaign.
I just tested this mission and passed it, but I agree it's too punishing if you don't do everything perfectly.

The key in this mission is to not let the TIE Bombers lay as much as a finger on the MC40, so it can soak up damage long enough for the other ships to escape in order for you to reach the 66 % required.

If even a few TIE Bombers get through, the MC40 will die too quickly, and the ISDII and bombers start destroying the transports and corvettes within seconds.

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Post by Will T » Mon Jun 29, 2020 12:09 pm

ual002 wrote:
Sat Jun 27, 2020 3:51 am
1. To clarify. I think some of the docking nodes have historically been way off on several of the large ships. I remember an issue with the ISD and CR90 previously and several other upgrade craft that dock at awkwardly far distances from each other. Something I don't remember in the vanilla game being quite so egregious.
Okay, so this is a really weird one.

You're probably recalling B4M6, where the ISDII Avenger captures the Corvette Razor and the Razor ends up sitting neatly in the hangar bay like it's the opening of ANH. At least in vanilla anyway.

When the XWAU ISDII first debuted, this behaviour didn't occur. Instead, the Corvette hung out in empty space underneath the ISD like all the other carried objects in the game. I think it was DS who figured out that this was because the TG ISDII wasn't centred logically. The centre point of the opt was somewhere above the middle of the main hull.

The XWAU ISDII was changed to mimic this, and the Corvette got carried neatly in the hangar again.

But there's a problem with this. When targeting other starships, all starships aim their guns for the centre point of the opt. So any hapless Calamari Cruiser aiming at an ISDII would fire at a point somewhere above the hull, and miss the vast majority of it shots. Unless it was sufficiently below the ISDII, and was shooting up such that the hull was between the cruiser and the ISD's centre point. Which basically didn't happen, as most XWA missions have the ships on essentially the same plane.

This was a problem in vanilla. You can see it really easily if you set up a skirmish with a Calamari Cruiser vs an ISDII. The cruiser will miss most of its shots.

So at some point the XWAU ISDII was reverted and the centre line was placed back inside the ship itself.

So now we get floaty Corvette docking.


The weird thing is: there's a really easy fix for this.

I noticed that the hangar bay in the XWAU ISDII has a DockToSmall hardpoint, but not a DockToBig hardpoint.

So I copied the DockToSmall hardpoint, changed the copy to a DockToBig and gave it a test.

Sure enough, the Razor now sits in the hangar bay when captured.


It's... bizarre. I'm not sure why TG had this functionality coded and available, but chose to recentre the opt instead. I'm not sure why the XWAU version hasn't picked up on this before either. But it seems to work. Now we have correct looking Corvette capture and an ISDII that can actually be shot at.

Happy to send a copy of the opt to anyone who wants proof or to do their own testing, but it's such an easy fix you probably don't need me to. Just go into OptEditor, open ImperialStarDestroyer2.opt, find the hangar mesh, select the DockToSmall hardpoint, hit copy, hit paste, change the hardpoint of the copy from the dropdown, save.


There seems to be a lack of use of DockTo hardpoints in general. I'm wondering how much of the floaty docking/pick ups can be corrected by assigning DockTo hardpoints that sit flush on the hull of ships like the YT-2000.
Last edited by Will T on Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ual002
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Post by ual002 » Mon Jun 29, 2020 12:40 pm

THIS IS EXACTLY what I'm talking about.
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Post by Trevor » Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:09 pm

You know, I can see that really there needs to be 2 programs here - both updated models but one with vanilla stats and hardpoints (with only a few adjustments for oddities like greebles in the way of docking points) and another for enhancements and bugfixes where ships are modeled with hardpoints in respect of model details (like GT did with ISD cannons) and then missions adjusted to accommodate the change.

The first of these is "easy" where designers let go of their pride (yeah I know, I'm not one to talk either as I have the same problem with projects I work on) and just reset all opt settings to vanilla.
The second - and in my opinion the better :) - will take more time as one re-balance requires another (eg, shield gens on SSD + increased laser output on falcon means earlier missions involving falcon need more enemies to compensate etc...)
The second will push the engine to its limits and use the hooks BUT will be a "different" game to XWA albeit the same story.

Also, as someone had on their sig;
"You can please some people all of the time, you can please everyone some of the time, but you cannot please everyone all of the time"

Trev

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Post by Will T » Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:35 pm

Trevor wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:09 pm
You know, I can see that really there needs to be 2 programs here - both updated models but one with vanilla stats and hardpoints (with only a few adjustments for oddities like greebles in the way of docking points) and another for enhancements and bugfixes where ships are modeled with hardpoints in respect of model details (like GT did with ISD cannons) and then missions adjusted to accommodate the change.

The first of these is "easy" where designers let go of their pride (yeah I know, I'm not one to talk either as I have the same problem with projects I work on) and just reset all opt settings to vanilla.
The second - and in my opinion the better :) - will take more time as one re-balance requires another (eg, shield gens on SSD + increased laser output on falcon means earlier missions involving falcon need more enemies to compensate etc...)
The second will push the engine to its limits and use the hooks BUT will be a "different" game to XWA albeit the same story.

Also, as someone had on their sig;
"You can please some people all of the time, you can please everyone some of the time, but you cannot please everyone all of the time"

Trev
Yeah, there were points where I was trying to argue how against refactoring missions I am that I wondered if this might have to be considered.

In general, I consider this project strictly visual and believe all the gameplay should remain the same.

But it's a hard attitude to maintain when you realise there are genuine bugs and instances of dodgy balance in the vanilla game. Not to mention that some improvements are just too good to ignore. The SSD is again my go to example. I love having this huge, powerful ship in the game. I like that the ISD-I now has sensibly placed weapon meshes and hardpoints, I think the gun turrets should be accurately modelled, and that they should function properly.

Sometimes the visual improvements go hand in hand with a balance change, and there's not much to really be done about it.

Personally, I would love it if we could give the B-Wing a heavier laser cannon on one wing and some lighter blasters on the chin to better reflect its actual loadout, but that's something we can't actually change because we don't have the ability to set weapon power on a craft by craft basis.

So ultimately, I think we're fine to make the occasional stat or balance change here and there. I think it just might need to be a bit more selective to avoid some of the worst mission breakers. The Falcon should definitely have a hardpoint on each barrel of each turret, yes. Ideally, we could do what I wish we could do for the B-Wing and double the number of hardpoints but halve the power of each shot. But we can't, and just giving it a hardpoint per barrel is too potent, so it's an area where accuracy needs to be sacrificed for game balance. But that's a flyable craft the player has direct influence over. A couple more hardpoints on a Star Destroyer shouldn't be a problem, so long as it doesn't affect the missions too much.
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Mon Jun 29, 2020 6:59 pm

Trevor wrote:
Sat Jun 27, 2020 6:54 pm
Anyway I found this (actually posted not too long ago)
capitanguinea wrote:Xwing AI, Lawrence stated that for each "level" of skill (rookie, novice, veteran, and so on) the skill % charts to do basilar things (fire, evade enemy fire, maneuvre etc) would be improved by a factor (rookie has a malus of x0.33 novice has a malus of 0.66 veteran is factor 1.0 ace 1.33 topace 1.66 and so on).
so yes, you are right, Veteran is what the game is "Designed" to run at, with harder difficulties being a bonus if you can actually finish them.
No, Trevor. "Novice", "Officer", "Veteran", etc. are AI levels which are assigned to flight groups in the mission files. All FGs, even passive ones like containers, have an AI level, and more difficult missions (and FGs intended to be more dangerous) generally have higher AI levels for the enemy FGs.

The game difficulty levels are easy, medium, and hard. Medium uses the AI levels as written in the mission files. Easy demotes all the enemy FGs one AI level, while promoting friendly FGs one AI level (subject to clamping at minimum/maximum level). Hard does the opposite. For that reason, I believe medium was probably the most rigorously playtested at TG, and should be considered the default play mode.

The difficulty setting also has a few other effects. FGs also have a difficulty bitfield that controls under which difficulty levels it appears. So during mission design you can do things like add enemies (or friendlies) at different difficulty levels, or have multiple versions of certain FGs (which never appear together) with modified bonuses, penalties, or behaviors. And as mentioned previously, on easy and medium, you can destroy starship components before the ship's shields are down, but on hard, you cannot - meaning, notably, that the only way to beat B7M2 on hard is to just burn through the Executor's shields (which is another reason I suspect Hard was not rigorously playtested).

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Post by Vince T » Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:55 pm

Geeze pple, where do you find the time to write all this? :D
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:06 pm

keiranhalcyon7 wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 6:59 pm

The game difficulty levels are easy, medium, and hard. Medium uses the AI levels as written in the mission files. Easy demotes all the enemy FGs one AI level, while promoting friendly FGs one AI level (subject to clamping at minimum/maximum level). Hard does the opposite. For that reason, I believe medium was probably the most rigorously playtested at TG, and should be considered the default play mode.
Hard difficulty promotes the AI level of all Flight Groups not belonging to player's team or a team allied to player's team +1 level.
However, it's not true that it also decreases the AI level of the Flight Groups belonging to player's team or an allied team.
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