MCT v0.22

19.August 2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.31

UniBar was causing serious problems. Removed it for now. :(

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19.August 2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.30

OOZ Battle Display shortened to 7 lines from 9.

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17.August 2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.29.1

Battle Display reports more concise, display duration longer, and are less frequent.

- Cut the steps reported from 19 to 7,
- Made reports from different steps more consistent,
- Cut lines from a maximum of 10 to a consistent 7 (could increase for long ship names),

If the reports are still too intrusive, please do let me know.

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17.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.28

Having discovered rogue elements operating according to MICT Doctrine, The MICT Council has decided that Defence Officers working in MICT Ships will be trained to face this new threat. Since MICT operates on the prime principle of mobility, MICT Defence Officers are trained to immobilize their opponents' ships, blind them, deny them the crutches that they lean upon, remove their ability to fight, destroy the shields that they cower behind, and ultimately, defeat all comers.

Shortly after this decision was reached, a lone Xenon N was belatedly spotted fleeing after having stolen the plans for the new training.

MICT Defence Officers based on capital ships will now designate jump drives, engines, radar, drone launch bays, turrets, missile launchers, and shield generators for targeting. Turrets will now fire upon any of these surface elements that are within range and line of fire. If no surface elements of high priority are found, turrets will fire directly upon the hull of hostile capital ships.

MICT Defence Officers will use their drones more efficiently:
- Since capital ships cannot field the drone numbers that stations can, they will use drones to surgically strike important modules in multiple small groups rather than sending them in large swarms.
-- Primary targets are the jump drive, engines, and drone launch bays. Drones will be launched against these targets even if they are not within line of sight.
-- Shield generators are a secondary target. Drones will be launched against these only if they are within line of sight.
--- After they destroy their designated target, drones will search within a 500 meter radius of their initial target to seek and destroy other priority targets. If none are found, they will try to dock with their parent ship.

-- These targets, in addition to radar, turrets, and missile launchers, are also designated as priority targets for turret fire.

Will not conflict with cicero111's Better Turrets, nor with the adaptation of Better Turrets implemented in Rubini's Conquer Mod and in CWIR. However, MICT Ships will no longer use Better Turrets nor Rubini's adaptation.

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14.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.27

MICT Captains now have an entry added to their pre-engagement checklist to make sure that they have valid targets before they initiate attack.

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17.August 2015 - MICT_supp2 updated to v0.27

Bugfix to MICT escort code

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19.August 2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.23

UniBar was causing serious problems. Removed it for now. :(

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19.August 2015 - Miscellaneous OZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.22

OOZ Battle Display shortened to 7 lines from 9.

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17.August 2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.21

OOZ Battle Display made more concise for games with extremely long ship names.

MCT v0.21

15.August 2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.20

- Enter the UniBar! Shield and Hull status of ships in trouble OOZ are now displayed in a status bar. Green = Shields, Red = Hull. Thanks and Kudos go to UniTrader for the UniBar.
- Initial reports should now no longer be overly cautious. All Threat Levels reflect actual battlefield conditions.

MCT v0.20 - The Split Special

14.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.26

MICT ships are more responsive when engaged in combat with stations.

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13.Aug.2015 - MICT_supp2 updated to v0.26

Split captains will now no longer wait for authorization to break attack and open fire. They will always be searching for targets while flying in formation, and will always break and attack immediately when a hostile target is detected, regardless of whether or not they are authorized to do so.

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13.August.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.19

Drones and XS class ships will no longer send reports when accosted OOZ.

Thanks to Scoob for pointing this out.

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MOCT_supp2 updated to 0.04

Having been hammered relentlessly by the Xenon for 25 years, Family Ryak, already formidable warriors, have developed a warrior culture of peerless resilience and tenacity.

Why?

Lore: They're Split. They're supposed to be awesome warriors, but suck at pretty much everything else.

Gameplay: Particularly with a fairly large percentage of Xenon running MICT with MOCT_supp2, there's a tendency for Family Ryak to get blasted to within an inch of extinction; that inch thanks only to the fact that stations are indestructible without mods that change that. And while they ought to have the fight of their lives, I think that it would be a shame if they were extinguished before the player even gets to see them.

Besides, they're Split.

What does this mean in gameplay terms?

Split captains, pilots, and defence officers will tend to be excellent. Split of other trades, not so much.

For those also running MICT, Split ships would almost always fly MICT, except their engineers kinda suck. Why do they suck?

1) Remember how Split ships are awesome implements of war, but not so awesome pieces of engineering? These are the engineers that designed those.

2) Lore holds that the really smart Split are the women, and all the Split engineers in the game are male.

That said, ships with Split crews have the highest chance to operate according to MICT doctrine.

MCT v0.19

13.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.18

A few changes to how the Battle Display works with regard to battles OOZ:

• The initial threat assessments that your crews make to OOZ threats assume that the threat will do the maximum amount of damage that it possibly can.
  
• Following threat assessments take only the amount of damage that a hostile threat did in its last salvo, and projects that into a survivability threshold.
  
  
• IF that threshold later drops, such that the Threat Level is elevated to Level 4, the affected captain starts sending a steady stream of reports with real-time updates of the status of their shields and hull.
  
• If the threshold drops further, such that the Threat Level is elevated to Level 5 and above, the affected captain starts sending urgent reports, and Betty reinforces those reports by sounding the Skunk's klaxon which should be very hard to miss.

Also cleaned up and optimized the code in general, although it wasn't very resource-intensive in the first place. Messy code makes me itch.

Happy 13th, everyone!

MCT v0.18

12.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.25

Legendary Hyperion captain-turned-multibillion-credit-mogul Sparky of the ubiquitous Sparkycorp pointed out that MICT Capital Ship Captains are stupid. You heard 'im right, stuuuuupid. Why? Because although MICT Captains take range into account, they often fly smack-dab right into opponent ships' guns! On purpose! Possibly because of adoption of some obscure Split ritual that seems to indicate that doing so is an indication of one's bravery, or some such nonsense.

The MICT council, with typical level-headedness, did not get angry. Rather, they decided to look into the matter and try to decide a better course of action. MICTCorp, with some marginal almost non-existent help from Sparkycorp, now present the SparkyManeouver:

MICT Capital Ship Captains will now try to maneouver their ships towards opponents' weakest points.

However, there has been some resistance among the elite cadre of MICT Sucellus and Balor Captains. They insist to go the opposite direction, and face opponents' strongest points. Asked for an explanation, they stoic band simply smirked and said ""Iñigo Montoya is chickenz."

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11.Aug.2015 - MICT_supp2 updated to v0.25

MICT Squadrons OOZ now more efficiently:

- break formation and attack when attack authorization is given and hostile targets are detected,
- and rejoin formation when no hostile targets are detected.

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10.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.24

Breakthrough!

Although the Teladi would like nothing better than to sit out a battle in stasis and let their Split and Argon brethren take care of it, a young Teladi engineer, stuck in one of MICTCorp's many Stromvoks, was finally convinced that at least knowing when a battle is over is important for the maximization of profitsss, not to mention the considerable lengthening of his life expectancy. The inventive engineer devised a means of detecting if an enemy ship has been destroyed, and, in that event, forcibly removing the captain from stasis even in the midst of a boost maneouver. The prototype, called the All-clear-waker-upper, involves a stick sticking out of a ship connected to a bucket of cold water, but was resisted by some Argon captains whose log-like ability to resist waking is simply astounding. The young engineer has since invented the ALL-CLEAR-WAKER-UPPER-RIGHT-NOW!!! involving a longer stick connected to a bucket filled with ice-cold strawberry syrup. MICT Captains have taken notice.

MICT Ships in combat are now aware when a target ship has been destroyed while they are undergoing a tactical boost maneouver.

The engineer has since been transferred to a Talorcan.

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Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.23

A bug in the neural nanonics forcibly implanted into all MICT captains' brains via seeding of nano-creepers into their strawberry-flavored pancakes caused data from everywhere in the galaxy to flow into the Skunk's mighty multi-function display. Unfortunately, this bug has since been isolated, and has since been fixed.

The Battle Display will now only display data from player-owned assets which are engaged in combat while in-zone.

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11.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.17

The great MICT captain, iWARR, lamented the loss of the Talorcan's brave pilot who very recently devised a most ingenious means of increasing his battlefield awareness. Blaming the young Teladi pilot's demise on the seeming lack of alertness on the part of the player who has a penchant for digging through obscure menus while his brethren are risking their necks, Captain iWARR thought it only fair that the same stick-and-bucket system be installed on the Skunk. He looks forward to the player being at least aware when his comrades face danger in parts unknown.

Priority alerts are now much harder to miss when player-owned ships and stations face threats OOZ with Threat Levels 5 or above.

Thanks to iWARR for suggesting this.

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10.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.16

Enter the Battle Display.

Player-owned ships and stations that come under fire while the player is out-of-zone notify the player with a threat assessment and a live status display.

Threat Assessment is on a scale from 1-5, with 1 being the least threatening, and 5 being the most threatening.

Threat Levels:
1 - No threat, we can handle it.
2
3 - We're about evenly matched. Think about sending reinforcements.
4
5 - We're up against stiff opposition. SEND HELP NOW!
6 - We're doomed! Tell them... tell them that... AHHHH!

Thanks to iWARR for pointing out that this is, in fact, a good idea.

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Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.15

Bugfix. Thanks to xrook for spotting and reporting the tell-tale debug spew.

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9.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.14

None of Ego's parameters were reducing damage due to relative speed, so wrote one.

Slower ships (and stations, of course) will do less damage to faster ships.

Changes to balance, yet again:

primaryweaponfactor changed to 0.35 (vanilla: 1.0)
secondaryweaponfactor changed to 0.35 (vanilla: 1.0)
turretfactor changed to 0.30 (vanilla: 1.0)
droneprimaryfactor changed to 0.07 (vanilla: 0.35)
dronesecondaryfactor changed to 0.04 (vanilla: 0.20)

The rest of the parameters set back to vanilla.

Effect of pilot skill on defence implemented in MOCT_v0.13, and the much earlier effect of crew skill on attack are, of course, still in effect.
And just to remind: drones from capital ships and stations are still used in the OOZ calculations, although effect per drone is much reduced as compared to vanilla.

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Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.13

If a defender has a pilot, the pilot's skill is taken into account.

Damage done OOZ is reduced by up to 40%, depending on defending pilots' skill.

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Miscellaneous OOZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.12

OOZ Rebalance attempt number 2.

Problems with the first attempt in MOCT 0.11:

maneouverfactor, rather than increasing a ship's defence proportional to maneouverability the way it said it should, was increasing damage that a ship dealt in inverse proportion to maneouverability. Reset it back to vanilla, since I don't want faster ships doing either more, nor less damage, but wanted to affect what damage they take on average.
Capital ships with primary and/or secondary damage were doing excessive amounts of damage. Lowered primaryweaponfactor and secondaryweaponfactor to scale with lowered turretfactor
Turrets were doing way too little damage. Increased turretfactor a bit. Still much lower than vanilla.
Drones were having too little impact on OOZ combat. Increased. Still much lower than vanilla.
sizefactor scales damage a bit according to ship size. Increased this to approximate the effects of maneouverability since smaller ships tend to be faster.

Details:

primaryweaponfactor decreased to 0.5, was 1.0
secondaryweaponfactor decreased to 0.5, was 1.0
turretfactor increased to 0.35, was 0.1 (vanilla has it at 1.0)
droneprimaryfactor increased to 0.07, was 0.035 (vanilla has it at 0.35)
dronesecondaryfactor increased to 0.04, was 0.02 (vanilla has it at 0.2)
maneouverfactor reduced to vanilla 0.42, was 0.84
sizefactor increased to 0.85, was 0.5

MCT v0.17

Bugfix.

MCT v0.16:

7.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks interim branch updated to v0.21.2

Ships will not pursue beyond the zone in which combat is initiated.

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6.Aug.2015 - MICT_supp2 updated to v0.24

Huge Bugfix - Due to a logic problem, MICT Squadron subordinates were not attacking when they were supposed to. Now they do.

Just to refresh: MICT Squadron subordinates have orders to stay in formation unless their Squadron Commander gives them authorization to break off and attack.
This authorization is given when:

• The MICT Squadron Commander has orders to attack a target,
  
• attack all enemies,
  
• or patrol;
  
• or MICT ships are escorting a civilian vessel.

If authorization to attack is given, MICT Squadrons actively scan for hostile targets.

• Capital ships in a MICT Squadron will use their own sensors, and will acquire hostile targets within their own sensor range,
  
• Fighters will be guided by fire control in the capital ship that they are escorting.

If a hostile target is detected, and permission to fire is given, MICT Doctrine holds that MICT Squadrons must utilize their superior mobility. Therefore, they have orders to break formation and attack.

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MICT_supp4 updated to v0.09

Removed notifications of drone launch from cockpit display.

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Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.21

Ships whose crews decide to boost will turn before doing so.

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5.Aug.2015 - Miscellaneous IZ Combat Tweaks updated to v0.20

Tweaked movement thresholds. MICT ships should boost much less, boost engines having more of a back-up function to jump-drives and regular engines.

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MICT_supp2 updated to v0.23

Fighters escorting a capital ship will be guided by the capital ship's sensors for finding and engaging hostile targets.

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3.Aug.2015 - MICT_supp4 updated to v0.08


Station-based Defence Officers now purchase combat drones.


Since they started actually using their combat drones five days ago, defence officers watched their drone reserves deplete steadily, and started wondering why they weren't restocking them. So they put their heads together, asked their managers how those market-buyer-thingers work, and now they've started ordering them by the hundred!

ALL NPC stations with defence officers will now purchase combat drones. They will fill up their stations' drone storage to almost full capacity, leaving a reserve of 100 drones for silly things like cargolifters and construction URVs. They will purchase all combat drone types, with most targeted stocks being of type Interceptor URV Mk1 and Intrepid URV Mk1.

Defence Officers of player-owned stations will do the same IF you tell them to automatically manage their AMMO. (The tick box telling them to manage defence drones doesn't work.) They will fill up their stations' drone storage to the same proportions as NPC stations. If you do not want your Defence Officers to do this for you and prefer to do it manually, tell them to stop stocking up on ammo. You can change this decision at will.


A couple of things to think about before downloading this update:

1. Do you want your stations stocked up on combat drones of different types?
- If not, make sure that all of your station-based Defence Officers are not set to manage their stations' ammunition reserves.

2. Do you want to make a crapton of money at the expense of arming your enemies?
- If not, order your drone production facilities to stop trading with NPCs.

3. Are you just starting out, and are you finding the plot just too dang hard?
- Do not download this update.


Another note: existing drone production facilities in the game are not nearly enough to satisfy demand for combat drones. This means that drone stocks in shipyards will probably dry up very soon, and the drone shortage will persist so long as YOU don't fill it. The game's economy simply isn't equipped to handle demand for combat drones at this level.

There are dangers to this situation, but there are also many opportunities, and it is important to go into this aware of what they are.


As always, comments, suggestions, questions, clarifications, and criticism welcome.


For the curious, the development of this part of MICT is documented here:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=381599

MCT v0.15

Station-based drone launching:

Code optimized.*
Timings tightened.*

Small structural change to fight.attack.object.drone.leader to check that a target is still flying before checking distance.

* Mostly structural changes and timing tweaks:

• Moved garbage collection outside the drone launching routine so that it only runs once per entire launch cycle rather than every time drones are launched.
  
• Timings for drone launch in large numbers are tricky. Wait too short, and the drones wouldn't be all deployed yet when orders are issued. Wait too long, and the drones appear to get stuck in the station's architecture. (Orders are issued, but they don't move.) Found what seems to be a sweet-spot at 173 milliseconds per drone.
  
• When ripple-launching, no wait between launches until all launchers are used.
  
• Since drones are launched much faster, reduced time between launch cycles from 60 seconds (vanilla) to 10 seconds.

Note: This is tuned to deliver the maximum number of drones to the target in the minimum amount of time while retaining the ability to engage multiple targets. If there are very many drones in the air, it will make your game run slower.

Since number of drones launched is relative to how many drones a station has, please exercise common sense and don't load too many drones in your stations if you notice your game slowing down to intolerable levels when stations are launching drones IZ.

MCT v0.14

1.Aug.2015 - MICT_supp4 updated to v0.06

When stations launch relatively few drones against low-priority targets, drones ripple launch from each available URV Launcher.*

* Marvin Martian very generously shared some code recently that allows very efficient drone docking on ships with multiple drone launcher pads. Adapted Marvin's docking code to this launching code that launches relatively small groups of drones from each operational URV Launcher sequentially. Many thanks to Marvin for sharing his code.

MCT v0.13

Lucky 13!

1.August 2015 - MICT_supp4 updated to v0.05

Stations now use all installed URV launchers! This allows faster and more reliable deployment of an even greater number of drones. Thanks to Marvin Martian for shedding light on how this might be done.
Timings tightened further.
If drones cannot catch up with their target, they will go home.
Garbage collection run once every drone launch cycle.
General optimization.

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MICT_supp2 updated to v0.21

Garbage collection when escorts transit/are transited OOZ.

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MiscellaneousIZCombatTweaks updated to v0.19

Garbage collection when ships in combat transit/are transited OOZ.
Typo was causing unnecessary debug spew. Thanks to BlackRain for pointing this out.