ELC balance scripts changelog

your team DOES have the advantage if you would be getting bio diesel or advanced coolant otherwise because of going into their respective trees. Would you seriously open up physics or electrical to get a fast engine after entering the biology or chemistry tree? If you do, kiss any sort of research time advantage you have goodbye. Fast engines do make a difference but so does powerful weaponry and a concise research path.

As I've said before, I research gas turbine quite frequently, I see other smart comms do it, and I can't see a reason to really buff it. I'm balancing these scripts primarily off of my own perception of how the game plays out. If gas turbine was underutilized I would buff it somehow but it definitely is not being underutilized. The only engine I really think needs a change is advanced coolant, primarily because of the research times, but I can't think of a good way to make it worth getting with the limitations I have with 2.24 server/client script compatibility. Quite frankly, I don't even know if there's anything I can even do to change it, but that testing will come in the next few days.

 

these scripts as well as the improved jeep turbos are now being used on ELC and all g4tc network servers (VIPER, Napalm's Funhouse)

 

Fair enough, but it would be nice if we had some hard data rather than anecdotal evidence.

Personally, I typically get the engine from the same tree as the armor I want (e.g. if I want regen, I research biodiesel). Since every armor/engine is better than standard, getting to upgraded armor/engines of any kind is sometimes enough to get a significant advantage. To help make my point, here are the research times for 2.24d vanilla armor/engine combos.

Time Armor/Engine
330 Regen-Biodiesel
390 Reactive-Biodiesel
390 Comp-GasTurbine
390 Refl-Fission
390 Comp-Biodiesel
390 Refl-Biodiesel
390 Reactive-3phase
420 Abs-Biodiesel
450 Reactive-Fission
450 Comp-Fission
480 Regen-Fission
480 Abs-AdvCool
480 Abs-Fission
480 Comp-3phase
480 Refl-3phase
510 Regen-3phase
510 Abs-3phase
540 Reactive-AdvCool
540 Reactive-GasTurbine
540 Comp-AdvCool
540 Refl-AdvCool
540 Refl-GasTurbine
570 Regen-AdvCool
570 Regen-GasTurbine
570 Abs-GasTurbine

Unless I want to grief my team by researching composite, the fastest armor/engine combo using gas turbine is 540s, towards the bottom of the list. I will sometimes get gas turbine later if I research biodiesel, but I will rarely research it as my first engine.

 

-90 seconds for researching mechanical, since it is researched in 100% of games. that puts it at 450 seconds, which looks like faster than average according to your chart. for the purposes of the early game, researching bio diesel is the same as researching no engine. the odd tank it saves from retarded tank drivers or sticky stuns does not put it on any sort of equal level with any other researched engine. a similar argument can be made for advanced coolant since you have to not pay attention to your heat for a long time before you start overheating with any other engine and it gives you absolutely no benefit.

 

pickled_heretic:
Have you taken a look on the armor weapon table?
(http://forums.empiresmod.com/showpost.php?p=275545&postcount=4)

Composite is now the worst armor for small tanks. And for heavy tanks it is just to expensive for it's values. Especially against fast firing weapons with lower damage like std canon/ML, salvos or rail gun.
You could raise the health of composite or also lower the health of all other armors (which I would prefer).



If there will be a new version of the scripts maybe you can also fix homing.
Here my old suggestion to lower the lock on times:
http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=11043
If this isn't possible, then maybe increase the damage of homing. It should do a little less damage compared to UML. But not less then half the damage.

Code:

Time to do 2000 damage:
Standard ML.. hits=50 cycleTime=1.2 reloads=12 totalTime=80,40
Upgraded ML.. hits=27 cycleTime=1.0 reloads=4 totalTime=37,20
Salvo ML..... hits=58 cycleTime=0.0 reloads=14 totalTime=42,00
Guided ML.... hits=29 cycleTime=1.0 reloads=7 totalTime=42,00
Upg.Guided ML hits=27 cycleTime=1.5 reloads=6 totalTime=60,00
Homing....... hits=29 cycleTime=2.0 reloads=4 totalTime=80,00
Upg. Homing.. hits=24 cycleTime=3.0 reloads=3 totalTime=87,00
Salvo Homing. hits=50 cycleTime=0.0 reloads=12 totalTime=60,00

Also the Bio MG needs a fix.
I never understood the general idea of Bio MG. You have a cycle time of 0.2 seconds but only the first hit will do the bio damage for 20 seconds. All other hits in this time will just act like a weak version of DU. You can maybe try to drive around the enemy to bio all sides of his armor. But never saw this ingame.

Maybe Bio MG can be fixed by these things (more but shorter bio damage):
-Vehicle/Player Bio Damage 20 (was 4)
-Vehicle/Player Bio Time 5 (was 20)
or the other way (act more like DU)
-Damage 7 (was 5)
-Clip Size 100 (was 50)

 

Now it makes sense why upg guided/upg homing sucks compared to the regular ones. It seems they were balanced based on damage rather than damage over time, which is what we really care about (actually damage over time over distance).

 

Did nobody pay attention to my graphs.

 

http://code.google.com/p/empires-sc...s/2.24d rebalance/scripts/vehicle_weapons.txt

Is this the most recently changed version of the ELC scripts?