Balancing and Star Destroyer Hardpoint Questions

[Will T]

Hey guys. Looking for some information on the finer points of OPTing here.

Playing through all the missions lately, I realised that all the missions I struggled with that I used to find easy had one thing in common: they all involved an ISDII. This was especially pronounced in B3M6 (the defector mission), where you have to defend the FRG Redemption and then the Liberty from an ISDII, and in B4M5 (the Battle of Kothlis) where you're defending the Razor and then the Liberty (again).

I had to cheese the warhead reloads to get by B3M6, and I'm still stuck with B4M5. In both cases, the ISDII seems to shred through the Liberty far faster then I remember in the vanilla game, and the combination of the SSD and ISDII in B4M5 also seems to wipe out the Golan platform and Rebel base much more quickly too.

So I decided to take a look at the opts themselves.


Something struck me as really interesting - as far as I can tell, the original TG OPTs do not use the SUPEREMPIRELASER hardpoint anywhere on any of the Star Destroyers. It's absent on the ISD, ISDII, VSD, VSDII and SSD.

The XWAU OPTs, on the other hand, do. They're positioned sensibly - the main guns on the sides of the terrace section of the hull. But I think they're an addition compared with the TG OPTs.

I didn't count them all up, but it also looks like there might be more weapon hardpoints in general on the XWAU OPTs.

I'm wondering if this might actually be seriously affecting the balance of some missions. The SUPEREMPIRELASER hardpoints do more damage, right?


Furthermore, something else struck me as odd. Both TG and XWAU opts make use of the WeaponSys2 mesh type, which I believe shows up as a targetable component in game and is a destroyable mesh. I thought those were the weapons you could target and destroy, but on both the TG and XWAU OPTs, they don't actually have any weapon hardpoints associated with them. Are they somehow linked to hardpoints on meshes like MainHull? Or do they in fact serve no purpose other than to be destroyable? Does destroying a WeaponSys2 mesh actually remove a weapon from the ship?

Almost all the weapon hardpoints on the TG VSDI seem to be on the MainHull, with most of them floating in space occupied by other Hull meshes. I can see that GT has made extensive use of GunTurret mesh types in his model instead. Does that make a gameplay difference?

It's hard to work out the effect the SuperLasers might be having. In the mission itself, most of the ISDII's shots seem to come from the nose. On the XWAU models, all the meshes around the nose just use TurboEmpireLasers, like the TG opts. But is that misleading? Can the ISDII fire shots that actually come from the SuperLaser hardpoints, but appear to emanate from the nose? That might explain why the things they attack die quicker.


One last thing. The TG ISDII opt similarly has most of its weapon hardpoints on hull meshes, and in the OPT file these are only present on one side of the ship. I remember that's a quirk of XWA, and that the game mirrors such hardpoints. But the meshes with the SuperLasers on the XWAU ISDII aren't only on one side. They're present along both sides. Do they mirror too? If so, does that mean that ISDII in fact has double the number of SuperLasers in game compared with the opt file itself?


I'm hoping that the answers to all this will help me figure out if it's the change to the ISDII's weaponry that might be causing a difficulty spike in some missions.

[Vince T]

I can speak for the VSD, as I had noticed that, while working on it, but at least some of those points may be valid for the other SDs as well.

I did notice all the laser HPs on the original OPT was designated as EmpireLaser and it struck me as just as ood. If you looked at the Ship stats in MXvTEd or BHE, those are defined as TurboEmpireLaser and SuperEmpireLaser. So, I'm not entirely sure if the hardpoints in the OPT makes much difference for capital ships. Here the number and placement of hardpoints seems of greater signifficance.

For the V2 I assigned every hardpoint to a physical turret mesh for immersion's sake, howewver, all those small turrets are actually joined together and designated as main hull - otherwise I wouldn't have made the mesh limit. The only meshes designated as GunTurrets are the large batteries on the sides of the terrace section and the two quad turrets in the trench.

I had set a number of Hardpoints, those on the larger turrets, as TurboEmpireLaser, not to make them stronger, but to avoid the engine mixing up shots from regular guns and the big turrets. In that made pretty much no difference and in fact, I've noticed the large turrets hardly seem to fire at all, at least in a 1:1 engagement with a single other ship.

I've done some in-depth testing of the all versions of the VSD and VSD2. While the v1 was indeed a bit overpowered versus the TG original, I managed to somewhat match the balance with the TG OPT with the V2 Remake. However I also noticed that running the same test mission twice, would not necessarily yield the same results. You can find my analysis in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12662&start=25/view ... =1&t=12662

As for the weapon systems, they work in a very special way: Once you destroy them all, all weapons stop firing. This was likely done so one could cripple an ISD without the team having to build actual turrets.

[Jaeven]

My last playthrough was about a year ago, but I don't believe that anything has changed since then. In my experience, simply firing a few shots at the ISD to distract some of its guns made the mission fairly easy to pass. What can absolutely fail both missions though is if you allow the TIE Bombers and Assault Transports to deal enough damage to the Liberty for the ISD to take it out.

Specific to B4M5 though, there was an issue with the Rebel Platform opt where the Executor targeted the transports near it, and they were close enough to cause enough explosion damage to destroy the platform in a few seconds. I uploaded a mission fix for that, but I don't know if DS ever implemented them.

[Forceflow]

Specific to B4M5 though, there was an issue with the Rebel Platform opt where the Executor targeted the transports near it, and they were close enough to cause enough explosion damage to destroy the platform in a few seconds. I uploaded a mission fix for that, but I don't know if DS ever implemented them.

Do you still have that and could you upload it again? (Or link to the thread were it is?) Not sure if it has been implemented yet, but we are currently also trying to find all missions issues and are trying to find a good way to fix them.

[Will T]

I can speak for the VSD, as I had noticed that, while working on it, but at least some of those points may be valid for the other SDs as well.

I did notice all the laser HPs on the original OPT was designated as EmpireLaser and it struck me as just as ood. If you looked at the Ship stats in MXvTEd or BHE, those are defined as TurboEmpireLaser and SuperEmpireLaser. So, I'm not entirely sure if the hardpoints in the OPT makes much difference for capital ships. Here the number and placement of hardpoints seems of greater signifficance.

For the V2 I assigned every hardpoint to a physical turret mesh for immersion's sake, howewver, all those small turrets are actually joined together and designated as main hull - otherwise I wouldn't have made the mesh limit. The only meshes designated as GunTurrets are the large batteries on the sides of the terrace section and the two quad turrets in the trench.

I had set a number of Hardpoints, those on the larger turrets, as TurboEmpireLaser, not to make them stronger, but to avoid the engine mixing up shots from regular guns and the big turrets. In that made pretty much no difference and in fact, I've noticed the large turrets hardly seem to fire at all, at least in a 1:1 engagement with a single other ship.

I've done some in-depth testing of the all versions of the VSD and VSD2. While the v1 was indeed a bit overpowered versus the TG original, I managed to somewhat match the balance with the TG OPT with the V2 Remake. However I also noticed that running the same test mission twice, would not necessarily yield the same results. You can find my analysis in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12662&start=25/view ... =1&t=12662

As for the weapon systems, they work in a very special way: Once you destroy them all, all weapons stop firing. This was likely done so one could cripple an ISD without the team having to build actual turrets.

Thanks GT, this all makes a lot of sense.

I had noticed that the MXvTED weapon stats for the TG models do indeed refer to the superlasers, so I had wondered if maybe the hardpoint itself was irrelevant for cap ships.

Do those weapon slots also determine how many guns can fire? I noticed that the weaponry is exactly the same between the TG and XWAU versions, but it looks to me like the XWAU models have more hardpoints? Does that mean that the XWAU opts can fire from any of the hardpoints, but only up to a maximum of what is defined in the weaponry slots?

If so, one assumes that would mean the damage output is the same. But as you said, the VSDI was noticeably more powerful than the TG version, and I'm still pretty sure the ISDII is stronger as well. So I'm guessing the number of available hardpoints must have some effect.


Thanks for clearing up the Weapon Systems meshes. I never realised you had to destroy all of them to get an effect, but it does explain a lot about some of my gameplay experiences. I guess they kinda work like shield generators, but for weapons. It's an interesting inclusion to be honest. I tend to find that by the time I've shot most of them off, I've done enough hull damage to just kill the ISD anyway. So if they don't have an effect until all of them are gone, they do seem a little pointless. But at least I know how they work now.

So are the rotary gun/gun turret meshes on the XWAU ships destroyable? Do they have a more immediate effect than the weapon sys meshes?

My last playthrough was about a year ago, but I don't believe that anything has changed since then. In my experience, simply firing a few shots at the ISD to distract some of its guns made the mission fairly easy to pass. What can absolutely fail both missions though is if you allow the TIE Bombers and Assault Transports to deal enough damage to the Liberty for the ISD to take it out.

Specific to B4M5 though, there was an issue with the Rebel Platform opt where the Executor targeted the transports near it, and they were close enough to cause enough explosion damage to destroy the platform in a few seconds. I uploaded a mission fix for that, but I don't know if DS ever implemented them.

The TIE Bombers and ATRs don't attack the Liberty, though. They can't, they don't have orders to. Once the Platform is destroyed and the Razor is either destroyed or escaped, they return to their respective motherships. It actually makes getting the bonus points on that mission really difficult, because the last couple of Bomber waves tend to launch then immediately fly home, and if you don't camp outside the hangar for them, you'll miss them.

I tried changing the mission to move the Revel Transports back to where they were in the original mission - far enough away that their explosion damage doesn't hit the platform, and it does help. But it only gave the Razor and the shuttle enough time to finish their respective dockings, where previously they were getting destroyed by the early explosion of the Platform.

That absolutely needs to be included officially as a mission fix somewhere, because the changed placement is pretty game breaking.

But it doesn't stop the Liberty beiing killed by the Avenger.

It's happened three times now since I moved the transports back.

This is the exact same issue I was seeing with B3M6, an ISDII shredding the Liberty while it's flying a route to hyperspace. It's got to be something to do with the ISDII's damage or rate of fire.


B4M5 is basically a timed mission. The shuttle always arrives at the same time, it always takes the same amount of time to fly to the Razor, the docking time is the same and the trigger for the Liberty to leave the region is the same. If the Liberty made it out fine before, it should be fine now.

I suppose it's possible that the new placement of the Razor - being higher up from the origin horizontal - might mean the shuttle has longer to fly, and that's messing up the timing a bit, letting the ISDII get too close before the Liberty starts to leave.

But the Liberty is getting totalled. In the vanilla game, it makes it out without even losing all its shields. A slight delay in mission time doesn't seem like enough to make that sort of difference in how much damage it takes.

Another problematic mission is B4M3, where if you take the time to kill the Bombers that attack you, the Star Destroyers destroy the Pirate Shipyard while you're still docked. It's doable, but it's way closer than the vanilla. In the basic game, the base doesn't explode immediately after you take off - it did on this recent play through, it was way quicker than I remembered. The only thing that specifically attacks the pirate shipyard? An ISDII, once again.

This isn't just a case of me having got worse at this game, there's definitely something up with how quickly the ISDII kills things.


@GT, is there any chance we could run the ISDII through the test scenario you put together for the VSD? It might help prove if I'm on to something here, or if I'm just going crazy.

[Vince T]

OK I just loaded the various IS versions into XWA OPT Editor and looked up the total number of Hardpoints (note this also includes Missile, Docking and Hangar Hardpoints):
- The TG ISD2 has 72 Hardpoints
- Matt's ISD2 has 119 Hardpoints ... whew!
That IS quite a hefty difference and likely the reason why the the XWAU ISD1 and ISD2 is so much more powerful

As for the VSD, like I said, while v1 was inded overpowered, I made v2 pretty much on par with the TG original.
- The TG version has 58 Hardpoints
- My VSD v2 has 79 Hardpoints.
Still more but with an important difference: As far as I could tell weapon hardpoints cannot fire through MainHull meshes. If you're below a ship, its doral weapons won't hit you. As I have assigned all weapon hardponits to turret barrels, they can only fire in the direction the turret is facing. Kinda like this:

firingArc.jpg

The TG version's weapons are attached to the hull which gives them a full 180° firing arc in all directions. Some are even attached to corner vertices which gives them an even greater firing arc.
Meanwhile those of the my v2 are somewhat limited by the orientation of the turrets, which is why I deliberately placed a few more of them to cover otherwise dead angles.

HOWEVER, that too made only little difference. All three versions, when faced with a single target, will only fire a small number of weapons, those closest to the target. No matter where I positioned the target, you would not have more than 4-6 closest weapons engage the target. This might be what is dictated by the Weapon settings - the number of hardpoints allocated to a speciffic target.

From what I've observed, I BELIEVE that a larger number of hardpoints does make one signifficant difference: The number of targets the ship is able to fire upon at full capacity. If you have more hardpoints, you can attack more targets with more guns. Otherwise you'd have to "compensate" by attacking fewer targets OR use less weapons per target.

I think what I'm going to do is update my test scenario to also feature combat against multiple targets and then make the mission.tie available for public use.

[Jaeven]

Specific to B4M5 though, there was an issue with the Rebel Platform opt where the Executor targeted the transports near it, and they were close enough to cause enough explosion damage to destroy the platform in a few seconds. I uploaded a mission fix for that, but I don't know if DS ever implemented them.

Do you still have that and could you upload it again? (Or link to the thread were it is?) Not sure if it has been implemented yet, but we are currently also trying to find all missions issues and are trying to find a good way to fix them.

The version that had my fix was running an outdated version of DTM's backdrop patch, so I applied the fix to the current mission. But while doing so I noticed some of the same issues Will was talking about, and some other bugs. For one, the Executor for some reason targeted the Razor, with predictable outcomes. I fixed those, and the mission should now run fine.

Here's all the changes I made:
- Slightly altered the ATR's waypoints to prevent collision with the new Rebel Platform Opt.
- Adjusted the position of the GR75 Medium Transports so their explosions no longer cause the Rebel Platform to be destroyed.
- Slightly altered the ISD's entry point so it takes a bit longer for it to close to maximum damage range and feel less oppressive in the last part of the mission. It shouldn't alter how the mission is played, and the mission will still force the player to run some interference on it, but the ISD should no longer instagib the Liberty. On all my tests, the Liberty generally escaped with around 60 % HU left.
- Adjusted the Executor's targeting parameters so it doesn't target the Razor, as was the case in vanilla. I don't know what caused this change, but the new parameters should ensure it does not target the Razor.

If anyone finds any other bugs, feel free to post them and I'll get them fixed.

[Ace Antilles]

Specific to B4M5 though, there was an issue with the Rebel Platform opt where the Executor targeted the transports near it, and they were close enough to cause enough explosion damage to destroy the platform in a few seconds. I uploaded a mission fix for that, but I don't know if DS ever implemented them.

I think it also needs the briefing fix. DS made some.
In the briefing the Calamari should be the Liberty and not the Defiance. It seems a lot of Battles 2 - 6 have the issue.

Apart from that in theory the fixes sound cool.

[Jaeven]

Specific to B4M5 though, there was an issue with the Rebel Platform opt where the Executor targeted the transports near it, and they were close enough to cause enough explosion damage to destroy the platform in a few seconds. I uploaded a mission fix for that, but I don't know if DS ever implemented them.

I think it also needs the briefing fix. DS made some.
In the briefing the Calamari should be the Liberty and not the Defiance. It seems a lot of Battles 2 - 6 have the issue.

Apart from that in theory the fixes sound cool.

I think a lot of the missions need some kind of update at some point, be it in briefing or in performance, simply because of how much the game has evolved since the game came out in 1999.

[Ace Antilles]

I think a lot of the missions need some kind of update at some point, be it in briefing or in performance, simply because of how much the game has evolved since the game came out in 1999.

Funny you should say that....
I just edited your mission to fix the briefing. Haven't had a chance to test in game.
Some reason YOGEME decided to break on me too.

[Will T]

OK I just loaded the various IS versions into XWA OPT Editor and looked up the total number of Hardpoints (note this also includes Missile, Docking and Hangar Hardpoints):
- The TG ISD2 has 72 Hardpoints
- Matt's ISD2 has 119 Hardpoints ... whew!
That IS quite a hefty difference and likely the reason why the the XWAU ISD1 and ISD2 is so much more powerful

Yeah, I think even with the details you add later, this has to be relevant to what I'm seeing. Whatever the rest of the limitations on cap ship weapon firing, I'm pretty sure that having nearly double the number of hardpoints must be doing something

As for the VSD, like I said, while v1 was inded overpowered, I made v2 pretty much on par with the TG original.
- The TG version has 58 Hardpoints
- My VSD v2 has 79 Hardpoints.
Still more but with an important difference: As far as I could tell weapon hardpoints cannot fire through MainHull meshes. If you're below a ship, its doral weapons won't hit you. As I have assigned all weapon hardponits to turret barrels, they can only fire in the direction the turret is facing. Kinda like this:

The TG version's weapons are attached to the hull which gives them a full 180° firing arc in all directions. Some are even attached to corner vertices which gives them an even greater firing arc.
Meanwhile those of the my v2 are somewhat limited by the orientation of the turrets, which is why I deliberately placed a few more of them to cover otherwise dead angles.

HOWEVER, that too made only little difference. All three versions, when faced with a single target, will only fire a small number of weapons, those closest to the target. No matter where I positioned the target, you would not have more than 4-6 closest weapons engage the target. This might be what is dictated by the Weapon settings - the number of hardpoints allocated to a speciffic target.

From what I've observed, I BELIEVE that a larger number of hardpoints does make one signifficant difference: The number of targets the ship is able to fire upon at full capacity. If you have more hardpoints, you can attack more targets with more guns. Otherwise you'd have to "compensate" by attacking fewer targets OR use less weapons per target.

I think what I'm going to do is update my test scenario to also feature combat against multiple targets and then make the mission.tie available for public use.

This is all really interesting stuff, and makes a lot of sense.

With this in mind, particularly the last bit, I did some comparison of missions.

Basically, I finally managed to get past B4M5 somehow. Liberty limped out with about 50% hull. Not really sure what I did differently. I maybe kept my wingmen alive a little longer, but it can't have been by much.

I then immediately got stuck on B4M6. The Avenger shows up again, and it just absolutely shreds the Dreadnaught Mercury. I know that it's supposed to be possible for the Mercury to be destroyed - the mission hints even tell you to interfere with the ISD's shots and keep your wingmen alive so that the ISD can't focus on the Mercury. But it happened so quickly. Even keeping one or two wingmen alive, it made it out; but was so heavily damaged that when the ISD showed up again in the next region, it finished the Mercury off. Basically nothing I did mattered.

So I played the two missions again in vanilla.

The difference was pretty big. But the most apparent difference was with me my wingmen. In B4M5 XWAU, it didn't seem to matter what I did - almost all the X-Wings were dead by the time the Razor escaped. In vanilla, most of them survived the full duration of the mission. This was pretty repeatable. In B4M6 XWAU, if I could keep all my wingmen alive during the fighter attack, they would all die to turbolaser fire while patrolling for targets after. In vanilla, usually only one - at most two - would die to ISD fire. It's also harder to tell what was killing the X-Wings while TIEs were still around. In general, it felt harder to keep the wingmen alive in the dogfight in XWAU, so presumably the ISD is contributing more damage even at that stage. Though your wingmen are incredibly unreliable in that mission anyway, so it could have been a run of bad luck.

This seems to be the big difference to me.

In XWAU, the ISDs aren't splitting fire. The XWAU ISDs kill starfighters much more quickly, presumably because - as you said GT - they're not having to sacrifice firepower per target to attack multiple targets.

This leads to a twofold problem: the ISDs don't have to split fire so much when attacking targets like the Liberty or Mercury while the player and wingmates are flying around anyway, and because they can kill the fighters more quickly, there's even fewer targets around that might divert some fire. Basically, they're able to kill their targets quicker, and also kill secondary targets quicker which lets them kill their main targets even quicker.


As further evidence, the Golan platform died something like a minute earlier every single time in the XWAU version of B4M5. That's a really noticeable difference in a mission that takes around ten minutes to complete. Whether that's a combined effect of the ISD and SSD, or just down to the ISD, I don't know. But it's very noticeable.

I do wonder as well if the laser bolt limit plays into this. If the ISD and SSD are shooting more, does that mean the Golan platform isn't able to shoot as often? There are TIE Bombers that launch warheads at it. Is it possible the Golan is able to shoot more of them down in the vanilla mission? There's so many potential feedback loops with the balance being changed slightly.

The version that had my fix was running an outdated version of DTM's backdrop patch, so I applied the fix to the current mission. But while doing so I noticed some of the same issues Will was talking about, and some other bugs. For one, the Executor for some reason targeted the Razor, with predictable outcomes. I fixed those, and the mission should now run fine.

Here's all the changes I made:
- Slightly altered the ATR's waypoints to prevent collision with the new Rebel Platform Opt.
- Adjusted the position of the GR75 Medium Transports so their explosions no longer cause the Rebel Platform to be destroyed.
- Slightly altered the ISD's entry point so it takes a bit longer for it to close to maximum damage range and feel less oppressive in the last part of the mission. It shouldn't alter how the mission is played, and the mission will still force the player to run some interference on it, but the ISD should no longer instagib the Liberty. On all my tests, the Liberty generally escaped with around 60 % HU left.
- Adjusted the Executor's targeting parameters so it doesn't target the Razor, as was the case in vanilla. I don't know what caused this change, but the new parameters should ensure it does not target the Razor.

If anyone finds any other bugs, feel free to post them and I'll get them fixed.

Interesting that you were running into similar difficulties.

I think I agree that I didn't use to find this mission so hard, and obviously the ISD itself hasn't changed in years. So it's strange for it to get so much more difficult now, even after correcting the transport placement. But I am wondering if maybe I'd been playing it on Easy for much of that time.

While adjusting the ATR and the transports makes sense, I think adjusting the ISD's entry point is a band aid, and doesn't address the root cause of the issue.

The stronger ISD is affecting multiple missions. I think it needs to be fixed at the opt level, and I think adjusting missions should be something that's done only when absolutely necessary.

To be perfectly honest, I'd rather the Rebel Platform get a bespoke new model that matches the proportions of the original, rather than replace it with something drastically different. But that's probably a different discussion.

Part of the reason I wanted to bring this up now was because of the new ISDII being worked on. I'm hoping it's not too late for the hardpoints on that opt to be addressed in such a way that it brings the balance back down to the original level. Either that means reproducing the original hardpoints faithfully, or it means doing some work like GT did with the VSDII to balance more guns by giving them more restricted and more realistic firing arcs; and potentially making them destroyable in a way that has more effect than the weaponsys meshes.

[Forceflow]

Part of the reason I wanted to bring this up now was because of the new ISDII being worked on. I'm hoping it's not too late for the hardpoints on that opt to be addressed in such a way that it brings the balance back down to the original level. Either that means reproducing the original hardpoints faithfully, or it means doing some work like GT did with the VSDII to balance more guns by giving them more restricted and more realistic firing arcs; and potentially making them destroyable in a way that has more effect than the weaponsys meshes.

Yes, that issue is being addressed, there is even a chance that we'll be able to fix the ISD I with a new model as well quickly, but no promises on that one. We are currently discussing on how to best solve the ISD I issue.

[Will T]

Yes, that issue is being addressed, there is even a chance that we'll be able to fix the ISD I with a new model as well quickly, but no promises on that one. We are currently discussing on how to best solve the ISD I issue.

Awesome, good to hear.

Really looking forward to that new model.


Let me know if there's any more testing data that might be useful.

[Vince T]

One quick note, the total number of laser shots may have an influence, too. If I‘m not mistaken there‘s a hook which can increase the max number of shots. However I have no idea if there is some sort of prioritization Going on which determins which ships are allowed to fire at a certain point.

[Will T]

Yeah, I did wonder about that actually. Certainly what I'm seeing is similar to the issues people were reporting with that hook.

I'm pretty sure I don't have the increased max shots hook installed, though. From memory, the problems that caused with missions were way more obvious and widespread. Is it still available to download even?

I'll check to see if it's in my install, but I'm not actually sure what it's called.

[Alpha_0-0-0]

Hello

It was never a hook, it was a just patch in the Xwa Exe Patcher

thank you

[Jaeven]

I do hope the team doesn't go overboard in terms of nerfing the ISDs. While they might be a tad to strong now, they should not be the joke ship the vanilla version was, where it was basically free 5k points because it was so easy to kill them.

An ISD is supposed to be scary and lethal. I hope there can be a balance between the two extremes.

[Trevor]

I have the 256 weapons patch, I prefer the aesthetics of the battle in VR seeing all the lasers whizzing by.

I don't fly campaign so I don't know how hard it is to complete (or even if possible) but I certainly prefer skirmish with 256 weapons.

Trev

[Mark_Farlander]

Hello pilots,
first of all I wish to say I really appreciate General Trageton's decision to make every turret a physical mesh to make his new model more immersive.
I would like even ISD2 will be done this way.

ISD2 issues: 72 hardpoints vs 119 hardpoints make a huge difference indeed, and as far as I read from the Constraints section of the Modding Wiki the limit is 127 hardpoints.
I guess the Executor-class Star Dreadnought has 127 hardpoints, and this is OK, but 119 on an ISD2 make it a killing machine even without the 256 energy weapon patch.
I mean the ISD2 has nearly the same amount of hardpoints the SSD has, but only 1/100 of the surface, so the fire density is insane.

Another thing: I remember the ISD2 having the most powerful Superlaser available for the Empire which is the 305 Green Superlaser, just like the Executor SSD.
I think this is indeed the right thing. ISD2 is supposed to have the most deadly armament available for the Empire.
It's just the number of turrets and their positioning that requires to be "canon" and balanced at the same time.
This means that the total number of laser hardpoints should be limited to 60, as this is canon. This would also be the "balanced" spot Jaeven was referring.
The Turbo and Super fire "priority" is OK as it is now.
Link: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperi ... _Destroyer (for reference)

[Vince T]

One more thing to consider: On capital ships, and larger ship classes in generals, you only add the hardpoints only on one side, as they are automatically mirrored. That means the discrepancy between the TG ISD and Matt's ISDs is even greater, jumping from somewhere around 140 to around 240, meaning the ship has a nother 100 Hardpoints at its disposal.

[Mark_Farlander]

As for the ISD (Imperial I-class) the same logic should be applied, limiting to 60 the total number of laser hardpoints, but 304 Green Superlaser should be used in place of 305.
304 Green Superlaser is intended to be older and less powerful than 305 Green Superlaser, as the Imperial I-class line had been designed during the Clone Wars.

Another point of discussion should be the speed of weapons: is it possible that 305 Green Superlaser shots are slower than their 303 and 304 counterparts?

A question for General Trageton: is the new Victory I-class Star Destroyer armed with 303 Green Superlaser or 304 Green Superlaser?

[Mark_Farlander]

One more thing to consider: On capital ships, and larger ship classes in generals, you only add the hardpoints only on one side, as they are automatically mirrored. That means the discrepancy between the TG ISD and Matt's ISDs is even greater, jumping from somewhere around 140 to around 240, meaning the ship has a nother 100 Hardpoints at its disposal.

Thank you so much for the info. So this is the total number of hardpoints, but I would be curious to know the number of laser hardpoints only on the 2 ISD2 (TG vs Matt's).

[JeremyaFr]

Another point of discussion should be the speed of weapons: is it possible that 305 Green Superlaser shots are slower than their 303 and 304 counterparts?

Hello,
The power of 303 is 750 and its speed is 1250.
The power of 304 is 1000 and its speed is 1100.
The power of 305 is 1200 and its speed is 900.

[Will T]

It's just the number of turrets and their positioning that requires to be "canon" and balanced at the same time.
This means that the total number of laser hardpoints should be limited to 60, as this is canon.

I'd be really, really careful about trying to make the ISDII 'canon'.

For one thing, the sources for its armaments have been very conflicted over the years, and just because Disney canon has one set of numbers that hasn't been contradicted yet, doesn't mean it won't eventually or that it's 'correct' now.

For another, no source has ever actually related the numbers given in stat books to what is visible on the model. For example, the ISDII's main weapons are 8 barbette turret batteries, 4 on each side of the terrace structure. These batteries have 8 barrels each. So does that count as 8 emplacements, or does each barrel count towards one of the 60? If each barrel counts, and all the emplacements are turbolasers then you've already got 64 turbolasers - already that's more than the 60 number commonly cited. A lot of sources seem to assume the back two are ion cannons though, which would give you 48 turbolasers and 16 ion cannons right there. 12 other turbolasers dotted around the side trenches and on the nose would bring the numbers up, I guess.

But if these only count as single emplacements, and are just 8 of the 60 then the 60 number becomes largely useless to us, because it means it doesn't actually track with the number of hardpoints assigned. If we're trying to get 60 emplacements in there, then we're already at 116 hardpoints [(8x8)+(60-8)], and that's assuming all other emplacements are single barrel.


Not to mention that this goes back to my earlier point: 'canon' is irrelevant. This is a game. Yes it's more of a sim than a lot of other games, where accuracy is generally a plus, but 'canon' would arguably dictate that no single starfighter should be able to take out an ISDII. XWA is still light enough and 'gamey' enough that concessions to realism have been made so that the player can have fun. Killing ISDs wherever they show up for bonus points is part of that, and so TG deliberately reduced the stats of the ISD down from what they probably should have been so that the player has a chance at killing them. We should respect that balance as much as possible, and I believe that means trying very hard to keep the stats and armament of the ships very close to if not the same as the original.

This would also be the "balanced" spot Jaeven was referring.

Well given that 60 is actually lower than the 72 the TG opt has, and that Jaeven wanted the balance point to be higher than the TG version, then no. 60 hardpoints would not be the balanced spot.

As for the ISD (Imperial I-class) the same logic should be applied, limiting to 60 the total number of laser hardpoints, but 304 Green Superlaser should be used in place of 305.
304 Green Superlaser is intended to be older and less powerful than 305 Green Superlaser, as the Imperial I-class line had been designed during the Clone Wars.

Another point of discussion should be the speed of weapons: is it possible that 305 Green Superlaser shots are slower than their 303 and 304 counterparts?

A question for General Trageton: is the new Victory I-class Star Destroyer armed with 303 Green Superlaser or 304 Green Superlaser?

This is irrelevant.

The XWAU opts haven't changed the weaponry assignment from the TG versions. They still use the exact same weapon types, as can be seeing in MXvTED or BHE.

The ISDII uses 305, the ISDI uses 304, both VSDs use 303.

The only thing that's changed is the hardpoints themselves, and that's why we had a discussion earlier on what controls weapon type and fire rate - hardpoints or weapon stats. I'm still a bit confused on the functionality myself, but the answer seems to be both.


@GT: Another question on this, actually. In MXvTED, any weapon slot that isn't defined says "None Set/opt default". The latter of those two is of interest to me. I noticed that a lot of capital ships, like the Neb-B and the Corellian Corvette, don't have any weapons set. All the slots say None Set/opt defaut. Presumably, that means that in this case, the hardpoints take over and the ship is able to fire with whatever weapon type the hardpoint is set to (RebelLaser in both cases, I guess)

But I'm wondering how that affects ships with some slots defined, and others not. Like the ISDII. In MXvTED, there's a third laser slot that isn't defined. What if that's what dictates the behaviour of any shots that are 'excess' to the first two slots? As an example, say we have 50 weapon hardpoints. The first Laser slot as it's displayed in MXvTED defines the first 20 of those hardpoints as EmpireTurboLasers and controls how many can fire at once, etc. The second slot controls the next 20 and defines them as EmpireSuperLasers.

What about the last 10 hardpoints? Are they technically controlled by the third Laser slot? If so, does that mean they revert to the opt default? And if so, could that be part of the reason for the power gap on the ISDII? As all the hardpoints are now EmpireSuperLaser, where on the TG opt they were just EmpireLaser, is it possible that the ISDII is firing shots from more hardpoints than those defined in the weapon slots on the ship stats and using the opt default, meaning the XWAU opt is able to fire more superlasers at once?

Would it be possible to test this by setting all the hardpoints on the ISDII to EmpireLaser, like on the TG opt, and seeing if it makes a difference in repeated scenarios?

[Mark_Farlander]

@Will T
I think you made a bit of confusion between the total number of hardpoints and the total number of LASER hardpoints.
General Trageton reported that vanilla Totally Games' ISD2 has 72 hardpoints total, including warhead launchers, docking positions and hangars.
I wrote that the total number of LASER hardpoints should be limited to 60.