XP Farming

[Fornax]

In the patch122.txt notes:

76. No xps for dodge moves if titan is not in danger being shot.

I tested this and my jocks are still getting piloting experience for dodging when they're not threatened. This is an incentive to engage in silly behaviour like dodging when there's no reason to dodge, which brings me to the subject of XP farming:

One weak spot in TOS is that it allows players to farm PXPs by performing movements that repeatedly cause piloting skill checks. There's many ways to do this. One is to dodge your titan to all of its destinations (or even around in a circle). Another is to repeatedly crouch/stand. Still another is to issue a move command, make attack wait for 1s, then when the attack menu comes up use it to break the move, then repeat the cycle. I consider this to be an exploit and for me it can easily put a damper on what otherwise is an outstanding gaming experience.

I would suggest that NO PXPs be rewarded for any piloting skill check unless one of the following conditions is met:

1. The titan has a threat level. The XP reward could even be scaled to the threat level (20% * threat_level, or some other scheme).
2. The skill check fails and some match-affecting consequence occurs, like the titan suffering damage (something went wrong and the jock learned from it).
3. The skill check occurred because of some event that wasn't controlled by the player. An example of this would be a jump stunt.

While I was doing some testing I had a crouched titan stand up and the jock failed his skill check (99/98). I looked at the team statistics HUD and saw that he had been rewarded somewhere around 150 OXPs for this. Not sure why that happened.

[LarkinVB]

I tested this and my jocks are still getting piloting experience for dodging when they're not threatened.

This is a bug. Will reupload a fixed 1.2.2 today.

While I was doing some testing I had a crouched titan stand up and the jock failed his skill check (99/98). I looked at the team statistics HUD and saw that he had been rewarded somewhere around 150 OXPs for this. Not sure why that happened.

This can have multple reason like avoiding health damage due to damaged life support while crashing down etc. Need more info to check for a bug.

I consider this to be an exploit and for me it can easily put a damper on what otherwise is an outstanding gaming experience.

If a player wants to cheat himself there are numerous ways, too many to prevent them all. Play hotseat, put the enemy on 'wait on call' and kill him without any danger is one of them. You can also hex edit the squad file. 

[Fornax]

Thank you very much! [:)]

A few other odds and ends:

1. Machine guns are listed in the factory as producing 2°C heat, but in combat produce 4°C.

2. Field "3d_terrain = 1" could be added to the [TOS_WS_BATTLE] section of tcc.cfg to allow user to specify a 2d or 3d default.

3. Chance of damaged electrical systems and energy weapons suffering further damage when submerged in water due to shorting out. Depth of water and titan's posture (standing/crouching/lying down) used to determine if location is submerged.

4. Titan temperature increase inflicted by heat weapons could be multiplied by armor's heat conductivity coefficient (multiply by 0.85 if location has duralloy armor, multiply by 1.15 if location has millenia). Duralloy is worst heat sink but best heat shield.

5. Armors provide an amount of EM shielding according to their density and mm's remaining. The heavy armors (millenia and titanium) provide the most EM shielding per mm and the lightest armor (vicenium) provides the least. Alternatively, simply use the weight of armor remaining on a location to determine amount of EM shielding.

6. Balance tweak: Reduce space/weight or increase damage of Guided Missiles. They don't seem to be effective. Maybe I don't know how to use them.

[Fornax]

Nevermind about the machine guns. I didn't know they consumed 2 rounds per attack in close combat.

[LarkinVB]

1. Machine guns are listed in the factory as producing 2°C heat, but in combat produce 4°C.

MGs do double damage/heat at point blank.

4. Titan temperature increase inflicted by heat weapons could be multiplied by armor's heat conductivity coefficient (multiply by 0.85 if location has duralloy armor, multiply by 1.15 if location has millenia). Duralloy is worst heat sink but best heat shield.

I like this idea. If I will ever restart coding for TOS it will probably be added.

6. Balance tweak: Reduce space/weight or increase damage of Guided Missiles. They don't seem to be effective. Maybe I don't know how to use them.

They can be very effective if you don't prefer to fight at close range. Game is balanced after fighting about 500+ battles. Of course GM are support weapons and can't stand on their own.

[Fornax]

Glad you liked the idea [:)]. I daresay it might create a niche for a fifth type of armor:

[font="Courier New"]XXXXXXXX.....[Armor 5].....0.65 AP/mm.....075% Heat.....Medium Weight.....High Bulk.....70($)[/font]

[LarkinVB]

ORIGINAL: Fornax

2. Field "3d_terrain = 1" could be added to the [TOS_WS_BATTLE] section of tcc.cfg to allow user to specify a 2d or 3d default.

It is already available but not documented as

3D_map = 0 with 1 being the default