[Mod] Better Fighters (compatible with carrier commands!)

[akeean]

TL;DR: Makes fighters tougher, deal more dps (depending on weapon type, no more 2dps tritanium chaingun fighters), faster, more available and fairer priced. Goes well with "Carrier Commands"-Mod. Don't use against wildly rotating "stick" shaped ships or lose fighters QUICK.

 

Update (0.1a): Looks like the HP of fighters is bugged on Avorions side, so for now this mod only gives you on average cheaper, faster, harder hitting, fighters with MUCH STRONGER SHIELDS that are easier to acquire. Can't do anything about the health till the engine bug is fixed :-/

 

A quick search for Avorion & Fighters results in many complaints about them being mostly annoying to acquire & use and a waste of money considering how quickly they die.

 

What if... they would be a bit tougher, faster and the crappy RNG ones were cheaper than the good / high end ones?

 

So I've played with fightergenerator.lua & fightermerchant.lua - buffed up fighters & changed how some of their stats were rolled.

 

 

For now I've settled to fighters having around 1400hp in iron tier, better materials and size give a bonus to health, so Xanion Fighters will usually end up with 5-7k HP plus their shields, which are for some undocumented reason always equal to their hull points. *Due to engine bugs, they only get their shields beefed up for now. Avoid enemies with shield piercing weapons :)

 

I've also beefed up the speed to 400-900m/s, so now they can keep up with most carriers and thus will dock quickly.

 

Smaller fighters have less HP and may be a little cheaper (since you have space for replacements) other factors of price: Size, speed, hp/shield, maneuverability.

 

If you still end up somehow wiping all your squads, carriers will usually find at least one type of cheap fighter at the equipment dock to have at least something to throw at the enemy.

 

Turret vendors also have 12 different fighters in stock and more of each type, so you have a bit more selection and can fill up your carrier at a single equipment dock if you need to.

 

Please leave feedback about this especially the scaling of fighter strength.. are they OP now?

 

Note that you likely still lose fighters at times, especially with full squadrons as fighters seem to hit each other with friendly fire (I'm looking at you laser/tesla fighters!)

 

Version History:

0.1a: folder nesting fix (no more insane fighter prices)

 

0.1: Initial release

 

Installation:

- Backup your Avorion/data/scripts folder

- replace files in the folder with files from the zip, voila.

 

Uninstallation:

- You did take a backup of your scripts folder, right?

- Replace modified files in your Avorion folder with your totally backed up originals.

betterfighters-v0.1a.zip

[Odious]

First time posting on a forum properly.

 

It appears upon installing this. prices of fighters have gone to insane levels.

At least 10 Million per fighter for average chaingun Xanion fighters.

Hoping this helps somehow.

 

[EvilChef]

First time posting on a forum properly.

 

It appears upon installing this. prices of fighters have gone to insane levels.

At least 10 Million per fighter for average chaingun Xanion fighters.

Hoping this helps somehow.

 

Move the merchants folder into the entity folder.

Thats what i did anyway and they are a bit pricy but not THAT pricy.

[Raphi54]

How does this mod interact with Multiplayer? Can i use it without it being installed on the server? Or only on the server? Or do both client and server need it?

[n0etics]

How does this mod interact with Multiplayer? Can i use it without it being installed on the server? Or only on the server? Or do both client and server need it?

 

Basically anything that's not a command mod should be added both serverside AND clientside.

[behemelo]

I too am having the problem where fighters are costing 3-10 Million Credits for a white (Common) Nao or Trinium Lv fighter.

[akeean]

How does this mod interact with Multiplayer? Can i use it without it being installed on the server? Or only on the server? Or do both client and server need it?

 

Since the server "rolls" the shop contents, it will need to be installed there for sure. Better on both client & server to avoid any desyncs.

[akeean]

First time posting on a forum properly.

 

It appears upon installing this. prices of fighters have gone to insane levels.

At least 10 Million per fighter for average chaingun Xanion fighters.

Hoping this helps somehow.

 

Move the merchants folder into the entity folder.

Thats what i did anyway and they are a bit pricy but not THAT pricy.

 

Thanks for setting this straight, fixed in 0.1a

[Odious]

First time posting on a forum properly.

 

It appears upon installing this. prices of fighters have gone to insane levels.

At least 10 Million per fighter for average chaingun Xanion fighters.

Hoping this helps somehow.

 

Move the merchants folder into the entity folder.

Thats what i did anyway and they are a bit pricy but not THAT pricy.

 

Thank you so much mate, Everythings back to normal :)

 

[akeean]

I too am having the problem where fighters are costing 3-10 Million Credits for a white (Common) Nao or Trinium Lv fighter.

 

Sorry about that, grab v0.1a it's fighter prices have been fixed in that. Avg. cost about 2.000 for a bunch of 20dps plain iron chaingun fighters with 450m/s top speed to 350k for exceptional 140dps xanion tesla fighters with 750m/s top speed  from what I've seen so far.

[fribbi898]

I found a bug for you :D

When I warp out of a system without making the fighters go back into my hangar (aka leave them behind) their stats reset, idk why this happens but I thought it would be nice for you to know ;D

[Inspired]

First of all, massive thanks for creating this mod. Fighter issues are the one thing that prevents me from enjoying the game to the max. Too bad about the HP bug, the fighters still die like flies to the slightest sneeze, however increased stats and amount/variation in the shops are very helpful.

 

If fighters did really have the amount of health you set, then i could see them being OP, but as it stands - they're still glass cannons.

[akeean]

I found a bug for you :D

When I warp out of a system without making the fighters go back into my hangar (aka leave them behind) their stats reset, idk why this happens but I thought it would be nice for you to know ;D

 

Thanks for the heads up, I'll check it out!

[akeean]

First of all, massive thanks for creating this mod. Fighter issues are the one thing that prevents me from enjoying the game to the max. Too bad about the HP bug, the fighters still die like flies to the slightest sneeze, however increased stats and amount/variation in the shops are very helpful.

 

If fighters did really have the amount of health you set, then i could see them being OP, but as it stands - they're still glass cannons.

 

Thanks! From my testing it it seems that as long as you don't send them against certain shape of ships (very long ones tend to start rapidly spinning when facing fighters, thus killing them quickly through collisions) they will now last a lot longer.

 

I will probably revisit fighters after the next patch to see if the mod is still needed and which part of it (prices, quantity, stats of fighters). I might also consider tweaking the generation of pilot crew (sadly I haven't found prices of those exposed in my initial pass). However, I don't want touch too many files, to not make running multiple mods at once too difficult.

[Inspired]

More often than not I don't even understand what kills them. Sometimes fighters will survive a huge encounter with tens of ships on each side, but sometimes you send them to help in a 1v1 situation, and half of them will die without them even being focused. I followed them very closely, and they would just pop almost at random. Splash damage? Stray projectiles?

I had a situation where fighters died even without anyone in the system. I had two flights of fighters salvaging a massive wreck, while also salvaging it with turrets myself, and I had a fighter die. I am thinking that either one fighter shot another, or maybe my salvager hit it.

 

It really is hilarious at times.

[akeean]

More often than not I don't even understand what kills them. Sometimes fighters will survive a huge encounter with tens of ships on each side, but sometimes you send them to help in a 1v1 situation, and half of them will die without them even being focused. I followed them very closely, and they would just pop almost at random. Splash damage? Stray projectiles?

I had a situation where fighters died even without anyone in the system. I had two flights of fighters salvaging a massive wreck, while also salvaging it with turrets myself, and I had a fighter die. I am thinking that either one fighter shot another, or maybe my salvager hit it.

 

It really is hilarious at times.

 

With unshielded fighters, they basically die from each others friendly fire, or by crossing your salvage & mining beams since their hitpints are so low (<4 hp), with the buffed ones with shields, they mostly die from colliding with stuff, since that damage ignores shields, also since cannons have a chance to punch through shields and its AOE damage, with the low health, cannon fighters usually just die from their own AOE effect when they attack something.

 

I'd stick with tesla, lightning, chaingun or bolter fighters. Laser may have issues with the fighters jitter and speed, cannon is dangerous with AOE damage and missiles sucks unless you get a super lucky roll with high dps, non-burst and guided perk.

[TeliaRS643]

I'm pretty sure this is breaking faction invasions right now, given this is the only thing I have altering fighters:

2017-07-11 09-29-45| could not execute function 'initialize' in '"data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua"':

2017-07-11 09-29-45| invalid argument 'nil' at stack position 6, expected 'Material'

2017-07-11 09-29-45| stack traceback:

2017-07-11 09-29-45| [C]:-1: in function GenerateFighterTemplate

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/lib/fightergenerator.lua:123: in function generateArmed

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/lib/shipgenerator.lua:68: in function createCarrier

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua:69: in function spawnShips

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua:46: in function ?

2017-07-11 09-29-45| Setting script "data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua" to invalid.

[ShadowHeart]

 

I'm pretty sure this is breaking faction invasions right now, given this is the only thing I have altering fighters:

2017-07-11 09-29-45| could not execute function 'initialize' in '"data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua"':

2017-07-11 09-29-45| invalid argument 'nil' at stack position 6, expected 'Material'

2017-07-11 09-29-45| stack traceback:

2017-07-11 09-29-45| [C]:-1: in function GenerateFighterTemplate

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/lib/fightergenerator.lua:123: in function generateArmed

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/lib/shipgenerator.lua:68: in function createCarrier

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua:69: in function spawnShips

2017-07-11 09-29-45| data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua:46: in function ?

2017-07-11 09-29-45| Setting script "data/scripts/sector/factionwar/factionwarbattle.lua" to invalid.

 

 

Can I get someone to verify if this is a common issue or not? Would like to add the mod to a personal server of mine, but if it's going to cause issues it's easier to stay away until it is fixed.

[TeliaRS643]

Well, it doesn't necessarily break the game and make it crash, it just prevents any of those encounters that would generate a ship that runs fighters.

[Jmoster]

Does this still work? I am not getting the buy fighters option at all.

[TeliaRS643]

Yeah, I feel like the last update broke this mod entirely...