[Shivan Hunter]

Any chance of getting them to match up with the actual missile ports?

Just spamming this until it's at least acknowledged. Missiles coming out of blank spaces in the Boa's hull is more noticeable than bank placement, and as long as you're moving stuff around you might as well have a firing point per hole in the texture.

[Commander Zane]

At least when looking at the front of the ship it is. But if that's to be done then every fighter and bomber would need to have this done, and I think there's a 25 point limit to the number of secondary ports a ship can have, the Myrmidon and Perseus (28) I can think of right off the bat would exceed that number.

Actually the Myrmidon has 24 points so it could be done.
As far as I can tell only the Perseus exceeds 25 points...

[Asteroth]

This really only affects people who are observant enough to notice the inconsistency between bank capacity and the number missile slots per bank and be annoyed by it. A "Sure, why not?" change if you will.

[FSW]

Potential balance implication:
Weapon placement greatly influences how easy it is to hit targets with dumbfire weapons; particularly when linked.

Example situation:
The player wants to destroy a turret with a pair of Trebuchets at close range, without waiting for a lock.

The following secondaries, compatible with these bombers, can be dumbfired:
EMP Adv, Hornet, Tornado, Trebuchet, Piranha, Infyrno
(EDIT: Corrected list.)

[Dragon]

Rockeye and Stiletto II can't be dumbfired, they'll look for a target upon firing.
Tornado and Hornet are completely useless when dumbfired, especially the former.
Neither Piranha nor Infyrno need to actually hit anything to cause damage.
Using Trebs at close range isn't ussualy an usefull tactic, since you should rather move away and then fire from long range.
EMP Adv. has a short lock time and dumbfiring it is a great way to get EMPed yourself.

[Commander Zane]

Eh Trebuchets at point-blank have helped me out once in a while.

[Dragon]

I agree, that's one tactic that could be usefull in a tight situation, but it shouldn't be difficult to adapt to a new layout.

[SypheDMar]

I think the problem is that it may be too easy to adapt to. Make a ship slightly more useful can cause larger changes in balance overall.

[Dragon]

If you're firing Trebs at close range without lock, you have to be really close, where bank placement stops to matter.

[Qent]

I think it matters more at close range, since bombers are so wide.

[Zacam]

Thank you for the lively and polite conversation on the issue. I appreciate both the encouragements and the concerns. I'll attempt to address some of them here.

... and I think there's a 25 point limit to the number of secondary ports a ship can have...

Correct, to a point. That's 25 points -per bank-. Maximum of 3 Primary Banks and 4 Secondary Banks. (Currently, as of the time of this message)

Example situation:
The player wants to destroy a turret with a pair of Trebuchets at close range, without waiting for a lock.

Which the player already could do anyway. In the case of the Boanerges, one could dumb-fire from the top above-canopy fire points, but they would end up sacrificing carrying more Helios/Cyclops/whatever because that was Bank 3 (one of the larger banks load-out wise) instead of Bank 1. And again, it's mostly a question of visual aesthetic.

Point is, that each of the banks in question still carry exactly the same amount of weapons as they did before. The order of how the banks are associated to displaying on the model, and from where the weapons come out from, was altered a -slightly- as possible to allow for correcting that and provided a balanced, operational and sensible aesthetic.

There are (afaik) no other ships where this issue needs to be addressed, save for perhaps one of the Shivan bombers, because all the rest are either already adequately balanced firing point wise, or the firing points are balanced but the capacities are not, which cannot be addressed without breaking balance.

So yes, in terms of being able to (in the case of Boanerges) load-out the above-canopy with some point-fire Trebs and use your two larger banks to better effective capacity -might- be considered balance altering...BUT only if you consider the load-out from the AESTHETIC perspective. Again, you still have a 40/100/100 arrangement. Most people will put their bigger bombs (especially on a cap ships run) on the larger capacity banks. It just now visually lines up better, is all.

I did think long and hard, and engage in several arguments and discussions with Quantum Delta, MatthTheGeek and General Battuta, to name just a few. And there was plenty and plenty of play testing done as well. And the general feel is that, while it could still be a contested issues, it's not a game breaking issue, and also, since it doesn't rely on table edits to achieve, any hard-core purists can open PCS2, re-point the firing points to their original bank configurations, and be happy without invalidating their data. (afaik)

I just figured that it would be a good idea (for a change) to present the "issue" before hand, rather than have an explosive flame fest from people discovering it and not expecting it. I still intend for these changes to go through into the next MediaVPs unless a clear, decisive and concrete reason why NOT to manages to present itself.

Any chance of getting them to match up with the actual missile ports?

And yeah, I can probably fiddle the Boanerges to line up to firing points a bit better. My only concern is that having some of them too close on a linked fire may lead to a bomb-in-a-bomb issue. I'll post updates on that when they happen.

[Timerlane]

Since we're only concerned about the retail FS2 campaign(as said, mod-makers can always revert the firing points for their mods if needed), how many missions is the Boa really available in? Slaying Ravana, the 64th Raptors missions, and possibly the last few missions with the Blue Lions. The Trebuchet doesn't even become available until you're with the Vasudans(first mentioned in Bearbaiting's briefing), so that just leaves the very last missions of the FS2 campaign as possible concerns(I don't remember for sure, which, if any, let you fly bombers at all).

EDIT: I'm sure there are MP missions where it could come into play, but as mentioned above, it's not letting you do anything you couldn't do in some form or another, anyway.

[Commander Zane]

Correct, to a point. That's 25 points -per bank-. Maximum of 3 Primary Banks and 4 Secondary Banks. (Currently, as of the time of this message)

Works for me.

[SypheDMar]

I just figured that it would be a good idea (for a change) to present the "issue" beforehand, rather than have an explosive flame fest from people discovering it and not expecting it.

Much appreciated. Thanks.

[Jadehawk]

Thanks Zacam for the polite heads up on this!
To me, it's guys like him who are thoughtfull about engaging the community in something like this in a civil manner about a change they feel needs to be brought forth.
Thumbs up!

[Black Wolf]

For what it's worth, I don't really have a problem with this, though i also don't see why it was neccesarry to change it. I guess it's more logical this way, but maybe there was a reason for the placement we don't know about? It's possible.

Anyway, the baance changes will, I expect, be minimal, and if it makes people happy... support, I suppose.

[General Battuta]

(if I weren't lazy I would do the following myself)

We should probably rig up some missions testing bomb intercept rates with the new firepoints vs. the old ones. Two bombs coming from different sides of the ship are meaningfully harder to shoot down than two bombs from the same bank.

[Shade]

Changing secondary firepoints would definitely be an issue with tempests, since it would have a fairly major effect on dogfighting ability, but in this case that isn't an issue. That dumbfired trebs might originate in a slightly different location will only really matter against capships, and since mediaVPs already alter the locations of many turrets from their retail positions (which is a whole different issue, but never mind that here), that's hardly going to make a difference. So as far as I'm concerned, go ahead with this - no harm done

[Edit] Battuta does bring up a good point. At least for the Medusa, the altered firepoints would mean significantly greater spacing between bombs on a double launch, and it might make them harder to deal with.

[Zacam]

We should probably rig up some missions testing bomb intercept rates with the new firepoints vs. the old ones. Two bombs coming from different sides of the ship are meaningfully harder to shoot down than two bombs from the same bank.

[Edit] Battuta does bring up a good point. At least for the Medusa, the altered firepoints would mean significantly greater spacing between bombs on a double launch, and it might make them harder to deal with.

Already done, in addition to testing all (albeit FS2) missions where Medusa's are present, either by player choice or by AI control.

And while they are spaced out more in terms of a double-fire, not significantly so. In fact, while they are both able to be shot, you no longer have the fact that shooting one pretty much automagically guarantees that you've shot the other. But, unless you have aggressive logging turned on, it's also REALLY damn hard to actually SPOT the difference, depending on your shooting style. AI also has no issue with doing bomb intercepts from either deployment configuration either.

Changing secondary firepoints would definitely be an issue with tempests, since it would have a fairly major effect on dogfighting ability, but in this case that isn't an issue. That dumbfired trebs might originate in a slightly different location will only really matter against capships, and since mediaVPs already alter the locations of many turrets from their retail positions (which is a whole different issue, but never mind that here), that's hardly going to make a difference. So as far as I'm concerned, go ahead with this - no harm done

Quantum Delta's first question in regards to the Medusa change was to ask if it could carry Tempests. So that was something I was very much aware of when I considered this change. It's mostly the splitting of the firing points for banks 1 and 2 that make the most difference for the Medusa as Bank 3 was already split. And granted, it doesn't even need to happen, it -is- just a nitpick on my part, but it has so far turned out to being a really un-noticeable in terms of balance impact, even with the Boanerges. (Though admittedly, I never really flew the Boanerges much before). Especially in the case of the Boanerges, the layout is still the same. It's just the order of them is now different, so dual firing from any of the banks still depends on what exactly is loaded into those banks, period.

In any case, again, I like that we're having this conversation, and if there becomes a serious and strenuous case to be made, or a concrete reason, then it just won't happen. And since it's not a table based edit, if anybody individually -really- has a serious objection, I will be -more- than happy to link to "Retail" configured firing point models.

[Spoon]

All these changes look fine to me, you have my blessing to proceed