Is this Valve Time™, or Blizzard Time™?
Neither, it is update time!
From the back stage ladies and gentlemen, I present the long overdue update of Exigency Incorporated. Why did it take so long you might wonder? Well to put it bluntly consider this a complete rebuild of the mod.
Every sprite was redone, all new custom sounds were added, most of the scripts were improved and optimized, all the writing was redone, everything was given a balance pass, more music was added, more ships and weapons were added, a new mini faction that is part of the back story was added, new campaign features were added, and virtually every bug, quirk, and gameplay issue was solved.
While there might have been some procrastination involved, in the end it was a rather large effort to get here and many thanks to the skilled coders who assisted with some of the more complicated issues.
So go ahead and grab the new version from original
post.
Changelog:
Spoiler
0.59a "Chaos reborn"
Please note this will break save games if anyone is still using 0.58d.
New content:
- Added a new faction called the 'Ahriman Association'. They are rogue Exigency Corporation employees that took technologies and secrets with them starting a new sophisticated pirate faction in the Sector, with common rabble rallying under them. They wield hybrid designs that share the traits of both Exigency Corporation and Mastery epoch technologies and are extremely dangerous opponents. They have a station out in hyperspace where you can purchase the hybrid ships and low tech vessels. This will also be the only location to purchase genuine Exigency Corporation vessels and modular components in small quantities (they will still appear in the Askonia system station until that "feature" of vanilla is corrected). Anywhere the Ahriman Association is present will be a extremely dangerous place to be, as the Exigency Corporation does not tolerate the use of their technologies in foreign hands.
- Added Gehenna class capital ship (Ahriman Association vessel).
- Added Harinder class cruiser (Ahriman Association vessel).
- Added Kafziel class light carrier (Ahriman Association vessel).
- Added Azryel class destroyer (Ahriman Association vessel).
- Added Rauwel class frigate (Ahriman Association vessel).
- Added Azazel class fighter (Ahriman Association vessel).
- Added Nasir class light carrier.
- Added Indra class frigate and its special built in CIGEN Repeater weapon, Burst Repulsor ship system, and Evasion Jets ship system (yes two ships systems, Evasion Jets are activated with right click).
- Added Naxos class bomber.
- Added Lancet ASM Launcher and Lancet ASM, mounted on the Nasir class and Naxos class respectively.
- Added 'Insider Trading' mission.
- The Exigency Corporation now launches a massive invasion fleet every 40 days that randomly chooses a single star system to attack. They will fight there until they are destroyed, low on supplies, or forced to withdraw.
New / changed visuals and audio:
- Added new portrait 'Audio Only' (Ahriman Association).
- Added new portraits 'Cigarette Woman', 'Generic Guy #2', and 'Admiral Von TroniK'.
- 'Cigar guy portrait' is removed.
- All mod portraits are now usable by the player with the exception of 'Audio Only'.
- Massive improvements to the sprites of all Exigency Corporation vessels (except for the Ulrith and its special Repulsor drone which are slated to be added into the mod in a future version).
- Enhanced the sprites of all Exigency Corporation turret weapons and missiles (except for the Hunter Killer Launcher which is slated to be added into the mod in a future version).
- Replaced all weapon and ship system sounds with custom ones made by Cycerin.
- Added customised explosion graphic to the Big Bang Torpedo with unique detonation sound also.
- Removed the custom engine sounds as the quality of them was not up to par and they conflict with other mods, this will be a correctable issue in the next update of Starsector when new and improved ones will return.
- Volume corrected the campaign song 'Stellar Remnant' from the last update, while also playing it a higher quality.
- New songs by Psiyon:
Campaign; 'Unknown'.
Combat; 'Exigency', 'Catastrophic Systems Failure', and 'Gliese 411 B'.
- New songs by Kazi:
Campaign; 'Fear Machine', 'Into the Black', and 'The Expanse'.
Combat; 'Steel Rain'.
- New combat song 'Rust' by Curtis Schweitzer, used under the Creative Commons License. https://soundcloud.com/curtis-schweitzer/if-i-scored-rust-i-think-id-go
- Changed the Exigency Corporation's faction color on the campaign map to a much more intense blue to further distinguish them from other mod factions.
Balance changes / other random tweaks:
- Changed values in the ship_data.csv to fit the new standards for the 0.6.2a update of Starsector.
- Rebalanced the prices of all ships, before some were way overpriced for what they are. But in the end they cost more than vanilla ships since all Exigency Corporation and Ahriman Association vessels have many built in weapons. So they should cost roughly the same as a fully equipped vanilla ship after the few modular weapons slots on the mod vessels are filled.
- Expanded the list of possible ship names in the campaign.
- Rewrote the descriptions.csv and all writing in general to a much higher standard.
- Ball Lightning Gun was nerfed by decreasing the frequency of consecutive EMP arcs by roughly 62% and the Energy / EMP damage done by the arcs to 40 / 40 from 50 / 50. Also reduced the Energy / EMP damage done by the beam itself to 40 / 40 from 50 / 50.
- CIGEN Recoilless-Cannon had its damage nerfed to 1100 from 1300. Also improved the visuals with an enhanced shell sprite, while also adding a glow effect to it to make it more visible on the battlefield.
- Stinger Rocket was renamed to Stinger Rocket Launcher, to clear any possible confusion with the new twin shot version which uses the old name and is mounted on the Naxos class bomber.
- If you use LazyLib 1.8c (1.7 is obsolete now) along with all the changes in this update of Exigency Incorporated, generally combat will be less taxing on your computer.
- All deprecated methods in the scripts have been replaced.
- Repulsor ship system has been improved greatly in the following manners:
Now creates a visual effect and plays a custom sound when weapons fire is deflected.
Memory leak was fixed.
Rare bug when it would refuse to activate was fixed (probably).
Slowdown caused by deflecting weapons fire was optimised some.
Improved the AI so it activates it in more intelligent manners to provide a more effective defense.
- Tweaks to the shield piercing script, behaves the same in combat but creates the visual and sound effects more accurately (it used to sometimes make them even when the shells were not inside a shield).
- Sidewinder Missile AI now sends the missiles in even more chaotic flight paths while now properly reacting to flares, character skills, and the ECCM hull mod and is much more efficiently coded.
- Mx10 / Mx4, Sidewinder, and Stinger missiles now have a fuse that causes them to self destruct harmlessly two seconds after the engine fizzles out. This reduces the load on your computer during combat as they fire so many missiles, prevents players from exploiting the range of them via careful micromanaging that is something the AI can never do, and also decreases the chances of friendly fire incidents which were very common before.
- Exigency Corporation vessels are no longer restricted from mounting the Expanded Missile Racks hull mod.
- Changed the method for preventing shield hull mods from being put on Exigency Corporation ships. Rather than modify the vanilla hull mods to prevent installation to begin with which can cause issues if other mods are using the same method, it now removes the banned hull mods instantly after installing them in the refit screen. This can cause slight confusion if you are not aware of this, but it is a necessary method to ensure maximum compatibility with other mods.
- Added faction specific Beam Resistant Armor hull mod (-30% beam damage to both armor and hull) to all Exigency Corporation ships / fighters as a standard built in.
- Reworked the ship bounds of all vessels, moved engines, and moved hardpoint weapons to more closely mirror how vanilla ships are rigged.
- Reworked all variants so that some weapons are on alternating instead of linked firing modes now, and the order in which some of them fire is different. This was done to "shape" the missile salvos into formations and firing intervals to maximise the chance of successfully penetrating point defense grids.
- Irithia class capital ship had its max turn rate and turn acceleration stats nerfed substantially, its fleet points cost raised to 29 from 28, and its hitpoints and armor rating stats nerfed slightly.
- Zephos class destroyer had its max turn rate and turn acceleration stats buffed substantially, and its armor and hull stats buffed slightly
- Yria class frigate now costs 7 deployment points instead of 8, and its armor and hull were buffed slightly.
- Elhiur class frigate had its turn acceleration stat buffed substantially.
- Glynado class interceptor was nerfed by reducing the excessively wide firing arcs of its guns.
- Tweaks to the Wargames mission to be more interesting while including the new ships.
- Tweaks to the random battle missions to be more interesting while including the new Exigency Corporation ships and the new vanilla 0.6.2a Starsector ships.
- Moved the Tasserus star system a bit closer to the center of the map. Now located at 2060, 14500 was previously at 360, 17500.
- Increased the difficulty of attacking the Tasserus star system by adjusting the composition and the number of Exigency Corporation fleets active at once. They also patrol the system in more intelligent manners that make kiting or avoiding them much harder, while also preventing you from getting ambushed by 12 fleets simultaneously as soon as you pass through the jump hole (they no longer just clump around the planet).
- Changes to virtually everything in the mod, so numerous were these tweaks that I will just provide quick summary:
Added proper faction prefixes to literally every single file name and in the data and scripts themselves (was mostly just on graphics and sounds before).
Random changes in almost all the data files and scripts to tweak so many things I cannot possibly remember all of them.
Reduced the file size of the mod slightly by compressing and resizing some of images where that could be done without any noticeable loss of quality (but it is actually larger now because the mod has more of everything).
- Probably some things I don't recall.
Final notes:
To those that have been following me and enjoy the mod I apologize that it took so long to complete this update. There was much feature creep, and some on again off again work done to it. But in the end consider this the a complete relaunch of the mod as literally nothing was left untouched or improved in some manner.
There also might be hints of unexpected things intended for the future if you dig through the mod files... --
Things that are on the very near future list of stuff is.
- More weapons
- More ships
- Another mini faction to flesh out the back story?
Any feed back on the update is appreciated as these guys are hard to balance but I put a lot of work into making them feel "right". And if someone can tell my if Linux hates it or not that would also be appreciated