[ModPack] dZ_Consolidated_Company_Commander

[me987654]

So I could mod the pilot abilities that give +1 max evasion to give +2 instead... not sure if that would break stuff though.

One thing I'm going to try is seeing if I can move those bonuses much ealier... so almost all pilots can get 5 or 6 evasion

 

[me987654]

I'll be interested in feedback if you go to the super long ranges... I've been thinking about expanding further.. but I'm worried about breaking missions

 

[n3ctaris]

Yeah but that's the thing. You end up with all your pilots being about 3-5 skill in all 4 lines. Then you specialize a bit, get a 6 or 7, then you bring up the rest of the skills and have all your pilots with 5-6 in all lines and maybe an 8 or 9 in one line. That's kind of boring. All of your pilots are mostly the same. Sure, Pilot A will have slightly better gunnery, and pilot B might have the callshot mastery until the rest catch up. But the differences are small, and you mostly just put any pilot in any mech without too much trouble.

If you had to pick between Gunnery 5->6 and Piloting 2->3, then you'd specialize that guy into Gunnery if you wanted him doing a lot of damage -- and his called shots would be bad, he'd be easy to knock over, wouldn't have evasion or bulwalk skills. But he'd hit twice as often as your other guys. Which mech you put him in is really important, and you'd even design your mech around his skills. He'd be completely different from your Gunnery 2, Tactics 8 pilot, right? Differences like that are what make for interesting choices.

Ahh.. I see what you are saying now. I can see some value in a system like this one for sure. The only stat that I think truly has a minimum is Guts, as that extra HP is not an option with the healing times (both vanilla and modded).

 

[ryanzag]

And as a wishlist for modding (would require difficult dll modding though), it would be cool if each pilot had a random unknown maximum number of skill points in a skill tree, after which the costs for that tree tripled.

Eg, Pilot A has a hidden Gunnery cap of 6. Gunnery 7 and above cost way more XP than normal. He has a hidden Tactics cap of 10 though, so he can get to Tactics 10 easily.
Pilot B has the opposite, so he would have a very hard time getting to Tactics 10.

Like a poor man's Potentials system for pilots.

EDIT: Err and throw in 'preferred mech' there while at it, why not.

 

[n3ctaris]

So I could mod the pilot abilities that give +1 max evasion to give +2 instead... not sure if that would break stuff though.

One thing I'm going to try is seeing if I can move those bonuses much earlier... so almost all pilots can get 5 or 6 evasions

Is it possible to add a chassis requirement to the pilot abilities? If you are in a light mech, add +3 max evasion, if you are in a medium +2, Heavy +1, Assault +0

 

[me987654]

Is it possible to add a chassis requirement to the pilot abilities? If you are in a light mech, add +3 max evasion, if you are in a medium +2, Heavy +1, Assault +0

Not sure - however you can modify the overall hit penalty for lights (I play with +4 instead of +2) which accomplishes a similar goal. I don't think this mod uses my evasion changes or gunnery skill changes (which IMO work much better than the blanket nerf to accuracy).

 

[n3ctaris]

Not sure - however you can modify the overall hit penalty for lights (I play with +4 instead of +2) which accomplishes a similar goal. I don't think this mod uses my evasion changes or gunnery skill changes (which IMO work much better than the blanket nerf to accuracy).

The overall hit penalty for lights doesn't really give the piloting tree the value for those chassis that it could. Putting a gunnery or guts focused mechwarrior in a light is the same as putting a pilot there. It would be nice if the differentiation could be tied to the pilot rather than fully the machine. Even keep the +2 light from vanilla, and put the focus on the pilot abilities to increase the hit penalty. +1 hit penalty at piloting 6, and 10? This would help with the overall impact of 'early game' vs 'late game' lights where you don't want to make it a pillow fight in the early game to try and fix the late game.

 

[me987654]

Ok, I'm going to test this and upload shortly. I changed a bunch of stuff....

Made it easier to get pips...

any mech get can 2 pips via normal movement.

Any mech that moves at Victor speed or higher (so all heavies, victor, banshee, zeus, etc) can get 3

Any mech that moves at 140 or higher can get 4 pips (so anything Griffin speed or faster)



Made pips 4, 5 and 6 more effective. Before it was +2 penalty per pip. Now pips 4,5 and 6 each give a +3 penalty


Edit - dumped piloting skill tree changes... I don't think they were needed after all (at least not without more testing) and they somewhat devalue investing the in the tree. That Level 10 ability is now pretty awesome....with a fast or jumpy mech you can give out a +15 penalty to hit


The only thing I'm wondering about is if the buffs to pips 4, 5 and 6 are going to be too extreme.... but then again it shoudl probably be hard to hit things with that much evasion Only testing will tell!

 

[me987654]

The overall hit penalty for lights doesn't really give the piloting tree the value for those chassis that it could. Putting a gunnery or guts focused mechwarrior in a light is the same as putting a pilot there. It would be nice if the differentiation could be tied to the pilot rather than fully the machine. Even keep the +2 light from vanilla, and put the focus on the pilot abilities to increase the hit penalty. +1 hit penalty at piloting 6, and 10? This would help with the overall impact of 'early game' vs 'late game' lights where you don't want to make it a pillow fight in the early game to try and fix the late game.

That's not entirely true - Fast mechs can get more pips.... and you can adjust how far you have to move to get those pips. Max evasion increases are also very good - check the post before this one where I detailed some changes I'm making.

I think the changes basically do what you want.... the reason I moved max evasion earlier in the tree is to make the AI pilots more effective (and I may eventually revert those changes - who knows)

Really I'd like 2 more levels of pips... but I'm not sure that's possible.

 

[ryanzag]

Having the pips/evasion tied to speed rather than 'light' or 'medium' is also way better for another reason - Take Cicada vs Panther. Cicada is medium, but moves fast. Panther is light, but moves slow. Panther should be much easier to hit. If evasion gets tied to speed, then that works out.. but if you tie it all to just 'light' or 'medium' then it doesn't really work out...

Same case for Banshee vs Orion - Banshee should always be harder to hit than Orion because it's a lot faster. It gives up most of its weapons for that, so it should get the evasion rewards.

 

[me987654]

Having the pips/evasion tied to speed rather than 'light' or 'medium' is also way better for another reason - Take Cicada vs Panther. Cicada is medium, but moves fast. Panther is light, but moves slow. Panther should be much easier to hit. If evasion gets tied to speed, then that works out.. but if you tie it all to just 'light' or 'medium' then it doesn't really work out...

Same case for Banshee vs Orion - Banshee should always be harder to hit than Orion because it's a lot faster. It gives up most of its weapons for that, so it should get the evasion rewards.

Yes - exactly.

A Panther does get a bonus over the cicada (+1 extra penalty) even in the stock game... however the cicada can generate more chevrons.

I'm hoping that making the top 3 pips more effective will also help the faster mechs more.

The stock game does penalties of:

2,4,6,8,10,12 for each pip

I'm experimenting with 2,4,6,9,12,15 right now along with pip movement breakpoints of:

20,70,100,130,160,190 (so you get each additional pip at those movement levels). Note that any movement at all gives 1 pip.

Using this specific example a Panther which has a max walk of 120 (same as Orion, centurion, etc) can generate 3 pips from walking. A Cicada 3C has 190 movement, and a Cicada 2A has 210 movement. Both of them can get SIX pips of evasion (although the 3C only gets 6 in cases where it can move the max distance... so the 2A will get 6 more often).

I think buffing 4,5,6 is a good break point because the "slower" mechs all move 120 or less... while the "faster" mechs all move 140 or more. This actually might make the Dragon and Quickdraw useful (they move 140 and thus can get 4 pips).

The 120 assaults are the only "odd men out"... but if you use a pilot who has the evasive movement ability they can get 4 pips and get into "bonus territory".. and they can still get one more pip than the other assaults from basic movement

 

[ryanzag]

Doesn't jumping cause problems there? You can get that 4th pip with a jumping highlander, I think...
Might be fine though if jumping causes your own mech to have a penalty to shooting too (I think tabletop had that?). I think there was a json config for that one too.

 

[n3ctaris]

Having the pips/evasion tied to speed rather than 'light' or 'medium' is also way better for another reason - Take Cicada vs Panther. Cicada is medium, but moves fast. Panther is light, but moves slow. Panther should be much easier to hit. If evasion gets tied to speed, then that works out.. but if you tie it all to just 'light' or 'medium' then it doesn't really work out...

Same case for Banshee vs Orion - Banshee should always be harder to hit than Orion because it's a lot faster. It gives up most of its weapons for that, so it should get the evasion rewards.

That's fair. I am still concerned about early game pillow fights with blanket/global evasion boosts.

6 pips, plus -4 to hit plus 65% base hit chance and the gunner has 3-4 skill... can you get negative to-hit chances?

 

[me987654]

That's fair. I am still concerned about early game pillow fights with blanket/global evasion boosts.

6 pips, plus -4 to hit plus 65% base hit chance and the gunner has 3-4 skill... can you get negative to-hit chances?

If you make all these changes then IMO you can leave the base accuracy at 75%. I actually think changing base accuracy is a bad idea (like using a hammer when you need a scalpel).

I have base accuracy at 75% myself.

 

[n3ctaris]

I'm experimenting with 2,4,6,9,12,15 right now along with pip movement breakpoints of:

20,70,100,130,160,190 (so you get each additional pip at those movement levels). Note that any movement at all gives 1 pip.

I really like this... the -10% per pip is fine for the bottom end, but going to 15% for the back end is a good way to separate the mech speed types. I've seen things that change each pip to 15% base, and I think that's too far on the top end -90% to hit at 6 pips, bleh. Also, like you said, the dragon and some other "high speed" mechs need some love, because they don't get the value for their speed in the vanilla game.

 

[me987654]

Doesn't jumping cause problems there? You can get that 4th pip with a jumping highlander, I think...
Might be fine though if jumping causes your own mech to have a penalty to shooting too (I think tabletop had that?). I think there was a json config for that one too.

That's true - however Jumpjets do cost tonnage and add heat when used (so you also might lose even more tonnage from carrying extra sinks).... so it's not like they come for free.

I think your solution is a good one if we end up needing one (having some level of accuracy penalty for mechs who just jumped)


I mean a banshee with a pilot who has evasive movement can get 4 pips for "free" just by moving without having to add tonnage or incur additional heat.

 

[me987654]

I really like this... the -10% per pip is fine for the bottom end, but going to 15% for the back end is a good way to separate the mech speed types. I've seen things that change each pip to 15% base, and I think that's too far on the top end -90% to hit at 6 pips, bleh. Also, like you said, the dragon and some other "high speed" mechs need some love, because they don't get the value for their speed in the vanilla game.

Yeah I used to play wtih the mod that straight up buffs all evasion levels and I eventually reverted the change (although I've kept and since modified the distance changes to get pips).

We'll see how this works... the idea is to make locusts crazy hard to hit while still having some sort of cap on an ATLAS (which I think can get a max of 3 pips with an evasive movement pilot)

 

[n3ctaris]

Yeah I used to play wtih the mod that straight up buffs all evasion levels and I eventually reverted the change (although I've kept and since modified the distance changes to get pips).

We'll see how this works... the idea is to make locusts crazy hard to hit while still having some sort of cap on an ATLAS (which I think can get a max of 3 pips with an evasive movement pilot)

this is also an indirect buff to sensor lock, as locking a 6pip mech will remove 30% hit penalty, which I think it needs. I'm not sure I'd go to -3 pips for sensor lock as others have suggested as the AI usually has MANY more units to lock you. I could see some value in a -3 pips sensor lock upgrade in the tactics tree at 9 or 10 skill if that's possible.

 

[me987654]

One other thing I've done that I don't think was added to this mod was nerf gunnery skill progression.

I found it very difficult to balance things with the default skill progression due to the 25% increase in gunnery for level 10 pilots. I changed it so level 10 pilots get +16% instead and gain 1.6% per level instead of 2.5%.

 

[ryanzag]

this is also an indirect buff to sensor lock, as locking a 6pip mech will remove 30% hit penalty, which I think it needs. I'm not sure I'd go to -3 pips for sensor lock as others have suggested as the AI usually has MANY more units to lock you. I could see some value in a -3 pips sensor lock upgrade in the tactics tree at 9 or 10 skill if that's possible.

Or maybe just swapping Sensor Lock with Master Tactician as was done for Bulwalk? Then only elite tactician AI will be able to sensor lock you, and making sensor lock more viable for the player as a reason to go heavy into tactics (assuming other changes of some kind to stop you from having boring 8/8/8/8 pilots).