Sure, let me expand a bit. When I said content I meant to refer to the new things (ships, factions, stat changes), when I said features I meant new actions (bribing, intimidating, etc). The big draw your mod has over others is in characterization. You've got lots of flavor in your lore, lots of consistency in your ships, and lots of interaction with your characters. These, and in particular the last one, are very hard to find in regular Starsector. There's obviously only so much you can change outside of a TC, but I still long for a middle ground where you could bribe and extort other fleets and so forth in the base game (only using more generic dialog out of necessity).
Unfortunately it goes both ways; you've clearly put a lot of thought into your work, and it's really distinct... but it's really distinct. I don't have any major suggestions for you because you seem to be following a vision of the game very closely and very well. There are little things, like how Archean ships are in a whole different class of speed compared to everything else, but that's barely a blip.
Thanks for the breakdown, I appreciate the feedback! I have been thinking about it, and it may be possible to separate that portion of the mod(fleet dialogue features) into a mini-mod that could work outside of a TC. Like you said, it would probably only be the "base case" since most of the alternate flavor dialogue is for the new factions, but it would be something! I also have been meaning to get some more dialogue into Vanilla factions, so when I do that I can separate the two out. I will see what I can do once this next update is done.
Considering how you are one person, I think you are 80-90% matched in the awesomeness.
True that.
Aw shucks, thanks!
I just have a lot of passion for both coding and this game, and I myself have dreamed of some of these features from before the campaign was even available! I am pretty confident at this point that I will continue development for a long while, assuming .9 doesn't break too much. Can never be sure there, but I'm hopeful.
As for Nex: The only thing I think would be a problem is the Asgard Station. Even then, it's just the weapons that are the problem...Although it wou-I am going to stop there so I don't ramble on possibilities.
Either way, I don't think Nex would be hard to make compatible. Not like you are trying to get Blackrock or Dassault-Mikoyan compatible. Nex doesn't add weapons or ships.
I spent some time going over Nex's source code, and the biggest obstacle will probably be in the way it generates new games. It's completely rebuilt from Vanilla, so I would have to integrate my own starts into that new system, once I understand it better. Still, it doesn't seem insurmountable.
(As a side note, Nex is AWESOME. Truly a lot of work went into the features, and should I effectively implement them here... wow... it will be more than I ever thought possible)
The difficulty is that this mod doesnt just add stuff, it changes everything to do with game balance. While yea, you could probably easily integrate it with nex, it would be extremely imbalanced. Bring fighters from another mod here? No idea of op or not. Slow, but way more firepower, so probably act like cheap gunships.
All vanilla and Order ships have heavier armor and tougher shields, zero flux boost. Most of these weapons cost no flux. Missile spam. Etc, etc. You could do it, but i suspect balance would be difficult.
Well, from what I can tell I don't think those ships are actually included, just the option to include those mods. So I just need to be sure I understand and can implement the code for the features- stuff like colony-capturing, diplomacy, invasions, mining, etc.
Since I hand place many of my factions' strongholds, I would also have to build in safeguards that check for Corvus Mode, or not include the completely random map as part of the features.
Even if those ships were included, I could probably balance other faction mods' content for this TC, however, given enough time. I have a system that seems to work pretty well at this point. The 13 or so small weapons I added in last month have only needed some minor tweaks from their initial balance because I plugged them directly into established and "proven" stat ranges. Time is the main factor here, per usual.