Shrooblord

Love the work you do on this fantastic game, devs. If it's down to me, take all the time you need. ;)

I can confirm though that having spent some time playing in the Outer Rim of your galaxy, that it is a super safe place to put your ships if you don't want them attacked by things too often. And if they do get attacked, those enemies are going to be super weak. I believe there's actually a bit of game code that specifies that certain attacks are literally impossible (chance of spawning = 0%) in the outermost Sectors of a galaxy - don't quote me on that though -, so give that a try.

Hey now hey now, calm down cowboy. It could actually already be implemented, just turned off. I was looking through I think it was stationfounder.lua and saw one line of code that read "ownership tax = 0; --gives the owner of the station this much % of the sales in tax" or something like that. So while it lacks a UI, the code to handle taxes may already be in the game... time for some modding!

Ahhhh nice one. Yep, I would like to be able to reduce that cooldown. We can reduce almost every other cooldown in the game by some way of blocks or System Module Upgrades, so why not. It would make hit-and-run attacks on PvP servers a lot harder to deal with though, as you can't keep 'em trapped in your System and they could just jump in, wreak havoc and jump out to who knows where. I think if we were to get a way to reduce that timer, we'd need a counterbalance in the form of Hyperspace Jammers as System Module Upgrades, or as blocks.

Okay, so player-owned Resource Depot are given special treatment for some reason, but that does mean that there should be disparity in the code somewhere where it deals with Resource Depot. Something in pseudo-code like "if this Resource Depot is owned by a player, don't stockpile goods".

Thanks Laserzwei! It's not super easy to gauge what Sectors you haven't visited in a while are doing, without extensive research. I'll reinstall the mod!

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that's a healthy trade. And sure, let me get back to you on how evil the nerf is once I find something with a valuable commodity and blow it up. Well actually I've been playing a bit and trying to match up my ships to the new strength of the Xsotan and Pirates who are constantly raiding my base, but I find it very hard to fill my ships' System Module slots with anything meaningful. I'm having to throw in five energy upgrades just so I can support one shield and one turret upgrade, for example. Definitely a game changer. But maybe that just means I need to incorporate more energy cores into my design: I'll get back to you on that, too. In the meantime, maybe consider buffing the nerfs to System Modules back up by a tiny amount, say 5%, and see how that is. I do like that the game is now harder to, er, "game", but I have a tiny gut feeling it's just a little too overboard. What do you think? Also I think you mentioned that with respect to the enemies now being much, much more powerful, there'd be less frequent attacks, right? I've noticed that they're still dropping in on me around every five to ten, fifteen minutes (hard to gague solely from memory: I'll check a clock next time), even though it now takes me a solid five to fifteen minutes just to deal with two of them. It's good no monstrous fleet has shown up yet 'cause I'm already starting to stockpile a couple of baddies from previous waves and I think a splurge of goons would mean curtains for my lovely built-from-scratch home Sector.

Yup, this works a charm. I'm currently ordering my three Salvagers squadrons to go collect some scrap with one click of the button: "Start Salvaging". Done? Click "Dock All Fighters". It's intense how much nicer this mod made controlling fighters, and I was already pretty satisfied with the vanilla micro-managing.

Yeah, after some more playing, battles now definitely feel more intense. Also, I'm gonna have to chuck away ALL my fighters because they're now basically useless, but what I get in return will be much, much more fun fighters. ;) Also... the sizes of these guns! Sheesh! Bigger than the bridge of my Flagship...! I will say though that because of the larger hull sizes, ships like the Xsotan now are very blocky, and they look less menacing in physique than before. Not sure how much you could do about that; that's just what Avorion does when you tell it to "up the blockage". EDIT: This is sweet. I have to run away again and boost to safety on the brink of destruction. It's just like I'm playing the early game again with a fragile ship, even though I'm playing an all-out epic space battle with 50 fighters in on the action as well. I like the new Xsotan ship names too. Pretty cool. EDIT II: Oh hell! One of those Xsotan scumbags just gave my capital ship a wicked tail slap like a whale; exploded me on the spot! Jeebus!! D:

OH MY GOD ALL MY CREW ON ALL MY SHIPS ARE DYING BECAUSE I HAVE INSUFFICIENT ENERGY TO SUPPLY TO THE LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS hahahaha thanks dude, loving this so far EDIT: Oh, ho ho, yeah, it's kicking my ass alright. Tiny three-ship Xsotan invasion force. Wiped out all my defenders in my home sector with ease. Couldn't even outdamage the healing of their shields. This is brutal. I love it!

Yah, definitely. Looking forward to a galaxy that'll try and kick my ass. As soon as I launch the game. Which will be... right... now. *waves*

Yeah, that looks about right from reading the OP's description on what this mod should do. Nice job!

Cool update from the looks of things. I wonder if we'll be able to custom-design torpedoes like in From the Depths? Always loved that part of custom weapon design in that game. ---- I also had an idea for an interesting "new mechanic" when I read that your reaction speed is important when shooting down torpedoes: turret rotational speed. You know how all turrets take equally long to aim from one spot to another spot when looking at equidistant scenarios? What if there were some turrets that are a lot faster at spinning around, acquiring new targets and the like? What if such turrets had Independent Targeting, and if you could somehow categorise turret groups into Attack or Defence stance, with Defence prioritising targets at close range, while Attack prioritises attacks from a distance. Might be an interesting counter to coming across torpedo-wielding enemies. And while we're spouting ideas here, I've always loved the notion of crazy Battleship Tachyon Beams. You know, the type of "Imma firing mah laz0r" nonsense you see in Sci-Fi a lot. Long, long charge time. Crazy range. Decimating damage. Big light show. Many fun. Oh amazing. This is one of my most sorely missed features. Thank you so so much!! EDIT: I'm not familiar with the Avorion update cycle. Is there a fixed date when updates roll out? Is there a place on my calendar I can already look forward to and hype myself up for? Or is it an "it'll come when it's ready" type of deal? I'm cool with both by the way, but I'd like to know.

And by "each" you mean each mod included in the modpack, correct? You don't mean I need to install both the modpack and the compilation in order for your changes to work? Thanks for these balance changes by the way! I'm super excited to play a more diverse and interesting game with drawbacks and challenges. Good thinking!

YES, so much all of this. I made a post earlier today almost exactly pointing out each and every thing you raise here, too. I would love to see a galaxy that feels more alive and less player-centric. It doesn't have to be like that. This is where the magic of forming and breaking alliances comes in, random Xsotan scourges upping the tension between two warring factions, now united against a common threat, random events like wormholes tearing a Sector to smithereens decimating the core worlds of a previously strong faction, now losing its power to anarchy and civil war, giving rise to more splinter cell factions in its place. This is all pretty advanced stuff I'm suggesting here, of course, but I only serve to illustrate that including a dynamic universe doesn't have to mean that factions automatically win, or that one faction will be the One Ringleader to Rule Them All. Then again, perhaps vassalisation is a mechanic that could be considered: multiple factions spun under a common banner of one overlord. Who knows. If you look at a typical time lapse of a game of Stellaris, you can see how galaxies splintered into multiple factions can play out. Yes, there are usually two or three superforces in the end-game, but that is seriously seriously end-game, and even they give rise to civil uprising and fracturing from time to time, breaking the steady-state. Also galactic conquest and domination is literally the default victory condition and entire point of that game, so of course all players on the field are going to have that in their game plan. But Avorion doesn't have to go down that path at all if the devs and us community members don't want it to. But you're right: factions as currently implemented in the game have a head start. Furthermore, no new factions are ever created, and no factions die unless by the player's hand. This is a bit of an unhealthy ecosystem in my view; all things change. That's the nature of the beast. Chaos and anarchy is the default state of the universe, and civilisations exert force and effort and expend energy to bring structure and what they see as balance to that chaos, but the forces of chaos will never cease. It would be super interesting to see a galaxy with already established factions, but also new arrivals, baby factions in the making, or dying civilisations, on the cusp of extinction because of whatever horrible reason. Sectors upon Sectors of wreckages of once fully vibrant production lines and freighters... plague? Xsotan scum? Overzealous Pirate attacks? It would also be super cool to be able to tutor a tiny sapling civilisation when you're a little further into the game yourself. Help others as others once helped you rise up in this galaxy. ---- But yeah, most of that would require pretty significant overhauls, and I'm not sure how feasible those are. I'd love to take a peek under the hood of the game, though, and take a spanner to it to see what I can come up with. Sadly the modding efforts are great, but our capabilities right now are still limited to extending current functionality, not writing complete new mechanics as what this would require.

Something like ownership tax or habitation rights tax, Xsotan protection tax (extortion, much??), or any type of taxation at all would be a healthy change to the economy system, in my opinion. Even if you're not a fan of taxes (and who is, amirite?), they're an integral and essential part of empire management. Never thought I'd say this, but: give us more taxes!!

Being a total noob to the specifics of the in-game code, I'd suggest the very first diff is already something you may want to check: require ("merchantutility") is apparently turned off / negated by the mod. I'm assuming here that merchantutility is what allows merchants to do their shopping interface business, so not including that in the code breaks the functionality as you put it. Not sure though. Also these two deletions seem pretty significant: 28. instance.buyFromOthers = true 29. instance.sellToOthers = true This is why I always custom-merge mod scripts with the vanilla ones... updates to the original scripts are not always incorporated in mods, especially older ones. Man we need more proper code injection and mod management than we have currently. Reinstalling mods after an update is hell.

Woah, burst of new mods! If I understand correctly, all those separate mods are contained within this post's modpack, correct? So I don't have to install anything additionally to get the changes advocated here?

One thing I love about Avorion is the hilarious or cool names that can come up in your playthroughs. A couple of my favourites are "Unforgiving Bulwark V", "Forlorn Hope", "Iron Isolation" (way in the Outer Rim - fitting name heh) and, what I only just now saw in a YouTube video of someone else's galaxy: "Pillars of Debauchery IV". What are your favourite names that you've encountered in the game?

I've heard depressing stories about Space Engineers' direction after they started introducing a planetfall update from a friend who was a huge, huge fan of the game pre-planet patch. I'd hate to see Avorion go a similar way. While I do think the concept of physically being able to go to planets is super cool, I personally don't see Avorion as the game where you want that happening in. I agree with you, Hellatze, that if this is ever implemented, it would be a super super end-game project: but honestly, I think a project on the scale of adding a whole new playing field to the game like planets is something that's more apt for a sequel game or a massive sequelite expansion pack on the scale of a whole new game. However, your point about implementing a simple UI interface like it were a Station, that I can see happening. Easily. I mean, in essence, it just is another Station but with some fluff to make it seem and feel like a planet. That shouldn't be too hard and ideas mentioned by others in this thread I like, too. Stuff like shore leave and mothballing your ship on a planet for storage and safekeeping sounds fun. Empire management becomes more interesting when planets get involved. But yes, like you, I go starry-eyed when planets come into mind. I always remember the feeling of using a Planet Buster in Spore. So cool. So... devastating. xD I mean, imagine building Star Killer Base from Star Wars VII and using it against your enemies' planets. Now that is some space game power fantasy right there. I'd like to see galactic wars with planets as the stakes; planets abandoned or lain waste to; planets as a safe haven, a sanctuary, or a neutral place of trade and togetherness (like Babylon 5). But first, I'd like to see some AI with proper pathfinding, fleet mechanics and a more properly balanced economy. Then let's talk planets. ;)

Hm, that's pretty poor. Have you checked to see if AI Resource Depot work like this as well? If you sell, say, 1000 Iron or something to an AI Resource Depot, is that 1000 Iron still there when you return to it, or is it also lost to the aether?

I think by "system" Hellatze means the System Module Upgrades. I'm guessing a bit here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they are suggesting a new SMU to do with navigating the galaxy and helping with the coordinate system in some way. I'm interested to hear how a system like that would work in yor view, Hellatze? What does it do for you when you install it on your ship?

Open your chat by pressing Enter. Down by the bottom is five or six "channels" you can listen in on: Chat, Sector, Alliance, Economy, Notifications. Stuff like that. Either select the Economy tab to see only messsages pertaining to your sales, trades and purchases, or select Everything to see every notification of every sort; this includes the ones that are already displayed on the right-hand side of the screen, sadly, so it does produce some superfluous message logging, but I digress.

This is why we need a mod loader. I should get back to work on that again. I'll try and scratch up on my java / visual basic. Programming in batch was giving me unnecessary headaches trying to work around some of the stupidly simply things batch cannot do properly. xD ---- Nice, Wayleran. Is there a way you could restructure this mod so it uses the "Dirtyredz approach" of incorporating the scripts in a separate /mods folder rather than replacing the vanilla scripts? Going back after a patch and re-applying all the mods is... tedious... and this 'new' system of separating scripts is rather elegant, plus, not touched by patches. I'm not sure if it's compatible with what you want though, considering you're tweaking balance values rather than adding functionality, but I'd say check it out anyway: it's a neat system. As for the mod itself, super cool, I'm gonna play around in a galaxy that kicks my ass like games ought to. ^^ OoooOOOooooo... me likey Heh, sweet. I like that nomenclature.

Sorry for a quick double-post, but a little bit of an update: I just played around for an hour in a neighbouring Sector doing trades and I can confirm two things: Your own Sectors don't appear to be loading traders when you're not inside them, even if you have a "keep-alive" ship currently active in that Sector. Contrast this with a ship that is set to "Salvage" a Sector while you're not there: you'll get a steady supply of resources gathered from Salvaging. My guess is that the Sector is active and your buildings are working fine, but the game doesn't actually spawn in any trader craft to come collect the goods, even with "actively request traders to come pick up goods" ticked. Enemies don't attack your Sector while you are gone, as Blaine mentioned, if there were no enemies present in the Sector at the time that you left. So for trading to work for your stations, you need to be in that Sector where they are located. But at the same time, your Sector is safe from harm. EDIT: Correction: it seems to work different still. You need to [*]start the game; [*]load the galaxy; [*]visit the Sector where your factories are. [*]From this moment onwards, trading works, even if you are away in a different Sector. So you need to have visited your Sector once during play before it starts to trigger traders to come buy stuff from you. Weird, but good to know.