Bacon Mod

[RogerBacon]

Fleet Manipulation part 2


#add [shipDesign]=[amount]

This command will attempt to reinforce the currently selected fleet with [amount] of [ship design] ships. If [amount] is left off it defaults to 1.

I saw this as a feature request while reading the forums and I think it is a good idea. When my fleets take combat losses I want an easy way to reinforce them. I think this fulfills that need.

It will find the nearest [amount] of ships, excluding those already in a fleet, those with less that 33% fuel, and those with more than 10 damaged components.

Note: the previously posted #add command has been renamed to #join.

[RogerBacon]

Damage Report

hotkey control-r

Now you can tell quickly if your ship is in red because its lost 1 armor or if its something more serious.

[Sparviero]

[RogerBacon]

Aces

To go along with crew levels, we have the ability for fighter and bomber pilots to gain perks. Unlike ship crews, there is no method to track cumulative stats so I just give a small chance to gain a perk when the fighter does damage.
Here are a group of torpedo bombers that have each gained some minor perk. When a pilot gains a perk for the first time he is given a custom name to distinguish him from a vanilla pilot. The generic torpedo bomber is also shown for comparison purposes.

[rjord2021]

Hi RogerBacon.....

I have sent you an email asking a few questions about your mod.
Cheers

Roy

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: rjord1

Hi RogerBacon.....

I have sent you an email asking a few questions about your mod.
Cheers

Roy

Hi Roy,
I just checked my settings and the email account I have associated with my forum account is an old one. I don't have access to it anymore. Can you send me a private message instead?

[rjord2021]

Message sent.

[RogerBacon]

Last item before the mod will be Feature Complete.
After this I will concentrate exclusively on testing

Fighters
I've always disliked how fighters are just another weapon with no identity of their own. They buzz about like little bees while the carrier fights alongside them. I wanted something more like World War 2 cariers, or Battlestar Galactica, or Space Battleship Yamato. To that end, I've made some changes which I will detail in the next post. Before that, Below is a short story of a battle I had over the weekend. Please ignore my poor writing style but note that everything in the narrative actually happened as I describe. It should give you an idea of the finer features of the mod with regard to fighters.

Carrier Strike at Red Rock Lair

The Red Rock Raiders had been plaguing merchant shipping in the Aurora sector for too long. High command was finally going to deal with them. The captain of the Hosho had his orders. The Hosho would jump in to the edge of the Tebis system, near the small moon of Tebis 9. From there it would launch a long range strike against the Red Rock’s main base, located nearly one third of the way across the system. The Hosho was the first of a new class of warship—a dedicated carrier. It had no weapons of its own but it carried 24 of the new light torpedo bombers, as well as one squadron (4) of fighters. Intelligence had confirmed that the Red Rock Raiders weren’t using fighters so the Hosho’s fighters wouldn’t be taking part in the raid. It should be an easy mission.

The Hosho dropped out of hyperspace and the captain assessed the tactical situation. They were out of position - closer to Tebis seven’s orbit than Tebis nine’s. That placed them within Tebis’ gravity well. That was not surprising; hyperjumps were never a sure thing.

The Red Rock lair was exactly where it was predicted to be but intelligence hadn’t said anything about the cruisers that were also stationed there. Again, it was not a total surprise to the captain. He had expected there to be some other pirate ships present. Of more immediate concern, however, was the pirate cruiser, the Stellar Claw, which was located about halfway between the Hosho and the pirate base, which was even now turning to engage the Hosho. The captain decided that the Stellar Claw would be the first target for the day. After his torpedo bombers made quick work of it they would continue on toward the base.

The Hosho’s bombers had been launched as soon as Hosho had exited hyperspace and were well on their way toward the base. The captain gave them a new order to attack the Stellar Claw instead. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared in front of the Hosho, directly between it and its escape path outside of Tebis’s gravity well. It was a cruiser, Iron Glory and it had come from the base. That meant the base was outside of Tebis’ gravity well. Intelligence had neglected to mention that fact.

The Iron Glory would have to be dealt with if Hosho was to make it clear of Tebis’ gravity well. The captain ordered eight of the bombers to break off their attack run on the Stellar Claw and engage the Iron Glory instead. It would take time for them to return though so the captain ordered the Hosho to turn sixty degrees to port to buy some time. They were still heading out of the gravity well but it would take longer now. At least intelligence had gotten one thing right; there were no enemy fighters launching to engage the Hosho’s bombers.

The remaining sixteen bombers finally reached the Stellar Claw and made quick work of her. However, four of the bombers had overloaded their weapon’s plasma generators when firing. That was to be expected. You couldn’t put a capital ship sized weapon on a bomber and not expect it to burn out quite often. Fortunately those components could be hot swapped nearly instantly once the bomber was back on board. The four unarmed bombers headed back to the Hosho for rearming. That left twelve bombers to engage the pirate base. It wasn’t a strong force and the captain had a decision to make. Should he order them to continue on to the base or recall them and wait to launch a strike with all bombers?

The decision was taken out of the captain’s hands very quickly though as two more pirate cruisers appeared around the Hosho. They, along with the Iron Glory, formed a semi-circle around the Hosho in perfect position to keep it from escaping the gravity well. The captain knew it was just luck; hyperjumps were too inaccurate for that to have been planned. The captain ordered the remaining twelve bombers to engage the new threats, sending six at each of the cruisers. Meanwhile, the Hosho would change course again but this time the captain would head directly at the Iron Glory. Hosho’s eight bombers were just reaching it. The captain would gamble that they could take it out and allow him to punch though toward freedom rather than diving deeper into Tebis’ gravity well.

Iron Glory didn’t go down easily. It destroyed two bombers and damaged another two before dying. Those bombers would take a month or more to replace and cost the empire some money as well but it had been worth it. Hosho was now on a vector to clear the gravity well and the two remaining pirate cruisers would not be in a position to stop her. A quick scan of the pirate cruisers showed that they must have been newly completed because their shields were not yet fully charged. That would help the Hosho’s bombers inflict some lasting damage.

Finally clear of the gravity well and with all bombers back aboard, the captain assessed his situation: five bombers destroyed, a base with several pirate ships present, and located where those ships could jump to engage the Hosho with little warning. This was not the mission that high command had intended for Hosho. It was time to accept a tactical victory and leave. Red Rock Lair would remain operational for now. The captain knew he would return another day. Hosho’s two sister ships were nearing completion at the empire’s shipyards and when they were finished Red Rock Lair would fall.

[rjord2021]

Looking forward to seeing your mod......

[Sparviero]

[:)]

[Unforeseen]

Making a bomberbay component is an intriguing idea. I didn't even know that was possible. How did you do it?

[RogerBacon]

Fighters, part 2
Note: all references to "fighters" below applies to both fighters and bombers unless otherwise stated.

In my little AAR above "Carrier Strike at Red Rock Lair" (which probably nobody read because it was too long but whatever) I described the way fighters are now working in my mod. Here are the details.

(slightly) Variable Range
In vanilla DWU all fighters have a range of 1500. Now they have different ranges based on their speed. A fighter with speed 100 will have the same range as vanilla DWU while faster fighters will have longer range and slower fighters will have shorter range. They are not big differences though.
Additionally, fighters from bases will have 1.4 times the range of fighters from ships. No more standing off and letting your fighters wipe out bases from afar.

Range Multiple
In BaconSettings.txt there is a setting fighterRangeMultiple which will multiply the range of all fighters by the square root of the number here. I've tested it up to 20, which I like and its what I'm using.

Limited Ammo (simulated)
In BaconSettings.txt there are settings ammoExhaustChanceMissile and ammoExhaustChanceTorpedo where you can set the chance for a bomber to be out of ammo after firing a shot. So, for example, setting it to 0.25 means a bomber would have , on average, 4 shots. Remember, the first shot is likely to miss if the target is moving away because the AI tends to fire as soon as it is in range.

Fighter build cost and build time
In BaconSettings.txt there are settings fighterBuildCost and fighterBuildSpeedDivisor that allow you to set a monetary cost to build fighters and to slow down their production. Without these limitations a carrier can just sit back and spam bombers until every ship in the system is dust. I didvide fighter production by 20 (ten times slower than vanilla) and use a cost of 3 (30 credits per fighter).

Fighters.txt
In fighters.txt I have tripled the damage of bombers (not fighters) to account for their limited ammo. Feel free to use your own values, as always.

With these settings I'm finding it fun to play with carriers and fighter-carrying ships. Of course everyone will have their own idea of what is balanced so that is why I made it as moddable as I could. Note that all of this is really dependant on using the stars gravity wells. Without this range doesn't matter as ships would jump right on top of each other as in vanilla.

Controls

In vanilla DWU its pretty hard to get fighters to do what you want. It still is with this mod but I've made some progress.

Automate flight ops
control-A will automate flight ops for the currently selected carrier. You will see a visual indication of this by a "*" preceding the carrier's name. In this mode the carrier will launch fighters and choose their targets. But wait. That's exactly what happens in vanilla DWU, right? So why do we need this. Well, because now the default behavior is full manual control of launching and targeting.

Manual launch and target selection
When not in automatic mode (or under AI control) you can selecte targets and launch strikes with the following hotkeys

Alt-4 designates a ship as a target for the hotkeys below.

Alt-5 orders bombers to attack the target. If you have a bomber selected then it will attack the target. If you have a carrier selected then all bombers will attack the target. If you have a fleet selected then all bombers on all ships in the fleet will attack the target.

Alt-6 is the same as alt-5 except it only applies to bombers onboard. Bombers already on a strike mission will continue to their target.

Additionally, I've tweaked some things so that fighters (not bombers) should avoid attacking ships unless directed to do so. They will prioritize CAP and target bombers. Its not 100% but it seems to work.

There's been a lot done with fighters and I may have missed something but those are the highlights.

[RogerBacon]

[Edit] Replaced images with non-zoomed versions.

OK, I know I said it was feature complete but there was one more thing I did that I want to include. I've always hated the drop shadow and the font used in the game. For me it is really hard to read. So, at least for theinfo panel in the lower left corner, I changed it. Here is what it looks like now.
The alignment is a little messed up but that's a small price to pay for better readability (for me anyway).



And here's the original



Some people may prefer the old one so it is an optional change. I would remove the drop shadow from the other panels but its a lot of work and I want to wrap this up.

[Hattori Hanzo]

I strongly prefer the original, much more readable

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

I strongly prefer the original, much more readable

And that's why I made it optional. However, I can't see how anyone could like the original font more. Look at the spacing for the "1" on the troops line. It's so close to the 6 as to be almost indistinguishable. On the planet summary screen I know its hard to see a "1" in this font. Many times I have sorted by GDP and been surprised to see a planet that I thought said "26" be near the top because it was really "216".

[Retreat1970]

The Galactic Order of Bacon is irresistible.

[BigWolfChris]

Can you do a normal screenshot on that in game that isn't blown up?

The new look I like, but without seeing it at it's proper size, can't be certain

[rjord2021]

The only issues I have with text is when you have one color text which can not be read easily against the back ground color. I have spent ages trying to get a uniform text color such as black which would be more easily readable across all empires.

[Hattori Hanzo]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

I strongly prefer the original, much more readable

And that's why I made it optional. However, I can't see how anyone could like the original font more. Look at the spacing for the "1" on the troops line. It's so close to the 6 as to be almost indistinguishable. On the planet summary screen I know its hard to see a "1" in this font. Many times I have sorted by GDP and been surprised to see a planet that I thought said "26" be near the top because it was really "216".

you're right, sometimes it's hard to cearly see the "1" in the "planet summary screen" - also there are some problems with main colors and background colors in the "diplomacy" screen.

however I still prefer the "style" of the original DW:U font.

font preferences apart, I strongly appreciate your efforts to mod and improve Distant Worlds.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: BigWolf
Can you do a normal screenshot on that in game that isn't blown up?

Done.

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo
you're right, sometimes it's hard to clearly see the "1" in the "planet summary screen" - also there are some problems with main colors and background colors in the "diplomacy" screen.

Yeah, those color combinations are the worst. Sometimes they combine a yellow with some other color that is totally unreadable. I'm like "OK, these guys don't like me but its not worth the effort to try and read why. Just nuke 'em".