Author Topic: The problem of Tebuchets  (Read 6075 times)

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Offline TrashMan

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The problem of Tebuchets
In terms of gameplay effect and balance, how well does such a weapon fit in?

A weapon that makes heavy fighters better at bomber intercept/carrier defense than dedicated interceptors?
A weapon who's range makes it so the player doesn't even have to bring himself into harms way to take out bombers?
Does it even fit? Should it even be there?

I know it's modeled after the AIM-54 Phoenix, but there are some BIG differences between real world and it's use in FS. For example:
- in real world, you cannot rearm so quickly and easily. You're supply is very limited
- in the real world, capital ships have long-range missile too, so you cannot snipe their turrets from afar.
- and somewhat of a lesser note, in the real world, not every fighter can carry such a missile to begin with.

Knowing all that, how does one fix it?
Does one give enemies and capital ships similar missiles too?
Does one limit it only to interceptors?
Does one remove it from the game completely?
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Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
I think it fits rather well....

In gameplay terms, the Treb is to give the player the option to fight at much longer ranges, which transfers in the ability to engage more targets - esspecially in escort situations where you might fight against two wings attacking from opposite sites.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
The BP approach has been to give warships countermeasures. You could also give Trebs the bomb flag.

 

Offline NeonShivan

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets

Knowing all that, how does one fix it?
Does one give enemies and capital ships similar missiles too?
Does one limit it only to interceptors?
Does one remove it from the game completely?

Reduce the subsystem damage to make it not godly against turrets. Gotta disarm turrets? Take the Stiletto II or the Maxim.
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Offline jr2

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
As an aside, also in the real world, warships have decent countermeasures as well (Phalanx CIWS and others).
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Offline Iain Baker

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
Personally I like them. Since they are quite large most ships cannot carry that many. Therefore you can't spam them too often, unless you are flying a 'treb truck' with a huge secondary bank like an Ares. They are pretty useless at close range, so if you are planning on using missiles for dog fighting you will only be able to have one bank of them in most cases, as the other bank will need to be filled with harpoons or tornadoes etc.

Ways they could more balanced could include:

Firstly make them interceptable like bombs.

then...

Make bomber's self defence turrets more useful - lower damage per shot, but higher ROF and projectile speed - essentially a bomber grade CWIS.

Better CIWS systems for cap ships. For example: 1- flack that is more accurate, so that the flak shell is more likely to score a direct hit. 2 - Point defence turrets being like Gatling guns as in real world systems, or the PDGs from 'The Expanse'. 3 - Anti-missile launchers similar to the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile. 4 - Alternate low-power but very short recharge time mode for AAA beams for sniping multiple warheads in quick succession.

More effective Countermeasures for bombers. Perhaps some of the larger ones could have a limited number of sacrificial drones which will 'take the hit' for them?

Greater use of ECM vessels to protect cap ships - If you can't lock on, you can't use them.

Enemy NPCs using them against YOU.

Equip cap ships with treb launchers - if you can terb them, they can treb you!

Make rearming them take longer - perhaps on par with swarm missiles.


As an aside, I have been meaning to ask - How well do NPCs use them, both friendlies and hostiles? Does difficulty level make a difference? Does Fury AI have an effect on them?
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Offline Droid803

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
In retail, the AI cannot use trebs at all IIRC, because of some conflicting table targeting priorities which prevents them from EVER being launched without the mission designer specifically scripting them to be used:

Quote from: FS Wiki
"Despite being one of the most effective anti-bomber/anti-turret weapons in the game, the AI is incapable of firing the Trebuchet. This is because of the combination of the "bomber+" flag and the "huge" flag in the table files. The first restricts the AI to firing the missile only at bombs and bombers, while the second prevents the AI from using it against smaller ships. Since these two types of targets are mutually exclusive, there are no valid targets at which the AI can fire the Trebuchet at. If you wish for AI to use Trebuchets in a mission, use the good-secondary-time SEXP."

This can easily be changed by simply editing the tables or just scripting missions properly so the AI can use them.

The AI (fury AI or not), is incapable of properly avoiding trebuchets at long range, whereas a human player can avoid them quite easily as long as they know the "trick" to doing so and aren't otherwise occupied by say, a swarm of angry fighters on their tail. I find this "imbalance" to be much more of an issue because it's not so easily fixed - the AI will almost always be vulnerable to trebuchet-like missiles because it just doesn't know how to properly evade it, and won't unless someone programs the AI with the proper evasive maneuvers to evade trebs, but then that'd open another whole can of worms in making the AI considerbaly harder to kill with missiles, perhaps to the point of aspect seekers being useless...

I find this "imbalance" the major issue with Trebs, and not how they can harass capital ships with impunity due to outranging them. I don't find that to be a problem at all, seeing as anti-fighter beams are basically pure RNG whether they hit or miss you and completely bypass your shields, outranging them is the only real "skill-based" counterplay, so I think Trebs are fine in their interaction with capital ships and have a very necessary place if the player is ever instructed to engage AAA-beam armed capital ships.

Plus, it's very easy to fix in a mod, between the aforementioned armor.tbl and bomb flags, capital ships just mounting treb-equivalents in return. There are also other ways such as just giving capital ships shields, which may work depending on your setting.
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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
Treb subsystem damage is still totally busted. If FS was more balanced you could have the AAA beams with generally lower health and trebs dealing just enough damage to take most of those out, but not enough to just oneshot capital-grade beams too.

I mean, the Trebuchet deals HIGHER subsystem damage than the Stiletto II, a dedicated anti-subsystem missile. It also has higher velocity, longer range, and can't be shot down. And that's not even considering that you can also lob it at strikecraft. And they both have the exact same cargo size of 8, so it's not like you can carry more stils.

So the solution to "fixing" the treb isn't all that easy because FS isn't very balanced, and the treb(or at least something similarly reliable) is kinda necessary to interact with capships. Arguably the treb isn't even the best secondary, the Tempest's DPS is absolutely idiotic.
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Offline Kie99

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
They're super overpowered.  The Ravana is supposed to be the biggest threat since the Lucifer until the Sathanas comes along, a single fighter with Trebuchets can render is toothless in about 30 seconds.  Its ability to take out fighters and light bombers is also unbelievable, in Argonautica you can rack up as many kills as you like without ever coming within 3km of a hostile.
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Offline Droid803

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
The thing with the Ravana is less about the Trebuchet being overpowered and more of the Ravana's main beams' hitpoints being woefully underpowered.
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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
^ It's especially jarring compared to the Demon's big beams that require like 5-6 trebs to take out vs about the same number of Harpoons for the Ravan's.

 
Re: The problem of Tebuchets
The Ravanas turrets can easily be disabled, with or without Trebuchets (just with them it can be done from 4 or 5 clicks with 1 shot).

 
Re: The problem of Tebuchets
The Missile is FINE as is. what's wrong in my opinion is the countermeasures not strong enough. It's primary mission is a Bomber destroyer/ cap ship systems destroyer missile. Secondary is taking out fighters and other ships at long range and if it cannot do this, then allot of the FS2 missions will not be able to succeed as designed and would need allot of changed for that.

Just saying :)
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Offline Aesaar

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
Personally I like them. Since they are quite large most ships cannot carry that many. Therefore you can't spam them too often, unless you are flying a 'treb truck' with a huge secondary bank like an Ares. They are pretty useless at close range, so if you are planning on using missiles for dog fighting you will only be able to have one bank of them in most cases, as the other bank will need to be filled with harpoons or tornadoes etc.
Ammo capacity is barely a balancing factor.  Rearm in FS is so easy that it makes missile ammo capacity almost completely irrelevant.  Just ask for rearm, run away from the support ship until you're empty, then just do it again.  Missiles are basically infinite.

The only time this isn't the case is in missions that don't let you rearm.

The Missile is FINE as is. what's wrong in my opinion is the countermeasures not strong enough. It's primary mission is a Bomber destroyer/ cap ship systems destroyer missile. Secondary is taking out fighters and other ships at long range and if it cannot do this, then allot of the FS2 missions will not be able to succeed as designed and would need allot of changed for that.

Just saying :)
You don't need trebs to complete any mission in FS2.

 
Re: The problem of Tebuchets
In retail, the AI cannot use trebs at all IIRC, because of some conflicting table targeting priorities which prevents them from EVER being launched without the mission designer specifically scripting them to be used:

Quote from: FS Wiki
"Despite being one of the most effective anti-bomber/anti-turret weapons in the game, the AI is incapable of firing the Trebuchet. This is because of the combination of the "bomber+" flag and the "huge" flag in the table files. The first restricts the AI to firing the missile only at bombs and bombers, while the second prevents the AI from using it against smaller ships. Since these two types of targets are mutually exclusive, there are no valid targets at which the AI can fire the Trebuchet at. If you wish for AI to use Trebuchets in a mission, use the good-secondary-time SEXP."

This can easily be changed by simply editing the tables or just scripting missions properly so the AI can use them.
For TotT I had to remove both flags in the weapons.tbl, then the AI fired them at some 3.5 km from the targets IIRC.

Quote
The AI (fury AI or not), is incapable of properly avoiding trebuchets at long range, whereas a human player can avoid them quite easily as long as they know the "trick" to doing so and aren't otherwise occupied by say, a swarm of angry fighters on their tail. I find this "imbalance" to be much more of an issue because it's not so easily fixed - the AI will almost always be vulnerable to trebuchet-like missiles because it just doesn't know how to properly evade it, and won't unless someone programs the AI with the proper evasive maneuvers to evade trebs, but then that'd open another whole can of worms in making the AI considerbaly harder to kill with missiles, perhaps to the point of aspect seekers being useless...

I know that it's possible to customize countermeasures, I'll be playing around with some options to see if I can get a missile diverged away from its target, so even if the AI fails to dodge, the missile will still be off target when attacking head on.

Quote
I find this "imbalance" the major issue with Trebs, and not how they can harass capital ships with impunity due to outranging them. I don't find that to be a problem at all, seeing as anti-fighter beams are basically pure RNG whether they hit or miss you and completely bypass your shields, outranging them is the only real "skill-based" counterplay, so I think Trebs are fine in their interaction with capital ships and have a very necessary place if the player is ever instructed to engage AAA-beam armed capital ships.

Ahhh, skill based beam dodging...
Next time when you see a AAA beam charging go to a 90 deg angle from the upcoming beam and hit afterburners.

When flying perpendicular you get out of the beam, which will not follow your ship during its shot.
If you fly fast enough, you'll be out of it well before it burns out, so most of its damage potential is wasted.
I know it's not a full dodge, but losing 3% of your hull vs 15% on a beam hit makes a big difference fast.


Quote
Plus, it's very easy to fix in a mod, between the aforementioned armor.tbl and bomb flags, capital ships just mounting treb-equivalents in return. There are also other ways such as just giving capital ships shields, which may work depending on your setting.
Or issue Trebs in a limited amount of missions.
If the mission involves assaulting a capital ship, Trebuchets don't need to be available, Stiletto's, rockets and conventional bombs can do the job.

If there's a desperate defense, then Alpha Wing could have all the toys in the arsenal, held in reserve just for such situations.

And even then don't issue enough...
Have the player pick between 1 missile haulin' Ares, or maybe having all of Alpha Wing having trebs in one secondary bay of Perseus interceptors, but not all Alpha Wing being Ares missile boats.

Same thing with Kaysers, GTF Erynies and other powerful tools.
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Offline Rhymes

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
Tebuchets

hello yes i am t. e. buchet.
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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
I know that it's possible to customize countermeasures, I'll be playing around with some options to see if I can get a missile diverged away from its target, so even if the AI fails to dodge, the missile will still be off target when attacking head on.

I experimented with custom CMs. One of my mods had basically inevitable missiles, the only thing you could do was make a difference between shield damage and KO. The trick was that the CMs explode with blast wave, propelling the the forward like an additional AB (albeit drifting).

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
I know that it's possible to customize countermeasures, I'll be playing around with some options to see if I can get a missile diverged away from its target, so even if the AI fails to dodge, the missile will still be off target when attacking head on.

This is impossible in retail because CM's don't actually 'pull' aspect seekers, just make them fly in a straight line - so if the Treb is on target it will remain roughly on target (barring the target's movements in that brief window before impact).

With the options BP added you can make CMs pull aspect seekers.

 

Offline ShivanSpS

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Re: The problem of Tebuchets
If you ask me all missiles should have the "bomb" flag enabled, i never liked the idea of invulnerable missiles, no matter the type.

The other problem is that turrets are just too good at shooting missiles, this is what makes the Stiletto II worthless and this is true on BP too Battuta, useless it is launched at very very close range.

The Trebs are mostly a "hack" because of V was unable to makes missiles actually evade turret fire.

 
Re: The problem of Tebuchets
If you ask me all missiles should have the "bomb" flag enabled, i never liked the idea of invulnerable missiles, no matter the type.

https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.22interceptable.22