[MOD PACK] Galaxy Mods: Balance & Difficulty Mods

[Wayleran]

I think making it an optional download would be awesome. That is a good fix until the combat update happens that gives us actual anti-fighter weapons. While it's pretty cool watching the AI use fighters in their big faction battles, I think people would appreciate that mod.

 

I'm going to release version 0.15.7.3 tonight or tomorrow and I'll include in the "Galaxy Mods" folder a separate install file for "No AI Fighters" that will mod the xsotan, shipgenerator and asyncshipgenerator files to spawn "Carriers" with 0 hangars, meaning of course 0 fighters. That was the best and most stable way I found to do that.

 

Also just a heads up I was thinking of ONLY releasing the "Galaxy Mods" folder with all the mods separately and not have the confusing "Modpack" one too because some people weren't quite sure the difference and a lot of people I know want to pick and choose what mods to use anyways.

 

Ok thanks.

[Shrooblord]

BTW, in the default script for the goods index it clearly is stated by the dev that...

 

"-- This file was generated automatically with a tool."

 

So they are WAY WAY out of balance due to that "tool" just spitting out numbers for the volumes and prices of goods. There's no real logic to it and no balance to profits you can acquire... So I do think it needs to be balanced through a mod, but yeah it's more than likely overkill on my part for this rough pass...so please give me as much feedback as you can, but keep in mind you can and will still see VAST profits even with those changes. But I will tweak them as the community sees fit.

No, I don't think that's what "generated with a tool" means. I think it means the list was compiled by a tool, i.e. pulling together a bunch of resources on what are goods for trade and putting them all into one, concise list, rather than the tool "randomly" generating all the values for the goods. I could be wrong, though, of course, but that makes more sense to my mind than the alternative.

 

Either way, I'd like to see the goods tweaked so that the higher tier goods are more like what you propose, but lower tier are left untouched. Simple water, for example, takes up a lot of cargo space now, and sells for literally zilch on the market. My poor Water Collector is only making 6k a trade every ten, fifteen minutes or so. Not a super worthwhile investment at the moment, due to the AI Cargo Haulers not being able to actually transport more than that because of the sheer volume water takes up now. :P

 

But I see you mention you've already tweaked it. Thanks.

 

Just to add my two cents: I think cargo volume should scale up somewhat exponentially together with whatever the item is worth on the market, and to reasonable and logical sense. For example, bulky things like Mining and War Robots should definitely take up huge amounts of cargo space, but Body Armour, while expensive, should not take up as much (though more than in vanilla). Meanwhile, carbon, water, oxygen and the likes should take up a very little amount of cargo space, vanilla amounts even, if that's appropriate with your vision for this mod.

 

I agree on the not-splitting-the-mod-into-two-separate-downloads change you propose. Makes more sense. I was always a little confused and had to think back which of the two it was that I was meant to be downloading.

[Wayleran]

No, I don't think that's what "generated with a tool" means. I think it means the list was compiled by a tool, i.e. pulling together a bunch of resources on what are goods for trade and putting them all into one, concise list, rather than the tool "randomly" generating all the values for the goods. I could be wrong, though, of course, but that makes more sense to my mind than the alternative.

 

Either way, I'd like to see the goods tweaked so that the higher tier goods are more like what you propose, but lower tier are left untouched. Simple water, for example, takes up a lot of cargo space now, and sells for literally zilch on the market. My poor Water Collector is only making 6k a trade every ten, fifteen minutes or so. Not a super worthwhile investment at the moment, due to the AI Cargo Haulers not being able to actually transport more than that because of the sheer volume water takes up now. :P

 

But I see you mention you've already tweaked it. Thanks.

 

Just to add my two cents: I think cargo volume should scale up somewhat exponentially together with whatever the item is worth on the market, and to reasonable and logical sense. For example, bulky things like Mining and War Robots should definitely take up huge amounts of cargo space, but Body Armour, while expensive, should not take up as much (though more than in vanilla). Meanwhile, carbon, water, oxygen and the likes should take up a very little amount of cargo space, vanilla amounts even, if that's appropriate with your vision for this mod.

 

I agree on the not-splitting-the-mod-into-two-separate-downloads change you propose. Makes more sense. I was always a little confused and had to think back which of the two it was that I was meant to be downloading.

 

Well Shroob, actually I'm uploading a new version 0.15.7.3 soon and I am going to just have the 1 download. People will have to install the 3 mods seperately but that literally takes only seconds.

 

Also I'm COMBINING the "Systems" and "Artifacts" mods into one AND I've removed the civil turret mod because that, like all the others I recently decided to leave alone, does not affect combat at all and shouldn't be punishing to equip.

 

And I'm totally removing the "Economy" mods for 2 reasons.

 

The first is because like you and others have stated you NEED a lot of credits if you decide to start "building sectors" and building stations, etc...

 

And the second reason is that the "Shop" mod only reduced the already existing 75% reduction to sell prices on equipement by another 50%... So essentially the formula IS sell price = price * 0.25 and I was only making it sell price = price * 0.125. Trivial difference really. And the "Goods Index" mod I kept tweaking and tweaking but I eventually felt that most things are either at a good volume already, OR are too "important" to crafting/trading etc. to modify... So it's just not worth even messing with them IMO.

 

Most people really didn't seem to like and/or care about the economy changes and I'd rather just focus on balancing and enhancing combat and events now. The other 3 mods are doing that and working really well so that's what I will continue to focus on too.

 

I'm going to test out the new version and post it probably tomorrow but it's generally more streamlined and completely combat/balance focused.

 

Oh and lastly I'm going to include in the new .zip folder a "No AI Fighters" optional mod for people like myself who just want to totally do away with AI fighters because all they do is cause issues and are nearly impossible and also very tedious to kill.

 

Look for that update and I think after that I'll be done posting new versions for awhile because things are in a pretty stable state now.

[Amber]

Looking at this mod, and got a usability question: have you actually checked if the subsystem mod gets the energy generation to negastive values or not within reasonable configs on large ships? I mean, I'm flying an 8-slot thing and am planning to upgrade it to what seems to end up being 11-slot thing, and I was planning to mostly fill these with shield boosters along with turrets (actually, the ship I'm currently flying has 6 turret mods and 2 shields, one of which I swap out for other stuff on demand).

Anyway, my concern is that there may be an issue of "what am I gonna do with so many slots" when the requirements are %-based, and large ships are already not really so big a boost given the... stuff

[Shrooblord]

Well, Wayleran, I liked your Economy Mod, but was just giving feedback on how it could improve (like you asked for), so I'd be sad to see it go. But you do you!

 

Amber, this game has had a history of "funny Math" when it does its percentage calculations. If "negative Energy Generation" is indeed possible, that's not a bug added by this mod, but one that becomes apparent sooner because of the percentage tweaking this mod applies to the base game's balancing. You would experience the bug with or without mod, though you'd need more Energy to Shield Converter System Module Upgrades before you saw it happen, if playing in vanilla.

[Shrooblord]

Just to follow up on that: I've tested in-game, and Generated Energy can never go below zero.

 

Also, if you add one Upgrade that takes out 40% or the Generated Energy, and another that takes out 40% of the Generated Energy, the Energy you're actually generating will by 20% of the original produced amount of Energy. So all bonuses and penalties are first stacked on top of each other, then applied (they're not multiplicative). In other words, it's not that if you generate 40% less energy, then add another system that takes out 40% of the produced energy, you're producing 40% less of 40% less; you're producing 40%+40% = 80% less in total.

[Wayleran]

Looking at this mod, and got a usability question: have you actually checked if the subsystem mod gets the energy generation to negastive values or not within reasonable configs on large ships? I mean, I'm flying an 8-slot thing and am planning to upgrade it to what seems to end up being 11-slot thing, and I was planning to mostly fill these with shield boosters along with turrets (actually, the ship I'm currently flying has 6 turret mods and 2 shields, one of which I swap out for other stuff on demand).

Anyway, my concern is that there may be an issue of "what am I gonna do with so many slots" when the requirements are %-based, and large ships are already not really so big a boost given the... stuff

 

Hi Amber. As Shroob said, what your describing is a aspect of the game and not a result of my mods. The percentage is taken from your initial, unaltered generated energy. Also the "Shield Booster" is slightly less effective compared to the "Energy to Shield Upgrade"(which no one used because of how imbalanced the Booster is in vanilla)

 

I intentionally made both shield upgrades use %-based requirements specifically to restrict the use of these to no more than 1 or 2 max and I lowered their effective bonuses because as their are, shields are WAY too strong in this game. I think the changes to the shield upgrades are really well balanced now and only slightly affect the ludicrous amount of shields a player can achieve anyways.

 

In vanilla it's so easy to get literally your shield to 3-5 million or more, and EVEN with my dps mods and other adjustments I've made, combat is still pretty casual on Normal and Veteran if you focus on taking your time and using as many shield generator blocks as possible.

 

That was also the philosophy I had with the reduction to Generator Upgrades and the exponential increase in Turret Upgrades energy requirements. It should be "COSTLY" to use multiple shield or turret upgrades, IMHO. You need to make conscious decisions on either being defensively stronger or offensively stronger...not simply be both with little to no downside. It's all about balancing combat and I think my most recent iteration (going up RIGHT now) version 0.15.7.3 is the best balance I've found.

 

Try the mods and see what you think but keep in mind you should START out on Normal or Veteran (or change your existing server.ini) because enemies are obviously a lot more dangerous and you should avoid combat or at least be super cautious until you get to the Naonite stages and get some shields...

 

If you haven't used mods before I'd also recommend backing up your "/data/scripts" folder so you can easily undo any mods. The only files affected by mods reside in that folder and you can easily swap in the default scripts and/or mods.

 

Lastly, I'm streamlining my mods to simply be 3 categories and I'm only having 1 download, "Galaxy Mods", which will have all the mods in different folders so you can pick and choose which you want to use, BUT all the mods work really well in conjunction with each other.

 

Thanks, let me know if you have any other questions or feedback.

[Ravien]

Good to hear! Look forward to the new version.

[Wayleran]

Good to hear! Look forward to the new version.

 

Thanks bud, the new version is up BUT I definitely need to tweak the systems a little.

 

The Arbitrary AND Military Turret Upgrades are going to have their top end energy requirements reduced so their aren't as harsh a plenty but there's still a substantial "cost" to equip the TOP TIER ones (+4, +5, +6). But the numbers right now are a bit too much IMO.

 

I'm also going to make the "Shield Booster" 75% less effective but with LESS energy cost and the "Energy to Shield Converter" the same at 50% and lower the energy cost a little bit... This is because the "Booster" upgrade also gives you shield recharge AND the crucial "upon depletion: recharge 25% of your shields once every 5 mins"... so I want that one to offer less shield durability and be more of the "recharge/upon depletion" upgrade AND the other one to be a straight up increase to total shields. This way the normal player should have 1 or EACH equipped for the 2 distinct bonus types...

 

Also I'm going to remove ALL the energy requirements for my Artifacts EXCEPT the shield and turret related ones, but those are going to be cut dramatically too in order to reflect the changes to the normal upgrade counterparts. The other artifacts shouldn't have any cost because I've changed my philosophy on "non-combat", "utility" upgrades.

 

I'll work on this today and post it asap.

 

These small changes I think will keep almost all the fun and challenge but get rid of some "overkill" on my part. :)

 

Thanks

[Shrooblord]

This is because the "Booster" upgrade also gives you shield recharge AND the crucial "upon depletion: recharge 25% of your shields once every 5 mins"...

Funny thing is, not sure if you've noticed, that not all Shield Booster SMUs have this recharge upon depletion trait. It seems to be random whether they do or not. Is there a way for you to balance all Shield Boosters with this in mind? Can you read whether a specific SMU has the recharge bonus, and penalise / balance out Energy Requirements based on that, or do you have to hit all Shield Boosters with a nerf? Mostly asking because I'm curious.

[Wayleran]

This is because the "Booster" upgrade also gives you shield recharge AND the crucial "upon depletion: recharge 25% of your shields once every 5 mins"...

Funny thing is, not sure if you've noticed, that not all Shield Booster SMUs have this recharge upon depletion trait. It seems to be random whether they do or not. Is there a way for you to balance all Shield Boosters with this in mind? Can you read whether a specific SMU has the recharge bonus, and penalise / balance out Energy Requirements based on that, or do you have to hit all Shield Boosters with a nerf? Mostly asking because I'm curious.

 

In an older version I did just that, all "Booster" had both and a higher likelihood of having  the "depletion" bonus...

 

So I will do that. I'll ensure that ALL Shield Boosters have BOTH Durability (at around 75% less than normal) and Recharge at the normal levels but leave the "depletion" bonus as is in terms of RNG chances to spawn on an item, because it's pretty high with blues or above anyways...

 

So a "great" purple Shield Booster would be roughly:

Shield Durability          +20-25%

Shield Recharge Rate    +40-50%

 

Generated Energy        -10-12.5% (half Shield Durability amount)

 

"Upon depletion: Recharges 25% of your shield" chance to spawn on item based on higher rarity as it is in vanilla. 100% on purples, 75% on orange, etc...

 

 

And a "great" purple Energy to Shield Converter would be roughly:

Shield Durability          +50-70%

Generated Energy        -25-35% (half Shield Durability amount)

 

With these numbers a normal player can and should be able to equip one of each for a total of about 80% Shield Durability, 45% Shield Recharge Rate and get the "Upon depletion" bonus for a total of around -40% cost to Generated Energy...

 

I think that's a great compromise and allows people to have 2 distinctly different shield upgrades equipped without getting +100%-500% to shields, like is capable in vanilla with multiple upgrades equipped.

 

The Teleporter Key 5 I reworked will be adjusted to a 60%/-30% Energy to Shield Converter to compensate and is essentially a nearly perfect purple.

 

I also reworked the Artifacts now to be REALLY useful even if you get a good purple "counterpart" to them, because of their new energy costs, or lack thereof, AND their unique "hybrid" stats.

 

I'll keep you all posted but it's about done now, I just need to test out the changes first.

[Wayleran]

Update 1/22/2018: Version 0.15.7.4

    - Both shield upgrades have been reworked to offer DISTINCTLY different benefits so a player will likely want to have at least 1 of each equipped.

    - Shield Boosters now require less energy but also have less "Shield Durability" and always have "Shield Recharge Rate" with the possibility of the crucially important "Upon depletion: Recharges 25% of your shield." bonus!

    - Energy to Shield Converter upgrades are now THE way to get higher end "Shield Durability" benefits. In vanilla they offered little benefit over the Shield Boosters, but now both are different and work well together.

    - Turret upgrades have been reworked to require slightly less energy, but are still costly at higher rarities to balance out end game dps potential.

    - Alien Artifacts now have no energy costs, except for the turret and shield related ones.

    - Added "+2 unarmed" to Artifact IV so it's now +5 armed, +2 unarmed. This change was to keep it valuable even compared to a normal "+5 turret" counterpart.

    - Artifact V is now a +60%/-35% Energy to Shield Converter which is slightly more energy efficient than a normal legendary upgrade with that Shield Durability bonus.

    - Some Pirate and Xsotan ships seemed to be a bit TOO big and fights were slightly more tedious than they were fun. So some of those ship's volumes were modified slightly to still offer longer encounters and challenge while not being too "grindy".

    - Slightly increased the volume of spawned "traders" in the "Trader Attack" and "Convoi Distress Signal" events so they were able to survive a bit longer and give players time to "save" them. Also the spawned trader ship in the Trader Attack event will spawn more towards the center of the sector with the pirates usually trailing behind "on their tails" so it will be easier for players (and even alliance ships) to come to the rescue instead of having to fly too far out first.

[Avorimon]

Hey Wayleran,

 

Very nice ModPack. I haven't played vanilla a lot so i don't know if i'm aware of what all your changes actually mean but i like the spirit.

 

First off: I liked the Economy Mod, i think im playing 0.15.7.2a where it was still included. If i understand correctly the volumes for goods are higher in this version than in vanilla. Which forced me to build a bigger cargo transporter and that felt pretty cool.

 

I felt salvaging got a lot more profitable, not credit-wise but since all ships are stronger (they are, aren't they?) the wreckages have much more ress. But again, only been playing this game for a week or so..

 

Also, do your mods turn the Xsotan automatically into enemies?

[Wayleran]

Hey Wayleran,

 

Very nice ModPack. I haven't played vanilla a lot so i don't know if i'm aware of what all your changes actually mean but i like the spirit.

 

First off: I liked the Economy Mod, i think im playing 0.15.7.2a where it was still included. If i understand correctly the volumes for goods are higher in this version than in vanilla. Which forced me to build a bigger cargo transporter and that felt pretty cool.

 

I felt salvaging got a lot more profitable, not credit-wise but since all ships are stronger (they are, aren't they?) the wreckages have much more ress. But again, only been playing this game for a week or so..

 

Also, do your mods turn the Xsotan automatically into enemies?

 

Hey bud. Welcome to the game and the forums and thanks for the kind words.

 

I decided to abandon the economy mod because, as I stated earlier, the effect on the overall game wasn't that noticeable and/or positive. Also you really NEED those extra credits AND goods to get heavily into station and sector building, so ultimately I felt the changes were unwarranted.

 

As far as the Xsotan, no my mods don't automatically turn them into enemies. They always appear first as "neutral" upon entering the sector than get hostile on their own. The dev felt like that reflects their mysterious, unknown nature but of course after you first run into them, they're no longer really "unknown", right?! LOL

 

I did change their names to what I think are cooler sounding names like "Xsotan Hunter/Reaver/Dreadnought/Mothership" instead of the default "Small/Big Unknown Ship". That's just a cosmetic change however but I think it's cool.  8)

 

My mod does make them BIGGER and STRONGER though. In vanilla Xsotan ships are meant to spawn as 0.5x the volume of an average ship and 0.75x the dps...

 

I felt that they shouldn't be measly little ships with low dps, so I simply changed those calculations to both be essentially 1x to an average ship in the sector. Now during an "Alien Attack" the Hunters are 1x, the Reavers are 2x, the Dreadnought is 3x and the Mothership is 5x... but I'm still testing out those numbers because too small and you cut through them like butter and too BIG and the fights can drag on and become tedious.

 

The newest version though is 0.15.7.4 that I just posted and is MUCH better IMHO than those older ones. Combat/Events and the Systems mainly are much more fun and balanced. So I'd recommend you update to that mod and check back often too. I'd do a full reinstall of Avorion so you're modding a "fresh" set of scripts to undo any old/obsolete mods that may still be in there. But let me know what you think and thanks for the feedback.

 

P.S. - You won't lose your ships or galaxies by uninstalling and reinstalling Avorion but since I changed a lot of the systems mods and no longer have modded versions of the non-combat related systems, it's just a good idea to go back to vanilla first then re-mod.

[Wayleran]

Hey Wayleran,

 

First off: I liked the Economy Mod...

 

Well, since I don't need to totally abandon it, I posted a standalone version of it in it's own post. This is a NEW version of it also that's much more reasonable. I only modified a selection of highly priced goods by 2x-3x max. This will curb some of the raiding profits you'll receive and make trading a bit more challenging but not really affect anything in a negative way I think.

 

You can find that post here: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php?topic=4408.msg23351#msg23351

 

For instance, things like Body Armors went from about 1.5 to 4.5 and War Robots went from about 8 to 24 just as a couple of examples. But those things are also of lower importance too. If something was highly priced AND had high importance, I either left it alone or modified it very slightly (less than 2x).

 

See how this feels and tell me what you think.

 

I am however working on, what I feel, is an EVEN BETTER SOLUTION! I'm going to look into making ALL items that come from destroyed cargo vessels and stations be marked as "Stolen". This will mean you'll HAVE to either sell them to a Smuggler Hideout for 25% of their value OR debrand them for 50% of their value, essentially cutting the profits down by 50%...

 

This I think may be a more elegant solution if I can do it. You'll still get all the goods you would have but you'll have to decide whether to sell them stolen for a substantial discount OR debrand them to use for yourself or resell to another station.

[Wayleran]

I discovered that as far as freighter ships are concerned they spawn with 500 goods for events like trader attacks, etc...

 

So I'm thinking of adjusting that number because it literally seems to have no relation to volumes. So it will spawn with 500 volume 1 items OR 500 volume 20 items. It's the last function in shiputility.lua. I'm going to test out changing it to 100 instead of 500. This is a better way to do it though for these ships at least because it doesn't involve changing individual goods' volumes which can get messy.

 

I'll test it out and see, and if anyone else wants to test it out either change shiputility.lua:

 

line 288:    entity:addCargo(g:good(), 500)

 

from 500 to whatever or just PM me and I'll send you the modded file, but it's easy to just play around with that 1 line to see for yourself.

[Shrooblord]

Oh geebus Wayleran I've still got my WINRAR window open for trying to install 15.7.3 and already a new version is out. xD

Can we get auto-updates to mods already? :P

 

So I will do that. I'll ensure that ALL Shield Boosters have BOTH Durability (at around 75% less than normal) and Recharge at the normal levels but leave the "depletion" bonus as is in terms of RNG chances to spawn on an item, because it's pretty high with blues or above anyways...

 

So a "great" purple Shield Booster would be roughly:

Shield Durability          +20-25%

Shield Recharge Rate    +40-50%

 

Generated Energy        -10-12.5% (half Shield Durability amount)

 

"Upon depletion: Recharges 25% of your shield" chance to spawn on item based on higher rarity as it is in vanilla. 100% on purples, 75% on orange, etc...

Oh, I see. So the penalty to Generated Energy is completely independent from whether or not the SMU has a "upon depletion" effect. Cool.

 

- Alien Artifacts now have no energy costs, except for the turret and shield related ones.

Oh? Intriguing. I wonder, what made you go for a change of direction from your parasitic upgrades viewpoint?

 

- Some Pirate and Xsotan ships seemed to be a bit TOO big and fights were slightly more tedious than they were fun. So some of those ship's volumes were modified slightly to still offer longer encounters and challenge while not being too "grindy".

Thanks! I was starting to notice the grind, myself. You're quick on the draw!

 

As far as the Xsotan, no my mods don't automatically turn them into enemies. They always appear first as "neutral" upon entering the sector than get hostile on their own.

Actually, no! They remain neutral to you, the player, as long as you never fire a weapon in their general direction, or a mining laser on a Resource Asteroid while they're around. They'll always target NPCs first, and they'll leave your entire Sector worth of player ships alone if you don't provoke them yourself. Source: my very bustling player-made Sector filled with 18 of my ships and constantly abuzz with 10 Trader NPCs.

 

Hey Wayleran,

 

First off: I liked the Economy Mod...

 

Well, since I don't need to totally abandon it, I posted a standalone version of it in it's own post. This is a NEW version of it also that's much more reasonable. I only modified a selection of highly priced goods by 2x-3x max. This will curb some of the raiding profits you'll receive and make trading a bit more challenging but not really affect anything in a negative way I think.

Yey! I missed the Economy Balancing part of this modpack. :>

 

So I'm thinking of adjusting that number because it literally seems to have no relation to volumes. So it will spawn with 500 volume 1 items OR 500 volume 20 items. It's the last function in shiputility.lua. I'm going to test out changing it to 100 instead of 500. This is a better way to do it though for these ships at least because it doesn't involve changing individual goods' volumes which can get messy.

Interesting. I'd like to see some more randomisation in this field, actually. Everything in this game is randomised, so why not also the amount of contents in a Trader's vessel?

 

----

 

I'm glad to see your "pendulum swing" approach to balancing working out for you: harsh nerfs followed by slightly less intense buffs followed by more refined nerfs followed by a minor buff. It's basically the binary-search way of approaching balancing, trying to hit the sweet spot just right by first starting with bounding leaps and progressively hopping closer to the bulls-eye with increasingly more elegant strides. Keep up the good work!

 

P.S.

Not sure if you've noticed, but this forum has a nice automatic list function BBCode, in case you don't want to manually type in the four spaces and hypens deal. Your choice of course; just letting you know.

 

[Wayleran]

Oh? Intriguing. I wonder, what made you go for a change of direction from your parasitic upgrades viewpoint?

 

Because of my total change towards the "non-combat" upgrades in general. If it doesn't impact combat (Shields, Turrets and to a lesser extent Generator Upgrades) than I don't see the need to punish people for using "utility" upgrades like battery, radar, hyperspace, etc...

 

My main philosophy is to somewhat limit a player's ability to just stack shield and turret upgrades with nearly zero downside and be overwhelming tanky AND have high dps. Now you can still have 2-3 shield upgrades but it'll cost you a lot of energy and you'll need more generator blocks to compensate and also you can have multiple high end turret upgrades but, again, it's a decision you'll have to make and sacrifice resources in your ship for more energy blocks.

 

 

- Some Pirate and Xsotan ships seemed to be a bit TOO big and fights were slightly more tedious than they were fun. So some of those ship's volumes were modified slightly to still offer longer encounters and challenge while not being too "grindy".

Thanks! I was starting to notice the grind, myself. You're quick on the draw!

 

Yeah it still may need further tweaking because me and my buddy haven't gotten into the core yet on my unofficial "real world scenario" testing server. LOL

 

 

I'm glad to see your "pendulum swing" approach to balancing working out for you: harsh nerfs followed by slightly less intense buffs followed by more refined nerfs followed by a minor buff. It's basically the binary-search way of approaching balancing, trying to hit the sweet spot just right by first starting with bounding leaps and progressively hopping closer to the bulls-eye with increasingly more elegant strides. Keep up the good work

 

Thanks bud but I think I need to just reverse the process. Start softer and slowly increase the mods, as opposed to the other way around. Because I don't want new people to try out the mods and be discouraged if I made them a bit on the difficult end. I can always buff mods as easily as nerf them.  ;)

[Ravien]

I'm not sure if your mod is the cause, but I had a "massive" alien attack warning but only 4 alien ships showed up. I know in the past there would be a whole fleet of like a dozen ships.

 

I hadn't played in awhile so forgive me if that is a change in the base game since I last played a lot.

[Shrooblord]

Yes, that's due to this mod. I think the "severity" of the ambush, the thing that tells you whether it's a tiny fleet or an armada, is determined by some "attack points" pool. That is to say, say that an easy encounter has 100 omicron to divide amongst enemies, and a hard encounter has 1000 omicron. In vanilla, enemies were weaker, so both scenarios would produce far more ships than if you have this mod installed. With this mod, the 1000 omicron are more quickly "used up" by the more powerful enemies spawning. Does that illustrate the mechanic behind the spawning in an understandable way?

 

I believe that in reality there is also a "hull points pool" together with the "attack points pool", which could help explain how that "pool" is exhausted sooner, since this mod massively amplifies enemy hull sizes.

 

I will agree that seeing a message like "omigod you're gonna get rekt by an entire armada" will initially make you raise an eyebrow if that "armada" turns out to be four ships instead of nine.

[Wayleran]

I'm not sure if your mod is the cause, but I had a "massive" alien attack warning but only 4 alien ships showed up. I know in the past there would be a whole fleet of like a dozen ships.

 

I hadn't played in awhile so forgive me if that is a change in the base game since I last played a lot.

 

Yeah it's the mod but I not only renamed and resized the Xsotan ships, I also adjusted the number of them slightly to compensate for the increase in both enemy ship's hull and dps. However in the newest version I've adjusted the amount of ships that arrive for some events. It's still 4 for the "massive" attack but one of them is a "Dreadnought" that doesn't even exist in vanilla. And the "entire fleet" attack now has 5 ships including a "Xsotan Mothership" which also doesn't exist in vanilla.

 

And if you pay close attention to the wording of that 2nd (of the 3) notifications, it will hint at what level of encounter is about to occur.

 

They breakdown as:

 

Level 1: 3 Xsotan Hunters (small)

Level 2: 2 Xsotan Hunters and a Reaver (large)

Level 3: 2 Xsotan Hunters, a Reaver and a Dreadnought (massive)

Level 4: 2 Xsotan Hunters, a Reaver, a Dreadnought and a Mothership (entire fleet)

 

 

Version 0.15.7.5 will slightly modify these and some other events because I felt some encounters were taking too long and were getting too "grindy".

 

 

P.S. - I came up with an even better solution to my "Economy Mod". Instead of modifying the volumes of certain goods, I've discovered a way to make trading ships spawn with less than the fixed 500 amount which isn't even dependent on the volume or price of the goods, it's just a stable 500 which I think is silly. And also to reduce the maxCargoSpace of stations so they can't have an unreasonably high number of expensive goods and this change also impacts the ships that deliver/sell to them on their trading routes too. I have the mods done now but want to test them before release. And I'll be re-incorporating the Economy Mod back into this Modpack if I get this new approach working well.

[Ravien]

Yeah that makes sense. And I did notice the dreadnought and have even seen a few pirate motherships and even a xsotan one! Pretty cool!

 

I don't know if there's a way to make some of the attacks still spawn greater numbers of weaker ships to give some more variety to the attacks or if you want to do that for your mod. There's something satisfying about fighting off a dozen alien ships.

 

Liking the mods so far!

[Shrooblord]

Wayleran, do you think you could add Swarm Events? I'd love to see one instance of Xsotan trying a different strategy: not 4 decent-at-combat ships, but 1 mothership and 15 tiny little shit craft that are meant to swarm and overwhelm me.

 

Also, yes please - I'd like to see the Economy Mod reintegrated into the main suite. ;)

[Wayleran]

New Version Released!

 

Update 1/26/2018: Version 0.15.7.5

 

- The Economy Mod has been re-integrated and COMPLETELY redesigned so it now only impacts raiding and has little to no negative impact of legitimate trading.

 

- Trading ships will now carry less goods overall and therefore yield less profits, however players can still "farm" high value goods (like Mining Robots or Body Armors) by paying attention and finding good trade routes and simply waiting on more trade ships to enter the sector.

 

- Pirates have had their hulls and dps slightly increased after the last version of the mod nerfed them a little too much. I'm fine-tuning things like this to find a balance between making enemies more challenging while also not adding "grind" to the game.

 

- Both Pirate Attacks and Convoi/Fake Distress Signals have also had the number of enemies that spawn slightly modified. Some harder encounters may have 1 or 2 more enemies than before, while easier ones are still the same.

 

- Alien Attack events have also been adjusted to have an extra ship in most cases and the sizes of the Xsotan Reavers, Dreadnoughts and Motherships have also been increased because they too were nerfed too much in the previous version of the mod.

[Ravien]

New Version Released!

 

Update 1/26/2018: Version 0.15.7.5

 

- The Economy Mod has been re-integrated and COMPLETELY redesigned so it now only impacts raiding and has little to no negative impact of legitimate trading.

 

- Trading ships will now carry less goods overall and therefore yield less profits, however players can still "farm" high value goods (like Mining Robots or Body Armors) by paying attention and finding good trade routes and simply waiting on more trade ships to enter the sector.

 

- Pirates have had their hulls and dps slightly increased after the last version of the mod nerfed them a little too much. I'm fine-tuning things like this to find a balance between making enemies more challenging while also not adding "grind" to the game.

 

- Both Pirate Attacks and Convoi/Fake Distress Signals have also had the number of enemies that spawn slightly modified. Some harder encounters may have 1 or 2 more enemies than before, while easier ones are still the same.

 

- Alien Attack events have also been adjusted to have an extra ship in most cases and the sizes of the Xsotan Reavers, Dreadnoughts and Motherships have also been increased because they too were nerfed too much in the previous version of the mod.

 

That is excellent news! Thanks for all the updates!