[MatthTheGeek]

Isn't that now much harder now that beams count toward damage scored by ships ?

[NGTM-1R]

Isn't that now much harder now that beams count toward damage scored by ships ?

I think this is a flag.

[General Battuta]

Isn't that now much harder now that beams count toward damage scored by ships ?

They don't, like NGTM1R said this is an optional flag.

[Parias]

At least I think people don't try to kill capitals in a fighter. Least I don't.

Silent Threat retail, anyone?

(Yeah, yeah, I know, technically FS1....)

[-Norbert-]

Let's go even further back. FS1.
When the Bastion forces it's way past that demon, I usually took out the demons engines as soon as the area was clear of bombers and then after the Bastion warped out, finished off the demon with my tiny little Valykrie.

[fightermedic]

now this is really weird, great find btw

[Droid803]

In FS1, there's no damage scaling at all.
Not even the "big ship" damage reduction.

AFAIK, that is.

[Meneldil]

And it's in. Coming soon to a post-7238 nightly near you.

The option is called "$disable weapon damage scaling for player:", and it will disable the rather arbitrary damage scaling the player is subjected to. In retail, a non-huge primary fired by the player was nerfed to 1 percent of its normal damage potential, secondaries were cut down to 5 percent of normal. With this flag active, players will do full damage against big ships, so you'll have to rely on armor.tbl to do any nerfing you feel necessary.

Hahaha what the **** is this

The_E I am genuinely interested to know how this system works on the code level.

Well, there's not much to it, really. When a  "huge" or larger ship gets hit by a weapon that is not "huge", and if that weapon was fired by a player, the damage would get scaled down. In code terms, this is what it looks like:

Code: [Select]

// if the weapon is a small weapon being fired at a big ship
if( is_big_damage_ship && !(wip->wi_flags & (WIF_HURTS_BIG_SHIPS)) ){

// if the player is firing it
if ( from_player && !(The_mission.ai_profile->flags2 & AIPF2_PLAYER_WEAPON_SCALE_FIX)) {
// if it's a laser weapon
if(wip->subtype == WP_LASER){
total_scale *= 0.01f;
} else {
total_scale *= 0.05f;
}
}

// scale based on hull
if(hull_pct > 0.1f) {
total_scale *= hull_pct;
} else {
return 0.0f;
}
}

Are you sure that completely disabling the first damage scaling is the best choice? If I'm reading this correctly, then the second damage reduction, the one that applies to everyone, has a rather moderate effect: in worst case scenario, if you try shooting down a Deimos from 100% hull integrity all the way to 10%, it'll take 10/9 log 10 (= approx. two and a half) as much time from what the raw hitpoint count would suggest. The first reduction on the other hand makes it's hull virtually invulnerable to anything without the "huge" flag.
Another arguably reasonable solution could be to impose a reduction similar to the first one on both the player and the new, (very much) improved AI. So perhaps it'd be better to allow for more customizability via flags in this case.

p.s. sorry for replying to such an old post, but I just saw it, and it's an interesting topic

[The E]

Are you sure that completely disabling the first damage scaling is the best choice?

I think you are misunderstanding the problem and the solution that was implemented. The first scaling, the player-only one, is configurable via the AI Profiles option introduced, the second scaling option is kept due it being expected behaviour.

Further customization can and should be done via armor.tbl.

[Meneldil]

No, but sorry if I wasn't clear enough ("completely disabling" was a rather wrong choice of words for "allowing only completely disabling...").
And "misunderstanding the problem" is subjective, which was more or less my point. You could say the player deals only 1% of the damage he should deal, or you could say that everybody else deals 10000% of what they should.
Do note that from the Retail's perspective the second one makes more sense: the amount of damage the player can inflict is the same in both the Retail and the mods, and is what the developers intended. What changes is the amount of damage the AI can inflict, and that happened due to it's later improvements. That's why I said one could argue that a better way of restoring the balance is restricting the AI too, and not... unrestricting the player.
Now, if you can simulate that by using armor.tbl (that is, if you can globally scale down the damage big ships take from primaries and (independently) small secondaries), then great, and I apologize.
And in that case, for what little it's worth, I would definitively recommend flagging the player-specific restriction away, and imposing a global, potentially milder one. Otherwise the "big ships" become far too vulnerable to the Maxim+Tempest spam for my taste, especially if their hull strength is above say, 50%. But ultimately I guess it is a matter of taste.

[Qent]

And "misunderstanding the problem" is subjective, which was more or less my point. You could say the player deals only 1% of the damage he should deal, or you could say that everybody else deals 10000% of what they should.

Or better yet, leave it in the control of the modder to go either way, which is what has been done.

Do note that from the Retail's perspective the second one makes more sense:

For Retail, the AI should do 100x the damage that a player does with a small gun to a big ship.

the amount of damage the player can inflict is the same in both the Retail and the mods, and is what the developers intended. What changes is the amount of damage the AI can inflict, and that happened due to it's later improvements. That's why I said one could argue that a better way of restoring the balance is restricting the AI too, and not... unrestricting the player.

For new mods like WiH that use much smarter AI, this is probably true. Which is why I suspect that they will probably use your solution.

Now, if you can simulate that by using armor.tbl (that is, if you can globally scale down the damage big ships take from primaries and (independently) small secondaries), then great, and I apologize.

You can.

And in that case, for what little it's worth, I would definitively recommend flagging the player-specific restriction away, and imposing a global, potentially milder one. Otherwise the "big ships" become far too vulnerable to the Maxim+Tempest spam for my taste, especially if their hull strength is above say, 50%. But ultimately I guess it is a matter of taste.

Some mods will probably do this, but Retail must play the same as always.

[Meneldil]

And "misunderstanding the problem" is subjective, which was more or less my point. You could say the player deals only 1% of the damage he should deal, or you could say that everybody else deals 10000% of what they should.

Or better yet, leave it in the control of the modder to go either way, which is what has been done.

Which is what I suggested in my first post
Obviously, I wasn't aware what scale armor.tbl operates on, and now I see there's a FreeSpace Wiki entry on it... well, that's embarrassing *sigh*
So yes, I see it's very much doable, although in a somewhat tiresome, but really flexible way. That table's a brilliant addition.

Basically, it boils down to your "you can" and my "then great, I apologize", which I do mean.

Some mods will probably do this, but Retail must play the same as always.

In Retail that's hardly a problem, since it's AI lacks the necessary tenacity, but a WiH-style Maxim attack by a wing of four crafts firing a quad bank for fifteen seconds will reduce an Orion class destroyer from 100% down to 66% hull integrity. Which I think is bad. Of course, it hopefully wouldn't be allowed to happen in a well designed campaign (such as WiH), but arguably it shouldn't be possible at all.

[assasing123]

is it possible to disable this "silly gameplay trick" behavior as to make the game more realist? i don't see any reason why a small ship cannot do enough damage over time to a capital ship to destroy it, and neither why should  the player weapons do any less damage than other ships.

how can i disable BOTH things for any mod, retail or anything i play with? can this be set to a parameter on the launcher?

[MatthTheGeek]

In Retail that's hardly a problem, since it's AI lacks the necessary tenacity, but a WiH-style Maxim attack by a wing of four crafts firing a quad bank for fifteen seconds will reduce an Orion class destroyer from 100% down to 66% hull integrity. Which I think is bad. Of course, it hopefully wouldn't be allowed to happen in a well designed campaign (such as WiH), but arguably it shouldn't be possible at all.

I don't see what's wrong with that. Think of it as firing multiple anti-material sniper rounds on a tank at the same rate. At some point penetration will wreak your tank's systems.

[The E]

how can i disable BOTH things for any mod, retail or anything i play with? can this be set to a parameter on the launcher?

Only by editing the mods' table files. And no, this will never, ever be a launcher option, due to the extreme gameplay-breaking consequences this would have. In addition, the fact that only appropriately powerful weapons can be used to destroy capital ships is such a fundamental gameplay design choice that removing it would be very, very stupid of us (Not to mention a violation of SCP policy #1, "Don't **** with retail"). Mods can and have gone other ways, but it's not something we can or want to enforce through code changes.

[Meneldil]

In Retail that's hardly a problem, since it's AI lacks the necessary tenacity, but a WiH-style Maxim attack by a wing of four crafts firing a quad bank for fifteen seconds will reduce an Orion class destroyer from 100% down to 66% hull integrity. Which I think is bad. Of course, it hopefully wouldn't be allowed to happen in a well designed campaign (such as WiH), but arguably it shouldn't be possible at all.

I don't see what's wrong with that. Think of it as firing multiple anti-material sniper rounds on a tank at the same rate. At some point penetration will wreak your tank's systems.

Nothing at all if you choose to believe so. You can certainly use technobable to justify going either way. You could also claim that the Retail's reduction wasn't done for some conceptual reasons, but purely for mission balancing ones. I did say it's a matter of taste.
And as for the above mentioned situation, I find it distasteful both because I don't want the Orion to get skewered by fighter mounted canons, and becouse such an attack can be made almost unstoppable. Fighters jump in, shoot until the defenders start closing in, jump out.
(I'll admit however that the BP's Little Devil AI doesn't really come close to the projected 66%, it's closer to 80. So either they have energy management issues, or I screwed up the numbers. But when I test it with mk 2 Hercs, they do exactly as expected, at least for the first 15 seconds.)

[MatthTheGeek]

And as for the above mentioned situation, I find it distasteful both because I don't want the Orion to get skewered by fighter mounted canons, and becouse such an attack can be made almost unstoppable. Fighters jump in, shoot until the defenders start closing in, jump out.

Have you really played WiH ? Fighters mounting maxims are good, but they're far to be the overwhelming nigh-invincible you make it sound like. Capships in BPverse have active armor that can resist a fair amount of those, and Kents will close in and dispatch those long before they can do any really significant damage on their own.

Large, sustained fire of Maxim will drain hull fast, but that's true of everything, right ?

[Meneldil]

Have you really played WiH ? Fighters mounting maxims are good, but they're far to be the overwhelming nigh-invincible you make it sound like.

That's because WiH doesn't allow them to be.
You said "I don't see what's wrong with that", and I replied with what I think is wrong with that. And it certainly didn't involve me saying "look at WiH, it's wrong like that" .
So to sum up what I wanted to say: yes, it's a matter of taste and of course that the balance issues can be resolved by a good mission design. But I still believe it wouldn't be the best choice of settings and that the point (although obviously and admittedly not really a strong one) can be made against it. However, I don't know whether this topic was the best place to do it; sorry if it wasn't.

[assasing123]

how can i disable BOTH things for any mod, retail or anything i play with? can this be set to a parameter on the launcher?

Only by editing the mods' table files. And no, this will never, ever be a launcher option, due to the extreme gameplay-breaking consequences this would have. In addition, the fact that only appropriately powerful weapons can be used to destroy capital ships is such a fundamental gameplay design choice that removing it would be very, very stupid of us (Not to mention a violation of SCP policy #1, "Don't **** with retail"). Mods can and have gone other ways, but it's not something we can or want to enforce through code changes.

true it would "break" gameplay for mods, but could be a single player flag for player tastes, i m not saying it should be enforced at all, and sorry not being mean "In addition, the fact that only appropriately powerful weapons.... etc" it's bull****,  there is no reason a player or fighter cannot finish a capital ship with its primaries, the "big" weapons will still be essential since the ammount of damage they output will always be much more effective than just firing your small guns.

either way, then could you illuminate me on how to exactly modify or what to modify as to disable said game behavior? i have done VERY small modding in FS but at least i know how to not screw up everything so i could appreciate some insight into what table or where to find those modifiers and edit them.