If you compare the damage per minute of two weapons without including the armor of the enemy you won't see the real effect in the game. Let me give you an example.
Weapon 1: ROF 10; Damage per round: 200; Damage per minute: 2000
Weapon 2: ROF 20; Damage per round: 100; Damage per minute: 2000
Two anti-tank weapons with the same damage per minute but different damage per round. We can ignore the modifiers because they have the same and the accuracy is also the same. Now the result against an NP tank with Scorpion body during Alpha 06.
Resulting damage per minute = (Base damage - armor) x ROF
Weapon 1: (200 - 23) x 10 = 1770
Weapon 2: (100 - 23) x 20 = 1540
As you can see, if you don't include the armor of the enemy into your calculations you think these two weapons are doing the same damage to an enemy unit but they don't.
If you really want to increase the accuracy of the MRP you shouldn't decrease the ROF as much as you suggested. Instead of increasing the firePause to 14 you should only increase it to 13. I don't see any benefit for gameplay by changing these values if the MRP becomes as powerful as before. But if you really want it, just do it, test it and tell us the result.
I'm not sure what your point is here, because I already mentioned the fact I'm quiet well aware that I wasn’t taking into account the targets armour, and as such the damage value of 1712 is not the actual real world damage per minute and that the real world damage per minute is going to be less than this when adjusted for the targets armour
But that’s still isn’t explaining why you seem to think that slightly increasing the accuracy and slightly decreasing the rate of fire to compensate is suddenly going to make the mini rocket pod overpowered because that’s simply not the case, the fact is the total damage remains exactly the same against the same target.
If you increase the accuracy so the weapon hits say an extra 50 times per minute for example then you reduce the rate of fire by the same amount so that it also fires 50 less rounds per minute ergo the damage remains exactly the same against the same target.
Now of course the collation between rate of fire and accuracy isn’t exactly 1 to 1 so simply adjusting rate of fire and accuracy by the same amount isn’t going to produce exactly the result you expect but it does give you a starting point and this is where in game testing comes in and you can adjust the values up or down slightly until you get the result that you expect.
I was merely doing simple ball park calculations to demonstrate the point that you are wrong when you say increasing the accuracy and slightly decreasing the rate of fire to compensate is going to make the mini rocket pod overpowered because its not, not if you do it properly.
Regarding the costs of the Medium Cannon, this can be a part of the decision of the player. It's not only the question if you want to use fast but less strong units or strong but less fast units. The difference is also that Cannons are worse against units compared with Anti-Tank weapons but are better against structures and Cyborgs. That means, the player has to include several parameters into his decision and the costs can be one of it. I admit that there is no reason why the Medium Cannon is so much more expensive but there is also no reason why not. If you see one, just tell me.
To my mind if the ultimate aim of this is to make the heavy cannon and the lancer equal then actually the medium cannon should in theory be less expensive than the lancer due to the fact that its an inferior weapon when compared to the lancer, the fact that the damage has been tuned in such a way that at that point in the game the damage of both is roughly equal so that they are both viable choices is neither here nor there, so given that cannons are much simpler weapons than rocket systems and much easier to produce require less materials to produce, then it makes no sense for it to be more expensive.
More over the idea of balancing like this is so that everything is on the same curve and when you have a situation like this then it needs to be adjusted so that its sits at the appropriate location on that curve, currently the cost of medium cannon is set wrong making it an outlier therefore it should be adjusted to bring it back in line
If you want to make the Medium Cannon less expensive, you have to do it with all Cannons for consistency. And I don't know what consequences this would have for later levels. Farther, if you start to make the Medium Cannon as expensive as the Lancer you have to adjust the whole cost system. Because you have also had a look at Anti-Personnel and Artillery weapons. What are their costs compared with other weapon classes? And what should be the cost of the Heavy Cannon? With which weapon do you want to compare it? And what about the Light Cannon? I see a lot of work with not much benefit. Please don't understand me wrong: I'm not categorically against it. But this is a minor issue for me and the benefit I see is too low for all the work we would have to do.
I get the point that you are making here but you seem to be over thinking it somewhat because there is no need to adjust the cost of the other weapons because they are already at there appropriate location on the cost curve
So let's put this into context
The light cannon should be just slightly more then the heavy machine-gun which it is, the heavy cannon should be the same as the lancer and the medium cannon should be somewhere in the middle
So currently light cannon on halftracks and a cobra body costs 162 power, a lancer on halftracks and a cobra body costs 187 power, the difference between those 2 values is 25 therefore the medium cannon on a cobra body and haft tracks should be 174.5 which is exactly half way between the cost of a light cannon and a heavy cannon
Nice and tidy and simple and now the medium cannon is at its correct location on the cost curve
By the way: Where is the price of weapons, structures etc. coded
go in to the appropriate file and look up "buildPower"
About our discussion of the speed calculation system, we should wait until someone told us if it's hardcoded or not. If it's hardcoded it will be way more difficult to change it because all changes would then also affect MP games.
Actually I've been thinking about this and I don’t think we have to alter the calculations at all and here is why, ok so currently the engine upgrades appear to work like this
Engine power = engine power + (engine power x upgrade value)
So a cobra body has an engine power of 15,000 before upgrades each engine upgrade adds 5% so the math is
Engine power = 15000 + (15000 x 0.05)
That gives the cobra an engine power of 15750 after 1 upgrade and this is indeed what we see in game after applying the engine upgrade on alpha 6
Now the problem with the current implementation and why engine upgrades don't work correctly is because base speed is a fixed value, and because it’s a fixed value applying more engine power doesn't change the base speed this is incorrect implementation, therefore in order to correct this problem you need to do 1 of 2 things
Either you have to change the calculations in a manor similar to what I suggested before or you need to alter the engine upgrade which is probably the simpler approach and something that we can do
So instead of the engine upgrade doing just
Engine power = engine power + (engine power x upgrade value)
It needs to do
Engine power = engine power + (engine power x upgrade value)
And
Base speed = base speed + (base speed x upgrade value)
This way when you apply an engine upgrade it will increase the engine power by 5% but it will also increase the maximum possible speed by 5% as well this way when you add engine upgrade ALL UNITS get faster and not just the really heavy ones
I think "speed" upgrades and prices can wait for another time. The original purpose of this mod, to make useless weapons/units viable, should be the first goal. Then come back to these things later if need be.
true enough but i figure if you fix stuff like this as you go then it saves it being forgotten later on, i mean ultimately that's was the whole point of starting at alpha 1 and then adjusting things level by level, so we don't forget to address stuff like this.
I think 25 is still good there. Rockets are all specialized to do some role and bunker-buster exists to hit structures.
with regards to the modifiers Alfred is quiet correct and that's why i mentioned it, i get that anti tank weapons strictly speaking aren't supposed to be used on structures, but the reality is that the bunker buster isn't currently a viable alternative it does no damage to enemy units and therefore cant defend it's self, its rate of fire is way to low, and given that currently there is no way to make bunkers busters auto fire favour structures over enemy units they are simply not a viable alternative alone or as part of a combined arms assault and this is why i only ever use bunker busters on vtols and even then i only ever use then maybe a half dozen times in the entire game because they are largely useless and as such need to be completely reworked from the ground up.
At least flamers can damage enemy units so there not totally useless, although really flamers need more work because currently they are to weak to be effective against New Paradigm units due to there stronger thermal resistance.
i know this might be a totally crazy idea but I'm wondering if its possible to combine the bunker buster and the lancer in to a single unit and then simply have it fire the appropriate rocket depending on the target so if the target is a structure it will fire the bunker buster rocket if the target is an enemy unit it will fire the AT rockets.
I'm not sure if you have ever played dune but the imperial Sardaukar did this they where armed with both machine-guns and rockets and would fire the appropriate weapon depending on the target so if the target was infantry it would user machine-guns if the target was vehicles it would use rockets, and I'm wondering if something like this could be a viable work around, given all the issues bunkers busters have currently.