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31

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] WhichMod 1.2.1

« on: October 18, 2022, 01:24:59 AM »

Nothing to update here (and hopefully I won't ever have to update this), but I've been asked about how to include mod-identifying descriptions without interfering with WhichMod, so I've got some code for anyone who wants to include it in their mod. This will just add whichmod-style descriptions to ships and weapons from your mod if the user doesn't have whichmod active.

Code

public class YourModPlugin extends BaseModPlugin {
    @Override
    public void onApplicationLoad() {
        SettingsAPI settings = Global.getSettings();
        JSONArray csvData;
        if (settings.getModManager().isModEnabled("whichmod"))
            return;
        try {
            csvData = settings.loadCSV("data/strings/descriptions.csv", "YOUR MOD ID HERE");
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return;
        }

        // try reading each row in descriptions.csv
        for (int i = 0; i < csvData.length(); i++) {
            try {
                JSONObject row = csvData.getJSONObject(i);
                String id = row.getString("id");
                String type = row.getString("type");
                if (!(id == null || type == null || id.equals("") || type.equals(""))) {
                    Description desc;
                    Type descType = Enum.valueOf(Type.class, type);
                    if (descType == Type.SHIP || descType == Type.WEAPON)
                        desc = settings.getDescription(id, descType);
                    else
                        continue;
                    desc.setText1("[YOUR MOD NAME HERE] " + desc.getText1());
                    String prefix;
                }

            } catch (Exception e) {
                //logger.log(Level.INFO, e);
            }
        }
    }
}

32

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Vayra's Sector 3.2.1 - D&DSECTOR 2021-03-25

« on: October 04, 2022, 02:40:46 AM »

Bit of a necro post here, sorry, but someone found an extraordinarily rare and possibly save-bricking bug (seriously, this took over a year for anyone to run into). Fixed it, so the download link has changed.

download here

33

Modding / Re: [0.9.51a-RC6][WIP] United Aurora Federation 0.72g1b

« on: September 16, 2022, 02:06:14 PM »

I'd personally recommend you not to bother with trying to reason with balancing

Regretfully, this seems to sum up the entire mod.

If you did played the mod though, that'll definitely change my stance for sure.

Yes, I have. Fairly extensively at this point; I played just with UAF and vanilla. (I didn't use other mods because most mods are balanced around vanilla, and it's unreasonable to expect authors to balance around specific mod interactions.) When I'm saying things are unfun to play against, or boring to play with, it's not from just looking at the stats on them, it's because I've played with and against them. But, also, most of these ships didn't need playtesting to tell they were overpowered. There is no magic juice in there that makes the UAF having straight-up better everything work fine in concert with other mods and the base game.

The UAF will not try to be or abide to vanilla style and balancing but they will respect it in their own ways and based around them.

Furthermore, don't bother using vanilla weapon as a point for balancing. UAF doesn't use them at all - so its better to just balance everything around ourselves instead.

...Then what's the point of the faction if it doesn't care about vanilla? This mod only adds one faction and that faction exists alongside vanilla; you either use UAF ships against vanilla/modded ships (boringly easy, it's like shooting fish in a barrel), use vanilla/modded ships against UAF ships (very rough; it's a "challenge" but it's not a fun one), or use UAF ships against UAF ships (still unfun- Semibreves, crazy strong fighters, and crazy powerful capitals mean most fights are very one-sided). UAF does not exist in a vacuum, and unless you add a few opposing factions and make this a total conversion, it will never exist in a vacuum.

I personally know you claimed you didn't try the mod just because it's anime and unbalanced.

I was right, though: It definitely is anime, and it definitely is unbalanced. I have played it now, though, so I hope you'll actually listen to my feedback.

It makes me happy when I see people enjoying what I came up with rather than constantly bullying me for being different than the rest.

Please don't interpret this as a personal attack on you. You aren't being bullied for being different, you are being told your mod is overpowered. I'm telling you this because you've clearly put a lot of effort into your mod, and it would be a real loss to have all that effort result in something that people don't want to use because it's too powerful to be fun. My opinions, of course, are my own; there are clearly plenty of players who do not care about that sort of thing.

34

Modding / Re: [0.9.51a-RC6][WIP] United Aurora Federation 0.72g1b

« on: September 16, 2022, 03:30:32 AM »

I thought the whole "dev despising balance comments" from the video was just a joke but no there really do be guys out there trying to tell the guy MAKING THE MOD what "fun" actually is like ****ing nerds

cy specifically asked me to post it here (instead of on discord where it'll get lost in conversation) so that's why I did

35

Modding / Re: [0.9.51a-RC6][WIP] United Aurora Federation 0.72g1b

« on: September 16, 2022, 01:44:43 AM »

Sorry in advance for the long post.

As requested, I'm gonna go down the list of ships and give you some feedback. I'm not gonna touch the (M) and (SP) variants (unless they're the only version of the hull), but generally speaking, nearly every (M) or (SP) variant is hugely stronger than equivalent ships in vanilla. These variants have power similar to one-off bounty flagships, not standard hulls that regularly appear in a faction's fleets.

Broadly speaking, most ships in this mod have significantly more flux dissipation and speed than vanilla ships with roughly equivalent roles and DP costs. This will be a recurring criticism (sorry), but it's an important one. Dissipation is the main limiter on a ship's firepower; outsize dissipation values without a significant downside (such as a huge loss of range and peak performance time, like how Safety Overrides works) make a ship unfairly (and more to the point, boringly) strong.

It's worth noting that having individual ships be stronger than vanilla "counterparts" is fine in terms of balance, but with certain qualifications. A good example of this is the now-defunct Templars, who had ships that were far more powerful than they "should" have been for their size — but they were priced like it. A Templar frigate was 10 to 15 DP; a cruiser cost around 50. This let them be a "boss faction", but still leave players able to acquire their guns and ships. DP is the king of balancing, particularly when the player can easily acquire the ships in question.

Ships

Spoiler

Frigates

Spoiler

- Minoria: This is generally not worth the DP (pretty common for frigate carriers), aside from its very high base speed, which rather than making it good, just makes it incredibly annoying to fight, because it kites forever. Also, why is a 10 DP ship a frigate and not a destroyer?
- Nakiha: Has double the flux dissipation of a lasher, 20 more speed, and a medium ballistic, all for only 1 DP more. This has more dissipation than all vanilla high-tech frigates (and all the modded ones I can think of), which is nuts for a ship that uses ballistic weapons.
- Novayu: Weird to have a 12 DP frigate without anything super funky going on. 2 medium missiles + fast missile racks is a lot, but it's 12dp and doesn't have much else going on. Probably okay.
- Osela: This is a logistics ship, but it's insanely good. Compared to the Hound, it has more than double the cargo space, tons of fuel and crew space to spare, and survey equipment. And though it only has one weapon slot, it has way better flux stats. And a shield, which the hound doesn't. And it has all this for 2/3rds the supply and DP cost of a Hound.
- Perwira(M): Way better logistics stats than its closest competitor (the Kite), but that's not even the relevant part here: 2 medium missiles for 3 DP is frankly insane. 2 medium missiles is something you get on a 12 DP destroyer, not a 3 DP frigate.
- Rama: Effectively a Wolf with a worse system and slot layout, but using ballistics means it can take better advantage of its slots than a Wolf. And it's 60% of the cost of one, and has 50 more seconds of PPT.
- Sekai: Actually not that great? The competition is a Dram, which has almost as much fuel space for a lot less DP/supply cost.
- Supolev: Has like twice as much cargo space as it should for its supply cost.

Destroyers (only one of these, I guess)
- Lovela: This one is basically fine. It's a Hammerhead with a little less speed and a good deal more flux dissipation, but I don't know if that's worth 2 DP more.

[close]

Cruisers

Spoiler

- Akatsuzuma: Same price as a Falcon, with more dissipation, a significantly better slot layout (all ballistics!), and more speed, for the cost of being a bit more fragile. Honestly not that egregious, compared to some of the other stuff here, but it could take a flux nerf imo.
- Exoria: This runs into the same problem as the Minoria- it's not actually that good (the comparison here is the Heron, which has Targeting Feed and 3 bays for the same DP), but having Maneuvering Jets makes it fast enough that it just kites forever. Not very fun to run into. (The Exoria(M) is actually pretty reasonable, though.)
- Inazuma: A lot of guns on this one. And most of its base flux gets used up by the built-in guns. But also its supply cost does not match its deployment cost, which is annoying.
- Lillaru: A faster Eagle with better armament, and more PPT for some reason. Better than the Eagle in almost every way, for the same cost.
- Machi APA: This one is bad compared to the Valkyrie.
- Miyo Juiliet: Also just bad. Compare to the Colossus. One extra maximum burn isn't enough to make this worthwhile.
- Scinaut: A cruiser-size Surveying Equipment and Salvage Gantry for 6 DP instantly makes this the best utility ship I've ever seen, and that's before I looked at the cargo/crew/fuel stats. Way too good. Why does this have better cargo, crew, and fuel-per-supply efficiency than your dedicated cargo and tanker ships??
- Seniraja: A lot like the Lillaru in that it makes the Eagle completely obsolete. Has most of the same stats and a way better armament. Medium ballistics are very good, and this has six of them, and they can all point at the same target, and that's before you start talking about the 9 small ballistics. Also has 15 more OP than an Eagle.
- Sentry: Primary gun is way too good. Too much hit strength and too much range. The only gun with similar stats is the Gauss, and that's way more inefficient, does less damage per hit, and has less range. Also this has reloading short-range Harpoon missiles for some reason?? For a ship that is noted to be a "glass cannon", it has about as much effective health as an Eagle. Also it's cheaper, faster, and has the same flux dissipation. (Lots of Eagle comparisons today.)
- Shinoria: A bit fast for a ship that can fit HVDs and Maulers *and* two wings of fighters. Otherwise probably fine.
- Sunami: This has way too much ground support strength.
- Wo: Worse than two Phaetons.

[close]

Capitals

Spoiler

- Eyeseau: Some janky stuff going on with the radar dome weapon, but I'm more concerned about the stats. Better flux and shields than an Oddysey, for the same DP (also the supply cost does not match the DP). At least the armament isn't that bad, but the turrets have absurdly huge arcs, firing over parts of the ship that they shouldn't be able to.
- Fusoreina(P): First, the lore mentions "super-heavy armor plating", and this only has 1k armor. The Dominator (a cruiser) has 1500; the Onslaught has 1750. Second, that doesn't matter, because the rest of this ship is extremely powerful. It has six converging medium ballistics/hybrids and two large ballistics, which would make it too good for 35 DP in the first place, but then it adds in AAF to really just smash through any pretensions of reasonableness. Also it has significantly more OP than the 40 DP Legion. This could easily be in the 50 DP range and still be strong.
- Isenoria(P): Odyssey comparison again. This has better shields, more dissipation, and better guns for the same price. And while the bomber is aesthetically pretty darn cool, it's awful to play against, because it just doesn't die if you shoot it and you have no way to avoid 2 Reapers worth of HE damage. An Onslaught worth of PD does not kill it. Also, its huge size physically blocks incoming fire for the carrier.
- Junyo Delta: This is worse than an Atlas; it has less cargo per supply cost. The only place where it's better is that it can flee the battle a bit faster and has better shielding, but that's largely irrelevant for a ship that will only see combat if you've already lost.
- Nebula Bravo(M): Same as Junyo Delta.
- Neuxoria(SP): An Astral costs 55 DP and has six wings, two large missiles, and Recall Device. This is cheaper (50 DP), twice as fast, has better flux stats, has more OP, and has better armament. Why would you ever pick any other capital carrier over this ship? Also it has the same problem with turret arcs as mentioned before.
- Purcellyra: Improved since the initial version that had four modular large missiles, but not by a significant margin. While this is the only capital with remotely reasonable flux stats, it makes up for that by having an insanely heavy missile armament. Five medium missiles, two larges, and then four built-in quick-reloading larges is just too much burst damage on a single hull. There are very few ships that can survive a volley of sabots, squalls, and Minirests. Oh, and even after all that, it has Fast Missile Racks, so it can dump missiles even faster. Pure missile hulls are almost always just a bad idea, and this one isn't an exception.
- Reisen: Better than basically any other vanilla capital by a large margin. Has more dissipation than the Paragon, and it doesn't fit a single energy weapon. Has a stronger converging main battery (four large ballistics, four medium ballistics) than almost any other ship I can think of, even going into the 60+ DP range. Also, it's only 40 DP.
- Reisen(M): This one gets a special mention because its stats are so out there. It has more dissipation than the Radiant, a ship with five large energies, and more armor than the Onslaught. Also it upgrades those ballistics to hybrids, so you can do the fun Gauss/HIL combo. Costs 5 more DP than the normal version, which is absurdly cheap for the huge stat stick it gives you.
- Rillaru: Faster and tankier than a Conquest with none of the Conquest's downsides. I guess you don't get the large missiles, but that hardly matters with how strong this is. The (SP) version is even more egregious, with better-than-Paragon kinds of flux stats and adding the large missiles back in.
- Tsutsumu: Worse than the Prometheus by a fairly large margin in terms of fuel-per-supply. Very strong otherwise because it's a 15 DP militarized capital with lots of OP for logistics hullmods. Might actually be fine; idk, wouldn't use it over a Prometheus because I care about the fuel stats more.
- Zepporia(M): Surprisingly, the "Fleet Supercarrier" is significantly cheaper than the Astral, and significantly better in every way except raw number of fighter wings. For the price of 1 less fighter wing than an Astral, you get more flux dissipation, more shield, a massive amount more guns, and also a nice discount of 12 DP. I suppose I have to take back my statement about the Neuxoria, since the only carrier that competes with it is this.

[close]

Two final points that apply to everything:
- A lot of these ships have weird PPT values that don't fit well with other vanilla or modded ships (which are almost always in increments of 60 seconds), or even other UAF ships. (For example, why does the Inazuma have 5 seconds more PPT than the Akatsuzuma???)
- Almost every ship has very, very generous turret arcs, to the point where they don't make sense- the capitals are particularly bad about this, with turrets being able to shoot "over" sections of the ship that visually appear to be higher than the turret.

[close]

Weapons

Spoiler

Only gonna be hitting the big outliers here.

Missiles: First of all, it looks like literally all of the UAF missiles reload, except the Semibreve. They shouldn't do that, particularly the torpedo- or Harpoon-style missiles. Most of those missiles are good without reloading. With reloading, they're just flat-out better than other options.
- Semibreve: There's no way I'm the first person to mention these, but I'm gonna mention them anyway. If I saw the weapon card, I would assume that they were a boss's built-in weapon that wasn't supposed to drop. These are simply a Bad Idea. They should not exist in their current form. They are horribly unfun to play against, because the AI is not smart enough to get out of their way, and if you get them, you have now won the game. "But their cooldown," you might say. You have conveniently included a ship in your mod with large missile slots and Fast Missile Racks, which completely bypasses that restriction.
- Swaras MLRS (M): This reloads faster than it fires.

Ballistics: Generally these have the problem of being very difficult to tell apart. Very similar colors and shapes; even the names are only a few letters off from each other.
- Catantata/Weiss 50 AC: These have identical sprites but deal different damage types. Visual clarity might be important there.
- Tona III 452: This is almost a direct upgrade over the Gauss. Better hit strength, same range, lower DPS.
- Cyrexa 452 AP(T): This is a direct upgrade over the Mark IX in almost every way. Better accuracy, longer range, better hit strength, lower DPS (but better actual DPS because of the accuracy).
- Cyrexa 452 AP(Q): Actually just straight up better than the Mark IX. Also, the naming convention sucks on these; one letter of difference is not enough to make them easily distinguishable.
- Tona II 452: Better hit strength than the HVD, still has EMP, and it's more efficient and costs less OP.
- Medlav 254 AP(D/Q): Straight-up better than than the Heavy Autocannon. At this point I think the pattern should be obvious- most of these guns are just direct upgrades over their vanilla counterparts.
- Ivory 254 HE(T/D): Same as above.

Energies: If I though the ballistics were hard to tell apart, these are worse (visually, anyway. At least the names are distinct). I only have one stat criticism here: These all have far too much range for hard-flux energy guns. Cut them all back to the 600s for mediums and 700s for larges and they'd be fine.

[close]

Fighters

Spoiler

Broadly, these are all too strong. Too much armor (fighters should basically never have more than 200 armor, and even then only the toughest ones should have that much), too much hull HP, too much damage, too much range, too much speed. Compare their stats to vanilla wings with similar OP costs! Also it looks like they were "balanced" by increasing replacement times to an extreme degree, which only does anything if they're dying in the first place.

I was gonna do each of these individually but honestly I'm burnt out at this point.

[close]

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my TED talk. This is, of course, your mod, and you're free to do whatever you want, but if you really do want to address complaints about balance, the stuff above would be a good place to start.

36

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] DroneLib v1.1.1

« on: August 27, 2022, 07:48:09 PM »

no, apex is fine since there wasn't a license when you copied it, just as long as you indicate that my source code now has the linked license applied to it

sure thing, I'll add that in there for the next version. thanks.

37

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] DroneLib v1.1.1

« on: August 26, 2022, 07:14:02 PM »

Discontinued indefinitely. I retain copyright authorship of all code contained in the mod, excluding where external authorship is marked, and any mods from this date that contain some whole or part derivation must comply with the current license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Is this license change gonna be an issue for the dronelib code I already have integrated into Apex if I want to make further changes?

38

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Furry Portrait Pack v1.12

« on: June 30, 2022, 11:07:54 PM »

Also, that was probably the wrong wording, XD but I was asking if you would later do exclusive furry races for each faction? Most would be diverse, I'm sure, Hegemony obviously, but I like the idea that Ludd could be mostly governed by mice with a smattering of diversity, and Tri-Tach are mostly snakes, for instance.

The portraits in this pack are almost entirely art that is owned by other people, who sent it to me to add it to the pack. The only art I commissioned to put in here was my own- unless you're going to chip in about forty bucks a portrait then it's gonna remain as "whatever people send me".

39

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] WhichMod 1.2.1

« on: June 17, 2022, 03:56:52 PM »

any tips or solution how-to support .skin description with whichmod prefix ?

It doesn't support skins. Typically this isn't a huge problem, since a skin is usually from the same mod that adds the base hull. There isn't anything I can do about the times where this isn't true (like a mod adding a skin of a vanilla ship, or a mod adding a skin of another mod's ship) because the skin description isn't accessible through code. (It uses the description in the .skin file along with the base hull's descriptions.csv entry.)

40

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Furry Portrait Pack v1.12

« on: June 15, 2022, 10:38:47 PM »

I was hopin for a tutorial to change the default vanilla humans to only display custom portraits, even to there being many duplicates, but how would I go about doing that? I get crashes when deleting the original portraits.

You would need to replace existing portraits with the ones included in the mod, making sure that you kept filenames and folder structure the same as the portraits you want to replace. You can do this either in the mod (mod files override vanilla ones if there is a name conflict) and delete all the .faction files (since you'd have renamed the files they reference), or by directly replacing the portraits in your core starsector installation.

41

Mods / Re: [0.95a] WhichMod 0.6

« on: May 31, 2022, 04:01:47 AM »

Can this mod be removed safely mid-game without ruining the save file?

Yes, it doesn't have any save data.

42

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Furry Portrait Pack v1.11

« on: May 30, 2022, 07:36:15 PM »

New update, added some more portraits. Notably, Philip "Lion of Sindria" Andrada is now actually a lion.

Hey...so dumb idea...but maybe when you reach at least 100 portraits, you could add a sub-mod that allows the player to set the % chance that a character is one of the furry portraits you added? I know some people, myself included, are a bit annoyed when we enter a port and see all but one of the primary characters are human. Not sure how you'd set it...but if that idea is at all feasible maybe it'd be a nice addition

I don't have a ton of control over how NPC portraits get picked. I could theoretically write a script that would change existing NPC portraits, but with some factions there would end up being a lot of repeats. It'd also be one more mod that I'm not really looking to maintain at the moment.

43

Modding / Re: Misc modding questions that are too minor to warrant their own thread

« on: May 23, 2022, 03:56:44 PM »

Is there an easy way (or just a way, period) to reproduce the spatter of debris that's created when a ship takes damage or a missile gets destroyed? Not quite sure how to pull the individual sprites/glow from the debris spritesheet. I'm assuming the code that does it is obfuscated but I'm just kinda hoping there's an API method somewhere that I'm missing.

44

Mods / Re: [0.95a] Kingdom of Terra (v0.13.1) - Taverns in Caverns (+Hotfix)

« on: May 21, 2022, 10:34:46 PM »

I'm making this post in both Kingdom of Terra and Apex Design Collective, as I'm not sure which of the two mods are causing this issue, but figured you both might want to know.

So experimenting with Grappling beam weapon on a modified Paragon and I wanted to see how effective using 2 beams on smaller ships will be so since my main armaments are shorter range and being able to pull in quick small ships means I'll be able to prevent the eternal kite even if they have no ability to break my shields.

At the top of my list of hostile ships when running a simulation are the Apex Design Collective ships, some of which have Geodesic Shield Matrix, which changes how shields work. I've tested my ship against Apex ships with and without the Geodesic Shield Matrix and it's only getting the effect from ships with the Geodesic shield matrix.

Upon the Grappling Beam hitting the shield, the sprite for the shield itself goes away, it still blocks all my shots, and emits particles like it is being shot. As well, the ship gains infinite flux being able to fire all of its weapons forever without gaining any flux at all. this effectively rendered them invulnerable to me.

If I send another ship to get behind the arc of the shield it still takes damage to the armor and hull like normal. so unless ship has a 360 shield I can kill it if I have 2 ships attack it.

Have a good [time of day].

yeah looks like this one is my problem- Geodesic Shield Matrix was having some very unexpected behavior if it was hit by something that didn't deal any damage. Dunno what exactly was going on to make the shield invisible and invincible, but I've got it fixed in dev and will have a patch out momentarily.

45

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!

« on: May 20, 2022, 01:15:51 PM »

I really do like your mod a bunch Mira but if I can run an idea by you; Mini-superweapons Mod - "Weaker prototype versions of rare super weapons but you can find blueprints to make more."

Seconded on this one. I really like the creativity and unique effects, but the sheer power level of them makes it kind of boring to actually use- get superweapon, use it, win. A version with "balanced" guns would be welcome.