Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: Into_The_Rain on December 16, 2019, 01:16:58 am
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I've just finished my first playthrough of FSBlue and Age of Aquarius, and I kept finding myself wishing for more information about the ships and weapons, especially those that received changes.
Some of the stuff is obvious, such as the Myrmidon and Maxim changes, but I often found myself wondering if weaker weapons had been improved or if strong weapons and ships had been brought more in line with the other units.
Weapons in general have very little information about damage, rof, range, and energy usage. Just a quick blurb describing the very basics.
Ships have no data about pitch/roll/yaw rates, energy reserves for each system, afterburner duration and thrust boost, etc.
Is there any chance the information, either in the briefing room or tech room, gets updated with hard data on what each weapon and ship is capable of?
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The wiki has most of those things up on there, and if you want the actual in-game numbers you could always open up the table files and read the entries yourself. .tbl files are just text files--you can open them in notepad.
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The wiki is pretty good about providing all those stats for ships and weapons and if you need even more details you can crack open the table files. They're pretty easy to read with rather self-evident flag names for the various stats and the wiki also has full references for each flag that explains what it does if the name itself isn't obvious enough.
As for some specific changes, FSBLue has changed some retail ships and a lot of underused retail weapons.
The Myrmidon has received a roll rate buff from 5s to 4s as well as compatibility with the Cyclops and Harpoon to make it more of a fighter-bomber. It has lost its retail Helios capability though because that feature was never used and it was really stupid and probably unintentional.
The Artemis D.H.(special SOC version) has received some engine buffs with a slightly higher afterburner top speed and base engine speed at max ETS.
The Circe has been reworked into more of a shieldbreaker with no hull damage but extremely high shield damage. It's travel velocity has also been increased to make it a good partner with the Prometheus. In terms of specific numbers a lot of the weapons have been rebalanced around the Prometheus S as the "baseline", as it's the best overall weapon in FS2 and a great jack of all trades.
The specific stats of the Prometheus S are:
27 hull damage per shot
30 shield damage per shot
0.35s refire delay(meaning it fires once every 0.35 seconds)
1 energy cost to fire(per gunpoint)
750 m/s velocity, 2s lifetime(For 1500m range)
That all comes out to 77 hull DPS, 85 shield DPS, and 2.86 energy/second.
The reworked Circe does a massive 78 shield damage per shot but 0 hull damage per shot, with a 0.4s refire delay and 0.6 energy cost. That comes out to 195 shield DPS, 0 hull DPS and 1.5 energy/second. The velocity has been buffed to 770 so that when matched with the Prometheus it hits first and breaks shields before the Prometheus bolts connect a few frames later.
The morning star has been reworked into a "flak-type" weapon that deals very low direct hit damage but has a very damaging shockwave meaning you'll still be doing good damage even if you slightly miss your target. It's energy cost has been cut by a factor of 4 since previously it was more expensive to fire than the Kayser, now it's rather cheap to fire at 1.3 EPS. It was also given a special flag that lets its shockwaves destroy bombs(usually bombs are only vulnerable to direct hits). But because subsystems take no damage from shockwaves it's very bad at disarming, being focused as a weapon for killing strikecraft and bombs rather than a generalist. It also lost its gimmicky pushback effect. It's velocity and lifetime were unchanged so it still has 2000m range.
The Lamprey has been given damage buffs so that it now deals decent shield DPS at 110(still absolutely crap hull DPS at ~10) but the biggest change was the electronics flag which lets it disable cruisers temporarily, kinda like the D-missile from Silent Threat. It's still kinda gimmicky and mostly useless because killing things will always be better than temporarily disabling them.
As for changes to BP-specific ships and weapons they're far more numerous though I believe you can find some changelists on the BP subforum dating from 2015 or so when BPC was released. Of course this doesn't tell you much if you didn't have an idea of what the stats were before or what the unchanged stats are. But in general the underused weapons like the Vulcan and Scalpel have been buffed along with underused ships like the Kulas.
In terms of seeing these numbers in the game itself there's unfortunately no option for that so you'll just have to trust the wiki or check the tables yourself. Unless the modder decides to directly write all of these numbers into the weapon description that you'll see when selecting it(which is sometimes done to help the player compare weapons but it's almost never done for ships).
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You forgot that the Kayser also is cyclic in BP, like the Balor.
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Ah, thanks for the info. It lines up about with what i've witnessed, but wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I know the Fighter Bomber concept for the Myrmidon seems to be popular with the crowd here, but I really hoping they had pushed its yaw/pitch/roll values instead. Terrans have more than half a dozen different strike craft that could arguably fill the fighter bomber role, but there is a seriously lack of true space superiority fighters outside of the Perseus. Having a ship built around having a lot of guns AND having the maneuverability to put those guns where you want them every time would have given the Myrm a niche imo. Ah whatever, it would still end up stuck in the Perseus's shadow.
Did any other ships get fixed besides the Artemis DH? (Zeus and the Boanerges for example?) It always felt to me like many of the ships clearly outclassed some of their counterparts, especially as more ships started getting unlocked. I'll see if I can dig it up in the forums. Or maybe I'll just figure out how to do diving into the unit stats.
As for weapons, I tried the Circe and Morningstar, and both were monsterously powerful. Circe punishes the heavy shields / light armor setup of the Shivans hard and definitely feels worthwhile in any mission where you aren't doing a lot of cruiser or turret hunting. The Morningstar likewise felt extra powerful, but I didn't respect how big the AOE was on my first usage, and I tore out half of my own health firing it at close range before I realized what was happening. Its a little tougher to justify still, as the game already has a ton of decent damaging weapons, and I miss the old Morningstar's knock preventing Bombers from ever locking on to their target again, but its still an interesting weapon.
Rockeyes are still comically weird. Being a long range heatseeker that is mostly good against turrets that shouldn't produce much heat, but remain a necessity to navigate the early missions of the campaign. Doubling the totals helps a bit though. Maxims still feel quite strong since reloading is fairly easy in FSBlue. In many ways I wish it wasn't quite as good so that maybe the Akheton could have its day in the sun, but again you need to kill a lot of capships in the campaign.
Anyway I'm curious to dig through the changes and see what else you guys came up with.
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No other bombers got changes aside from all ships being assigned capacities for their primary banks(since this isn't a retail feature no retail ship has them assigned) which was necessary since the maxim is ammo limited.
The Artemis DH change was done more for lore than balance, as it's only 10 m/s extra on afterburners and the tech description claims it's an upgrade over the standard Artemis(you also have to go through the SOC missions to unlock it so it makes more sense if it's actually an upgrade, even if it's a very small one). The problem with other big changes to retail ships is that a lot of their shortcomings have been "embraced" as part of their character and even written into the tech descriptions of BP proper. So the Myrmidon got some very slight buffs but it's still too big and slow for its role which is kind of the point. It was designed to fulfil too many roles and ended up being ~meh~ at all of them.
For some of the BP specific ships they can be altered and even given an entirely new character(like the Kulas' new role as a marathon runner) but the character of the retail ships is a lot more ingrained into the mind of the community as they've been around for 20 years now.
The Morningstar's damage is actually not that great. It's only 73 shield DPS and 51 hull DPS, far below the Prometheus(which is 85S/77H) . It's "real" damage is rather high however because unlike all other weapons it will do damage even on near misses which quickly adds up unless you're shooting something you can't miss(like a huge, slow bomber or a capship).
As for the game already having "a ton" of good damaging options... it really doesn't. Retail FS2 has the Prometheus S as by far the best option for damage since the Subach does very low damage and the Kayser drains too much energy while being very short ranged. The maxim is mostly used for very long range capship disarming and isn't really used for its hull damage. All other weapons are basically pointless.
The Kayser is a bit better on lower difficulties since your weapons will recharge 4 times faster on "Easy" and 2.5 times faster on "Medium" but that brings up the number of decent weapons to 3. You'll be using the Subach early because there's no other option but as soon as you get the Prom S you'll never switch back because it's just not very good.
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I thought Boas got a buff? Didn't a lot of the Vasudan ships get tweaks too?
I intentionally removed the details stats from the in-game interface because I felt they weren't providing much affordance. It's more useful to get a general idea of a weapon's role than to try to hold all that data in your brain.
And yeah, I've been playing BWO (which uses retail FS2 balance so far) and I've literally never used anything but double Prom S as my primary.
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Actually if anybody wanted to diff the changes for me that'd be great as I need to put together a patch to propose for BWO, lol.
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Perhaps great damage wasn't a good way to describe the Morning Star. I just know I removed half my health before I realized I was doing it and had to adjust my tactics.
Maybe its because I've only played the Campaign, and usually on Medium or Hard, but I guess I never had a problem with the Subach or the Kayser. I always assumed the primary selling point of the Prometheus was the Range and Velocity, so its a little disappointing to find out it also the most consistent of the 3 'main' guns available to you.
General Battuta, any chance of getting more hard stats in the database entry instead? I can understand not having the info in the tiny blurb available in the mission briefing, but I would have liked to have been able to compare weapons there if I really wanted to.
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Actually if anybody wanted to diff the changes for me that'd be great as I need to put together a patch to propose for BWO, lol.
Couldn't you turn BPs weapon tbl into a tbm (just renaming and +NoCreate) and throw them into BWO?
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Nah, I want to go through change by change and make sure to only use stuff that fits BWO's design.
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Slightly Off-topic - but if the myrmidon could carry maxims and trebs it would be one hell of a good all rounder. Kyzers in the double bank for dogfighting, maxims in the single bank for turret sniping, heat-seekers, swarm missiles or harpoons in one bank for dogfighting, terebs in the second for anti-bomber and more turret sniping, and cyclops in the third for taking out heavy cruisers like the Lilith and softening up corvettes.
Change my mind ;7
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A lot of the bombers received shield regeneration buffs. Retail doesn't support that flag so all ships regenerate the default 2% of their maximum shield energy per second, the bombers in BPC have all been buffed to 4%. This means they regenerate their shields in 25 seconds instead of 50 seconds, assuming max shield ETS. With "standard" ETS it's 75 seconds instead of 150, which is still pretty relevant.
Some bombers have also received big weapon energy buffs, since in FS2 retail bombers weirdly have the lowest weapon energy. A Perseus has 150 while a Boanerges only has 100. The Artemis was buffed from 100 to 170, an increase big enough to let it sustain fire from it's quad-bank.
Many other bombers have been changed from 100 to 130-150, depending on their weapon configuration. The Artemis also got actual engine OCLK speed, in retail it's always limited to 65 no matter how much ETS you put on engines, BP changed that to 78.
The Boanerges specifically also got slightly buffed turn times(from 5.5, 6.0, 6.0 to 5.0, 5.5, 5.0) and a decent AB buff from 85 top speed to 100, giving it more unique advantages over the slower Ursa to compensate for not having a turret.
On the fighter side of things the Myrmidon changes have already been mentioned, the Erinyes got a suite of buffs to make it suck a bit less, a very light rotation time buff(from 3.8, 4.2, 3.8 to 3.8, 4.0, 3.8), reactor buff(shields from 500 to 620, weapon energy from 150 to 200 along with weapon regen going from 4% to 5%), very slight health buff (from 325 to 350), and a slight nerf to afterburner duration though the speed and recharge stayed the same(AB fuel from 420 to 350).
The Ares also got a weapon energy buff from 180 to 230, remaining the highest in the game, and the Herc II was buffed from 150 to 165, a rather small increase that doesn't matter that much considering the 2+2 layout generally isn't very power hungry.
As for the Myrmidon being a good all-rounder... no, not really. The Perseus with Trebs does it way better. The Myrmidon is bad at dogfighting due to its huge target profile and lethargic turn times, weapon compatibility doesn't fix that core problem. Its speed means it can be used as a decent strike bomber but definitely not an all-rounder.
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On the Vasudan side of things, excluding the WiH overhauls like the Set-Mace or Horus-Ur:
The Horus got a slight weapon energy buff from 100 to 120. It also got a longer lasting afterburner from 300 fuel, 50 burn, 25 rec to 360 fuel, 40 burn, 25 rec.
The Serapis got an afterburner buff too, from 300, 50, 25 to 400, 40, 25, giving it a decent 10-second afterburner but it's still limited to 135 m/s so it doesn't live up to the "advanced interceptor" name.
The Tauret got a weapon energy buff, from 100 to 175. The retail one was seriously underpowered even compared to most 2+2 fighters like the Perseus which had 150. You can still chew through it pretty quickly though, especially if you go for quad kaysers.
For bombers the Sekhmet got a massive weapon energy buff, from 100 to 220. Same shield regen buff as the terran bombers(2% to 4%), and engine overclock to 75. The AB max speed was buffed to 100 to 105, not really that meaningful. To compensate for these the secondary capacity was hit slightly, from 80, 80, 80 to 60, 60, 60.
The Bakha recieved a suite of changes to make it more like a fighter-bomber. Its turn times have changed from 4.2, 4.6, 4.0 to 3.6, 3.6, 3.6 beating all other bombers and assault fighters and only falling 0.3s behind the Perseus on each axis. The shields have been nerfed from 620 to 450 along with hitpoints going from 440 to 290. It does still benefit from the 4% bomber shield regen rate though.
The weapon energy was buffed from 100 to 140, and the afterburner top speed was buffed from 105 to 140. Overall it's got the stats of a medium fighter but has the ability to carry bombs.