Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 12:40:23 AM

Title: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 12:40:23 AM
Mods that expand vanilla faction ex: Luddic Enhancement, HTE, Missing ships, etc do not count. Also, mods that introduce new ships but do not introduce a faction at all ex: ED shipyard.

I've been playing with 13 faction mods so far (yes 13) and I was rather surprised I had so many. So I wanted to know how many people had and why they chose certain mods or why they limited the number of factions downloaded. I have a hunch the amount of factions mods has a direct correlation to long playtime slowdowns and random slow time to save a game. I wanted some info on what most prefer and what these faction mods you have consist of!

I'm currently using:

Blackrock Drive Yards
COPS
DIABLEAVIONICS
HMI_brighton
Interstellar Imperium
Kadur Remnant
Legacy of Arkgneisis
Neutrino corp
prv Starworks (2 factions but I counted it as one)
Shadowyards
sylphon
Tiandong Heavy Industries 1.2.1a
XhanEmpire (2 factions but counted it as one)

I forgot which mod added Legio Infernalis might be 14.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: n3xuiz on April 23, 2021, 04:19:05 AM
in .91a i had a save with 58 factions total. basically i went to the mod index and got all the faction mods. though that caused saving to perform terribly after a few hours of playtime. now i run a save with 28 factions (including vanilla ones) and it seems to run ok.

looking forward to more mods getting updated so i can try again with that many :)
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Helldiver on April 23, 2021, 05:34:39 AM
Roiders
HMI
ORA
Star Fed
Scy
Xhan/Pamed

Will add Tiandong and Blackrock after they're updated.

Sector feels empty and lacking in variety without additional factions (especially since vanilla lazily groups all of League nations as just "the Persean League", all pirates as "the Pirates" and all indie worlds as "the Independents") but I usually limit myself to mod factions that I feel integrate well into the game's setting and each other.

I don't have late campaign slowdowns with these + Nex.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Kakroom on April 23, 2021, 06:08:46 AM
Last I checked I think I only played with Roiders. I'm pretty satisfied with the Vanilla roster. I like that roiders are designed as less of a faction and... more like a subculture? There's pirate roiders and faction roiders in addition to the group that's gone off to colonize their own system. That's really neat.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: rabbistern on April 23, 2021, 06:12:42 AM
when you ask "how many modded factions" does that mean number of factions or mods? like how prv adds 2 factions for example. does that include factions from non-faction themed mods, such as plague bearers?
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 06:56:29 AM
in .91a i had a save with 58 factions total. basically i went to the mod index and got all the faction mods. though that caused saving to perform terribly after a few hours of playtime. now i run a save with 28 factions (including vanilla ones) and it seems to run ok.

looking forward to more mods getting updated so i can try again with that many :)

And I thought I had too much man holy cow that's nuts bro I think I'm ok then how do you not have issues with that many Every faction would only have like 4 planets max. And how's the lag is it severe, your save file must be huge.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 06:58:11 AM
when you ask "how many modded factions" does that mean number of factions or mods? like how prv adds 2 factions for example. does that include factions from non-faction themed mods, such as plague bearers?

I mean mods that have factions regardless of it consisting of 1 or 3 in the mod just count the mod itself not the factions within to keep it simple as mentioned with xhan and prv.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 07:01:28 AM
Last I checked I think I only played with Roiders. I'm pretty satisfied with the Vanilla roster. I like that roiders are designed as less of a faction and... more like a subculture? There's pirate roiders and faction roiders in addition to the group that's gone off to colonize their own system. That's really neat.

It's less about a need for factions for me it's more about extra ships, I love seeing different ships it makes the  sector more realistic and interesting imo you got all these ship designs to see and collect like pokemon and I love it plus some of em you grow to love so much like the replekia I love from the sylphon mod.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 07:05:55 AM
Roiders
HMI
ORA
Star Fed
Scy
Xhan/Pamed

Will add Tiandong and Blackrock after they're updated.

Sector feels empty and lacking in variety without additional factions (especially since vanilla lazily groups all of League nations as just "the Persean League", all pirates as "the Pirates" and all indie worlds as "the Independents") but I usually limit myself to mod factions that I feel integrate well into the game's setting and each other.

I don't have late campaign slowdowns with these + Nex.

I couldn't agree more I like seeing a new ship and going what is that? Or what does it do? On top of that some factions are unintentionally stronger and gives a sense of who to mess with and who not to mess with depending on your ships and how many good blueprints you have. Really adds to that you're not special feeling I needed. I never feel like any ship is meta now even with the paragon.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: shoi on April 23, 2021, 09:03:53 AM
too many is just clutter since it's unlikely you'll ever even interact with the majority of them; 2-3 extra is the sweet spot for my personal tastes
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Rudette on April 23, 2021, 09:05:09 AM
Faction Mods:

Roider Union
Kadur Remnant
Legacy of Arkgneisis
Federation
Scy Nation
Underworld + Tahlan Shipworks (Cabal and Legio. Tahlan is where Legio comes from, btw)

Ship Packs:

Luddic Path Enhancement + Hegemony Expeditionary Fleet
Arma Armatura
Tahlan + Underworld (Though they add factions, I mostly got them for the pirate fleet variety)
Varya's Shipack (Slightly modified)

Other

Libs
Starship Legends
Trailer Moments
Speed Up
Combat Alarm Sounds + Combat Chatter
Console Commands + Captains Log
Better Colonies
Logistics Notifications
Unknown Skies

Rambling about my thought process with my list, other faction mods, and what not:

I'll ramble about my whole list because I think seeing the sum of it's gives my list context, will be helpful for understanding what informed my choices.

Factions? Not many. My list is small-ish. I tend to rotate them in and out. Bigger lists kind of get too chaotic for me and I'm not a fan of the load times, so I keep it small. Kadur, Arkgneisis, and Roider Union fit right in and feel more like additional pirates/subfactions rather than full fledged factions. Those three I usually keep in. Then I'll have one or two more I plug in on rotation to check them out. Scy Nation is very lore friendly, but I don't always interact with them so they aren't always in. Federation was too nostalgic for me not to grab.

Legio and Cabal are mostly incidental because the main attraction with those mods are the ship packs. That said, the cabal makes hyperspace travel and smuggling more risky which I highly appreciate.

I also try to keep things lore-friendly-ish. So I avoid anime, meme mods, and mods that push the tech in crazy directions. Though, admittedly, I'm kind of a hypocrite because a lot of the time rule of cool gets the better of me XD I couldn't say no to the FTL inspired mod and the mech mods are hard to pass up. Also of note- Rather I'm playing with or without Nex also changes the way I look at adding factions. With Nex, the chaos of more factions is fun so I might plug in a couple more than usual. With a tighter more vanilla++ list I want less.

Tiandong is going on there as soon as it updates. If I ever get around to doing a League playthrough I'll give Mayasuran Navy a go. Diable I like to throw in when I'm doing Nexerelin. Xhan Empire is on my radar, but I haven't tried it yet. HMI looks a little out there, but I do like the junker aesthetic so I'll probably try it at least once at some point.

Tahlan and Underworld do so much to enhance pirates that they are a must have.

Varya's I adore and love most of the ships in it but I did go in the faction configs and got rid of a few. Stock standard it adds way too much frigate bloat. It dilutes early pirate battles into just picking on and blocking up a few near defenseless Spades and hounds. So, I got rid of the Spades, one of the Hound variants, the pirate Battlegroup ships, the Direwolf, the Henchmen, and few other things I thought were redundant or silly. The end result was immediately better, between Varya's more interesting frigates and underworld the early pirates weren't push overs anymore.

Ship/Weapons I'll probably add but disable a few things too (like that giant Ludd ship) Missing Ships I haven't tried but would need to disable the capital ships, patrol boats, and probably look at dropping Expedition Fleet and figure out what ships overlap between it and the Luddic Enhancement pack. I have enough ships and that would require some testing so I haven't got around to it. If I shake things up I'd probably shelf my other ship mods for a bit to see what I like better. As it is, I'm already thinking of pruning things back a little.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: ShpunkY on April 23, 2021, 09:31:51 AM
2 with other mods
maybe 3 if i disabled all other mods
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Thaago on April 23, 2021, 09:47:45 AM
At present I can't answer the poll, because: 0. I'll start using some faction mods once I'm done with vanilla, but I'm not done yet. I've got at least 4 more playthroughs of different styles to do...
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: robepriority on April 23, 2021, 11:24:18 AM
Wait can you just switch version number for Tiandong for .95 or is the OP modlist .91?
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Ad Astra on April 23, 2021, 12:40:55 PM
Ohh it said FACTION mods, my bad, haven't tried any so far, since I use Nex I'm afraid factions will wipe each other out too fast.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 01:50:25 PM
At present I can't answer the poll, because: 0. I'll start using some faction mods once I'm done with vanilla, but I'm not done yet. I've got at least 4 more playthroughs of different styles to do...

I apologize knowing how much have no faction enabled is important I've since updated the poll. Thank you for mentioning that! Ya I can be annoying to start a new save besides if you have stuff to do in vanilla it's good to have at it without mods. Will you be bloating your game with factions or retaining a level minimalism?
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Thaago on April 23, 2021, 01:52:43 PM
Once I'm into the swing of things I like playing with 3-5 faction mods, depending on how big they are, and a couple of QOL/feature mods like ruthless sector, sometimes nex, starship legends, etc. I rotate through factions that look interesting and really try to learn how to use them, but I don't like the feel of the game when there are many more faction mods than that. It just feels a bit too crowded.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 01:54:28 PM
Faction Mods:

Roider Union
Kadur Remnant
Legacy of Arkgneisis
Federation
Scy Nation
Underworld + Tahlan Shipworks (Cabal and Legio. Tahlan is where Legio comes from, btw)

Ship Packs:

Luddic Path Enhancement + Hegemony Expeditionary Fleet
Arma Armatura
Tahlan + Underworld (Though they add factions, I mostly got them for the pirate fleet variety)
Varya's Shipack (Slightly modified)

Other

Libs
Starship Legends
Trailer Moments
Speed Up
Combat Alarm Sounds + Combat Chatter
Console Commands + Captains Log
Better Colonies
Logistics Notifications
Unknown Skies

Rambling about my thought process with my list, other faction mods, and what not:

I'll ramble about my whole list because I think seeing the sum of it's gives my list context, will be helpful for understanding what informed my choices.

Factions? Not many. My list is small-ish. I tend to rotate them in and out. Bigger lists kind of get too chaotic for me and I'm not a fan of the load times, so I keep it small. Kadur, Arkgneisis, and Roider Union fit right in and feel more like additional pirates/subfactions rather than full fledged factions. Those three I usually keep in. Then I'll have one or two more I plug in on rotation to check them out. Scy Nation is very lore friendly, but I don't always interact with them so they aren't always in. Federation was too nostalgic for me not to grab.

Legio and Cabal are mostly incidental because the main attraction with those mods are the ship packs. That said, the cabal makes hyperspace travel and smuggling more risky which I highly appreciate.

I also try to keep things lore-friendly-ish. So I avoid anime, meme mods, and mods that push the tech in crazy directions. Though, admittedly, I'm kind of a hypocrite because a lot of the time rule of cool gets the better of me XD I couldn't say no to the FTL inspired mod and the mech mods are hard to pass up. Also of note- Rather I'm playing with or without Nex also changes the way I look at adding factions. With Nex, the chaos of more factions is fun so I might plug in a couple more than usual. With a tighter more vanilla++ list I want less.

Tiandong is going on there as soon as it updates. If I ever get around to doing a League playthrough I'll give Mayasuran Navy a go. Diable I like to throw in when I'm doing Nexerelin. Xhan Empire is on my radar, but I haven't tried it yet. HMI looks a little out there, but I do like the junker aesthetic so I'll probably try it at least once at some point.

Tahlan and Underworld do so much to enhance pirates that they are a must have.

Varya's I adore and love most of the ships in it but I did go in the faction configs and got rid of a few. Stock standard it adds way too much frigate bloat. It dilutes early pirate battles into just picking on and blocking up a few near defenseless Spades and hounds. So, I got rid of the Spades, one of the Hound variants, the pirate Battlegroup ships, the Direwolf, the Henchmen, and few other things I thought were redundant or silly. The end result was immediately better, between Varya's more interesting frigates and underworld the early pirates weren't push overs anymore.

Ship/Weapons I'll probably add but disable a few things too (like that giant Ludd ship) Missing Ships I haven't tried but would need to disable the capital ships, patrol boats, and probably look at dropping Expedition Fleet and figure out what ships overlap between it and the Luddic Enhancement pack. I have enough ships and that would require some testing so I haven't got around to it. If I shake things up I'd probably shelf my other ship mods for a bit to see what I like better. As it is, I'm already thinking of pruning things back a little.

Nice mod loadoat you got their I see you personalize your game too! May I ask how you completely removed certain ships from the roster of mods? I get anxiety about potential errors I make cause doing so I only modified Varyas music to fit better with the game and removed her odd tips CSV file along with the odd ship naming system she has, while funny it breaks my immersion.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 01:59:14 PM
Once I'm into the swing of things I like playing with 3-5 faction mods, depending on how big they are, and a couple of QOL/feature mods like ruthless sector, sometimes nex, starship legends, etc. I rotate through factions that look interesting and really try to learn how to use them, but I don't like the feel of the game when there are many more faction mods than that. It just feels a bit too crowded.

You're completely right about the crowded nature of things, you've inspired me to rethink my faction selections, however using next I think I might just disable said factions and retain their ships in the game so I may either get a blueprint of it as a long dead faction of the sort or see it being sold on the independent market. Nex really shines through for these situations!
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Rudette on April 23, 2021, 03:11:09 PM
@Flacman3000

Yus. Thank you. And sure thing. You you're looking for:

Mod Folder > Data > World > Faction > default_ship_roles.json

To alleviate your anxiety, first make a copy of it and add Z to the front of the name so that the game doesn't read it and so that it goes to the bottom of your list. If something goes horribly wrong, you can delete the original and remove the Z from this copy and everything will be ok. 

Open default_ship_roles up with notpad++ and cntrl + f to search for the ship names your looking for and delete those lines- they won't show up in stores or faction fleets after that. Just make sure you don't erase any brackets and everything will be fine.

The individual .faction files can control the spawn rates more finely if you don't want to get rid of something completely, but not every ship will have an entry and you'll need to know the ID for the ship to add it, which you can usually find in default_ship_roles if it isn't already there.

I'm not sure if it's fool proof or will have problems down the road, but, so far, anything I've removed hasn't shown up in faction armies or stores. Theoretically, I think blueprints and derelicts and stuff for it will still be discoverable in game but I'm not 100% sure.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Carabus on April 23, 2021, 03:49:43 PM
At the moment 12 factions and 3 ship packs.

I usually play with 10-15. Too many good faction mods to choose less than 10. But with more than 15 you will not even experence some in a course of one game so not much point having more.

I rotate them between games, so in next game I may disable some factions I experienced the most (and possibly got bored with), and enable some fresh ones to try.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: pairedeciseaux on April 23, 2021, 04:31:06 PM
I answered 0, because currently on my my third vanilla 0.95 campaign.

With version 0.9.1, I either played vanilla, or modded with 7-10 faction mods and 2-3 ship packs. In my experience the game becomes too messy for my taste when too much mods are loaded, game performance goes down, and higher chance to have stability issues. That said, there are so many great mods, I rotate mods from campaign to campaign to change experience.
Title: Re: How many faction Mods do you play with?
Post by: Flacman3000 on April 23, 2021, 10:26:24 PM
@Flacman3000

Yus. Thank you. And sure thing. You you're looking for:

Mod Folder > Data > World > Faction > default_ship_roles.json

To alleviate your anxiety, first make a copy of it and add Z to the front of the name so that the game doesn't read it and so that it goes to the bottom of your list. If something goes horribly wrong, you can delete the original and remove the Z from this copy and everything will be ok. 

Open default_ship_roles up with notpad++ and cntrl + f to search for the ship names your looking for and delete those lines- they won't show up in stores or faction fleets after that. Just make sure you don't erase any brackets and everything will be fine.

The individual .faction files can control the spawn rates more finely if you don't want to get rid of something completely, but not every ship will have an entry and you'll need to know the ID for the ship to add it, which you can usually find in default_ship_roles if it isn't already there.

I'm not sure if it's fool proof or will have problems down the road, but, so far, anything I've removed hasn't shown up in faction armies or stores. Theoretically, I think blueprints and derelicts and stuff for it will still be discoverable in game but I'm not 100% sure.

Oops unfortunately doing so will remove the ability to do custom productions for the ships deleted if you ever get a bp for it. I was hoping you had another method.