@atlana quoting you for reference purposes:

Originally posted by atlana:

@lophatkao & all others:

this is the LUA script snippet, from
\\\stats\effects\xsm_energyuse\energyuse.lua
(you need to use the ASSET_UNPACKER.EXE from \\\steam\SteamApps\common\Starbound\win32 )
that handles the amount of energy for the Mech's
"....
local energyScale = math.max(100+(10*world.threatLevel()),status.stat("maxEnergy"))/status.stat("maxEnergy")
-- sb.logInfo("%s",energyScale*status.stat("maxEnergy"))
effect.addStatModifierGroup({
{stat = "maxEnergy", effectiveMultiplier = energyScale},
{stat = "energyRegenPercentageRate", amount = 5},
{stat = "energyRegenBlockTime", effectiveMultiplier = 2}
..."
people could edit it for themselves, by changing max energy/world threat lvl multiplier (which is additional 10% per world threat lvl) and change the regeneration amount/time for the energy usage.
it works just peachy

=^.^=

invent a brand new game mechanic - everyone hates it ^.^
my work here is done~!
--------------------------------------------------------------
ok some explaining is in order then...

original energy use values for mechs when they were a tech were roughly 2.5x higher, plus a constant drain per second
i eliminated the constant drain, and nerfed most values downwards

with vanilla cheerful giraffe, an unarmored char has 100 energy
a maxed energy char has 310 (T6 accelerator set + energy3 augment on EPP)
non-accelerator T6 sets have 160 energy

keeping those stats in mind, the energyScale from energyuse.lua will read your current maxEnergy and calculate how much more (if any) energy it needs to add to your max

-

now with other mods thrown into the mix, your maxEnergy could be potentially 490 or more.
if you use the mods that add augment slots to head/chest/leg armor pieces and put energy3 augs in those also. or there might even be augment mods that give more energy per augment than a lvl3
i usually don't code for taking into account other mods and their effects, but this time i did ;)

//continued

i can understand that to some people what i did was shocking - how dare i attempt to balance the stupidly op mechs?!
... and thats the reason right there - "stupidly OP"

honestly, i totally f*cked up when i fudged the damage/hp/armor scaling functions - they worked fine on a starter world, but then became .. well.. stupidly op
and through sheer inertia and laziness on my part, this became the default for the mechs after 1.0.. stupidly op
i did not and do not want that to become the mechs legacy --"hey remember xs mechs?" "was that the one with stupidly op mechs?"

even after i fixed the scaling though, they were still op as hell - especially after ZZ mechs came along. because, like many vehicles, it used my code - in this case the horribly broken op code

so.. i needed to find a way to have mechs use energy again - with absolutely no way to access it from a vehicle.
the amazing thing is, after many days and many ways that didnt work, i managed to find a way to do it in a small amount of code

so after fixing my bad coding and adding more balance - now people say the mechs are underpowered

good :D id rather have them a bit underpowered than stupidly op

however going back to your initial comment (sorry about the rant ;)) ..

as well as the planned 'godmode' patch, since you asked nicely and listened to my rant, i can also make a 'reduced energy use' patch - either increase energypool or turn down all the energy variables

ingame item used on mech for reducing energy use is a cool idea, i'll keep it in mind - but i dont see it happening soon (different mods have priority now that major xs fix is done)

reading player armor value and using it as well for mech is doable - but would require another major update.. so again, not soon

but the godmode and energy patches are next, before i release another vehicle and start working on updating an old mod (i think i have another gardenbot update to push as well, i forget xD)

@lophatkao: thanks for your extensive and throrough explanations and replies! :)

I understand that you probably are bothered by the general userbase behaviour and, as I said, I understood your decision to balance your mechs, and I liked it from a design perspective, much more balanced this way.
Also your mechs are now much more usable in multiplayer mech wars and by new players/characters.

Mine wasn't an immature whine or complain, I just wanted to express my thoughts from an endgame perspective, where (some of) your mechs are used with specific purposes and as less OP alternative to /admin, F.I. after well over 200hrs in game and having done almost everything, I want to do quickly these things:

- explore the surface of a 16000 sectors ocean planet -> Ronin Rho and go
- Need Asteroid rocks -> Ronin Rho and go (up)
- terraforming -> Ronin Rho or Theta
- microterraforming or quick mining (gathering high quantities of blocks) -> Miner Sigma (ZZ's)

With your mechs I was able to do all that and avoid many boring tasks while doing things on a bigger scale. (but they were OP with that insane amount of health and armor)



Now, I've done a little testing with the Ronin Rho and other than the really fast energy consumption,it now has too few hit points/armor, in fact it explodes after a few hits on higher tier planets, becoming useless in the end...
(I tried the Miner Sigma too, and it just can't bear higher tier planets, it just keeps being pulverized - maybe @ZimaZang is reading :P)


I agree with the energy consumption, but probably health amounts and energy consumption rates need to be rebalanced.


The point is: I use mechs to do things better than they could be done by my char alone (faster mining, faster exploring, faster terraforming), and with the current settings, I'm faster without mechs, so I'm less inclined to use them, and it's sad for me keeping them parked in my base. :(


As I said, no real complain, just a little reasoning on how the last update influenced the endgame. :) (at least, for me)


Thanks for reading and for your will to listen us for fine-tuning purposes. :)


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


PS: I don't know other people, but I use FU mod, and I often had to repair my mechs because they were heavily damaged, either from spikes or enemies attacks.
Here's a picture of two of them heavily damaged, before the last update:

- This is from 08/25

http://imgur.com/a/tuifc

- This is from 08/22

http://imgur.com/a/p6LZx

Oh, another thing: is there a way to avoid char damage to their own mechs?
I'm asking because when by mistake I swing my weapon near them I highly damage them, like, a whole lot of damage... D:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=754503264
the reduced energy use patch for you

should be able to add a thing so mechs take less/no damage when unpiloted, good idea

re: fragility on high tier planets -
will look into this - i never get a chance to 'play' so dont have them unlocked currently in my modding environment or on my steam chars
used to in prerelease nightly

Thanks a lot for your work, @lophatkao! :D

Originally posted by lophatkao:

re: fragility on high tier planets -
will look into this - i never get a chance to 'play' so dont have them unlocked currently in my modding environment or on my steam chars
used to in prerelease nightly

If you need some intensive testing on different environments and against different tiers enemies just tell me, I'll do it, just message me with your requests. :)

For clarification on the miner mech, it was actually using more energy than intended and I reduced it's consumption in my 1.2 update.

Originally posted by ZimaZang:

For clarification on the miner mech, it was actually using more energy than intended and I reduced it's consumption in my 1.2 update.

Hi @ZimaZang, yeah, I read the release notes and I saw that you reduced energy consumption for the miner mech. (and I thank you a lot for that, it was almost unmanageable before that update XD)
Unfortunately, under certain conditions - F.I. using both beams + thrusters - consumption is too high, making de facto that configuration useless.
I know that using both beams and thrusters at the same time could appear as OP thus the consumption should be high, but let me show you a common case when that configuration is needed (not the only one):

- You land on a big planet, start digging underground;
- at a certain point, while going down, a HUGE cavern opens, you need to fall for 7 to 10 seconds at free fall speed (likely dying) to reach the bottom of that cave;
- once to the bottom, while jumping here and there, you realize that on the background there are a lot of useful ores, but they're mostly in the higher part of the cave background AND ceiling;
- you try to reach the points where the ores are, but in the time you reach them, a good bunch of energy is gone for the only task to reach that point;
- you start to use your beams but the energy drops whitin seconds, and you fall again to the bottom of the cave, having mined almost nothing;
- meanwhile a couple enemies hits your mech 5 or 6 times, and it explodes; T^T
- rinse and repeat.

All this makes these kinds of mining operation a little frustrating, also because you need to wait X seconds to start again when energy drops.

The case above aside, the overall performance of the miner mech is heavily dropped, to the point I'm faster and scoring a higher yield using the matter manipulator alone (standard but fully upgraded MM, no modded ones), and I'm really sorry about that since that mech was really helpful to me, saving me a good bunch of hours while searching for materials. (and trust me, after 230+ hours in this game, each minute saved from boring grind-operations is precious :P)



I'm not demanding anything of course, I just want to collaborate with you guys to help balancing your mods for the better, giving my humble opinion based by my personal experience and from an endgame perspective. (with Frackin'Universe installed) :)

Originally posted by Metalloman1:

- you try to reach the points where the ores are, but in the time you reach them, a good bunch of energy is gone for the only task to reach that point;
- you start to use your beams but the energy drops whitin seconds, and you fall again to the bottom of the cave, having mined almost nothing;

welcome to the fold, brother (FU user here too)
which is why I started digging into lophatkao's mod-code, and found the part that I mentioned in the comments.
After I changed that value there, the mech's became quite useful to me, again.

I'm not dissing his coding work (quite the opposite actually, he did a fantastic job). I was just one of those WHAT THE ACTUAL ♥♥♥♥ HAPPENED *surprisebuttsecks* moment, when you got into your mech, and ZIP energy gone, and dead

Originally posted by atlana:

Originally posted by Metalloman1:

- you try to reach the points where the ores are, but in the time you reach them, a good bunch of energy is gone for the only task to reach that point;
- you start to use your beams but the energy drops whitin seconds, and you fall again to the bottom of the cave, having mined almost nothing;

welcome to the fold, brother (FU user here too)
which is why I started digging into lophatkao's mod-code, and found the part that I mentioned in the comments.
After I changed that value there, the mech's became quite useful to me, again.

I'm not dissing his coding work (quite the opposite actually, he did a fantastic job). I was just one of those WHAT THE ACTUAL ♥♥♥♥ HAPPENED *surprisebuttsecks* moment, when you got into your mech, and ZIP energy gone, and dead

Eheh, I understand you completely, mate! :D

The patch addon @lophatkao made of course affects their mechs only, so I really hope @ZimaZang will create a similar patch too (if it's not too much to ask), otherwise I'll try to edit the values you told before, hoping I'll not break anything while doing so.


While thinking on that, @atlana, wouldn't the edited values be overwritten by the next update, without a proper patch?

Originally posted by Metalloman1:

While thinking on that, @atlana, wouldn't the edited values be overwritten by the next update, without a proper patch?

It'd - but then I'm running a dedicated server for myself (singleplay) and my family/at home. As you know, you've to manually copy over the mod-files for the dedicated server - so my versions are safe
=^.^=

Originally posted by atlana:

Originally posted by Metalloman1:

While thinking on that, @atlana, wouldn't the edited values be overwritten by the next update, without a proper patch?

It'd - but then I'm running a dedicated server for myself (singleplay) and my family/at home. As you know, you've to manually copy over the mod-files for the dedicated server - so my versions are safe
=^.^=

Heh! Then I hope ZZ will drop a energy consumption patch too! :)