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Messages - gun&drink

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1
Mods / Re: [0.9a] Blue (0.5.1a) Mod - January 20, 2019
« on: June 30, 2019, 07:14:02 AM »
just stopping by to say that the station is absolutely amazing. pure, unadultered firepower, just how I like it

2
I just had the FIX_ADMINS_ENABLED crash when changing to 2.4.1:
87270 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NoSuchFieldError: FIX_ADMINS_ENABLED
java.lang.NoSuchFieldError: FIX_ADMINS_ENABLED
   at data.scripts.campaign.VayraAdminAssigner.advance(VayraAdminAssigner.java:37)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.title.TitleScreenState.menuItemSelected(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.title.Object.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newnew.buttonPressed(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.I.?00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.I.processInput(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.O0Oo.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
87397 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Creating streaming player for music with id [miscallenous_main_menu.ogg]
87397 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.null  - Playing music with id [miscallenous_main_menu.ogg]



besides that, from the version before that I'm liking the parts of the mod I'm getting to see, but I think I'm doing something wrong due to how rarely some of the stuff shows up:
  • is it intended that I cannot raid or destroy the kadur and l'Interstellaire stations? is there a way currently to obtain blueprints?
  • what's the best way to obtain faction ships and weapons currently? I have only gotten them so far from salvaging

3
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Interstellar Imperium 2.0.0
« on: June 18, 2019, 04:36:26 AM »
welp, time to reinstall everything and sink another 100 hours in. this or Tiandong were the last straws holding me back

Dark.Revenant, you did it again you absolute madman. I was checking the page every few days wishing it was released already, but looking at those sprites it was worth every second. also is that a large turret mount I see in that new ship? in my II fleet? nice

4
So I was trying to revive an old mod (I think that the last time this was updated was in 0.5) and I managed to be able to make the ship and everything appear in-game. the problem is that when trying to fire any of the weapons of this mod the game crashes and this log is what's left:


60095 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager  - Loading stage 34
60095 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager  - Loading stage 35
60173 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager  - Loading stage 36
60173 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager  - Loading stage 37
60174 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager  - Loading stage 38
60175 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager  - Loading stage 39 - last
82423 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine  - FP1: 135, FP2: 1191, maxFP1: 200, maxFP2: 300
82423 [Thread-4] INFO  org.histidine.chatter.combat.ChatterCombatPlugin  - Chatter plugin initialized
95947 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.ship.A.if.startedChargeup(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.ship.trackers.OoOO.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.ship.trackers.D.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.ship.trackers.D.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.ship.trackers.OoOO.String(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.ship.A.if.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.systems.oOoO.advanceLinked(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.systems.oOoO.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.Ship.fire(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.Ship.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

where should I start looking for what's wring with the weapons? I checked the vanilla ones to see if anything looked too different but I'm a bit lost

5
I was testing a hullmod that gives you a lot of speed, but despite the max speed being at 690, the ship won't go faster that 618: the speed bar merely fills up until that speed, leaving some unused space. is there a hard cap in ship speed? can it be removed?

6
Modding / Re: Unlearned restrictive hullmods
« on: April 22, 2018, 03:45:27 AM »
kind of unrelated to the final point of the post, but

Full disclosure here for starters, I'm really not a fan of restrictive faction specific hullmods. As in those that can only be used for a slew of ships from a faction. Just like the mod weapons can completely change the way a vanilla ship does combat, I wish I could do all sort of experiments in combining hullmods from different factions and what-not. It's something I wish more mods would allow but well, I understand the desire of making a couple of ships more unique and balancing the hullmod only for them, so I'll chalk this up as personal beef.
I fully agree with you on the part about restrictive faction specific hullmods honestly. hullmods give such a crazy amount of possibilities to begin with, so having them restricted is, for me, just as painful as if faction specific weapons restrictions actually existed. I do understand why people do it: it's extremely hard to balance out, as these combinations can give the player the chance of making crazy combinations while the AI is a sitting duck. I was trying to make a hullmod pack myself just to give me more possibilities, and I think that the only way to balance it out is to include with such a mod a good amount of variants using said hullmods and vanilla content, just so the campaign is changed as a whole. Of course the moment there is more than one mod in the user's starsector the ships in that mod could be at a disadvantage, and of course creating variants from every mod out there would be crazy

I wonder if it could happen as a community effort tho: people would summit optimized variants that people have made by playing several mods, and they could be compiled into a huge pool of variants, which then would appear if the combination of mods being used is in use in the player's starsector. I know Dynasector exists precisely because this is no easy task, but it sounds neat on paper

7
Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Transponder Reminders 0.0.0
« on: April 19, 2018, 01:27:55 AM »
I have lost so much rep like this, I love you

8
Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] LowTech Armada
« on: April 18, 2018, 01:16:05 PM »
nice, more low tech goodies to play with

I gave them a quick try just now, and overall I like it very much. the corsair, the skull and the Mason in particular are really nice, both sprite wise and stat wise. I specially like the corsair's artillery role, I have always liked the thermal cannon and being able to bring more of them into the battle is definitely a plus

two small things that I have noticed right away that bothered me tho:
-the caravania brings very little for 35 fleet points. we have the legion with 5 medium composite, 2 large ballistic and 4 fighter bays just 5 more fleet points away from it, and same story with the onslaught. hell, even an eagle outguns it for 22 fleet points
-I need to test this one more, but the tappah could go all the way up to 20 OP cost, maybe more, and it would still be well worth it. they are a really nice idea both for the burn drive and the armament, but they are way too good for what you can find at 16 OP, specially with reserve deployment. normally I would tell you to nerf the stats instead of making it more costly, but I really like the idea of a low tech, high performance corvette

Cheers


9
Hey! If it's something you would put out as a mod for others to download, then you absolutely have to have permission from the person that made the assets. If you couldn't reach them, that'd be unfortunate, but would not make it ok to use someone's stuff.
Thanks for the quick reply Alex
Good to know, I will try to contact him as soon as possible to know if he is interested in it, so that even if it takes a good while to respond I have a better chance than doing it in a few months

10
I don't know if this should go in here, but it definitely sounds like it doesn't deserve its own thread:
I was bored, browsing old threads and stuff, when I saw an sprite in a really old mod that catched my attention. Said sprite is not in use in any mod in the present, and the user owning the mod hasn't posted anything in the forums since 2012.
what is the etiquette when planning on reviving old mods/using old assets if the author is inactive for a very long time and you are unable to contact him? this is a very hypothetical question because a) I have yet to make a single modification in Starsector than works besides modifying config files, let alone making a ship from a sprite, and b) I haven't attempted to contact said author yet so I don't even know if contact is possible or not. I wanted to know the answer anyways just to have it in mind if I get a little better at modding and I decide to go for it

11
Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Fringe Defence Syndicate v0.4.1 WIP (2018/04/10)
« on: April 11, 2018, 05:29:15 AM »
Okay let's do this again:
- I like the new dagger changes, it's far more usable now and definitely has a place
- I didn't see any changes about market spawn and such, but both weapons and ships in markets seem really limited. after forcing market upgrade about 15 times I was able to get a few hatreds and remnant daggers, but ootherwise corusant is an endless river of wraths, revenges in the ship side and autoblaster batteries/heavy beams on the weapon side. not a single large energy weapon appeared in all of this process
some of this may be because some ships have been removed from the market (I can kinda understand the terror as it is a killing machine, but I would look for an alternative way to introduce it to the campaign when you have the rest of the balance of the mod in an stable position) but there is something fishy going on right now with the markets
-I heavily disagree with the changes made in the heavy beam and he council spear. the heavy beam was already a bit hard to justify with 14 OP, but now with less range, less efficiency and 16 OP (I think it was 14 in the previous version, this change isn't in the changelog) it's not really worth it. if it was in the 13-11 range of OP I could see some use to it accompanied of the remnant dagger due to same range.
the coucil spear went from being awfully efficient and strong but extremely slow (which was still reasonable IMO) to being a tachyon lance with a bit of extra range but worse everything else: less efficient, less damage per shot and less shots per minute. even the OP drop doesn't make this changes worth it
-the removal of alot of the blaster/autoblaster weapon variants is understandable, for the reasons I pointed out in my first post. I still believe that with the right changes they can be a really fun combination, but they can wait until they are reintroduced. Gladiator Beam wasn't a favorite of mine and needs some work but I could see some use due to the long range it had for a medium weapon

First of all, thanks for your feedback, I see you took the time to write all this down and I appreciate it, like I have already said countless times, I do enjoy listening to other people's feedback since that is what really helps me put all this together to amke something you (the players) will enjoy.

The sprite work is not mine, all credits should go to MrDavidoff. I am using his sprites with his permission as placeholders to replace the old (in)famous 2k long pixel ships and I do plan on reworking all the current sprites, even if only a simple polish.

Regarding ship balancing, All ships have been through loads of stat changes, you can look at the changelogs for yourself, and before I even released the first version of this mod further work has been done to put most ship stats to a "decent" level with further tweaking after release thanks to the feedback of some Discord users ;)

I have considered making an IBB ship several times, I even have a couple of sprites reserved for that/those ship(s), although that is not quite a priority at the moment and I will have to discuss further details with someone, possibly SWP's creator, to know exactly what are the needs and work that needs to be done.

Again, most of the sound files are also from MrDavidoff, although I have pulled some from other Star Wars based mods like the one mentioned in the credits section. And no, sound is not "unappreciated", at least not for Starsector. Just ask literally anyone what is their opinion on Blackrock's sound quality and you'll see what I mean.

you are welcome, it's the least I can do when you are doing free content for the community which people enjoy

I didn't know that the sprites and sound were from MrDavidoff, but I still thank you for putting them into use. it's no easy task to balance and put into work a mod even when you have the sprites, and even more so when you are planning on polishing them. can't wait for those sweet IBBs you just mentioned
I have tried balancing the Gravity Well with a value of flux generated per second to limit the time the system can effectively stay active, but the ship is already quite vulnerable as 20% of the ship's flux capacity is automatically filled with hard flux, the ship can't vent while the system is active and it takes 30 seconds both to reach full power and to finish the cooldown, not to mention decreased shield efficiency while the system is active (unless I switched something and it actually buffs the shields, need to test it carefully). Other than that I have tried to make the ship more of a support ship with stats comparable in some levels to cargo ships or combat freighters, and code restrictions to prevent multiple ships to deploy their system simultaneously when there should only be one active at a time, both to prevent a null-area over a given region and to prevent performance issues.

The ugly sprites when damaged are not really an issue that only affects the Loyalty, and that may be due to a number of reasons, one of them possibly the excessive amount of greebles in all ships making the damage sprites even more noisier. I will see what I can do about that...

The Terror had 7 bays in the past, so you have seen nothing ::)
But yeah, the lack of a carrier is damaging the faction as a whole because some ships have 1-2 wings but nothing over that. This problem only exists because I am using sprites that are not mine and I have failed to find a proper carrier sprite from the collection that was given to me. This is definitely an issue to be fixed in the future because I really would like this faction to have more fighter power.
Ohh and fighters will be balanced someday, its another item in my TODO bucket.

The doctrine for the ships is still being considered and drafted. A valid choice would be heavy slow battleships and cruisers and fast frigates, destroyers and fighters, as it would fit the current lore, but this is also an item in my TODO bucket, which is starting to turn into a barrel.

The hullmods should be only two, one of them built-in in the Rancour, which I consider to be quite powerful as it is. It allows the ship to move with the 0-flux boost at up to 20% flux, 4 times what vanilla gives you through a skill iirc. The other is a mod that decreases repair time by 50% and the time the ship remains disabled by 10%, which should quite powerful as well.
More hullmods would certainly spice things up, and maybe even add a faction-wide hullmod similar to Neutrino's to give the ships some special effect, but that has to be analysed first.

The descriptions are a work in progress, as all the mod is in fact. At first the Submission was supposed to be a large combat freighter with a dedicated combat sibling, the Remorse, which has been removed in the previous update. They both are cruiser sized, it might have been a lapse when naming/labeling the ships, thanks for pointing that out.


The ships should be easier to distinguish right now. As of v0.4.0 there should only be two battleships, one of them with fighter wings, and two dreadnaughts, one of which is currently only available in a custom mission. Before this update that problem was severe, and still is, but now it should only really be a problem for fighters and frigates, which still have some "duplicates". Were you referring to the Hatred/Suffering or to some other ship(s)?
to be fair, I didn't have the chance to experience the gravity well in detail as the ship didn't show up in the market in my regular run and I had to use console command to test it a little, so my opinion isn't as fleshed out as some of the other weapons and ships in the mod. still, it should be treated with extreme care for future changes IMO

the 'duplicate problem is way less severe now that the campaign catalog is smaller. I was mostly referring to things lime Hatred/Suffering and  Submission/Remonse, but for what I have seen right now in the market it's not such a problem right now

regarding the doctrine of the ships and the lack of dedicated carrier, take your time. as long as you know that right now that's a problem the faction has it's good enough for me. Also Jesus, that 7 bay Terror sounds terrifying

I think I missed the first hullmod you mentioned in my run, but that one actually sounds very interesting. the second one didn't really bring much to the table to me mainly because it seemed like a different take on the vanilla automatic repair unit. I'm probably not the best player to use as a judge in hullmods, as I consider them something really important (and something I can be specially harsh on) when a mod decides to introduce them for the simple fact that one cool hullmod completely changes the way I make specific builds all across the mods, so take my criticism with a grain of salt
mildly related to this, but when you find the time update the catalog of weapons, ships and hullmods in the first page, as it makes finding whatever new I can find and test way more easy. a simple list in text would be fine really, just to know "oh, this exists" without having to go to the command prompt where something could be missed easily


Ahh, weapons.... One update almost entirely dedicated to weapon balancing, but mostly targeting damage and flux values. The actual market price and OP cost still needs tweaking, obviously, and like with the ships many weapons were also removed in v0.4.0 as they weren't really adding anything different to the game. Needless to say, there will still be changes to most weapons.
it's really difficult to find the balance on those kind of things, just keep working on it and slowly but surely it will take shape
Once again, thanks for all the feedback! I really want to make a mod that people will enjoy, and leaving a "Star Wars" mod left to oblivion again like many other did is not in my plans, progress may be slow but I want to see this mod stand in the Mod Index some day, once it has reached a proper level of balance and content.
cheers mate, good luck






12
Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Fringe Defence Syndicate v0.4.1 WIP (2018/04/10)
« on: April 11, 2018, 03:37:58 AM »
I do suggest that you update the mod, a closer look at the screenshot and I quickly see that you must still be using v0.3, that may fix the similar ships a bit ::)
Okay, now I feel dumb now  :P. I will reply to your post in detail once I do a quick check in the new version, as some of the things I have pointed out may have changed
that being said, upon updating my starsector crashes, giving the following fonal lines of log in the end:

45943 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore  - Loading variant [C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\data\variants\fighters\xyphos_Fighter.variant]
45944 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils  - Loading JSON from [ABSOLUTE_AND_CWD: null (C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\data\variants\fighters\xyphos_Fighter.variant)]
45944 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore  - Loading variant [C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault.variant]
45945 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils  - Loading JSON from [ABSOLUTE_AND_CWD: null (C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault.variant)]
45945 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore  - Loading variant [C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault_LRabSabsLrlas.variant]
45946 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils  - Loading JSON from [ABSOLUTE_AND_CWD: null (C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault_LRabSabsLrlas.variant)]
47475 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.specs.HullVariantSpec.<init>(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.OO0000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.OO0000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.ResourceLoaderState.init(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

nevermind, this only happens after overwriting the old mod directory with thenew one, deleting and copying the new fixes it

13
Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Fringe Defence Syndicate v0.4.1 WIP (2018/04/10)
« on: April 10, 2018, 01:45:20 PM »
After a full run of this mod I feel like I can give a fairly good overview on it
First, the good:
-I like the spritework, could use some work in some areas but so far I love most if not all ships
-as far as ships go, they seemed fairly balanced and had a unique role to fulfill (with some exceptions) within the fleet, which is really nice and not something that I see with every mod. I had tons of fun from bravely fighting remnants with the Loyalty to absolute domination with the Terror, and things like the Rage active system give a ton of possibilities, with broadside warfare being a new favorite of mine from now on. If you ever consider it, do a IBB Bounty for the Ships and weapon pack go for it, there's tons of potential in here
-very good sound choices, which is often unappreciated with this kind of things


The Meh (not really sure if bad or not that bad or it's me misunderstanding things):
-the gravity well active system needs either some big weakness (maybe the moment the ship goes past certain flux limit or receives some decent damage it automatically deactivates) or some time limit per use. I love the idea, I really do, but as it is right now it's a really cheap way to invalidate an entire fleet of frigates
-The Loyalty sprite looks a bit ugly when damaged:

-Right now there's no dedicated, big carrier in the entire catalog of ships. It specially hurts because the fighters are so damn nice, and some cost their fair cost in OP, so justifying the investment in hullmods and a dedicated carrier officer when you are going to be using 2 bays at best seems a little underwhelming. Reading previous posts I learned that the Terror had +4 fighter bays in the past, and while I do agree that it needed to be balanced some ship in the fleet needs to take that place, even if it's at the cost of firepower
Unless you were going for a kind of battle doctrine that doesn't like to put all the eggs in the same bag, then I can understand why so many battlecarriers and no actual carrier
-the hullmods didn't really give me that much
-the Submission claims to be a freighter in the description, but it's labeled as a cruiser
-Remnant dagger and Council spear are pushing it a little with flux efficiency, but it's kinda justified due to OP cost and slow firing rate. more about OP cost below
-some of the battleships could use an slight paint job to distinguish them. nothing too brutal, but some simple differentiation that can give me a better idea of what am I deploying or what is different of what when someone is not that familiar with the mod and the similar silhouettes confuse you
>I'm pretty sure that the AI doesn't use hyperspace jump for retreat, which is a shame because that's awfully useful

The not so good:
-as a general criticism to weaponry, a big chunk of the weapons in the mod tend to go for really high OP cost which I find hard to justify,specially with the medium energy weapons(which is a big deal when there are so many medium slots in the ships). to put a pair of examples, the heavy beam(which is a neat idea and I can see that you actually took some time to balance it based in the graviton beam) is indeed an improvement from the graviton beam, but 14 OP seems a bit too much of an increase when the weapon itself already pays the price with range and efficiency. and while the Remnant dagger is a neat weapon too, 18 OP is really pushing into Large slot OP cost. I have only seen medium weapons reach that cost with Templars, and that's supposed to be a boss faction really.
This inflation in OP points for medium weapons makes outfitting cruisers and battleships with the same mod weapons a bit awkward, specially if you want to pair them with Council Spears in the Terror.
-I really, really struggle to see some use to the heavy battery blaster/autoblaster weapons. it's pretty hard to get into range with them, and when you do, something feels... wrong. I see the numbers and they shouldn't be this hard to make use of, but I feel like I'm paying an stupid amount of flux cost and OP for it. on top of this they feel like you are changing very little besides the color of the projectiles.I noticed then that I couldn't find any energy weapons with explosive damage in this mod, so one possible solution to this could be giving them a different damage tipe so that they can complement each other and have a better role. also the dual autoblaster canon inherits part of these problems, while the quad battery doesn't for the simple fact that it's dirty cheap for a large weapon slot (only 4 more than the medium version, which again puts into perspective the medium weapon OP inflation I talked about) and it's more efficient that their medium counterparts, so I could see some use for it at least.
-hydra torpedoes struggle with any amount of PD. they need either more hitpoints, or more ammo. they are fine in the bomber version, but any decent distance and some minimal PD makes them useless

In any case don't give up with this mod, just for those active systems alone I'll have it as a regular in my runs from now on

14
Modding / Re: [WIP] Hullmod Minimod idea, help and feedback needed
« on: April 08, 2018, 03:31:28 AM »
Do note that OP cost changes are not correctly applied when hullmods are added in the refit screen, so they are only supported for built-in hullmods.
of course, that makes sense. between this and the active system modification it's going to be messy, but I have to study how to implement it. I wonder if you can make a dynamic creation of new ship variants, so that once the hullmod is installed the ship becomes a new ship with new stats and with a preinstalled hullmod. I know that sounds like an absolute mess to implement, but at the same time it would certainly answer the limitations I have right now.
in any case I need to do some serious investment in time to understand how to pull any of this off

15
Modding / Re: [WIP] Hullmod Minimod idea, help and feedback needed
« on: April 06, 2018, 11:19:11 AM »
First off, welcome to modding!

Now onto the hullmod itself, the idea is good, although for the bonuses it gives I'd probably rethink its name, the hullmod itself seems to be giving a buff to ship systems and flux dissipation, so if it was me making this hullmod I'd probably call it "Electronics Augmentation Device" or something like that.

Looking at it, balance wise, it is powerful, but I also see that in the long run it can become costy, so I'm not sure... I'd probably use it on my flagship to further enhance it in combat but not much else.

Give it a try, all stats you posted there can be changed iirc.

EDIT: You should also join Starsector's Discord channel, you can get a lot of help and feedback in there
thanks for the warm welcome

-the name is something I came on the fly, so it really could use some work
-It's costly, yes, but I think that for someone that does heavy lifting with their flagship is totally worth it. I hope I can implement some form of test quick to see how far does it go
-if I get really active I may join the discord, but right now it's going to be something really in the sidelines until at least summer.
I think all of that can be implemented, and it sounds like a great thing for stuff like the Hyperion and a few other High Tech toys, which desperately needs better CR and other bonuses to be competitive right now, as well as providing meaningful efficiency bonuses for certain player flagships, like the Aurora.

the CR wasn't the main focus, it was more like something that made sense for overall improvements of the ship. but I'm glad you can see an use for it right off the bat

 
@gundrik That's a very interesting idea for a hullmod, though I can see it definitely being abusable. Most ships are already more powerful in the player's hands than the AI's (with some exceptions), and giving such a blatant buff to such ships at the expense of logistical stats isn't the best way to balance the pros and cons, because at the sort of stage a player would use this mod to buff their flagship, logistics (supplies and such) are rarely an issue.

I wouldn't recommend Peak Performance Time as a stat to buff here either, and certainly not by such a huge amount. Most capitals for instance already have 10-12 minutes of PPT. If you want to solo in a 20+ minute battle before you start to suffer CR losses, then go for it, but PPT and CR exist to prevent such scenarios, and encourage the player to retreat/deploy ships over time during long battles. If you're going to buff PPT or CR in any way, then I'd reduce the rate at which CR decays once PPT runs out (such as what the Hardened Subsystems hullmod already does).

one of the reasons I went for logistical punishment for this was in part because if I even end up implementing this in a way that enemy fleets can use it (still a long shot) it's because their lack of logistics would make it busable even for the AI, but yeah I do agree that for a lategame player this is still pretty abusable. the other reason I made the punishment that way is because it makes sense in context (use more supplies-> better maintenance | empty cargo, non skelly crew and fuel -> more space for other stuff | high maintenance ship -> needs alot of crew, needs to come in support ships because why have passengers in a finely tunned killing machine). the the CR was just part of this line of thought, but it probably is a little too much right now. on the other hand this isn't necessarily a hull mod that benefits mostly capitals (I actually came up with the idea while wondering if a Neutrino Falken only run was possible with the mods I had at the moment) but I get what you are saying. I will probably nerf that part or make it incompatible with hardened subsystems

the last reason that I went for its because I have seen several times the opposite hull mod (in mods) to this: halving supplies and crew for worse performance. I just found it so weird that no one had gone for the opposite approach to that


 
As for stuff that affects a ship system, I don't believe you can achieve such a thing without heavy scripting (if at all) and you might need to do an awful lot of edge-case scripting. System cooldown time and number of charges (for those that have them) aren't "mutableStats", which means you can't simply change a ship's value in a hullmod. Whether they can be changed at all I do not know, but if they can it's a pretty safe bet it will be far more trouble than it's worth. On the flipside, all the other stat changes are easily edited in a hullmod file.
this is what I feared the most after fooling around a .java from a hullmod: I couldn't find any references to the active system. If this is the case then I may have to postpone this hullmod for a while until I get the hang of it, as making active systems was honestly what I was most excited about with this mod. in any case I have some other ideas about hullmods that should be fairly easy, as they only touch mutable stats

 
I'm not rightly sure how you can make such a hullmod interesting I'm afraid, because at the moment while potent, it's also kinda boring sorry to say. And at the same time, the penalties should also be more interesting, and have bigger impact on a late-game fleet where the player would be most likely to use it (and where it would be at its most powerful). There are a number of nerfs you could give the ship - more expensive weapons so you have to specialize the loadout; chances of engine and weapon malfunctions; overall improved flux stats but worse active venting rate - and some are more interesting than others. But balancing such a mod would be quite a challenge. I'd have to give it more thought.

TLDR: The concept sounds fun, but the current execution is a bit dull and potentially extremely abusable. Needs some work, but definitely deserves the time.  ;)

Like the more expensive weapons idea and overall improved flux stats but worse active venting rate idea, they could be really interesting applications. I was also thinking about making point-defense worse, but this sounds like something hard to implement (make auto aim worse if possible? make turn rate slow down?). I was also thinking about removing some of the bonuses as it seems a little aimless right now as a hullmod,

 on the other hand I have always found malfunctions to be a huge deal-breaker and never worth it,  on top of that it doesn't really make any sense taking into account what the hull mod tries to accomplish

so to wrap the fact that I'm unable to implement active system modifications and to make it more balanced I may make a test with all the pros and conts excluding AS modifications.

thank you all for your time, will update when I get some progress or I need more advice

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