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Kabill's Air Combat Balance Mod


kabill

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EDIT: As of 19.1 Stable, this mod is redundant due to changes to the actual game.

Download from https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8nrent2z14exqo6/MeJmrrgI4J

It's the one under Aircraft Balance Mod. To install, overwrite aircraftweapons.xml and gameconfig.xml with the downloaded files.

Premise:

There's been some discussion about how to stop Foxtrots from dominating the air game. This mod is my attempt to resolve that problem.

Changes:

- The evade ability is buffed considerably. It now only has a 1 second cooldown, occurs slightly quicker and moves the aircraft a little further.

- Torpedoes are nerfed. Their speed and turning ability have been halved.

- Missiles buffed slightly. Missiles (both Xenonaut and alien) have a higher speed and each weapon slot contains 2 missiles rather than 1. Missiles on alien fighters, heavy fighters and interceptors have also been doubled (from 2 to 4).

Consequences:

- Torpedoes are practically useless against any UFO which can evade (fighter, heavy fighter, interceptor and light scout). You *can* score hits with torpedoes against such UFOs, but this happens as a result of a UFO dodging one attack into another (and therefore can't be relied upon). As such, it is no longer possible to rely on Foxtrots to bring down all alien squadrons.

- Condors and later fighter craft are now significantly better. They can take on alien fighters and win with little or no damage if played well. Against larger UFOs like Landing Craft, they still lack the firepower to take them down.

- As such, aircraft diversity is now important.

Feedback and suggestions very much welcome.

Edited by kabill
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I've thought about the consequences of upping the number of missiles per slot; what about if you equip light missiles to a Foxtrot? Does it give it the two missiles per slot, or only one?

It's two missiles per slot (rather than four slots). I originally wanted four individual slots, but it clashes with the cannon in the UI so it's not workable.

This does mean, however, that on a Foxtrot you can equip 2 torpedoes or 4 missiles, allowing the Foxtrot to serve as a reasonable, if still less effective, substitute for a Condor/Corsair. Which is actually better, I think.

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hello gizmogomez,

older version, there was mod attempt (not downloaded) for cluster missles. That means pack of x number missles in 1 hardpoint. but I do not recall how many allowed in a cluster.

the catch, you are fire(ing) from 1 hard point right away; translated there is x on hardpoint, then x missles is launched at once.

R

Edited by rynait
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'Considerably better' was meant to the refer to the act that they were actually usable beyond the first month or two so was a 'relative' improvement rather than an absolute one.

So,there weren't actually many explicit buffs to the Condor other than what they got from the evade buff (which I think is a massive improvement overall, since it makes them actually quite difficult to hit if your timing's good). The only thing they got extra was that their missile slots gave them 2 missiles instead of one (hence my suggestion above).

I never got the opportunity to test the changes out in their entirety from the beginning of a new game (doing that now with the new build!) so I don't know what effect it's had on the difficulty overall. It's obvious that difficulty will go up, though, because using Foxtrots to win air battles was laughably easy once you knew the trick. But this said, in the mid-game tests I did composing this mod, I was able to handily defeat fighters and heavy fighters with minimum damage. Indeed, in one test fight I defeated three Heavy Fighters with two Condors (albeit with one downed and the other badly damaged at the end!). Not sure whether I had additional missiles for that battle though.

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Realistically a hard point can only really service one missile [that has advance guidance software... IE: active radar] as they require a data stream for target ID and a power source to power it [as they have short term internal battery] before launch, as well as streamline of the aircraft. But depending on the frame you could have one on each wing tip, 2-4 on the underside of each wing and 1-2 hard points on the 'belly'. some Aerospace frames can handle 'frames', internal [for Air superiority fighter/interecpter, like the avro arrow] or external for slow or low altitude flyers like chopper.

on a side note, Who must I flail at, bribe.. i mean Hire or talk into making the CF-105 Arrow part of a mod. [i want Canadian tech, and It's in the correct era too.

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There were a number of other (and better) planes available in 1979. The F-16 is a short range single engine interceptor. Don't get me wrong, it's an agile fighter. But for range, I would have chosen something different. Probably a -15.

One wonders how they missed an already-existing, highly advanced, long-range dedicated air-superiority fighter with five times the speed and four times the weapons payload plus a trio of drop tanks when they were doing their research.

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One wonders how they missed an already-existing, highly advanced, long-range dedicated air-superiority fighter with five times the speed and four times the weapons payload plus a trio of drop tanks when they were doing their research.

Referring to which, the F-15?

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Well, apparently they wanted a cheaper fighter to operate. Remember, the Xenonauts do have a limited budget. *shrug*

It kind of raises the question of why the world's militaries (or the US Air Force at the very least) can't manage to bag a UFO when they're operating hundreds of fighters that can fly five times faster and that are massively better armed than the ones the Xenonauts are using.

This is one of the things I was talking about when you're looking at the stability and depth of writing, and how it figures into suspension of disbelief for anyone that's not absolutely ignorant of the subject. It's as off-base as if you saw someone in a movie firing an M16 whose bullets exploded like 500-pound bombs. You'd raise an eyebrow, right? It seems weird unless you've never seen a gun before, or have never heard of what one is or does.

Edited by EchoFourDelta
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It kind of raises the question of why the world's militaries (or the US Air Force at the very least) can't manage to bag a UFO when they're operating hundreds of fighters that can fly five times faster and that are massively better armed than the ones the Xenonauts are using.

Maybe the Xenonauts project is the only one with the super-advanced radars needed to detect UFOs?

My method of explaining away any equipment oddness is that Xenonauts basically gets all the cast-offs. All viewing the Xenonauts project through the lens of game-theory, each nation is trying to piggyback off the contributions of others while inputting the least they can get away with. So, for example, the US isn't going to give away their multi-million dollar aircraft so that *communists* can have their skies protected and safe. They'd rather keep it for themselves in case (/when) everything goes to shit.

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I think they just picked something that sounded cool, wrote it so it sounded plausible, and went with it. That's perfectly fine, too. Sort of the "yesterday's forgotten becomes our tomorrow" kind of thing, where the alternate timeline deviates off with certain things. I've always enjoyed the alternate timeline type of sciences fiction, myself.

The game is very open to modding. And they obviously have no problem with us tweaking the stuff (they encourage it by having a mod forum).

I say we got some F-15s in there. :D

Has anyone experimented with adding the V18 UI back in for the fighter craft? The one with the 4 slots.

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  • 1 month later...

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong. I can't seem to get the names of the vehicles or ordinances to display correctly, they just show XXXX-1 or something similar. This is on a fresh steam instal with the latest v19 experimental build, with no other mods. If someone could tell me if they know what I'm doing wrong I'd appreciate it. It's my first time modding Xenonauts, so there's a good chance I messed it up.

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