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[Tecrys]

Thanks for the backup Gotcha!

BTW: very nice work on Bushi and Hiigaran Decendants, love the balance. Very well done!

[Gotcha!]

Flatterer. Pfff. And you're welcome.

[Tecrys]

Zaphide gave me his ok for the Exerelin files so here they are:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nfxfz4ksgi48yh6/Dstech_Exerelin.zip

Simply follow the instructions inside the readme.txt files.
Make sure to backup your Exerelin files beforehand just in case.

Have fun!

Edit: The new version of Exerilin includes these files so there is no need to do this anymore.

[HELMUT]

Tried them a bit, still very, very powerful. Perhaps increasing drastically the supply/cr cost would make them a bit closer to a reasonable balance. Anyway thanks you for updating this for 0.6.1a!

[Tecrys]

I think most weapons are too powerful as well but that could be fixed easily, either by increasing they're flux generation, reducing the damage or by reducing firing speed.
The other option would be to give them a certain amount of regenerating ammo so that weapons are very powerful and fast firing but their sustained dps would be much lower.

I think the blade frigate isn't badly balanced at all it's the weapons tht make it op. (And maybe the insane speed of the damn thing)
But other ships like the Shield and the Block are quite op.

Balancing the ships without changing themselves would be difficult but I could imagine if you increase the fleet points drastically it could work out.
In that way you would have very few ships, maybe only 1 ore 2 sometimes, but they are very powerful.

In any case I don't think I could balance them in a good way and I'm not sure if that would be the author's intention so I'm not gonna do it.

BTW: I got an ok from DSMK2 for updating. All credit for the mod to him. Thanks mate, love DSTech art style!

[Zaphide]

At the moment the ships/wings have no values for CR or supplies/day, which makes them pretty broken in current StarSector

I feel these could be added without breaking/changing the authors intent. They could be based off the values for Deployment Point's, which aren't really that useful anymore but are what used to be a fairly good balance value for StarSector 0.54. The Deployment Point values for DSTech are all really high, pretty much signifying that the ships are powerful but expensive

[Tecrys]

Is 10 points for a frigatte high? I don't really know I did not really pay attention to deploiment points with other factions.

Since I've played them a lot in Exerelin here some feedback:
-Logistics value is completely broken, you can have as many DSTech ships as you like and your logistics rating will not increase unless you carry too much stuff or crew
-CR is weird: The ships lose qite a lot of cr per battle but they are also replenished very quickly
-DSTech ships repair extremely fast

Since DSMK2 answered my pm I guess I could ask him if I should continue doing some tweaks to his mod ...

Any suggestions?

Edit: Oh, and the ships are way too cheap, most ships cost only a few hundred credits and the the dreadnaught is like 1200 credits but I'm not sure how to change that.

[Zaphide]

10 deployment points for a frigate is on the high end yeah. Hound (basic frigate) is 3, Falcon (light cruiser) is 12

Well, assuming you get the OK, to get started you could do Deployment Points / 2 for Supplies/day values. This would result in:
 - Blade (Frigate) = 5 supplies/day
 - Block (Heavy Destroyer) = 10 supplies/day
 - Side (Heavy Cruiser) = 20 supplies/day
 - Edge (Super Dreadnaught) = 25 supplies/day

I would also set a buy credit amount per ship (as most of them at the moment are super low).

I think those two changes would go a long way to making them fit in a bit better

BTW: You can change those values in the ship_data.csv file in data/hulls, although you may need to add those 'columns' (it is saved as a comma-separated file) yourself.

[HELMUT]

Had this while playing. The Driver class isn't working i think.

Code

992372 [Thread-6] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.String  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.FighterAI.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.F.øÒÒ000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.super.oOOO.Ò00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.String.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$2.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

Otherwise for the balance, 10 is pretty big but not that crazy, the Hyperion is 15 for example and definitely not as threatening as a DSTech frigate. The supply/day seems reasonable though.

[Tecrys]

That's weird, I had no problems with the Driver wings as of yet.

Since I'm pretty new to this game and modding it I don't quite understand that error message.
I guess there's a null value somewhere that isn't supposed to be there?

I was looking threw the mod folders and found some weapons which don't appear either on the ships or in Exerelin,
I guess Exerelin uses ship variant data to generate what's in store at stations so I'm gonna have a look at all variants and I'll try to include these weapons too.

I think that should solve the problem regarding built-in weapons as well.
(I had to change all built-in weapons, mostly those small HELR lasers, because Exerelin was generating ships at stations without those built-in weapons and there was no way of putting other weapons in there)
Using the ship editor this should be done fairly quickly. I'm off on monday, I might use the day to get started on this.

As I'm doing that I think I'll add cr values and repair time as well.
I have no clue how to solve the logistics rating problem so far but I might find a solution for that as I'm working on the mod.
(BTW: I got approval for trying to balance this mod by DSMK2 but I don't think I can do it all by myself ...)

Edit: I think I'm gonna go for replenishing charges for most weapons to get them balanced. That should work similar to Shadowyards CEPC weaponry but the charge amount should be even smaller I think.
Like that ships would be able to pack a serious punch for a very short amount of time after which they would be quite vulnerable and the player or the AI would be forced to use other(?weaker?) weaponry in the meantime.

[Zaphide]

Had this while playing. The Driver class isn't working i think.

Code

992372 [Thread-6] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.String  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.FighterAI.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.F.øÒÒ000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.super.oOOO.Ò00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.String.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$2.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

This could possibly be because in the .faction file supplied by Tecrys it lists the driver_wing as 'ds_driver_missile_bomber', which is actually the singular variant, which can cause the null exception. I think it should be changed to 'ds_driver_wing'.

I was looking threw the mod folders and found some weapons which don't appear either on the ships or in Exerelin,
I guess Exerelin uses ship variant data to generate what's in store at stations so I'm gonna have a look at all variants and I'll try to include these weapons too.

Yep that's exactly how Exerelin does it

(I had to change all built-in weapons, mostly those small HELR lasers, because Exerelin was generating ships at stations without those built-in weapons and there was no way of putting other weapons in there)
Using the ship editor this should be done fairly quickly. I'm off on monday, I might use the day to get started on this.

I'm not sure how you are fixing this, but a few mods have had similar issues; see my post here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=161.msg117067#msg117067, it may be the same issue

[Tecrys]

Thanks for the link, that's exactly the way I was going to fix it.

Edit: I see, you've fixed the driver problem already in the new version of Exerelin. Thanks!

[Tecrys]

New version available!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2t8md66tuvyx1ta/dstech0.5.3.zip

Changes:
- All built in weapons are built in again!
- updated some ships with systems
- added logistics and cr values
- increased most fleet points

I've tried the update with the new version of Exerelin, so it should work properly.
This is just a quick balance atempt, most ships are probably still overpowered but they now use s lot of supplies and cr per deployment.
Added some lore provided by DSMK2.

Let me know if enything weird is happening and I'll try to fix it.

Cheers!

[HELMUT]

Just noticed that the fighters CR deployment cost is 25%, it's huge, it means that destroyed fighters can barely be replaced. For example the Talon CR cost is 4%.

[Tecrys]

Ok, I'll keep that in mind.
The fighters of DSTech aren't that op so i guess I should have some mercy on them.
I'll test it myself and see how it goes, thanks for the advice.