Pets mod developer on the head and give it a cookie for being so productive. Good job, I am very proud of you!
Oh my, what an interesting collection of ships. I'll make sure to give this a go.
Whoo boy this looks vanilla-friendly af, nice job King
I'mma try it out
All your ships so thiccccccck ;) ;D
When I am playing Nexerelin, it informs that the mod has an update but it sends me to the page of: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22826.0
I think there is a mix up in the update url's, or is it supposed to do that!?
Thus another faction gets added to my next run. 8)
Looks like King's Cove has both "population_7" and "population_6" conditions.
Thank you for the cool mod. Amazing ship designs :)
Can you check the stats of the following ships/weapons?
- The Barque Destroyer have OP of Destroyer but stats of a (heavy) frigate and it only cost 5 maintenance and deployment. Thats a little bit low in my opinion.
- Barkentine carrier has three fighter bays (description say two) incl. reserve deployment and cost only 10 supply/points. So its very similar to the Naruebet carrier but this ship has two fighter bays. So the Barkentine is superior over the vanilla Condor light carrier - except the buying cost.
- The Basilisk weapon have a flux cost of 1184 per second. Is this a typo? :D
- I will check the Shredder next. It could make the Heavy Needler obsolet while beeing cheaper at the same time.
Maybe I overlooked something?
Will be giving them a go in a run where i've stripped the more egregious non-vanilla factions from play, and this looks like it will fit a niche that I would usually use Roiders Union for, but they are more armor focused and I love me a good strong shield.Roiders Union is a great faction mod, I applauded your taste!
Have you considered using the new IndEvo Alcoholism to add your own period-accurate brew to the game?I do use IndEvo main mod and am aware of the alcohol mod but haven't tried it yet but I'll give it an install once I'm done with the JYD patch I'm working on.
I noticed you have a deep emphasis on the real life history, hell the story about the recover of tea could make for a good tie-in, instead of alchohol they sell tea or something? Idk, just a rambling thought. Excited to try this out, the more midline, the better.All my faction mods have a common theme to them and I do my best to keep the lore consistent. John Carter is a distant relative on my Mother's side and I had a lot of midline looking ships laying around that needed some love and a good home and voila here we are. ;) As to the custom commodity, I could see tea or rum since both would be period correct. I'll give some thought about adding it and maybe modifying the colony structure to produce it. You got me thinking and I appreciate that.
the Intelligent is a beautiful little boat.
Oh, ***, I didn't even realize you did the JYD mod, until I went to just check my replies and my only responses(I do not post much at all) were from you on separate posts. I remember having to swear off your hullmods though. The one that added range to sensors was incredibly strong in combination with Extra Systems Reloaded. I'd end up with four ships that could do every single thing I needed, while being borderline invisible and able to see everything. Good times, I never missed a single salvage opportunity with the all-seeing eyes.I understand that sentiment. I designed JYD to be self sufficient if a player wanted to only use JYD assets I did my best to provide every kind of ship and hullmod they would need. I know that if you stack hullmods from other authors you can really OP a ship but I figured I would give players the choice whether or not to do that rather than make it for them.
Nice thank you, I like it so much myself that I made a Q version of it for JYD as well :)the Intelligent is a beautiful little boat.
Its my favorite too, I always grab 2-3 at the beginning of a run, regardless of what I'm doing.
Question: Can I add this into a game in progress?
Right, so I have played with it for a few hours and I believe someone mentioned the weapon flux values all being a little wonky, but it is super noticeable on the Super Ship start. Likely just oversight errors, multiple frag pds have flux costs in the 1000/sec range for equivalent damage (Culverin has 1.07 flux/dam at 1.5k damage and like 1.6k flux/sec) They all seem to be of the same design philosophy of the vulcan pushed to its limits and I assume they should work more in line with something like your Fog of War frag pd at a much more reasonable .25 flux/dam? As it stands, the super ship start comes with a ship whose stock flux loadout is 6k weapon flux/sec with 2k dissipation at 50 vents. That was a funny start tbh. The weapons have some weird spots overall on that ship.Well as a standard loadout I was going for a well defended ship. Since it's armor and hull are so low I made sure there was a flurry of flechette to protect them along with it's shield. Now the flux use to dissipation is only if all weapons are firing at once and I have the weapons all not facing forward to help mitigate that. Now that is my intent but I'll put it through a round of testing and get back to you on that one.
Auto Cannon: The Auto Cannon feels like a weapon meant exclusively for stations and AI and has massive damage. 3k effective range is funny, very very funny, but also means as a player, you can't realistically use that weapon range due to actual view range in combat, so what purpose is served by having it so high? The extremely low flux cost suggests just leaving it on autofire to snipe frigates? Is it meant to abuse small ships AI and dissuade engagement at all? That would fit the long-range commander vibe, for sure. Just seems excessive to me. Otherwise, I like that the ammo count theoretically means you can get in trouble if you increase fire-rate, but that is completely obseleted by something like extended mags or some hullmod out of the very popular MHM. On top of starting with 100 ammo, it means that consequence will only happen late into a very, very large fight if you're manually firing in any way. There isn't much semblance to Vanilla or typical modded balance with a 3k range weapon, even if it is a super weapon. 30 OP is a wise choice for cost, since it has so much going for it and is expensive to mount, but .25 flux/dam on an HE weapon? Big numbers, all around.I felt I was filling a hole in the game with the Auto Cannon. You are correct it is not really intended for direct use at maximum range. It is meant as a AI controlled sniper weapon at extreme ranges with a huge cooldown but damn when it eventually hits it HITS. I tinkered with various ammo counts and 100 seemed right for a long fight against a tough foe like an Ordo fleet. The flux/dam is because it has such a long cooldown but you make a good point, I'll give it a lookover. The OP was to ensure it was only viable to use on large ships that can afford it. It is a trade off of using multiple weaker guns or having a big punch. If you are using it to tin can a small wolfpack fleet well more power to you I guess :)
Dart-Gun/Shredder: These two I want to call strong, but when I compare them to vanilla counter-parts, I cant. Maybe the Shredder? But I don't see it being anything other than a neat side-grade. Trading range and accuracy for a bit of efficiency in the Dart-Gun, and losing some efficiency and accuracy for massive range on the Shredder. I like this, opening up build flexibility on a lot of ships with these options. I question the 1x3 emp for the Dart Gun. It's cool, it's flavor, but its simply too weak. Maybe the visuals make it worth it? I dunno, I like it, but don't understand it. Even slaving it to IPDAI for the light emp to affect missiles seems like a waste considering its now a 150 flux kinetic pd gun for missiles.The EMP damage on the Dart Gun is meant to be bit of flavor and not the primary purpose of the weapon. If you look at the Dart Gun's description, it fires "charged core" flechettes. It's not really there to add a meaningful amount with only one mounted but if you have a ship with several same facing mounts it does stack up. The shredder is meant for larger ships that have the op and want more umph than the lower OP fog of war could provide. I did my best to have all the CFT PD weapons (and yea there is quite a few) to fill different roles for different needs. Idk I probably went overboard. I can put em all side by side and give them another round of balance testing though.
Volley Rockets: Holy *** what an insane kinetic shotgun. The 5/s fire rate means you will churn through the ammo fast, even with its 250 capacity, but that is some insane value on 75 kinetic damage a missile in a small slot for 5 OP. 5 OP is Salamander tier btw. I will be abusing this with ESR so hard, every ship will have a missile Commanders *** Kinetic down every other fleet's throat. Hundreds of dumbfire Micromissile making an impenetrable kinetic wall. The sheer amount of PD screening these guys do is absurd. Wow, I think they need a nerf, bad, but will be sad to see them go.Good points and I'll give it some thought, I hadn't considered using them that way. OK now for my hot take on the Volley rocket. I'm a big ole fan of Mech warfare and having a bursting wild firing rocket is a core thing in that genre so it's just me having a nerd moment when I fire them. Seriously though, If you look at the stats I have them set to a spread of 35, launch speed of -50 and a flight time of 5 and very low 5 HP to balance out that damage potential. Potential is the operative word, because they are inaccurate to the point that yes once in a blue moon they can all hit a target but they are more likely to fly off to Narnia.
Wavemotion/Waveburst: Sick, awesome, cool. Wavemotion is an HE Beam Side/Upgrade. More Flux, but more HE beam damage, theoretically you would be able to use it less, since you're stripping copious amounts of armor off. The whole wave series feels like very competent sidegrades and more-over, they are just cool. I don't have any complaints, they are just neat.I'M A' FIRIN' MAH LAZER!!
Other than that, Prussia station is incredibly decked out. Wow, they look like one of my late-game colonies minus my Access Control Planetary Shield to stop Pather problems. The Path is gonna eat that place alive eventually.Well the station is meant to be the first line of defense and hold out a warp point assault long enough for fleets to come to it's aid. Of course there is that pesky fringe entry but ah balance and all that for the sneaky sneaks.
Balance and quality is in-line with JYD, visually exceeding it in some places. This is a good mod, I like it. I look forward to tinkering with it even more over the next few play sessions.CFT is the product of my accumulate learning to sprite over time with my other two faction mods. I am pretty happy with how it turned out visually tbh. This is still early days for the freetraders and with the help of fine folks such as yourself I plan to keep tinkering under the hood until I get it right.
I have failed reading comprehension! I must commit sudoku now.You sir have just made my day :)
I like the mod generally, but the non-semetrical mounts with Energy/Kinetics instead of double kinetic or double energy irks me something fierce. Any chance of using Hybrid mounts?
The mod seems interesting and kinda fitting for a vanilla-adjacent modpack. I might eventually do a write-up of what I think about it if I ever I get around to properly trying out the ships and weapons it provides.Sweet, if you decide to do that, please toss me a link and I'll check it out.
My current modpack is, however, the very opposite of vanilla, and I've just found a... non-conventional way to abuse the Auto Cannon, which already seemed kinda broken even with the 30 OP cost. Gaze upon this abomination, and despair.I am always amazed at how players can find ways of playing that would never occur to me. Probably why I like this forum so much is there are so many creative people who interact. Well you are using it in a sniper role as intended but what had not occurred to me in my testing is tactically working the AI shield routine that has ships lower their shield when at range to bleed off flux. Kudos!Spoiler(https://i.imgur.com/bbqyWM2.png)[close]
I realize that the Onslaught on its own is a bit of a meme, however this... doesn't exactly seem right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_cBcL3v7Y
(Also yes, the sound for the Auto Cannon seems to be missing. Kinda scary, considering the damage it can cause.)I'll take a look at the weapon's sound files and change it to something more impactful, good call on that.
Obviously this gets countered by a single semi-competent Wolf, 2-3 stray harpoons, or anything else that can get close for a couple of seconds, but I dread to think what a bunch of those could do if properly supported by a couple of tanky cruisers/capitals/Monitors and a bunch of fighters so they don't get shredded in the backlines.Well, as you state, all it would take is one frigate to spoil your day. I am sure you could craft a fleet that you propose and it would make a fun watch, looking forward to that if you do.
Needless to say, I might try that at some point. Maybe after tweaking the gun's stats a bit ;DI leave my mods open source for that reason. I know putting the code in a JAR file is good compression but I learned how to do all this by going over other mod author's code that I could access and I feel I am just passing it forward.
A great deal.I like the mod generally, but the non-semetrical mounts with Energy/Kinetics instead of double kinetic or double energy irks me something fierce. Any chance of using Hybrid mounts?
Would it be more satisfying to have a more vanilla layout of two ballistic on the front and two energy on the back mounts?
There's usefulness in asymmetry, but particularly on the frigates it ends up being more awkward instead.I agree, there's more room to play with the big boys and I think I went a bit wonky on the destroyers and frigates. I'll get on those changes when time permits, these posts really re-charge my batteries. Thank you.
Demi-Calverns: Way too low on flux. I think you made it .1 flux/non-emp damage instead of 1.Yes that is a typo on my part woops my bad, I'll have that adjusted next patch.
Additionally there's a issue with Inferno Rockets and Point Defense missiles.I am not sure what you mean by small, are you referring to the pixel size of the weapon or the missile or something else entirely? Point Defense rockets are set to target fighters vs Inferno that target ships. I have PD rockets set so fast so they can catch up to the faster fighters and set their damage higher since they are HE and would suffer against all the shielded fighters out there. I'll take a look at their firing behavior and ensure they aren't targeting ships first but I do see your point and will get back to you once I look into it deeper.
Compared to volley rockets they're way too small (Volley ones might be a bit big compared to anhialators.). Additionally, Point Defence Missiles launch super fast, do 75 damage, and fire about 3 per second for 4 OP for 360 missiles. Inferno Rockets are rockets, are 8 OP, shoot 1/second dealing 25 damage, and have a 100 limit.
I think somehow their stats got transposed. Because right now Point Defence Missiles are incredibly good, while the inferno rockets are a trap. This extends to their medium equivilent.
Next, I think Sloop's (Small Fuel Tankers) need to drop a few OP and maybe 2 weapon slots, because they have Destroyer Ordinance in a Frigate Body without being civilian and having insulated engine assemblies. For slots, if OP gets dropped to the more reasonable 30 range instead of 60, they could probably do with 3 weapon mounts in their current layout instead of 5. Though 5's still fine!My intention was to make it a quick tanker well defended with PD weapons so it can flee a battle when a fleet is forced to retreat. I had not intended it to be a warship and not marking it civilian was a mistake on my part, I'll have that fixed next patch.
I also like how their meadium slot weapons basically have swapped damages for their immage. Makes them theoretically unpredictable. (I.e. Is that a kinetic or high ex hypervolocity driver?) Lots of neat variations.Well my goal was to make them different that what was already out there. Some of them are based on vanilla models with some kitbashing and some of them are original designs. I am glad you like then, always nice to hear a positive word :)
Their ships might be a bit heavy on the Salvage Rigs, but it's nice to get some really great hauls out of not necessarily non-combat fleets. As a side effect makes them really good mining fleets combined with some of the ore smelting mods since they work on them.Well I sort of struggled with the salvage rigs. JYD (one of my other faction mods) is saturated with them as they are miners and salvagers where as CFT are salvagers and smugglers and I did not want to double them up. I only have rigs on the ships with the yellow wavy lines and that there is one for each ship size whereas JYD has rigs on several non utility ships. I did add additional NEX mining stats to the five utility ships so CFT could have a decent AI mining fleet for their economy.
Fleet has a interesting 'Not quite pirate traders' feel, though I tend to descend into piracy with them.That is a design decision I made for them to offer player choice. I set them as neutral to just below neutral to all in game factions (including pirates and pirate themed modded factions) with some exceptions like Hiver swarm. I set it this way so that the player can decide if they want to play as more of a pirate or a bit of a shady rogue with a good reputation. By setting the faction settings this way, a player has some time to make that decision but the game will slowly make it for them since as time goes on you will loose reputation with one faction because you are friends with another. You can choose the pirate path in one playthrough and the trader path in another, gives it some replay variety (at least that is my intention)
Edit: Also the Autocannon could probably use less ammo. Before mods it's only going to run out of ammo in the most extreme firefights. With mods, it might as well not have a cap.Well I set up CFT as a solo faction mod for players who do not play heavily modded games and wanted a vanilla+ friendly faction to play with. I did not balance anything with the thought of how another mod author set up hull mods and such. That being said, this is not the first time I've gotten that note. I will adjust it for the next patch after some testing to find that sweet spot.
Hello again and thank you for your detailed analysis. I'll take these one at a time and explain my reasoning and any planned changes based on your feedback.Additionally there's a issue with Inferno Rockets and Point Defense missiles.I am not sure what you mean by small, are you referring to the pixel size of the weapon or the missile or something else entirely? Point Defense rockets are set to target fighters vs Inferno that target ships. I have PD rockets set so fast so they can catch up to the faster fighters and set their damage higher since they are HE and would suffer against all the shielded fighters out there. I'll take a look at their firing behavior and ensure they aren't targeting ships first but I do see your point and will get back to you once I look into it deeper.
Compared to volley rockets they're way too small (Volley ones might be a bit big compared to anhialators.). Additionally, Point Defence Missiles launch super fast, do 75 damage, and fire about 3 per second for 4 OP for 360 missiles. Inferno Rockets are rockets, are 8 OP, shoot 1/second dealing 25 damage, and have a 100 limit.
I think somehow their stats got transposed. Because right now Point Defence Missiles are incredibly good, while the inferno rockets are a trap. This extends to their medium equivilent.Next, I think Sloop's (Small Fuel Tankers) need to drop a few OP and maybe 2 weapon slots, because they have Destroyer Ordinance in a Frigate Body without being civilian and having insulated engine assemblies. For slots, if OP gets dropped to the more reasonable 30 range instead of 60, they could probably do with 3 weapon mounts in their current layout instead of 5. Though 5's still fine!My intention was to make it a quick tanker well defended with PD weapons so it can flee a battle when a fleet is forced to retreat. I had not intended it to be a warship and not marking it civilian was a mistake on my part, I'll have that fixed next patch.Edit: Also the Autocannon could probably use less ammo. Before mods it's only going to run out of ammo in the most extreme firefights. With mods, it might as well not have a cap.Well I set up CFT as a solo faction mod for players who do not play heavily modded games and wanted a vanilla+ friendly faction to play with. I did not balance anything with the thought of how another mod author set up hull mods and such. That being said, this is not the first time I've gotten that note. I will adjust it for the next patch after some testing to find that sweet spot.
Thank you for this, I tend to get blind spots and sort of rely on player feedback to finetune my mods. This really helps!
First off, the Galleon-class Battlewagon. as it states, its supposed to be a back of the line missile support ship, so why in the hell does it have plasma burn? in my adventures, I ended up loading it full of torpedoes and sending it off charging into battle with limitless supply due to the missile autoforge. while controlled by an aggressive level 5 officer, and me in a Hyperion supporting it, it was able to take out entire [REDACTED] ordos like it was nothing.
This also goes for similar hulls, like the bombardier. its a backline support, its plasma burn and insane amount of medium missiles make it shine if i set it up to be super aggressive.
I suggest replacing the system with much more defensive or omnidirectional movement type systems, reduce the top speeds a tad, and maybe make the shields a bit worse, they soak up a really high amount due to the lack of flux going into weapons.
This is all i have a good amount of understanding of, I'll most likely be back once i have a good understanding of some more super cheesy tactics you can pull off with these ships, I've found a lot that I need to dive into lol. let me know if you need me to go in depth, or record a video with a deeper explanation, I suck at explaining things over text.
For the Missiles/Rockets, I believe the actual image in battle/the targetable rocket is too small. The PDM is basically a glowing dot, and the inferno rockets are much smaller than the anti-shield option (I'm at work so I don't have the name on hand.)Ahh ok I get it now, thank you for the clarification. I can easily re-make their sprites to be more size appropriate. I already have a note to adjust the Inferno so that'll def be in the next patch.
Also, the Inferno-rockets still do far too little damage and move too slow if they're intentional. You've made them worse than Anhialator's or even Light Mortars and far more expensive.
As for targetting, the targeting works well. But pilots can pilot them, and use them as a weapon targeting ships, which causes them to shine.
For the tanker, I haven't taken it into battle (Sounds far too risky when it comes to my fuel supply), it's more that I could quite feasibly give it a pair of Railguns and have a ok support ship due to the sheer OP available.I plan to give it a once over as well and most likely lower the OP and replace the mounted weapons on the variant with less op cost ones.
Finally for Autocanon ammo, I was considering just Expanded Magazine which from memory would bring them to 200. They then fire every 5 seconds, and reload every 10. At that rate, the ammo limit is... A joke.Gotcha. I will be running it through a couple battles with different amounts and adjust the ammo count based on that testing. Thank you for the clarification, it helps.
I was just giving it a new run on the last patch and saw that you evened up the PD and flux on the super ship start, it really shines as a super ship stock now. The shield was visually off-balance, a little to the right, but I otherwise really enjoy this ship.Not sure what you mean about the shield but I'll look into it. Thanks for the ups.
Glad to see another patch as I scrolled Discord! I'll download it and give it a go and come back with my thoughts in the next few days.
I love this mod. The combat freighter, what is it, the shaw or slaw or something like that, seems a bit too good. I've been wrecking with a fleet of those.
Sorry that was from my phone and didn't have the game handy. It is the Scow. It's so good, and so easy to fit. I would think just 10 less ordnance points maybe? And/or one less fitting point? It's such a good combat craft, and it can haul, and it's only like 12k? A handful of those can handle so much.
Sorry that was from my phone and didn't have the game handy. It is the Scow. It's so good, and so easy to fit. I would think just 10 less ordnance points maybe? And/or one less fitting point? It's such a good combat craft, and it can haul, and it's only like 12k? A handful of those can handle so much.
Pretty sure the reason it's so good is mostly volley and point defence missiles.
I generally give them 2 PD, and then 2 of those plus a medium gun of the opposite damage type plus aux thrusters since their guns aren't turrets. Slap on the Expanded missile s for a third less cargo and they're not going to run out of ammo but aren't great haulers. Salvage rigs on all of them meN they easily account for +50% salvage in a small fleet.
The reason I have that dependency is that I use some code that requires Nex, Lazylib and Magiclib to be useable. Were you to run it without those three mods, your game start would crash. I am unsure If I could make a non-NEX version but I could look into that for some future alternate update.
Thank you for the kind words, it really makes the work worthwhile to know I am not the only one that likes my mods. :)
thanks for the speedy reply, this community seems really welcoming and once i get a slightly stonger computer ill make sure this mod becomes a permanent addition to my games :)
In my opinion, the problems with the scow lie in the fact not that it directly outcompetes the wayfarer as a freighter (which is debatable), but that it is very competitive with the brawler, a vanilla midline frigate fully dedicated to combat. Yes, the brawler is far more durable, with more hull, better shield, and dramatically more armor and flux capacity. However, this matters less than you might think, since the brawler still doesn't have enough armor and hull to survive a small barrage of harpoons, or enough capacity to shield tank a small sabot barrage. And that is just against other frigates and weaker destroyers, with proper heavy guns on a cruiser or a capital, the extra durability is largely irrelevant. The only other real advantage the brawler has over the scow is it's high PPT, but on frigates that is only really important late in the game, and it doesn't matter in the early-mid game, when frigate balancing is most relevant. Now lets look at the advantages the Scow has. It has more guns, with an extra small weapon slot over the brawler, and it has a huge 15 extra OP. But the really huge advantage the scow has is that while the brawler is very slow for a frigate, at only 100 speed, the scow is incredibly fast for a frigate, at an insane 180 speed, only matched by the tempest in vanilla, which is an elite frigate that costs 40-50k. While if it was just all the things I just went over, it would probably be largely fine. A very strong option, but it would be ok for the most part. The really big problem is that the scow strongly competes with the brawler, while providing lots of logistic support. It has 100 cargo capacity, which adds up when you have several scows, but the big thing is that it has a salvage gantry and shielded cargo holds. While you have equated them to being equivalent to 5 OP each, since they are not available as modular hull mods, they are worth far more than that. Shielded cargo holds is very useful and only available on 4 vanilla ships (hound, cerberus, P mule, and the rare P buffalo), but the real catch here is salvage gantry. The extra salvage it provides is huge. While you might argue that you could just use shepherds which have the same amount of cargo and a salvage gantry, and also come with free surveying equipment, shepherds do not have shielded cargo holds, and are terrible in combat, making them risky to spam. With scows, on the other hand, you get the salvage bonuses of a shepherd, and shielded cargo holds, while being a top-of-the-line combat frigate. And since surveying equipment is modular and scows have so much OP, they can easily use it while still being combat viable. I think scows probably need to lose salvage gantry, and 5-15 OP, and be like 30 speed slower (and maybe downgrade one of the medium mounts to a small).Sorry that was from my phone and didn't have the game handy. It is the Scow. It's so good, and so easy to fit. I would think just 10 less ordnance points maybe? And/or one less fitting point? It's such a good combat craft, and it can haul, and it's only like 12k? A handful of those can handle so much.
Pretty sure the reason it's so good is mostly volley and point defence missiles.
I generally give them 2 PD, and then 2 of those plus a medium gun of the opposite damage type plus aux thrusters since their guns aren't turrets. Slap on the Expanded missile s for a third less cargo and they're not going to run out of ammo but aren't great haulers. Salvage rigs on all of them meN they easily account for +50% salvage in a small fleet.
I just finished up a hotfix for JYD so I have some time to tinker with CFT. I've already got a couple adjustments made from messages I received on discord and would like to incorporate both your views into a potential update to the Scow for the next patch.
First off, thank you both for taking the time to provide your input and well thought out comments. I would like some clarity if you have some time to let me know if I have your concerns correctly. Here is a TLDR breakdown of how I designed the balance and loadout of the Scow and how I generally layout the ships in both of my playable faction mods:
The comparable vanilla midline frigate sized combat freighter, the Wayfarer, has a 2250 HP, 250 armor, 1600 flux, 120 flux dissipation, 170 shield arc, 150 cargo, 55 OP, 120 max speed, 50 max crew, 40 fuel, and 6 small turrets.
The Scow is a midline frigate sized combat freighter with 1500 HP, 200 armor, 1850 flux, 250 flux dissipation, 170 shield arc, 100 cargo, 65 OP, 180 max speed, 40 max crew, 30 fuel, 2 small turrets, 1 small hardpoint and 2 medium hardpoints. I put two built in hull mods, shielded cargo bay (5 OP) and a salvage gantry (5 OP) on the Scow.
Comparable stats: The Scow has 750 less HP, 50 less armor, 50 less cargo, 10 less max crew, 10 less fuel capacity 3 less small mounts. To offset that it gains 20 more OP (adding in the OP of the mods), 60 more speed 250 more max flux, 130 more flux dissipation, and 2 more medium mounts. I felt that by replacing 3 small mounts with 2 medium mounts it put it farther into combat w/out going too OP. (idk I'd appreciate any comments on that)
I designed the Scow to be more combat than freighter vs the Wayfarer which is more freighter than combat. I felt that by making the Scow less durable in HP and armor but giving it more max flux, flux dissipation and speed with the two hull mods puts it line with CFT tech lore of "less durable but with better than average speed and shields and smuggler/scavenger oriented". The additional flux strengthens it's shield capacity and offsets the higher demands of it's weapon mount loadout. To balance that I gave the Scow less capacity to carry cargo, crew and fuel.
So bottom line, I tried to balance it while letting it stand out from it's vanilla counterpart by designing the Scow to be less freighter but more combat/utility. By giving it those built in hull mods (shielded holds for smuggler and salvage gantry for salvager) it puts it inline with CFT lore and the additional weapons and higher OP gives it more combat options.
If I understand both of your concerns correctly, Kumquat believes that lowering the OP from 65 to 55 and removing one of the mounts would balance it. Whereas 5ColouredWalker makes another point that with it's higher OP they can add two combat oriented hull mods that make it even less freighter and more combat ship category.
My personal belief is that I want to give players choice and options with the ships I design and I am always happy to see players share their loadouts that show ways of using the ships I would not of thought of. So if I were to lower the OP, it would disallow 5ColouredWalker the option to go their route. Removing a turret is sort of vague since the Scow had varied types of turrets, so some clarity on which mount to remove would be appreciated. Ok so now that you have my thought process on balance and based on the stats I would truly appreciate some constructive comments on how to balance the Scow.
I look forward to both your replies as well as any other player that would like to add to the conversation.
In my opinion, the problems with the scow lie in the fact not that it directly outcompetes the wayfarer as a freighter (which is debatable), but that it is very competitive with the brawler, a vanilla midline frigate fully dedicated to combat. Yes, the brawler is far more durable, with more hull, better shield, and dramatically more armor and flux capacity. However, this matters less than you might think, since the brawler still doesn't have enough armor and hull to survive a small barrage of harpoons, or enough capacity to shield tank a small sabot barrage. And that is just against other frigates and weaker destroyers, with proper heavy guns on a cruiser or a capital, the extra durability is largely irrelevant. The only other real advantage the brawler has over the scow is it's high PPT, but on frigates that is only really important late in the game, and it doesn't matter in the early-mid game, when frigate balancing is most relevant.Well when I made the Scow I did not compare it to combat frigates like the Brawler. It's intended purpose is to be a Smugglers logistical combat freighter more focused on combat than freighter but not so much that it can replace a combat ship. Though you de-value the advantages that the Brawler has in mid game, I think they are key differences that have great value for a wolfpack fleet ship.
Now lets look at the advantages the Scow has. It has more guns, with an extra small weapon slot over the brawler, and it has a huge 15 extra OP. But the really huge advantage the scow has is that while the brawler is very slow for a frigate, at only 100 speed, the scow is incredibly fast for a frigate, at an insane 180 speed, only matched by the tempest in vanilla, which is an elite frigate that costs 40-50k. While if it was just all the things I just went over, it would probably be largely fine.I have already taken the comments I received from Kumquat and rawkhawklives and modified it by removing the small front missile mount and reducing the OP by 5. I will give your speed concerns more thought while playing around with the data files for the next update.
The really big problem is that the scow strongly competes with the brawler, while providing lots of logistic support. It has 100 cargo capacity, which adds up when you have several scows, but the big thing is that it has a salvage gantry and shielded cargo holds. While you have equated them to being equivalent to 5 OP each, since they are not available as modular hull mods, they are worth far more than that. Shielded cargo holds is very useful and only available on 4 vanilla ships (hound, cerberus, P mule, and the rare P buffalo), but the real catch here is salvage gantry. The extra salvage it provides is huge. While you might argue that you could just use shepherds which have the same amount of cargo and a salvage gantry, and also come with free surveying equipment, shepherds do not have shielded cargo holds, and are terrible in combat, making them risky to spam.Yes, both the Sheppard and the Scow are combat freighter logistics frigates but the Sheppard also has mining drones that provide extra PD support and mining stats for Nex which the Scow lacks. The Sheppard is intended to be a backline support frigate if deployed where as the Scow is a nimble front line glass cannon that can do some damage but one wrong move and it is destroyed. The 5 OP I used to calculate the hull mods actually comes from vanilla SS files, that is what Alex rates their worth as. The surveying equipment on the Sheppard is equal in OP to the shielded holds on the Scow so that's a bit of a wash.
With scows, on the other hand, you get the salvage bonuses of a shepherd, and shielded cargo holds, while being a top-of-the-line combat frigate. And since surveying equipment is modular and scows have so much OP, they can easily use it while still being combat viable. I think scows probably need to lose salvage gantry, and 5-15 OP, and be like 30 speed slower (and maybe downgrade one of the medium mounts to a small).I am hesitant to remove the gantry and shielded holds because those are on-point aspects for the CFT technical lore. Overall I want CFT ships to not just be analogs of vanilla counterparts but offer something that vanilla does not offer. I do agree that in it's current state it is Op for it's role as a smugglers logistics freighter. I have the changes I made to the Scow stated above as well as sprite updates to reflect them ready for the next patch. I will take into account your comments before a final release for the Scow but I should have a patch that also includes some other player suggested changes to the mod out over the weekend.
Hello there! Nice points you make about the Scow, thank you for taking the time to share them.In my opinion, the problems with the scow lie in the fact not that it directly outcompetes the wayfarer as a freighter (which is debatable), but that it is very competitive with the brawler, a vanilla midline frigate fully dedicated to combat. Yes, the brawler is far more durable, with more hull, better shield, and dramatically more armor and flux capacity. However, this matters less than you might think, since the brawler still doesn't have enough armor and hull to survive a small barrage of harpoons, or enough capacity to shield tank a small sabot barrage. And that is just against other frigates and weaker destroyers, with proper heavy guns on a cruiser or a capital, the extra durability is largely irrelevant. The only other real advantage the brawler has over the scow is it's high PPT, but on frigates that is only really important late in the game, and it doesn't matter in the early-mid game, when frigate balancing is most relevant.Well when I made the Scow I did not compare it to combat frigates like the Brawler. It's intended purpose is to be a Smugglers logistical combat freighter more focused on combat than freighter but not so much that it can replace a combat ship. Though you de-value the advantages that the Brawler has in mid game, I think they are key differences that have great value for a wolfpack fleet ship.Now lets look at the advantages the Scow has. It has more guns, with an extra small weapon slot over the brawler, and it has a huge 15 extra OP. But the really huge advantage the scow has is that while the brawler is very slow for a frigate, at only 100 speed, the scow is incredibly fast for a frigate, at an insane 180 speed, only matched by the tempest in vanilla, which is an elite frigate that costs 40-50k. While if it was just all the things I just went over, it would probably be largely fine.I have already taken the comments I received from Kumquat and rawkhawklives and modified it by removing the small front missile mount and reducing the OP by 5. I will give your speed concerns more thought while playing around with the data files for the next update.The really big problem is that the scow strongly competes with the brawler, while providing lots of logistic support. It has 100 cargo capacity, which adds up when you have several scows, but the big thing is that it has a salvage gantry and shielded cargo holds. While you have equated them to being equivalent to 5 OP each, since they are not available as modular hull mods, they are worth far more than that. Shielded cargo holds is very useful and only available on 4 vanilla ships (hound, cerberus, P mule, and the rare P buffalo), but the real catch here is salvage gantry. The extra salvage it provides is huge. While you might argue that you could just use shepherds which have the same amount of cargo and a salvage gantry, and also come with free surveying equipment, shepherds do not have shielded cargo holds, and are terrible in combat, making them risky to spam.Yes, both the Sheppard and the Scow are combat freighter logistics frigates but the Sheppard also has mining drones that provide extra PD support and mining stats for Nex which the Scow lacks. The Sheppard is intended to be a backline support frigate if deployed where as the Scow is a nimble front line glass cannon that can do some damage but one wrong move and it is destroyed. The 5 OP I used to calculate the hull mods actually comes from vanilla SS files, that is what Alex rates their worth as. The surveying equipment on the Sheppard is equal in OP to the shielded holds on the Scow so that's a bit of a wash.With scows, on the other hand, you get the salvage bonuses of a shepherd, and shielded cargo holds, while being a top-of-the-line combat frigate. And since surveying equipment is modular and scows have so much OP, they can easily use it while still being combat viable. I think scows probably need to lose salvage gantry, and 5-15 OP, and be like 30 speed slower (and maybe downgrade one of the medium mounts to a small).I am hesitant to remove the gantry and shielded holds because those are on-point aspects for the CFT technical lore. Overall I want CFT ships to not just be analogs of vanilla counterparts but offer something that vanilla does not offer. I do agree that in it's current state it is Op for it's role as a smugglers logistics freighter. I have the changes I made to the Scow stated above as well as sprite updates to reflect them ready for the next patch. I will take into account your comments before a final release for the Scow but I should have a patch that also includes some other player suggested changes to the mod out over the weekend.
Thank you again for your thoughts, I truly appreciate the input.
That feeling where, after a break, thinking you've updated all your mods so you come back to give feedback, only to find no, you didn't update the mod. :'(In the latest update I agreed with you and implemented your suggestion and I am a bit confused so please clarify the statement.
Been playing recently, I'll try to give an update on fleets. If nothing else, I've managed to figure out how to restrain myself from going straight to drug running. Load up on Salvage gantries and go mining!Well personally I do not smuggle, it is just that I thought the game lacked a smuggling faction that was not a bunch of pirates. I do like having some cargo space that is not scannable though for those times I pick up things while scavenging that some factions think are no nos. Smugglers are gonna smuggle though and I do not judge so have at it :)
Hey sorry I haven't replied, been sick the last week. I'll go over all your notes and get back to you with a detailed response once I'm 100%.
To clarify, I forgot to download the update!Essentially it is part of John Carter's irl Prussia Cove, it was located along the shore with heavy tides and the geography of the area allowed it to draw in wrecked ships and cargo. As part of CFT's lore, I believe I have it in the description, their system had a strong gravity pull and is located in an area that wrecked ships seem to float to. So I recreated that by having several ships and cargo floating around the system. And yes if you explore the entire sector you can field yourself a decent starter fleet. I felt it was on brand for a salvaging faction.
At the moment I'm having fun accumulating Danube and freighters and scavanging/mining. Additionally the sheer number of drones plus their destroyer size means they can body small fleets, especially with the two cruisers hiding in the system, and their mining power with Nex means I can easily fill up their holds, and then work through them at a reasonable speed due to the salvage gantries with commodity forging mod.
And the time it takes for me to Scourge things means I also got the excuse to supply the pirate planet in the system, so i have a decent fleet without leaving the system.
Edit: Just noted on the Carrack one of the two medium ballistic rear turrets are a medium and the other is a small. Is that deliberate?Nope, just another in the long list of oopsies on my part, I'll have it fixed in this update, ty
Extra edit:Well I was going on a fire related naming scheme for the explosive missiles, Inferno, Hellfire etc. I am not sure why you feel it is a bad name but I am open to suggestions for a re-brand as long as it fits the lore.
Tried the new inferno missiles, (badly misnamed there), they're very good against things without full coverage shields. Like volley rockets we're, potentially too good.
I'll try to do some dedicated testing if fleets later.
Additionally, I've fallen in love with the Danube. I'd prefer it if the arcs for its turrets were widened from 180 to 270, or angled for better 360 overlap, but otherwise its a massively upsized Shepard. Sure, no missiles or surveying, but it makes up for it with a decent destroyer body, being a discount ox, and having so many fighters that on attack it turns things into laser balls of death.I deploy the Danube as backup PD support, carrier. I am pretty happy with it's performance for what it is but you do make a good case of widening the arcs as it is intended for PD. I think I'll do a combination of re-angling and widening the arcs, either way it will end up with better coverage w/out being OP (i hope).
I wouldn't garuntee it vs a frigate, but neither would I a mule. That said while it had worse far range presence I'm not sure I'd garuntee a mule would beat it. While Scows are potentially better combatants, the sheer AA coverage means I'm strongly considering just not getting any and using the Danube as a fighter escort. I'm unsure how it would be worth counterbalancing. Possibly 1 less fighter wing? Or I making a combat version 2 less and a medium or small slot.
That said, I kept around the starting frigate to try, while it can reliably bring at least 1 gun on target in frigate battles, the drones are useless. Their shielded drones with 1 pd gun, they can't reliably counter missiles (but they do pull ok work on fighters). As drones, they don't really need shields, and their range is so low they can't contribute in battle. I honestly would prefer mining drones as they've got a longer leash and while fragile, cam put I'm work against missiles.The PD drone is a proof of concept design. I'll give it another pass with your observations in mind and have an adjustment in the next patch.
Testing the Sloop, the huge OP made me want to try it out as of Overdriven frigate... Unfortuneately it's body means this is pure trap, but it can fight hounds! I've a feeling that the best way to field this would be to slap converted hangers on it. Beyond that, it's just a Dram with reduced toughness, slightly better logistics, too much op and odd weapon mounts. On one hand, changing it too much makes it not worth having in the mod, on the other hand, I'm not sure why it's really needed? The extra OP are nice from a logistics standpoint though.It is intended to be an alternate to the Dram with, as you state, more OP for logistics with less durability as a balance. The reason I included it was a core concept of the CFT fleet being able to provide vanilla replacements if if player wanted to use only CFT ships for roleplay. It is how I play and I figured there has to be at least one other person who does as well :)
I'd consider changing the mounts to more Dram like, (possibly keeping the 4 if you want, more regarding fields of fire), and either toughening it so it to dram toughness to make it slightly less of a trap fighting option, or throwing in integrated fighters.
Likewise, the Asteria looks promosing. 3 Medium turrets, integrated range unit. However 2 small PD are useless, and it needs some form of PD or it's going to need heavy cover... That said, if you swapped them for 2 small missiles, either turret or forward facing, it looks like it might be able to take a mule... Sometimes. Right now, it has enough OP to be a tempting trap for combat, or a nice useful logistical peice.Well with it being a tanker, I never considered it for serious combat deployment. However you do make a case for the small mounts. With them being on the front it does make it seem they should be combat focused instead of coverage while it is fleeing. I'll give it some thought and adjust it.
Speaking of combat with logisticals, the Danube... It can eat a Mule reliably, or a Enforcer in player control. Not fast mind, but either it should be listed a combat logistical, or needs a nerf. I'd suggest raising the OP to 7 and dropping a fighter bay (Borer to leave it more offensive, mining aux to leave it more defensive.). That said, if you want to move it to a more combat role, perhaps swap the physical and energy turrets. [Personally for combat, either 2 pulse lasers and 2 vulcans or a Assault and Duall Machine Gun and 2 pd lasers, then a useful mod like hardened shields. Tac Lasers can be used instead for far support.]Well I have some notes on that ship in the above posting but I will add that it is intended to be a combat deployable logistics ship. I will look at making it more defensive since it would be way too OP to give it more combat strength.
I haven't bothered testing the Vergulde in combat. It looks like it should do it's job on the strategy layer, but I can see it has too few mounts and bad combat stats. It's got enough OP it could work with converted hangers, but honestly it's probably just worth dropping the OP.I did not intend it for combat. The small mounts are there for some PD coverage if it has to flee or to give it a little more mining power if you put weapons with mining stats on it.
Barque: Feels awkward to use, but does it's job as a destroyer ok. Homestly, given it's op points, I'd upgrade it's DP and make either it;s missile or it's front kinetics to medium, otherwise it just does it's job a little too slowly to feel good to use. I'd rather an enforcer honestly. Also, I find it does best with vanilla weapons, not Carter's ones.I designed that ship for the aesthetic look I guess more than the combat efficiency, I tend to fall in that trap when I design ships. I'll give it a balance pass since it is intended for combat deployment and if it is not doing it's job, well that is a fail.
Jackdaw: The Frigate version to the Barque... It feels like everything the Barque does wrong, the Jackdaw does right. Arguablly the missile slot could be dropped to small and flux stats considered improving, but I'm not going to actually suggest touching it yet.Hurray I did something right! :)
Carrack: Unlike it's fuel counterparts, this isn't a trap in combat! It's PD could use some beefing up perhaps (Not reliably against a mule's double salamander salvo), and it handles like a pregnant sow, but it can take a atlas or mule, and with great care could take a enforcer in theory (Fluxed one out a few times.). That said while it can kinda fight, it's not tough enough to actually fight, but the missile slots are great for Pilums. I'd consider marking this a combat transport, but honestly if you're taking it into combat there's a decent chance of loosing it... Call it borderline.It is intended to hold it's own in a defensive role so long range missiles like the Pilum are ideal. I could see the front graphic being turned into a hanger with some minor cosmetic changes. I'll give it some thought.
If you wanted to push it firmly into transport, maybe drop one of the medium front guns. If you want to push it towards a support, drop a gun and turn the section in the front into a 1-2 wing hanger, because it looks like it has a hanger on the front, but I'm assuming that's for the gantry.
Brigantine: A wider, up dunned and down defended mule... I'd consider dropping the front energy mounts to 2 small or 1 medium, and probably raise it's op by 1 since it handidly spanks a mule, but needs careful hands if it's to take a enforcer... Also looking at the mule, probably chop 100 off it's transport capacity, since then it really is a fair trade off on the mule. Trading resilience for firepower. Or sacrificing the firepower for a mule with more OP for logistics but that's bigger and more fragile.It is intended to be a beefed up mule. I'll increase the deployment cost to compensate.
Barkentine: Looks like a Gemini, plays like a combined Gemni/Condor that's combat hardened. It's a nice addition to the fleet. I treat it more like the meant for combat version of a Danube. It's ok. Possibly too much DP, but I'm not certain how much dropping 10ish would really change it. Honestly, don't touch it.You can't touch this! (does hammer dance)
Clipper: Took a moment to realise it's a Venture, made more manueverable and dropping 2 missile slots, a fighter slot, and some storage for salvage rigs and much better combat performance... Arguably worth having at least 1 in the fleet for the bigger salvage bonus, or as a 'fleets first cruiser', except you leave a Pirate Eagly just laying around in system... Perhaps swap the pirate eagle for this?For you, I'll make that eagle/clipper change as a thank you :)
Raven: The Standard builds are useless. Ignore the medium slot, fill the front missiles with either long range support or anti shield and give it a Large weapon. Attach PD, guard with fighters. Also, the large in the standard build is a PD, but it's not the sort of PD that does redonculous amount of Frag so it can delete cruisers once they're stripped. For short range weapons, this ship needs some careful watching, but makes it a interesting alternative to a sunder. For the longer range weapons, it's a nice sniper support platform. Only thing I'd change is default load outs.I enjoy using this ship personally and it is intended to have some flexibility in it's loadout options as you noted. I think useless is a bit harsh but I get your meaning overall and I'll give the standard loadout some thought.
Lennox: It's an option, but not one I'd ever use. 2 small missiles can be useful, especially for inferno spam. 2 small forward ballistics are kinda eh, and then there's 2 energy to use for either pd or additionall attack... It's... Not something I use. It's very clearly a support destroyer, and I suppose those that like living on the tac layer can use it though.Idk, I deploy it and use it as a personal ship in my wolfpack fleets. I find it's a fun zippy little guy.
Griffon: An... Interesting but actually usable layout. Fighters are hard set but to a group that looks like it might be usable in large fleet battles, and in testing it sort of plays like a light cruiser with a nice fighter compliment.... However for 33 dp? No. God no. It needs massively more OP for that to be viable, and possibly swapping the medium energy to a large. Having done some testing, it's probably good around 25 though. [Against the 20 point carriers it stomps them, against the eagle it's a grinding victory with some stumbling. Against a dominator it's a clear dominator win. That said, in a fleet fight it shouldn't be 1v1ing those, so putting it below that seems too low.]I struggled with balancing it since it is a four bay drone carrier but it also has some teeth. I'll look it over and probably wind up lowering the DP instead of changing the weapon layout as I feel it is working as intended. I'll know more once I dig into it but either way it will be tweaked in the next patch.
Chester: Take a Griffon, trade Armor and speed for weapons, and 3 chooseable fighters instead of 4 preset, and drop it to 20 OP... This should probably be 25ISH as well. Add some armor on and you could just call it a heavy variant of the Griffon. As is, you can probably give it no hull mods, 3 ok fighters and medium weapons and make a good all rounder, give it 3 great fighter bays and under arm it to make it a Heron Equivilent, or over arm it and maybe grab 1 set of pd fighters/claws and have a fragile but ok cruiser, makes for a flexible all rounder.As a standard variant it is designed to be a carrier / sniper with good PD coverage. I like your description of it being a flexible all rounder.
Coventry: 7 Inferno Rockets + Missile Storage Expansion? Ok. Honestly, this with a missile commander and expanded racks, possibly even salvaged hull, just stand back, hold the fire button, and watch things go away. I'm not sure what the point of it's rear energies are, they don't seem to be useful for energy. Side weapons are probably best just as more PD... Forward kinetics use for either High Ex (Ships without full shields get confused by infernos) or kinetics (To bash down full circle shields.). OP feels in an OK place because the capitals (Except conquest.) can smash it before inferno spam smashes them... I'd probably consider this an inferno 'carrier' more than a cruiser.It is intended for an officer that has missile specification and be a beast for sure. The side and rear mounted small weapons are intended as defense against either missiles that target engines or swarming drones/fighters. I put wave burst PD lasers in the rear mounts and find they do their job fairly well.
Kerberos: What if midline Dominator, but instead of missiles/large, all mediums? I don't have the weapons to build this in my perfered combat form to test if it's as bad as it sounds (Think 6 Gravitons and 4 Maulers), but slap chainguns and phase lances with overrides and it does work. I'll file this as interesting and does what it should do so far... Could possibly loose some speed since it starts at 85 and that's quick. Doesn't need to drop to 30 like the dominator.... Honestly, while 85 feels quick I'm not sure what it should be... maybe 70's?I'll drop the speed down to 75 since it is intended to be a slugger.
Triton: What the Legion wishes it was... In fact, I'm pretty sure you took a legion, fiddled with the stats slightly, gave it recall device instead, and set all the slots to medium at most... Usable like a upsized Chester but better for bombing and worse for dedicated fighting.I sort of had a Legion analog in mind but honestly I was just having so much fun designing this ship I had to pair it down from it's initial design. It is probably still too big but I like my chunky boy.
Freebooter: A... Utility Dreadnaught? I mean, it can facetank an Onslaught for you, and you're incentivised to pilot it by an operations center. It's got a salvage gantry which is great for getting the maximum bonus... But it has 2 large kinetic mounts, it's fighters are forced into non-kinetic harassers, and it has 2 forward mediums that are just sort of there. And 2 small missiles. Maybe for the PD missiles?Two words - Super Ship. Utility Dreadnaught, I like that :)
Scow: Unlike most Carter's ships, doesn't have flux management problems. Feels like it'll be at an ok point once Hellfires/Infernos are adjusted. That said, personally I'd swap the med missiles for 2 smalls or a medium laser for better weapon balance.I feel the current layout lets it stand apart for other ships of it's kind w/out it being too OP. As a combat freighter I felt the medium missiles gave it better use as a sniper over others of it's kind. Changing them to small would water it down to why bother in my opinion. Idk, I'll give it look.
Odam: A pretty good fleet anchor. Unusually slow for everything else, but it functions like a small appogee should. All small slots does hold it back in the damage department, but that's not what it's supposed to be.... Possibly could use speeding up to keep up with everyone else though.Yep that is it's intended role, I'll look at the speed vs others of it's size and adjust if needed.
Fog of War and Culverin: Vulcan alternate, however unless a mod has changed mine vulcan cost 1 more or less depending which one I'm looking at OP and have much less flux output. Skip hard.I designed them to be alternatives to vanilla with better coverage but higher flux.
Piaxhan: Looks like a flak canon in a small slot, for 7. I should try it, but I'm not going to bother at that op... That said looking at the stats I might try it in medium slots later despite how derpi it'd look.I added several PD weapons as niche roles to be used as the player felt needed. I probably went overboard with the variety, but that is sort of on brand for me :)
Demi-Culverins: Very short range, not much better than dart guns in kinetic damage. I'm sure there's a reason for them, but with their high op i'm not sure what it is. (That said, I don't have one in front of me so I'm going off memory.)see above. Essentially I sort of went overboard with weapons in general, idk I left them all in and let the player decided to use them or not.
Dart Guns: Due to raw damage a good contender for Dual autocanons... I'm not sure why they have emp damage, since it's not enough to do anything from what I can tell. Also, as soon as you reach armor they become useless due to how low damage they do. Probably part of the point, I consider them a worthy sidegrade.The EMP is a flavor text sort of thing in the description, it does some disabling on frigates but larger ships it is sort of useless. Enough to have some small effect and lore applications but not enough to used as a dedicated disabler.
Falconet: It costs more than a assault gun to do more per hit damage and almost 2/3rd real damage at much less range. Theoretically better dps than a light mortar, but a light mortar runs at 2dp, longer range, and higher damage. Hard pass.Hmm ok I'll give it a balance pass for the update
Inferno missiles: Odd description, should mention that they deliberately overfly and split into multiple missiles dealing 50 damage. Says they do 400dps, I'm not sure what to make of the title card without going into the code and I'm not a codemonkey. In damage effect, they do very little, splash damage around the hull of large targets, mostly miss small targets. Good in mass fights, a distraction vs frigates. That said, great ammo capacity, especially with trading cargo for +50% (Speaking of which, that hull mod is missing a % sign.). That said, possibly need a nerf because unless fighting someone with 360 shields they confuse the AI's shield prioritisation. Also the range on the card/rangefinder is far shorter than reality. Effective range is about 150% what's listed. Honestly, possibly under OP now. That said, why does it have a emp listing? It doesn't do emp damage. Also card should mention the second stage and how it deliberately overflies before turning into a missile targeting the rear/sides.Well I am no codemonkey either :) The intention of the weapon and why it does what is does would be a bit long and since I will be giving it balance pass, it would be tldr for no effect at this point. I'll add comments when I release the patch.
Edit: Much like the AI doesn't know how to use shields, the AI somehow doesn't know that it should be firing these constantly as if it werean autocanon due to the sheer amount of ammo it has and how they fly.
Volley Rocket: Post nerf... Too slow IMO. As fast as it was was far too op. Honestly, probably a balanced sidegrade to annihilator rocket pods. That said, Volley's have more ammo, so maybe unballanced.I'll take a look at the speed and give it a balance pass overall.
Point Defence Missiles: A direct fire version of Inferno Rockets, usable against fighters... Honestly, too useful as anti-ship weapons and ships do use them in my experience. Does an annoying sound count as a balance feature? Honestly I'd drop ammo, increase OP to 8, and reduce volume.I was running out of sound files to give all the missiles distinct sounds but I am sure I can tag it with a less annoying one :)
Hellfire Launchers: 1 bursts into even more infernos... Due to how their effective damage is so low and they get far less damage, actually a nerf, even if they hit the rear more consistently, though they still confuse shield AI. On one hand I think it needs a buff compared to infernos. On the other hand, I think Infernos and this need to be nerfed to act like sallamanders/mirvs for AI reasons. If you do so, you would need to add more EMP or direct damage however.Good point, I'll have some adjustments in the next update.
Sledge: As far as I can tell, there's no large missiles on Carter's ships... So why does this exist? I could be wrong though.I felt large missiles have a limited use and selection. There are far more torpedoes in that role and I wanted a missile option I felt was lacking. The Galleon has two large missile mounts btw.
Wavemotion Pulse Lasers: Sidegrade to pulse lasers. EMP damage is too low to be worth mentioning, overall an eh.But it's a prettier pew pew, does that count as balance?
Wave Burst PD Lasers: A nice alternate to pulse lasers. I need to use them more. Also range is enough to be used as threatening weapons especially in medium. That said, given most medium energy slots are attack orientated, the medium pd kinda has to be attack useful.I added them specifically because I felt there was a lack of medium laser PD weapons out there. I like to give options and let the player decide to use them or not.
Shredder: I don't like close attack, and this faction doesn't really seem built for it. That said, here's a kinetic assault chain gun, slightly more range, slightly less damage. It's not for my playstile but not calling for a nerf/buff. I think it's fine for what it is.Yep, it is a brawler style weapon. As midline ships I agree that is not CFT's forte but I felt it was a needed weapon for those that want to play that way.
Spread Shot Chaingun: A less damaging chaingun, but uses far less flux. Also spread which can be nice for catching frigates, but I don't like chainguns... A side grade, but I'm not sure it's a worthy one.Pretty much it's intent. Again, an option for the player, nothing more nothing less.
Basilisk: What if your chaingun had 800 range? Not quite a perfect comparison, but close. Ok for killing frigates/destroyers, otherwise too low damage compared to it's alternates. This may sound negative, but honestly don't change it, it's a good sidegrade.Keep it as-is, check!
Wrecker: Like the Basalisk, an alternate to the 7-800 range high ex. However, hitting at 500ex every 2.5 seconds... Honestly, probably hits too hard, it effectively 1 shots frigate and sometimes destroyer armor, making them easy kills (If it hits, and it's not that rare). Possibly raise the OP? (I think it's 12, probably should go to a mauler's 13 or maybe 14... very maybe.)I'll give it a look over. I am sure you have a good point but at this time I can't give specifics until I do.
Auto Canon: Gauss Cannon on Steroids by High-Ex.... The ammo is enough that it's not worth mentioning. It's something outside the game to such an extent balance is a nebulous concept for it. That said, I tend to prefer Gauss Cannons so it's probably in a ok place.There is actually a discussion regarding this weapon stats and name (apparently auto canon is misleading) on discord that I have copied as balance notes.
Bombard: I... Nothing compares in base, but I see no reason to use it. Other modded PD does it better, either as a dual pd/huge frag output (but yours is much better on flux), or as a dual pd/combat weapon with non-frag with extreme range and spread.I feel I am being redundant but yea it is a side grade option to other weapons of the same type.
Apollo LPC: Frag/Emp harraser. Honestly, I thought it'd be trash but it's ok. Maybe worth an extra ship per flight, but that might be too much, I probably need to play with it more.It is sort of a nod to one of my favorite SF book series that uses missile pods in this manner. Idk, sort of a personal nerd addition for me :)
Brig LPC: Feels like too few for what it does, but I need to play more with carriers.I feel they are balanced for what they are but again I am apparently bad at balancing so if you have some opinions when you test them further, Id be happy to hear them.
Skiff LPC: I need to play with it more, but from looks this is what a Warthog should be, I look forward to mixing these with Broadswords.see above
Mizzon: Arguably worse than a Mining drone swarm. Costs 1 op, has shields and a small pd laser... Probably ok for converted hangers for PD, but unless you're hard pressed I'd probably never use it. (Possibly ok with the mod that allows you to add fighters that don't replenish. Honestly needs 1-2 more per wing.)I replied about these in the above post, due for a balance change for sure.
Cutter: These are great! Amazing PD and fighters! Also drones to save on crew, and in good number. Probably at a ok balance compared to Broadswords/Skiffs as a energy alternate, but could possibly use more op or remove the Fog.I love my Cutters, I'm glad you find them useful.
Ok, so that's 3 mill and like... 4 hours of testing/writing. Going to go back in game time and figure out a exploration fleet in the future.Seeing as long it has taken me to reply I believe it. Much appreciated, thank you for all your hard work!
Edit:I'll change the mod description a bit and incorporate this. Nice summation, thank you.
Because my brain won't let me sleep, a general faction review:
Carter's Freetraders are a solid midline faction. Their ships tend to be fast, relatively lightly armored with ok shields, and somewhat strained on flux venting. As a fleet it has great logistical or modification support with most ships having a generous op budget and plenty of salvage gantries and shielded holds for smuggling, salvaging and mining. (Could easily be vulture scavengers in Nex.).
The logistical Boons however come at a combat cost. Unless combat specced the relatively poor venting and undersized mounts on ships means you can easily be out ranged and out gunned, forcing you to use your speed or non-faction ships to survive. Additionally most factions weapons are best considered vanilla alternates, and you'll want many vanilla weapons with a sprinkling of Carter ones unless you're focusing on short range and safety overrides to blow through the opposition, with help from damper fields and speed boosts. This is not to say there aren't good combat ships, because there are. Especially in the carrier department, with it possible for you to field a unending swarm of drones in addition to a fast midtech strike force.
Edit: Done some in force exploring. Not as much as I'd like (Like to grab a capital and some more carriers, as the fleet I had was basically primary combat ships with some Danubes/odd inbuilt fighters), some expansions too my notes that I'll expand on later.Already have some changes in mind as noted in the above posting. Edit noted, ty.
Carter's feels like a fleet that works best as a mix Carters/Normal or going heavy on the carrier aspect supporting fleet anchors. As a dedicated fleet, it really needs to pick it's battles, but is really good on the strategy layer.
Inferno/Helfires actually need a solid nerf, and their range being listed properly. As they are the AI doesn't know how to use them, and when you're using them... Well, I had a Bombadeir with 5 Hellfires (Small missiles unfilled because I didn't have enough weapons when I made it) eat the red planet fleet/a small ordo with a radiant alive while odams and other ships body blocked. Total cost, 2 Odams and a salvaged conquest (The only non-carter's ship in the fleet.)
Odams in real fleet actions aren't quite as sturdy as they look. They can hold up ok vs cruisers for their size as destroyers, but they're the only real fleet anchor ship, but without fortress shields or a similar system (Active flares is nice but not super useful) capital's evaporate them. Perhaps if Carter's markets spawned Apogee's as well it works, but they tend to spawn low/mid tech+carters. Additionally, they have 8 speed, slowing the fleet a fair bit. But then again, they've the OP to fit Augmented Drive Fields if you don't have enough Danube's (I was off by 1 after a salvage and felt it in my soul.)I am a bit confused here, the Odam is a logistics based light cruiser. Putting a fortress shield on that would be a bit ridiculous. Did you mean another ship?
I will note, the tendency towards smaller mounts does wear on Carter's fleets a bit, at least those with lower carrier support, and with Carter's Cruisers either being over costed or not knowing how to use their missiles properly, it seems mostly best to skip cruisers other than the Kerberos and Chestor (Neither of which I happened to have, having been trying the others... Perhaps the game was telling me something by having 5 Kerb's spawn in the market, but I just didn't have the weapons for them on hand.)I take your point on the small mount bonanza, it was a design choice to set them apart from other ships. I believe the missile changes I plan to make may address your cruiser concerns but we'll see once I have it all released. BTW, you can use console commands to spawn ships and weapons for testing purposes. Personally, I have to be disciplined to not use them in my normal gameplay and only for when I am testing but I find they are a must for proper testing.
Also, the scow's mount's are awkward for damage balance. Perhaps if they were energy/missile? Or Kinetic/Energy? Otherwise they're defineately early game ships before diversifying into Danubes/Jackdaws/Odam's with proper freighters.Well they are intended as early game ships. Once I move on from wolfpack to a heavier ship fleet, I rarely use anything below a destroyer.
Will list my actual fleet composition later, wanted to post my thoughts before sleeping.All good observations. Rather than taking them one at a time, just know I'll keep your notes in mind while tinkering with the mod.
Extra Edits: No cheats to test things more thoroughly, though I did consider it for some Kerberosi.previous fleet compFor all, assume max Capacitor's/Vents unless noted. Basically true too.
Capital:
Conquest, Gauss, Wreckers, Hurricane Mirv's, Hellfire Rockets, and PD, with Hardened Shields and Intergrated targetting units. Like normal for a Conquest, good bully ship, folded against a radient. But since it was a throw away collected capital, I can't exactly blame you. Weapons did well, it hit rather hard. Except hellfire because it didn't know how to use them.
Bombardier: 5 Hellfire Launchers, PD. Full Cap and No Vents, because not need. Salvaged Hull/Armor, missile storage expansion, hardened shields, reinforced bulkheads, efficiency overhaul and aug drive field. It honestly has way too much OP unless loading it with missiles from other mods with super high costs, even if using Infernos in the 4 smalls would have worked wonders. In the AI's hands it was useless because it doesn't know how far it's missiles actually goes. In player hands, click and hold to delete a small remnant ordo while other ships play ablative armor.
Coventry: 7 Inferno, 2 Autocannon, 2 Phase Lance, hardened shield, integrated targeting, missile storage expansion. If it knew how to use Inferno's it'd be lovely and I planned on having other ships serve as PD. Unfortunately as mentioned, it doesn't, so a glorified bombardier backup.
3*Odam: 3 Light Autocannons, 2 IR Pulse/Wavemotion Pulse, 1 Breacher MRM/Swarmer SRM. Hardened Shield, Salvaged Hull, Missile Storage Expansion, Salvaged Armor, Torpedo Spec (Another mod, faster tougher missiles with less manoeuvrability). Not as tanky as expected, but still pretty damn hard. I think optimal ends up being Wavemotion with Swarmer SRM or Point Defence Missiles. Yes, Salvaged Hull means that there's just under 5K hull which does make it less resielient, but it's got 600 armor and 18000flux cap at .6 shield damage, so I'll take the +20% missiles. Only 25 flux vents because that cover's things comfortably. You could drop vents and swap torp spec for a hull boosting mods and slightly less vents at the cost of no longer covering flux. Overall, a great ship in it's class and in small battles, and a ok ship in large battles. Oh, I understand you giving them Dart Guns, their slow spead means unlike everyone else running isn't a option and kiting rarely turned out to be one, so gonna throw darts on them.
Raven: 3x Volley Rockets, Devastator Canon/Hephaestus Assault Gun/Saker, 2 pd and a Vulcan, Flux Distributor and Aux Thrustors. Saker means changing the missiles for something for proper effect and can't really manage it's flux, but there's no other great missiles and I didn't have annihilators. Hephaestus makes flux barely manageable and is a good damage/aim match up. Devastator acts a psuedo large pd and makes flux a dream, but is unreliable... I was leaning into the 'It's a sunder' and it did ok work, but nothing amazing. Might try for Gauss/Autocannons next run.
2X Cutty: 2 Assault, Railgun and Autocanon, 5x PD, hardened stabalised shields and a flux distributor. Did ok work. In retrospect, going to changge the two forward PD for 1 Vulcan and upgrade to 2 railguns if possible. Leaves 1 OP free... Just barely manages flux and easily recoverable when it overextends. All in all a nice ship.
2x Jackdaw: 4 Darts, Anhialator Rocket Pod, 2 PD, Missile Storage, Flux Distributor, Salvaged Armor, Armored Turrets. It put in great work and surprisingly tanky.
Berkentine: 1 Dagger Wing, 1 Broadsword Wing, 2 Vulcans, 2 Pulse, Hardened Shields and Integrated targeting, and 18 Vents (Didn't have anything to put in it.). Could easily drop 10 OP, that said due to the fights I rarely got to deploy it. Did ok when I did though.
4x Danube: 2 Pulse and 2 Vulcan, salvaged armor, expanded cargo, 18 vent/capacitor. A dream support destroyer. Fragile in heavy action but still useful in it. More is always needed.
Asteria: 2 Gravitons, Mauler, Vulcan, Hardened Shields and Integrated Targeting Unit. I found the build that can kite a mule! Didn't deploy it because OMG no.
Carrak: Due to a lack of weapons, it had 4 PD, 2 Vulcans, and a Hypervelocity and Wrecker. Expanded Cargo, Efficiency, Boosters. Didn't end up needing deploying it.
Overall Notes: Fleet felt like I thought broadly, responsive, great on the strategic, and fragile with problems dealing damage outside of players spamming inferno/hellfire. But great at punishing Explorers/Pirates out of position. Against Remnant, outside of the 'I'll just die' of the Radiant it was a case of 'fall back and shoot, and keep falling back!'. That said, an Odam I was piloting (Shield Expertise for .5 damage to flux) lasted almost 15 seconds, buying precious breathing room for reinforcements so I could take over the Bombadier, and move it behind the reinforcements to start unloading. Another lasted almost 10! This means that a Odam holding fire can hold out about as long as a Conquest that's fighting back.[close]
Take 2 (Smashed by surprise Nex Remnant)Post shopping update!
3 Odam, Same build except Darts and Torpedo Spec swapped for Vents since I didn't really have any other space. May improve doing some merchenteering before exploring.
2 Ravens: 3 Annhialator Rockets, Vulcan, 2 PD, Gauss Cannon, Integrated Targeting, Flux Distributor. Not going to be even close to venting enough, but they're sniper support.
2 Cutties: As before, but swapping 2 PD for a Vulcan, and now with 2 Vulcan.
2 Jackdaw: Due to logistical dificulties, one's the same, 1 has 4 dual autocanons instead.
4 Berkantine with Broadsword and Cutter Standards (I look forward to grabbing Skiffs). 2 Pulse, 2 Vulcan, 20/20, hardened shields, ITU and FCA, so they are psuedo tanks.
5 Danube. Not enough Danube
1 Astera
2 Carrack, 2 Pilums, Basalist, Heavy Autocannon, Expanded Holds, 30/30 and full Vulcan/PD for a support/combat transport.
2 Chester: For AI management, 3 Volley Rocket's on the nose, 1 Wavemotion Beam, 2 Heavy Autocannons (Volley's are too dodgeable. Hopefully I can sub in Hyper velocities.). 2 Broadswords and a Xyphos (Supplementing tons of Kinetic with Ion Beams). The relative lack of generosity of OP on these ships feels painful to build in comparison, since it's not 'slap what you want on, and maybe some mods!'. But perhaps that's why it's DP is 20?
2 Griffen: 2 Katyusha missiles to try them on ships, and because it means a constant stream of 6 launchers per ship for constant emp threat. 1 Wave Motion, 4 autocannons, 4 pd, Flux Distributor. Fast, lightly armed assault carriers... That I may never deploy due to the redonculous deployment points, but I'll give it a go!
1 Kerberos. Going 4 Hypervelocity, 4 Phase Lance, PD/Vulcan/Flack, 30/30, ITUU, Flux Distributar and Coil Adjunt. No where near enough flux, but it'll be interesting to see if it does work. May rebuild it into a SO Ship.
1 Freebooter (I have a capital!): 2 Autocanon, 2 Hypervelocity, 2 Wavemotion Kinetic Burst, 2 Katyusha, and full PD compliment with double flak on the rear. Hardened shields and ITU built in with Extended and Shield Conversion Front to turn it into a tank, with my piloting bringing it to .65 Dam/Flux, and Expanded Mags for the Wavemotions. Ridiculously fast with manoeuvring jets given Odam's sit at 60 (At this point they need 10/15 on comparison.). One problem I somehow didn't notice before, the Freebooter's shields are off centre. Centre line appears to be through the right forward missile, which is aggravating.
Also turns out it can eat paragons and outranges them handedly Might need to be upped to 50OP if not 60.
Oh, and -7 Vents, because the Freebooter has more than enough flux actually![close]Edit:
I will note, while Hellfires and Inferno > than Remnant, Freeboota Autocannon is not. Too much pressure... That and/or I chose the wrong ships for support, and they need massed Odam's to act as a shield wall.
That said, it and carriers feel much better and isn't as cheesy.
Also, tried the Kerb... Just way too little flux capacity. Put in work though! Long range HV's to wear on shields until close, then turn them off for Phase Lances.Take 33 Odam, Same build except Darts and Torpedo Spec swapped for Vents since I didn't really have any other space. May improve doing some merchenteering before exploring.
2 Ravens: 3 Annhialator Rockets, Vulcan, 2 PD, Gauss Cannon, Integrated Targeting, Flux Distributor. Not going to be even close to venting enough, but they're sniper support.
3 Cutties: As before, but swapping 2 PD for a Vulcan, and now with 2 Vulcan.
2 Jackdaw: Due to logistical dificulties, one's the same, 1 has 4 dual autocanons instead.
2 Berkantines with Broadswords and Skiffs. 20/18 with Hardened Shields, ITU's and FCA's to make them tankier.
8 Danube. Enough Danube?
1 Astera
3 Carrack, 2 Pilums, Wrecker and HV, Expanded Holds, 30/30 and full Vulcan/PD for a support/combat transport. Due to economic downturn, mining lasers for laser pd, but that means they contribute to mining, so eh. Expanded Cargo and Efficiency Overhaul.
2 Chester: For AI management, 3 Volley Rocket's on the nose, 1 Wavemotion Beam, 2 Heavy Autocannons (Volley's are too dodgeable. Hopefully I can sub in Hyper velocities.). 2 Broadswords and a Xyphos (Supplementing tons of Kinetic with Ion Beams). The relative lack of generosity of OP on these ships feels painful to build in comparison, since it's not 'slap what you want on, and maybe some mods!'. But perhaps that's why it's DP is 20?
2 Griffen: 2 Katyusha missiles to try them on ships, and because it means a constant stream of 6 launchers per ship for constant emp threat. 1 Wave Motion, 4 autocannons, 4 pd, Flux Distributor. Fast, lightly armed assault carriers... That I may never deploy due to the redonculous deployment points, but I'll give it a go!
1 Kerberos. 2 Shredder, 4 HMG, 2 Gravitons, 2 Wavemotions for armor peeling, and 2 Ion Cannons for control, Safety Overides. Then built in Hardened Shields [Lets it go harder] and Hardened Systems.
4 Vegulde, High Resolution, Expanded Cargo, Unstable Injector, PD, 19/20.
Freebooter, same as second.[close]
I also tried out the Bourbon more... Despite costing more, this one readily outfluxes itself, has less shield coverage despite being the one with fortress shields, and can't eat a Paragon. Build Below.SpoilerBourbon. To not feel cheating, 4 Anhialator Rocket Pods, 2 Railguns, 2 Heavy Needlers, 2 Large Wave Motions, and plenty of PD. ITU and Hardened shields built in again. Shields are front so only extended this time, so much less shield coverage, but potentially tankier due to fortress. Flux Adjunt/Distributor for extra tank and because this one doesn't hae enough venting unlike the freebooter. Aux Thrusters because the shields is lacking in coverage. -3 Capacitators.
Atttempt 2, cheating all in. Rockets become Hellfire, don't have other large energy weapons so no changes. -3 Cap instead. Eat the Paragon half way through launchers, as the missiles confuse the shields but the wave motions means it ends up restarting it at the front every time.[close]Everything was going great with run 3, even managed to pick up the carrier capital from a bounty to try more, however since the games on a portable hard drive for reasons several parts of starsector including the save were corrupted. :( [Somehow the record of the campaign was replaced with data about X-Com 2....]Can't fault you there that's a pretty good game for it's genre.That said, my feeling for the fleet remains the same as the initial review. It seems that Carter's Freetraders work best as a highly mobile but somewhat fragile midline fleet that works best as a group of tanks out front with faster ships doing punishing and some really solid back line in the form of carriers, missiles, and Autocannons.Well I already have auto cannon changes in the works so that's a given tweak. Highly mobile with good shields but poor armor is their design choice. I'll keep your notes for reference as I go.
And having played with autocannons, albeit with expanded mags, even in long battles so far I've yet to go below 50 ammo. Either the reserve needs to be neutered (Say, down to 10-15) or just removed treating it as a regular weapon... Also, there's nothing quite like hitting a Frigate at extreme range, where due to the angle there's just enough time between shots that the ship goes from 0 flux and full hull to a exploded wreck with one shot from 2 cannons. It's hillarious.
Hi Dazs
Just been trying your mod and had a few issues getting it to run on linux - case sensitivities.
To get ot to load up I changed;
CFT_salvagedshield.png
to
cft_salvagedshield.png
and
CFT_Katyusha_hardpoint.png
to
CFT_katyusha_hardpoint.png
Thanks for your hard work. ;)
This time I've started small with plans to explore the smaller fleets more. Review coming while at work because I stayed up way too late.
Combined Broadswords and Skiffs are as powerful as I thought. The Carter's energy damage ones could be better since they also have frag but I've yet to test them. The Frigate Carriers can also carry those two handedly leaving Brigantines free for super fighters or heavy bombers (Cobra+Broadsword for example) with Reserve Deployment. Starting as a heavy carrier fleet works quite well.
Fighting off a early invasion I got to see how the AI uses Volleys and Hellfires more, the AI definitely treat Hellfires as the Large MIRV's [Wait for the shields to be down/near down, any that don't smack the front are irrelevent), in which case limiting the range of their second stage should balance them fairly well (Making them not ridiculous in player hands). They have lots of spread but they still put in work. Volleys feel too slow against Frigates/Destroyers but they do manage it for Cruiser sized engagements and large clusters, however the missile layout of Carter's ship's in the cruiser weight class makes Volley's less useful for most. (Need more forward facing smalls while the side ones are mediums for the hellfires.)
A Autocannon Raven outranges a Paragon, allowing it to stay in a huge station fight until CR degrades below 30, and still have around 20 ammo without expanded mags, while actively helping to the point sometimes I can't shoot/miss due to hitting wrecks instead. I need to fiddle with it more to see how well it works in a fleet backline, but definitely needs the ammo cap nerf... Also, the Raven can easily keep up with the flux requirements. Given the intended role I don't want to ask for less damage or range as a nerf, but maybe it needs more flux to go from 'easy artillery and single shot damage' to 'If you put this on a destroyer, it's a dedicated artillery ship.' [Also, a memory from the wiped saves, having a Autocannon makes encircling enemy forces a lot more risky. I also hit an ally while backlining in the station fight, was funny sending a destroyer limping off after tearing into it's armor, I could imagine the angry radio chatter.]
Also, just ended up skipping Scows for Danubes. They're that good/ok in combat and if you're not smuggling their logistics are that much better. Also saving up for the destroyer freighter for smuggling isn't that hard... Though Scows do provide more leeway if you forget just how much illegal cargo you have.
As an aside, I need to do more Safety Overrides after testing the Clipper. I'm getting a feeling that lots of ships were designed with that in mind. It might help make the Jackdaw good instead of ok. [Though I do want to try it with heavy armor/armored turrets/salvaged armor to try and make it's Damper Field useful... Also want to try an Atropis/Cyclone Reaper build.]
Edit: Clipper works well with SO, and it's OP is a good size for going either heavy long range combat with plenty o' mods, heavy short range with SO, or ok at either and logistics mods. Definitely fits as a 'babies first cruiser'. I have noticed it's a bit odd in the dedicated salvage line of Destroyer Danube/Cruiser Clipper/Capital Name I'm not remembering in that it doesn't have fighter bays, even built in. That said I don't feel like they need to be there in the clipper at this time.
Jackdaw with SO also works, enough for there to be space and potentially mods stripping out some vents, but the Flux Cap is too low. Also very dependent on what missile you give it. Testing it against a regular Jackdaw, it definitely needs Atropos or Hellfire in Frigate matchups at least for tracking, or perhaps Breach MRM (Don't have enough to test multiple vs Destroyer at the moment), but it takes it from 'interesting' to good. Annhialator's however work for creating breathing room and damage but might not cut it on the high end.
Makes me feel like this is a 'accidental' LP faction :P Given they're on good terms with the Pathers at game start (but terrible with the church? Obviously too high tech for the church, but pathers are looking the other way for supplies.) it kinda makes sense. If you squint.
Loving the ships particularly the Raven class Destroyer - just up my street.I was especially happy with how the Raven turned out. It may not exactly fit the CFT aesthetic but it was one of my favorite kitbashes, I just had to include it. So glad to hear you are enjoying it.
I do feel some of the weapons are overpowered to vanilla, I could be wrong but for balistic and energy weps generally flux/second and damage/second are rougly the same, adjusted for range, ammo and firing rate. The Auto cannon has an enormous range which I love but the damage output seems to be maybe 5x to high? maybe I am misreading the stats?I have a list of changes to the weapon lineup already under way. The Auto Cannon is my number one complained about creation on Discord and is due for an overhaul this patch. I am about a third of the way done with the update, mainly all the discord "suggestions" are done and I am now working on the forum notes and should have it out this evening.
*Thoughts on reading the Change-log*That and the standard loadout changes wont take effect to existing ships in a current game. Pretty minor stuff but my bad for not detailing it.
Looks like the only starting change is the Clipper being in the system spawn, so I'll stay in my current run (Trying to find a good settlement atm).
That said initial response, though I have tomorrow off for detail.Good point I had not considered, I'll add it to the next update (I'm sure there will be more balance concerns as time passes)
-Danube, Wider Turrets, more OP, still 6 dp? :o I'll take it.... Arguably could go to 2-0 PD now to be an actual combat vessel (Rear 2 360's make better for PD, which is a shame as they're the kinetics.). All smalls means it's still a close range fighter, but it should definitely be 7DP now.
-Bourbon looks like it should be usable now. The flux problem isn't fixed, OP is less then a paragon so probably in a good place.I felt that giving it more flux on top of the shield coverage was a a bit too good. I tried to balance the ship in both the player's hand as well as the AI. As a player you can be judicious in what mix you use but I agree it could be a concern under AI use. I would suggest not using heavy flux use weapons if you plan to have it AI controlled. Trying to find that happy median is always a balancing act.
-Inferno/Hellfire fixes most of the player issues in not knowing how they function, but doesn't fix that the skill difference with AI and PC. That said less ammo means spam use is somewhat less powerful in player hands.I saw some videos on discord of players abusing the heck out of them and deleting entire fleets of capitals. Of course they stacked several missile related hull mods from different mods but I felt by reducing the MIRV amount and ammo count, it would limit it. Not much I can do about the game AI, I believe Alex stated in a post that the next update of the game changes missile and torpedo logic. Let's hope that comes out sooner rather than later.
-Fighter changes look great. 2 Mizzen means the built in ones just doubled in power which means some ships will get to skip on PD, but also means non-built in looks interesting... I should have thought of how the built in would effect before suggesting.I originally went with adding two PD mounts to a single wing but figured that by reducing their health and making a 2 count wing was a better balancing move. The Carrack built-in was a great suggestion, it can defend itself much better now.
-Yay to Griffin! That said the other carrier is still 20 which will push people towards it... But they do fill two very different roles so perhaps that's ok.Exactly my thoughts, wasn't much of a point in having two carriers if there was little difference between them. Player choice is the goal.
-Heavy Railgun, very fair nerfs... That said the range drop is gonna make reorganising the battle line somewhat. Less 'Super Artillery' ship and more 'Artillery option'.That was a tough one but it needed it. I saw videos of it being abused on discord but tbh I was sort of impressed with their creative ideas. :)
-Odam: Thank god for the speed boost!Go speed racer go!
Edit: something between this and Nex updating is causing a loading issue. I'll try to chase it up more tomorrow.That is odd, I updated NEX and tested 0.6 with a 0.55 load with no issues. I am very curious what the issue is on your end. Looking forward to your further thoughts and again thank you for all the hard work!
Oh, .6 and .5 Carter's both load fine.All sounds about right.
However I updated Nex recently, then this one. I think something with both updating.Life happening so won't be trying to figure out cause of crash, GF stealing the big comp, so I'll be playing small world on my laptop.
Quick notes:
It was the Clipper I called odd for not having wings, because the Capital and Destroyer that look like it both have built ins... I think.
I appreciate the point defense change. I'm going to try to use it more.
I've tested the Scow (Autocanon+Hellfire), actually works really well, be it shifted multirole, logistical or combat.
The Barque feels much better with 360 mounts. 2 PD, 2 Pulse Lase, 2 Kinetics. ATM using Railguns for them for the range and multirole damage.
Edit: Finally been able to play with the phase ships. Only the frigates so far. Super zippy, outspeeding Terminator zippy levels, but suitably fragile.
Tried the updated Mizzen Wing... Cutter Wings fill their role much better, I think they might be ok, but it's definately a case of 'you get what you pay for.'.
Extra Edit: Managed to build a Cog... The sheer number of PD missiles on it means it can pull it's weight, especially given a missile commander... But it doesn't feel like it's meant to be player accessable since it's all pre-built with only PD.Well the cog is a design concept defensive role ship. In theory it is automated and should be AI controlled but I guess if you want, you could put a PD/missile officer piloting one and it would be ramped up quite a bit.
Random QoL thing, but could you add your own design type tags to this mods ship/weapons instead of using the common tag to make searching easier for people using Stellar Networks? Not just for this mod, but your other factions too.Each data asset has a prefix of CFT_ (Same goes for JYD_ and HIVER_) that sets it apart for any other mod author's work. You should have a button on the bottom to sort by CFT. For example on hull mods, if you press the CFT then only the hullmods from this mod will show. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean by "design type tags". I'd appreciate some clarity so I can help. TY
Play for ~15 hours with this, Very very strong, maybe too much, Heavy railgun is overpower, CFT Bulinbruk is overpower insane tanking and dps and cheap, some CFT mod are overpower like "missile storage expansion" combined to "expanded missile racks".Hello there!
I love it.
You are still using my art in your kitbashes. Can you please not?MesoTroniK,
The things from Tiandong Heavy Industries that are bashed into your sprites are not in Spiral Arms, nor have they ever been or ever will... That being said, every instance of "long hazard stripe" is from THI. But whatever, that is an incredibly generic thing and you can keep it. But you could do yourself a favor and paint over them a bit so the imperfections and rust are not obviously tiling where you made them longer (and also obviously from THI).
(https://i.imgur.com/jv2CnsD.png)
That ship however took the entire center section from the Nanzhong and is not ok. The bridge and turret mount behind it.
Had to do a quick hotfix - Should be save game compatible to initial releaserefrences the changelog:
I am unsure where I got that center section as I made that ship months ago but it is most likely a left over from the initial non no on my part (since it is the same ship in question) but neither you nor I caught that part of the ship after I re-made it back in April.
Lo' there!
Made an account just to ask what the behavior of the Firestorm MIRV Launcher is for the AI; I have 3 of em' on a Starslayer from Luddic Enhancement (I think...) but in battle they just refuse to use them unless I tie them in with another weapon in the group.
Is this due to the Explosive damage type, so the AI will only use them when there is armor or exposed hull available to hit?You are essentially correct, it is a behavior of explosive missiles and torpedoes to priority target exposed ships. I also have them flagged with the AI tag STRIKE which means that the AI will only use them against ships destroyer-size or above. I did that so as to not waste a high OP weapon on easy targets and I'll add that to the description in a future update to make it clear.
To be clear the AI will, very rarely, use them when the opponent's shields are down or they are overloaded. However most of the time I have to use a 1000 range fast firing gun so that the AI will actually use the missiles more then 2 times a fight.Alex explains the coded behavior of STRIKE weapons in this post https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=23636.0
Hey great work with the mod!Hello there, happy to hear you are enjoying the mod.
I found an issue or not i don't know maybe it is intended but Basilisk got huge impact effect when hitting targetWell it is an intended feature. I figured that since it was an explosive triple barrel weapon, it would have some oomph. Are you finding it distracting or an issue? Perhaps I should go over the descriptions I have for the explosive weapons and include something to that effect.
Hey great work with the mod!Hello there, happy to hear you are enjoying the mod.I found an issue or not i don't know maybe it is intended but Basilisk got huge impact effect when hitting targetWell it is an intended feature. I figured that since it was an explosive triple barrel weapon, it would have some oomph. Are you finding it distracting or an issue? Perhaps I should go over the descriptions I have for the explosive weapons and include something to that effect.
Thank you for the feedback, a bit more clarity and we can fine tune it.
oh okay i just thought weird to see fast firing small caliber with 20x15 damage do that big impact effectI sort of made all the weapons procedurally with an overall output goal. What I have not done is go back and look at them in their totality in a lineup offering. You do make a good point that as a small weapon, regardless of barrels, it is a bit too much. I am currently working on a JYD update for it's 1 year anniversary but I'll give the CFT weapons a once over when I can.
Saker seems too strong, it does too much damage vs shield and its super efficient with its 0.3 flux/dmg, yeah its got 900 flux/second but most ships able to fire that long enough to do enough damage vs ships that rely on shields. Accuracy dont really matter against big ships, i think It shouldnt beat storm needler. Idea is cool but its just too strongGood points, thank you for sharing your thoughts. As always, comments like yours are a great help in making the mod good for all of us. I've been busy irl and still tinkering with some ideas for JYD and now have a quick fix I need to do for Hiver BUT I will get the weapon overview, with this comment in mind, out when I can.
I must say I like this mod a lot, they are clearly had a lot of cool idea going into them.Why thank you, that is very kind of you to say. I appreciate it.
Their transport is a problem however, they are simply far tooooo OP especially the Carrack. There is no reason not to use them, They have MORE cargo than Atlas, can double as a Fuel tanker and can even hold a respectable number of crew and most importantly they have burn speed of 8!!! and have only a bit more maintenance cost than the Atlas. BUT not only that they also have built-in Salvage Gantry AND Shielded Cargo Holds mod?!?! what is this monster!?Yea I already have some adjustments to their cargo ships as part of the upcoming update. I will take your comments regarding the Carrack and give it another once over with your points in mind.
I also can't decide on the Biolab... since they are not industries they did make colonize a very high hazard planet less stressful since they can help offset the maintenance cost of industries. But then they also make you a drug lord, Player can now crash the drug market share pretty easy since AI do not build them and unlike Commerce there is no drawback to them : /Well they are smugglers first but they do not believe in slavery and are pretty peaceful as a faction so weapons as a base product were not in lore. I tinkered with the idea of making a unique product like Prontus or King Alfonzo do but I declined to for less bloat. That sort of left drugs as their stock in trade for smuggling. I went with a no industry route to help with colonization and sort of bypass the limit. I have tried to keep it balanced so it is not too profitable. With the player limit on the amount of colonies they can have I had not thought they would effect the market too much but I guess where there is a will there is a way. :)
And on the side note, Bombard are a pretty powerful and fun ship to fly around, but -- I don't know if this is only just me -- but the AI pilot seem to have problem using them. They almost never shoot anything, instead they just fly in and stare enemy ships in the face... Maybe it's because of the side mount are all facing out and I linked both of them together and the AI don't understand concept of tracking missile? and since I put Reaper on the front facing mount the AI don't wont to shoot those on shielding ship either?? :/Quite possibly it could be the type of missiles you are equipping. Depending on the AI code used in the weapons.csv some explosive missiles and most torpedoes (Reaper included) will not fire while shields are up. If you scroll up a little you'll see a reply from me to RegentMaxa that gives more information. Try equipping Kinetic or Fragmentation missiles and you will see a difference. What I will do though is widen the firing arcs of the side missiles for this upcoming patch and that will give them better tracking.
Hello there and happy Thanksgiving!Thanks for the very quick reply and fix.
I looked it over and when I zoomed in I did see it was a little off center, sorry about that. I will add it to the next update but if you would like to edit the file yourself manually then go to data\hulls\CFT_freebooter.ship and open it with an app. (I use notepad ++) You will see the first few lines line up to the following:
"hullName": "Freebooter",
"hullId": "CFT_freebooter",
"hullSize": "CAPITAL_SHIP",
"spriteName": "graphics/ships/CFT_freebooter.png",
"style": "MIDLINE",
Now navigate to lines 7-13 and change your settings to the following:
"height": 288,
"width": 229,
"center": [114.5, 143.5],
"collisionRadius": 192,
"shieldCenter": [0, -0],
"shieldRadius": 187.5,
"viewOffset": 0,
Hi, just wanna mention the basilisk description is missing but when i checked your strings description excel it has content, it just doesnt show ingame?Hello there, thank you for the heads up. TBH, the current descriptions were just meant to be place holders that I left in for far too long. I am currently working on an update with KMS that includes all new descriptions that are lore friendly. We have 2/3 of the ships done and I have some code to update but I should have it out by the weekend if all goes to plan. I will look over the weapon descriptions and see where I can make improvements as well for that update.
always wondered how the strings worked?
One side of schooner's engine is MIDLINE while the other is LOW_TECH, i guess that's a problem?HI there, thanks for the input. I remember doing that on purpose when I designed ships that used assets from both low-tech and midline ships when I kit bashed them. It was an aesthetic choice I used with JYD since their ships are kind of junky/bashed up but now that you point it out, it does not make much sense for CFT. I am working on a small update for CJHM and then a deep dive on Hiver over the weekend but I am sure I can fit a small CFT update between them. I'll go through all the ships in CFT like that and set them proper on both sides and have a update by Friday(?).
Just wanted to say that it's a great mod, really loving the ships, it really suits my style of playing which is usually trade heavy at the beginning.That is so nice to hear thank you for taking the time to let me know. I am working on an update that adds a new ship that should come out by Friday so look for it and let me know your thoughts :)
I'm absolutely loving this mod, the mixture of sleek midline ships combined with rugged, low-tech salvage and mining vessels is perfect. The asymmetrical weapon mounts on some ships are a little odd at first, but give you a great deal of tactical flexibility. Can't wait to see more, this is definitely going in my 'always on' modlist!You have no idea how much I needed this thank you! I was feeling pretty low after a huge mistake I made with Hivers it is so nice to hear a good word and you got what my vision was perfectly. I was working on a CFT update when I had to stop and hotfix Hiver so there are fixes coming but so far no new content. I am sort of on pause just maintaining my mods until the next Starsector update unless some requests or good ideas come my way. :)
I'm hoping, some day, for a mod that adds crewed mining ships instead of drones. But so far, this is an amazing mod with that lovely shade of yellow I appreciate. Fits right in with Vayra mining ships. And of course, another great mining ship mod to couple with HMI, Junk Yard Dogs, Roiders. And others I'm surely missing.I am not quite sure what you mean by crewed mining ships as most of mine are. Do you mean mining wings that are not drones but piloted like fighters? Vayra was my inspiration and I learned a lot from reading her guides. I hope she is doing well and will maybe return some day if it aligns with her happiness. I wasn't sure if I was going to add mining to this faction since it is a salvage and smuggling core focus and JYD is already a mining focus. But I figured since salvage gantries double as mining modules that I may as well and hearing nice comments like yours makes me glad that I did.
Bootleg Vayra's the way to go. It feels like such a mandatory mod pack. As does DARA, though they seem to have become active with big changes coming.I agree, Vayra's mods are all must haves in my game. I used to play as Tiadong until it stopped getting updated and moved over to Roider and enjoyed it for the most part and HMI is super good but I prefer playing as a neutral happy go lucky rockhopper so I made JYD :)
Yeah, crewed mining wings with nex mining power. I only say this because Tiacong (not updated), Roiders. Junk hard, Hazard Mining, Machina... And well, every vanilla thing, along with vayra are all drones. It makes sense, but you kinda start to wish for some manned stuff, ya know? All the current mining based ships also have built in drone wings.
Not at all a critique of your mod. Just something that they all have in common.
I'm honestly upset I didn't spot this mod sooner! Can't wait to add it to the Alliance collection and run the super mining fleet.
I mean, Recovery shuttles is always there to save the day. Built in with S-Mod bonuses gets you 90%.The Expanse is an inspiration for JYD. I like the lived in hard used ships that belters use and I emulated that in the design of the JYD ships. I get flack that they look low rent but that is the point, I mean they spend their time in asteroid fields so it seems wrong to have them all shiny and slick looking like MCRN ships.
Manned would likely just be better, right? I don't know. Been watching too much of the Expanse and playing too much Shipbreaker, but I just enjoy the idea of belters and people risking themselves to repair stuff. It's a bit more low tech though, admittedly.
A small note on JYD and Carter's. Both have a bunch of civilian hulls, which is great. But there's something noticeably missing sadly, though it's maybe extra work that's unnecessary except for a subset of people that occasionally do the super special secret playthrough...Well I tried to offer all kinds of ships in both mods so if someone wanted to they could field a fleet comprised only as the single faction.
PiratesI do offer some pirate ships in the bounties in JYD but they are super not cool with pirates, a JYD admiral would rather blow up all their ships than surrender to pirates. So having their ships available to the pirates is not really lore friendly. Now CFT is pirate friendly and you could easily play as a CFT pirate/smuggler and the faction would be cool with it. I set it up so the player has to decide what factions they want friendly because after awhile having good relations with one will upset the other. Lastly the idea of pirate reskins I am unsure of to be honest. I have never done it so I'd have to look in to it plus I am already at ship bloat in both mods so yet more may upset people.
They love converting civilian hulls. Low priority, maybe not even needed, but some pirate variants would be lovely. Unless they're already in and I've just missed them. Converted Atlas' were just my favorite in the base game. I love the general amalgamation messed up ships designed for combat (Junkers are a favorite, I just don't know how to run shieldless ships though). Some of Carter and JYD's designs are super cool though, visually, and they'd look amazing with some pirate redesigns.
Well, I mean. Lore friendly or not, people die in space. While the JYD may have a zero surrender/parlay policy, they don't get much of a say when their ship is full of hull breaches and everyone inside is dead. And I don't think JYD has done something as crazy as rigged their own ships to explode (in that, there's other modded factions that have increased hull explosions for their ships, which the JYD doesn't). Pirates kill, cart hulls back, and then re-rig them for their purposes. It's sort of standard fare for them. If you've watched the Expanse, I'm sure you can relate to how they do salvaging there, and how Belters come by their ships.I am just unsure if it is a thing I can offer since I am not really a good sprite artist. Also I am unsure what the demand/desire for MORE ships would be since I have seen comments on discord about my ships bloating the game. Please understand I think you make valid points and I appreciate your suggestion it is just I am unsure I can do it.
The two factions are just missing pirate retrofits, it's sort of a standard thing, though a few factions don't have them, like Dassault (of course, their ships are high tech; there's not many high tech pirate retrofits).The factions I see that do it only have a selection of their ships with pirate skins. I do see many that have pirate ships that are their own things, not re-skins of their faction ships. Maybe I am misunderstanding your request, are you asking for reskins of current JYD/CFT ships in a pirate color scheme or that I add new pirate themed ships for the pirate faction?
Just a minor suggestion. JYD and CFT have hull designs that would fit the majority of pirate ships added by other mods, so they'd fit visually and conceptially. Just a remark, tis all, I certainly love both mods for what they already bring (and the hullmods that have been separated. Great work!Thank you for the kind words, its is clear that you enjoy the mods and your suggestions are good ones. I enjoy the process of mod making and want to offer the best I can with my limited skills. I have been blessed with a community that has reached out at various times and offered help and that is great but at the end of the day I am just a guy with zero prior experience with Java or sprite creation that enjoys the game and wanted to add what I though were aspects that were not fleshed out and thought others may appreciate it as well. When I get requests like yours it keeps me engaged and thinking so I am super appreciative.
.... I put aside some time this weekend to finish up the CFT update I was working on when the Hiver crisis popped up and took my focus. I will see what I can do about the manned mining wings idea and look into how to do skins, no idea if I can pull them off but I'll see what I can do.Do you think it's likely that this hypothetical update will break saves?
This is the changelog so far:.... I put aside some time this weekend to finish up the CFT update I was working on when the Hiver crisis popped up and took my focus. I will see what I can do about the manned mining wings idea and look into how to do skins, no idea if I can pull them off but I'll see what I can do.Do you think it's likely that this hypothetical update will break saves?
Need to know if I should delay my new game a few days. ;D
[... Nothing major, I had to stop and spend time on Hiver and that took some time to do. If I add a new wing or a pirate ship as requested that would not break saves so as a courtesy, I'll ensure that whatever I do this weekend I won't add a save breaking update.Sounds good, and thank you for letting me know... now on to a new Sector!
Sounds good, and thank you for letting me know... now on to a new Sector!Heh well 1.4 is released today and it will not break saves - it does address some player summited suggestions and error corrections, a new mining fighter and a new small ballistic long range frag mining weapon though so I hope you enjoy the new content, slim though it is. ;)
Especially since I finally got that custom Adversary system working correctly. :P
... Heh well 1.4 is released today and it will not break saves - it does address some player summited suggestions and error corrections, a new mining fighter and a new small ballistic long range frag mining weapon though so I hope you enjoy the new content, slim though it is. ;)No worries there, I always enjoy quality content such as this. ;D
Quality content, what a nice thing to say thank you. How high have you increased your vmparams settings, I'd say 6 gb (8gp if your rig can afford it) is a good amount for a standard mod load. If not Dark Revenant has a easy to follow guide https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8726.0... Heh well 1.4 is released today and it will not break saves - it does address some player summited suggestions and error corrections, a new mining fighter and a new small ballistic long range frag mining weapon though so I hope you enjoy the new content, slim though it is. ;)No worries there, I always enjoy quality content such as this. ;D
Honestly my main problems are cutting back from stuffing every interesting faction mod I can find into things, I keep having memory problems (despite having cranked my parameters as high as they can go without causing instability messages).
Oh well, hopefully as the game gets closer to that mythical 'v1.0' it'll get better at letting us mod the hell out of it. A guy can dream. :P
... Quality content, what a nice thing to say thank you. How high have you increased your vmparams settings, I'd say 6 gb (8gp if your rig can afford it) is a good amount for a standard mod load. If not Dark Revenant has a easy to follow guide https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8726.0You deserve the praise, I have no idea how long it'd take me to make something like this or if I even could (right now my only idea in that regard is using the 'Passwalker - Ghoul' sprites from the Spiral Arms thread and creating a purely 'antagonist' faction. ie it doesn't trade and you can't use their ships, it's just an End Boss but it can take over worlds forcing you to bomb them to death). Programming is not my forte, managing to cobble together a single system took embarrassingly long. :P
You deserve the praise, I have no idea how long it'd take me to make something like this or if I even could (right now my only idea in that regard is using the 'Passwalker - Ghoul' sprites from the Spiral Arms thread and creating a purely 'antagonist' faction. ie it doesn't trade and you can't use their ships, it's just an End Boss but it can take over worlds forcing you to bomb them to death). Programming is not my forte, managing to cobble together a single system took embarrassingly long. :PI appreciate the nice comment it really makes my day to hear a kind word. Passwalker's sprites are nice imo, if you look at my mods you can see pieces of thier free to use sprites. I had thought of making use of the ghoul sprites at some point but I found an old mod that used them in a way similar to what you describe. I do not remember the name of it off the top of my head, I just know it never got updated to current SS. There was also one that I do remember called Flu-X from back in version 8 I think that had a similar theme so you may want to look them up for inspiration.
As for the settings, 8gb. Given that I have over 150 individual mods running and over a dozen large factions in the mix... it adds up. It surprises me these days how fast the game loads when I cut everything out to test a single mod or two.150 does seem on the extreme end so maybe prune a little even if isn't just a small utility mod that you do not really use. I know some people "upgrade" the game to use JRE8 to handle increased load but idk if that is a worthwhile pursuit.
.... 150 does seem on the extreme end so maybe prune a little even if isn't just a small utility mod that you do not really use. I know some people "upgrade" the game to use JRE8 to handle increased load but idk if that is a worthwhile pursuit.I did the upgrade and I'd say it's pretty worthwhile, it greatly reduces stutter after large battles. Hoping that this too becomes part of the base game eventually.
Haha, no worries! Crewed fighters was just a thought that popped into my head. They ought to be better than normal drones, because human beings are better computers - the drones that /should/ be better at mining work would be stuff Tri-Tech/High Tech stuff could put out, which isn't what you'd expect from a mining fleet (though nothing says there couldn't be a high tech mining fleet/pirate fleet I guess?).Well the new fighter was inspired by your comments. I wanted it to be a mining ship like the belters would use but by linking it to the CFT combat Engineers it made sense for CFT to have it as opposed to JYD which already has many mining drones. I tried a couple ways to make it unique to the faction and it was Madbadger2 who suggested that I have it deploy drones which I thought was a nice touch and a good reason why it would be manned. I
Honestly, of the stuff that doesn't get much love, Ludd stuff was something that kinda made me wish I knew how to mod. Especially the Luddic Enhancement stuff.
I'm not sure if you've tried Imperium or played with Luddic Enhancement, but there's something amazing by the giant missiles the first uses, literally baked into the ship. And the IED ships that Ludd uses. It's low tech, sexy, and ingenious. Especially Ludd - they're not technologically superior to other factions, so they leverage their faith for war. Similar to pirates and their Reaper/Hammer stuff. Unsophisticated maybe, but incredibly potent and dangerous no matter what. A ship with a whole bunch of reaper missiles will without a doubt kill any one other ship it goes up against.I have both mods installed and they are quality content but I usually play commissioned as either JYD or CFT depending on my mood that game playthrough. I do play as a pure salvager though so I have used their ships and generally hold on to them since I have found good uses for them.
Going back to the Expanse (it's criminal how low the ratings are/were for it), I'd played with the concept of a manned mining fleet that allows more modular design for their baked in fliers (a little like how Roider as a hullmod to swap to different drones). This restrictive (because they're mining ships), but allowing some customization and being crewed having its own unique advantages (better in combat, maybe less range due to having a cockpit? Who knows!). I thought it'd be so damned cool if there was a way to make 'asteriod' missiles like they did in the show. Perhaps through a means of Imperium's missile ship design, launching a big hunking asteroid at things. UNGP has a negative setting for making ships that explode have insane velocity, turning debris fields into weapons, for example.STFY was good enough to give the Expanse a green light and the money for quality production values but I too was sad that it seemed I was the only one watching it. It really gathered traction when Amazon bought the property so I wouldn't say its ratings were criminal after that. JYD was inspired by the series but I did not want them to be political so they are different things. I felt a megaton whopping asteroid missile would be a little too OP so I took the concept from the show but went a different direction with the idea. If you read the descriptions of JYD weapons I do make reference to them using asteroids as ammo like the Shard AF for example.
Of course, with only two ideas that's not much of a faction, is it? Still, my precious Wingcom suite struggles to find a mining ship to deploy on.Are you thinking of a playable mech fighter like Arma uses that mines or if it is something else? I am curious what you have in mind.
Sounds like great advice!Glad to help, if you ever decide to start making your mod and hit a roadblock feel free to reach out.
On another note, I've been trying out some of the Carter Hullmods. I have to say that one in particular might be overtuned? Nano Hull Repair. Or whatever it is! I mentioned using Iron Shell for the first time; anything with extremely heavy armor (XIV for example), even when the armor is stripped, gets damage resistance. Coupled with infinitely repairing hull make's it... let's just say. More than a little bit broken, especially in player hands.Well this is more a discussion for the CJHM forum but I'll try to give some clarity on your points here.
For destroyers it's only worth 4 points to install compared to the slightly faster hull regen of HMI's Hullfoam Repair that's 10 points, but caps out at 2000 or 100% Hull repair (whichever is higher), and the Combat Readiness skill that caps out at 50% hull repair. It's frankly, without a doubt, way. Way. WAY too powerful. It'd be slightly fairer at 12 Ordanance point cost (Expanded Missile Racks price for destroyers), but it's still extremely powerful.Well the goal behind CJHM is to offer low op hull mods for when you have extra and nothing better to spend it on. To balance the low Op I put in negatives to each one thus the "Junk" nature of them. Regarding Nano Hull Repair there are two detractors, one being a 10% overall loss of hull and that it does less healing the larger ship you put it on. So a Destroyer would be in the "sweet spot" for it imo but the average destroyer does not have that much hull and a 10% reduction is a bit for them. There are extreme examples on both sides which could be cited but I tired to balance it for those ships in the middle.
Comparing it to other infinite repair, we have Tahlan's 6 point Hel Plating. It infinitely repairs armor by five percent a second but reduces total armor by 70, or 3% armor repair at 50% percent reduction (not a super great S-Mod bonus). HAM (which increases armor calculation points and minimum armor protect) is a whopping 20 Ordanance point cost on a destroyer.Well the difference is that hull mod repairs armor and mine repairs hull. Arguably armor is way more impactful to a ship's survivability and once it is gone, a ship that just has hull left is taken out quite quickly. One hit from a torpedo or a burst from a frag weapon on a ship that has it's armor stripped even with full hull is a quick kill. My hull mod was a way to let ships in that state survive a little longer.
My point? Infinite hull repair is broken, not matter how abysmally slow it is. Granted, I WILL say Hel Plating, while absolutely ridiculously amazing on certain ships in the player's hand, isn't made a great use of by AI without extreme baby sitting. But it feels fair. Anything, however, with a lot of Hull and alot of Armor will make Nano too strong. In my opinion. Maybe you've had different outcomes?I guess I have had different experiences when testing it, here is my summary logic on how I balanced it. It takes up 4 op and does nothing for most of a fight while shields and armor do their thing then it kicks in when the chips are down but if an enemy keeps attacking after the shields are collapsed and the armor is stripped then the repair of the mod has little effect. The way to use the hull mod is to retreat when your in trouble and keep that ship out of the fight while it heals. Thing is, now that ship is usually taking up deployment points while it evades and not contributing to the fight.
My suggestion is either massively increase the ordinance point cost, give it a negative (-70% hull, or strips 95% of armor on a ship? Or... I don't know). Give it a cap, or make it useless when CR starts to drop (doubt that'd help much). I don't know. Something! Or test it yourself more on some builds if you don't think it's too strong.Well I have tested in on various ships and the person who helps me beta test them also did so. It went though several iterations before release but I can certainly give it another balance pass once I am done with the Hiver update I am currently working on.
I still use the UAF, I just don't use 80% of their stuff. So self balance is 100% a thing, and I don't mind not using Carter's stuff. But thus are my thoughts."self balance is 100%" is exactly correct. I offer features in all my mods that some people dislike and some people appreciate. It is up to the player to decide if a certain aspect of a mod they do not much like is worth using the mod overall because they like another aspect. I do appreciate your posts and how detailed they are. I hope I have clarified my reasons behind how those hull mods were balanced before release but I am always open to suggestions and as I said I will give CJHM a balance pass next.
Sorry, I mixed up what mod it was from, obviously. My bad.Not a problem the information got to me is what matters and hey maybe someone reading this may give CJHM a chance - any free publicity is good publicity :)
I think this might be a case of not using the right builds. Fighter Clamps, for example, is an outrageously bad hullmod, and yet it's gotten repeatedly nerfed: that's because, with the right and very specific builds and compositions it is utterly broken. Sort of like proper Safety Override ships.Outrageously bad? Back when Roider Union had open hull mods, I put fighter clamps on all my non-combat freighters as a way to equip them with mining drones to increase their overall mining strength. Just got to think of out of the box uses for some things and they become useful.
You mentioned saying Iron Shell was a great mod, which means you've probably played with it. But even without it and just using a XIV base ship, I highly suggest trying to use your JYD/CJHM mods to kit one out. (I don't know how to quote specific parts of text so here's a quote without quotes) "It takes up 4 op and does nothing for most of a fight while shields and armor do their thing then it kicks in when the chips are down but if an enemy keeps attacking after the shields are collapsed and the armor is stripped then the repair of the mod has little effect."I do use Iron Shell ( I think I am the third of fourth comment on the thread) but you have to take into considering their strengths and weaknesses. Yes they offer high armor and if you stack it with all the things it becomes insane but they can still be beat if you stack anti-armor assets.
Shields? Why would you ever have shields with it? ;3 Armor can't be entirely stripped and depending on how absurdly high you crank it, it will always provide a bonus. Combined with every Hull increasing mod, and built in S mod bonuses, and an Officer, you're going to find something extremely disgusting happen...That is not my understanding of how armor works. It can be taken down to 5% of it's value, which really isn't worth much, no matter how many stacked hull mods you use. A faction that stays at range and kites like SCY can whittle it down and it may take longer but CR loss effects both teams.
Shield Shunt + Reinforced Bulkheads + Blast Hulls + Ablative Armor + Armored Weapon Mounts combined with anything else you can think of. Things like Yunru Core's HAM (20 ordinance) and Iron Shell's Vanagloria Ionized armor just put icing on the cake. Of course, no need for the extra modded faction interactions, base and your mods are strong as is. Salvaged Armor/Cargo Filler...OK well that is quite some stacking and the amount of OP used would reduce the overall OP available making other aspects weaker.
I'm not sure if you've tried HMI yet (I highly recommend it, partially for their very fun Hull Mods), but they've got Junkers that have no shields. They're trash, terrible, garbage. Except if you build for them. You're right, Nano Repair just thrown on doesn't do much. Much like how Elited Combat Endurance isn't very good, with ships dying way before they make use of it. But on the right ship, with the right build? With the right ship system with Damper Fields or Iron Shell's unique hyper charge? Something also seen in Tahlan's Ships (like the Dun Scaith)? And things become even more fun if you're using Better Deserved S Mods (incredibly popular, used by several modded factions that add hullmods, keeping you from always S-Modding the highest cost mod). But again, feel free to do Vanilla + your mods.HMI is great and I have played as them in the past before I started making mods and still have it installed for the quality content it provides. Well as you state as a stand along hull mod it is just ok and that is its intended place. I really cannot balance my hull mods as a part of a stacking system that involves other mods. Not everyone has those mods or want to spend thier OP making edge case ships. I balance CJHM using vanilla as a baseline and then it is up to the player how and if they want to take advantage of what those hull mods provide.
Oh. And now add a level six officer with Elited Damage Control, Elited Combat Endurance, and Impact Mitigation. And you'll see what sort of monstrosity your low cost Nano is.Well now you are taking stacking to a ridiculous level lol. :) If I used those scenarios on all my hull mods they would be part of a stacking OP monstrosity in their own right. I will take your breakdowns into consideration when I give CJHM a balance pass but I have to think of that mod as it's own thing and not necessarily how it interacts with other mods that are outside of my control.
I just wanted to comment that I'm really liking your mod and have been using it my last few playthroughs.That is so nice, I am happy to hear that you are enjoying it.
The Knarr and the Danube are some of the best value for the money & DP ships in my fleet. I play with Realistic Combat, and these 2 ships make up about 75% of my fleet.Interesting, I do not use Realistic Combat so I do not have first hand experience in how it interacts with my mods.
The Knarr has capital-class armor while costing cruiser-class DP. Sure its guns aren't much, but its armor can fully tank small and even most medium mount weapons without damage, and even many large mount and light bombers struggle to harm it. Only bombs, missiles, and heavy weapons stand a chance at causing hull damage to it (assuming the shields don't block them), which....Yep, that is it's intended role, happy to hear it is doing the job I designed it for.
The Danube is an excellent PD compliment to the Knarr. Throw 3 Danubes on escort for a Knarr, and you've got 24 mining lasers running cover to knock out most any missiles someone tries to shot at the pack. Throw 6 Danubes on escort, and not only do you have point defense that nothing will get through, those lasers also cause a radiation cloud the enemy doesn't want to approach especially with realistic combat -- due to diffraction, 60 mining lasers at range aren't very scary, but any ship trying to go in for a knife fight finds how painful they can be. Only safety override fleets like LP, Fang, or Hive dare to brawl. And while the tender drones are nothing too powerful, their weapons can do an appreciable job taking out frigates and even low-grade destroyers when you've got 10+ of them firing away at a ship. And logistically, you've nearly got an Atlas worth of cargo hauling for every 6 Danube escorts you've got in your fleet. It also has a very generous amount of OP given only 4 small weapon mounts, leaving tons of OP for other purposes.Yep, it is a logistics ship by design. I gave it more OP than it could use for weapons because direct combat is not it's intended role. I felt that ship and a couple others would offer players the ability to customize by stacking hull mods on them. I am always happy to hear about some new creative way someone laid one out.
The Chester provides the final piece of the puzzle. A few heavy bombers takes care of any heavy cruiser or capital grade ships that can't be appreciably harmed by tenders or even the Knarr's medium weapons.That is great to hear. I like the Chester but it gets no love when people talk about CFT ships.
Add on to that the fact you get obscene salvage when most every ship in your fleet has a salvage gantry, and Carter ship provide amazing bang for the buck. Plus if you're playing Nex, anytime you need some cash, go mine and you get a windfall with the ships' large mining power.Well JYD is my mining focused mod but CFT does have gantries on most of their ships because they are a smuggling/salvage focused faction. Nex uses salvage gantries in it's calculation when assigning mining strength to a ship so they become mining ships under Nex. I sort of went with that and added some mining weapons and drones to their lineup for players who like CFT but also want to mine. TLDR it isn't a focus of the mod but a nice little side benefit. :)
Add in the Modern Carriers mod, and standardize the fighter bays with the hullmod, and you've created a combat masterpiece. Facing off against 200 DP of Carter ships, 3 Knarrs & 20 Danubes with standardized bays? You've got 3 meat shields soaking any small or medium weapons you try shooting at it without taking damage, 20 wings of mining pods destroying whatever missiles you shoot at this horde the instant your missiles unclasp from their weapon mounts, 20 wings of wasps chasing down and obliterating any frigate or destroyer that tries to approach these guys, and 40 wings of flash bombers dropping heavy death on any big ship that can actually bring large weapon mounts to the battle. After a few minutes of battle when you've pushed the enemy back to their launch area, it basically just becomes that scene from wing commander where the Kilrathi are coming through the jump gate one at a time and being blown up before they can even get their shields online. New enemy capital ship entering the battlefield? Well enjoy flying through 160 proximity charges dealing you 80,000 damage as soon as you join the fray there buddy!Lol that is great! - I never though of stacking like that with Modern Carriers, hats off! :)
All that said, I don't use much of their weaponry or fighter wings. I find their stuff relatively weak (which lore-wise makes sense, they're blockade runners, not warmongers). Even the cutter fighters, which on paper have good DPS, suffer from weak flux dissipation, meaning they can give a decent heavy initial burst with their wavemotions but then barely have the energy to keep the Culverin going. MVS tends to offer up better armaments for my play-style -- continuous moderately damaging all-purpose DPS with added EMP to shut down systems, and drone swarms that don't cost crew losses.When I set out to make CFT I wanted them to stand apart from JYD. JYD is more militant and anti-pirate focused and their weapons are stronger so I did the inverse with CFT. Your breakdown is evident of my intention for them to be heavy into logistics with sturdy blockade running ships but their weapons are only strong enough to hold their own. I gave them so many PD weapons to give players options to set them up in defensive roles.
I also find the Carter system and faction allies in Nex to be problematic. Often their favorable relations with pirates causes them serious issues -- nobody else really likes pirates, and a number of times their system is absolutely teeming with large enough pirate swarms to destroy their real ally trade fleets. I generally hate going to their system until mid-late game when the 6+ fleets of pirates camping every jump gate no longer pose a real threat.I have them set to a neutralist stance when you start so no one hates them except a faction like Hivers that hates everyone. Thing is, Nex will not allow you to maintain a neutral stance and forces you to take a side. If you dislike them being pirate friendly that is easily remedied in Nex by doing missions for "good" and "neutral" aligned factions like the independents, essentially any faction that the pirate faction(s) dislike. You will find real fast that the "amoral" and "evil" factions will start to hate you for helping their enemies but the inverse is true if you want the pirates factions to like you just do the reverse.
Nono. It was a joke. I was just having some fun with the image.Oh good, I did my best to not make CFT OP fighting ships you had me worried a bit there lol
I thought it'd be so damned cool if there was a way to make 'asteriod' missiles like they did in the show.Hopefall, I gave this idea some thought and decided it made more sense to add something like that to JYD since they are mainly a mining faction. So FYI in the JYD update I just released I added a weapon to the Industrious that literally uses asteroids as projectiles. Instead of going with a slow effect as you suggested though I gave it an EMP explosion since it is propelled by a rail gun. The weapon is currently exclusive to the Industrious so if you acquire one l would be interested in your thoughts on the JYD forum. :)
What is the colony structure from this mod? Don't see it shown in the mod description hereHello there, there is a spoiler section labeled "Mod technical notes" on the forum OP and there is a brief description for the industry: "The included colony structure produces recreational drugs with an option to update it into an industry that also produces heavy weapons"
Good day/evening/night. I was wondering if you still had the 0.95.1a version of this mod and your hullmods mod available to download? I was looking at it the other day, and was going to download it, but something got in the way of that. I haven't updated my game yet (due to wanting to get as much as possible updated beforehand), so I was wondering if you had the slightly older versions still available.Hello there, glad to help. I keep previous versions for 90 days in case someone such as yourself would like a previous one. Here are dropbox links to the last 0.95.1a versions of both CFT and CJHM:
You very much updated quicker than I was expecting, ahahah.I was waiting with baited breath for the Nex update and had them ready to go! :)
Good day/evening/night. I was wondering if you still had the 0.95.1a version of this mod and your hullmods mod available to download? I was looking at it the other day, and was going to download it, but something got in the way of that. I haven't updated my game yet (due to wanting to get as much as possible updated beforehand), so I was wondering if you had the slightly older versions still available.Hello there, glad to help. I keep previous versions for 90 days in case someone such as yourself would like a previous one. Here are dropbox links to the last 0.95.1a versions of both CFT and CJHM:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/03fiwrk73lax0n5/Carter%27s%20Junk%20Hull%20Mods.rar?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6nziqgcj2d3o1q/Carter%27s%20Freetraders.rar?dl=0You very much updated quicker than I was expecting, ahahah.I was waiting with baited breath for the Nex update and had them ready to go! :)
Thank you very much! I look forward to playing the new content, but for now I'm rather fine with waiting until the majority of my stuff is updated.You are welcome, I am kinda flattered that you wanted them. I agree with your sentiment although I tried to keep my mods as up to date as I could, personally I have not played much of .96a. Now that Nex is updated I plan to do a marathon game once I am done with the update for TTSC. (Barring any crash reports from my mods) #fingerscrossed :)
Keep up the good work!
Hello,Hello there I will try to help as best as I can but without an error log or code the best I can do is start with basic troubleshooting. I run a fully modded game with pretty much every mod that is updated to .96a. So as a first step I started a new game as CFT after reading your message and before replying and the game loaded and ran fine on my end.
I get a Fatal:Null error when I try to run this. I guess RC9 messed something up, but I'm not great at reading the logs.
Edit: it crashes on startup.
Thanks for being so quick on the updates.Thanks for noticing :)
{"enabledMods": [
"$$$_DakkaHolics_sprites",
"$$$_lightshow_nc",
"$$$_trailermoments",
"adversary",
"A_S-F",
"Angry Periphery",
"anotherportraitpack",
"apex_design",
"Cryo_but_better",
"bsgportraitspack",
"battletechportraitpack",
"brdy_addon",
"blackrock_driveyards",
"ORK",
"CFT",
"CJHM",
"Csp",
"combatactivators",
"chatter",
"cmutils",
"lw_radar",
"lw_console",
"diyplanets",
"istl_dassaultmikoyan",
"hm_flagpack",
"diableavionics_rosenritter",
"diableavionics",
"Diktat Enhancement",
"Everybody loves KoC",
"fleethistory",
"fleet_journal",
"fleetsizebydp",
"forge_production",
"sun_fuel_siphoning",
"HexShields",
"hostileIntercept",
"sun_hyperdrive",
"immersionFriendlyPortraitPack",
"interestingportraitspack",
"lw_lazylib",
"lunalib",
"MagicLib",
"nexerelin",
"shaderLib"
]} I took a quick once over on both and do not see any apparent Linux issues. Does not mean there aren't any, I do not use Linux so it is hard for me to diagnose other than the usual suspects. Posting on discord is fine but all I really need is the last dozen or so lines of the log that says why it crashed which with a simple text editor you can copy/paste here. Either way is fine but having that error code and reason would help me greatly. Thank you!
I'd attach the log itself, but it's very large and I don't know what to post to help. I can add it to the player-tech-support discord and ping you if you want to take a look at the log.
I should also mention that I'm running on linux.
I took a quick once over on both and do not see any apparent Linux issues. Does not mean there aren't any, I do not use Linux so it is hard for me to diagnose other than the usual suspects. Posting on discord is fine but all I really need is the last dozen or so lines of the log that says why it crashed which with a simple text editor you can copy/paste here. Either way is fine but having that error code and reason would help me greatly. Thank you!Alright, here are the last lines of the log.
63011 [Thread-9] ERROR com.fs.graphics.OO0O -
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.putVal(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1011)
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.put(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1006)
at com.fs.graphics.OO0O$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:750)
63035 [Thread-9] ERROR com.fs.graphics.OO0O -
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.putVal(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1011)
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.put(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1006)
at com.fs.graphics.OO0O$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:750)Well that is a new one for me to be sure. Were you successfully using CFT under Linux before the 0.96a update?I took a quick once over on both and do not see any apparent Linux issues. Does not mean there aren't any, I do not use Linux so it is hard for me to diagnose other than the usual suspects. Posting on discord is fine but all I really need is the last dozen or so lines of the log that says why it crashed which with a simple text editor you can copy/paste here. Either way is fine but having that error code and reason would help me greatly. Thank you!Alright, here are the last lines of the log.Code63011 [Thread-9] ERROR com.fs.graphics.OO0O -
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.putVal(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1011)
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.put(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1006)
at com.fs.graphics.OO0O$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:750)
63035 [Thread-9] ERROR com.fs.graphics.OO0O -
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.putVal(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1011)
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.put(ConcurrentHashMap.java:1006)
at com.fs.graphics.OO0O$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:750)
Curious to see what the issue turns out to be. Hopefully something simple. ;D
Hello, just testing your mod for the first time!I looked into it and it seems like yet another Dazs bonehead oversight. Thank you for letting me know I will have it fixed in the next update. That one went undiagnosed for about a year, good eye!
I believe there is an unintended arc value for the upper right small energy turret (WS0006) on the Schooner. Current value is 45, shouldn't it be 95 like the others?
Well that is a new one for me to be sure. Were you successfully using CFT under Linux before the 0.96a update?
Thank you that helps, I use JRE 8 as well but I use windows so IDK. The error code sort of baffles me because if I am reading it correctly it is a Java Hash Map value issue but I did not change anything in the last update that would cause that.Well that is a new one for me to be sure. Were you successfully using CFT under Linux before the 0.96a update?
I was using CFT and JYD with no problems in .95.1a.
Edit: I am using JRE 8 as well.
If I can provide any more info to help let me know.If you could post the entire crash log on discord and ping me with the message maybe I can better figure it out. Plus it would give us a starting point to ask the community if they know what it means.
Seems like this wouldn't be intended but can't be sure, but on the front Small Energy hardpoints on the Schooner, the leftmost hardpoint has a wider arc than the rightmost one. Looks like about 90 degrees vs 60 degrees.Hello there, thank you for the report. oporpu messaged me yesterday a similar issue with the Schooner (couple messages up for reference) and the correction for that will be bundled in the next CFT update. For clarity sake however I have to ask if perhaps you are referring to a different ship because the Schooner has no hardpoints, only turrets and none of them are angled 90 or 60 degrees.
Hello there, thank you for the report. oporpu messaged me yesterday a similar issue with the Schooner (couple messages up for reference) and the correction for that will be bundled in the next CFT update. For clarity sake however I have to ask if perhaps you are referring to a different ship because the Schooner has no hardpoints, only turrets and none of them are angled 90 or 60 degrees.
I am currently waiting on a crash report from Solar Mechanis to help figure out their reported Linux crash issue so if you could let me know if perhaps it is another ship you are referring to, I can bundle in a fix for that as well.
Ah, sorry, just coming back to the game and had forgotten the terminology. Small 'slots', then, I guess; and I'm not sure the exact degrees involved, the 90' and 60' arcs were just an eyeball.Not a problem, I was just concerned that I may have overlooked a separate issue with the mod. I'll have a fix for that out soon as discussed.
Also noticed a different thing, the Pulse Mining Blaster and Medium Pulse Mining Blaster seem identical except that the former only takes a small hardpoint and 6 OP while the latter takes a medium one and 12 OP.Well speaking of overlooking an issue with the mod.... I am embarrassed to say you are correct about that. I mean really, that line of weapons has been out for months and I personally use them. How could I have never noticed that? Time to hang it up and turn in my mod guild membership card. :(
Excuse me, but what is wrong with this Wrecker weapon? Not only does it look identical to the HVD but darkened, it makes no sound whatsoever.Hello there, I made so many weapons in CFT that they sort of blended after a bit and had to stop myself when I realized how many I added :) I looked over the Wrecker and compared it to the HVD and it does resemble it, I had not realized that before. Pieces and parts I used were from vanilla weapons and I guess I just unintentailly matched up the base and barrel and oopsie. As far as the sound, I have it set to make the sound of the Devastator and my guess is if it is no longer working then the sound file I have it linked to most likely changed in the .96a update.
Excuse me, but what is wrong with this Wrecker weapon? Not only does it look identical to the HVD but darkened, it makes no sound whatsoever.Hello there, I made so many weapons in CFT that they sort of blended after a bit and had to stop myself when I realized how many I added :) I looked over the Wrecker and compared it to the HVD and it does resemble it, I had not realized that before. Pieces and parts I used were from vanilla weapons and I guess I just unintentailly matched up the base and barrel and oopsie. As far as the sound, I have it set to make the sound of the Devastator and my guess is if it is no longer working then the sound file I have it linked to most likely changed in the .96a update.
Thank you for letting me know, I'll remake the graphic and verify that there is a sound in the next update. I guess I should check all of them while I am at it.
I hope I didn't come across as hostile, it just seemed a little odd, like a placeholder. I don't want to stifle anyone's creativity. I like the mod otherwise!Not hostile at all, I welcome posts such as yours. I tend to see the forest and not the trees, so to speak, and it is helpful when someone points out a flaw that I overlooked. I am happy to hear you are enjoying the mod and look forward to any other insight or opinions you have regarding CFT as you play.
No worries. There are, uhm, quite a few weapons that are very similar-looking to existing stuff... for example, the Howitzer is just a Hellbore mirrored at the middle with slightly different colours.
I'm not saying they -have- to be changed, it's just an observation I made. I've tried making weapons myself and it's really hard. I'm bad at spriting. So I don't blame you. Like before, I hope you don't take offense. The ships are cool, at least.
I attached an image of the first weapon I ever made, and it looks really bad. Just to show you what I mean, haha. Spriting is hard...
are the bonuses granted by Combat Engineers ship exclusive or do they count for the whole fleet? the wording on the actual mod is unclear except for the last part about ship recovery.Good morning that is a good question, and a perspective I did not consider. I looked over the description I gave them and I see your point, it only states that "the ships they are assigned to are almost always recoverable after the battle". All the CE skills are ship exclusive, it would be a bit OP to have it fleet wide. I'll change that to be more clear in the next update, thank you for pointing that out.
oh great! I didn't mean to sound ungrateful with that post, I guess I should have properly introduced myself first off. I realize it wouldn't make sense for CE to have a fleet-wide bonus, especially with the Hull Restoration skill being right there. Thank you!In no way did I get that vibe, I apologize if I came off that I had. It was a valid question and I truly appreciate getting other people's views and comments. I do my best but I am just a guy that likes the game enough to learn the basics of Java so any and all help is appreciated.
Hi, coming back after some time away. This plus the one in the hull mods might have me sounding a little negative but I love your work.Ah hello again and welcome back to the game. I hope you are enjoying the .96a changes, I know I sure am. I do not take your feedback as negative, I appreciate you taking the time to post such detailed analysis because it helps me gain perspective.
Three big things balance wise.I went synergy on CFT because it is not a mining focused faction though it does have some mining ships. All good points and I like your suggestions for the Danube, I'll take them into account for the next update.The DanubeThe Danube is effectively a Salvage Vessel and 2 Shepards bolted into one ship. This would cost 48K if the ships were actually all bought. The Danube costs 16K.
This is egregious. Additionally it has 80 OP.... It doesn't need this. With this, I can use it as a dedicated logistics ship and a dedicated logistics ship. That's silly.
For armament it has 4 Synergy Pods. It has 2 Mining Drone bays as dedicated PD (Barring Hull Mods), so it doesn't need PD, and can dedicate all slots to weapons, with good Flux stats and 20 Vent spots to work with... If armed with PD or Missiles, it doesn't need these, giving it effectively 20 free Build Points. If you decide to go energy weapons, then you're only spending 60ish OP on combat stuff (Full Vents/Caps, 4 Tac Lasers or Pulse Lasers), leaving you with tons of mod points.
And it's 2 non-Mining Drone Fighters are going to be addressed in their own section, but mean it rolls over most early game enemies.
If I were to change it, I would give it Survey Gear (To match the Shepard comparison), and drop 20 points of DP. If people want it logistics, it's still combat capable, but it means you can't give it a super combat load. If you don't want it combat capable, that gives it plenty of space for combat defences and logistics mods. If you want to dedicate it for combat, well it shouldn't be a combat ship with tons of mods, you have other combat salvagers for that. Oh, and it should cost 35K minimum.
That said it's a bit odd it has Synergy slots. The missile mining weapons are in Junk Yard Dogs, and being Synergy it can't pack mining lasers. Hybrid would make more sense, even if the idea of packing it with Drill SRMS, Asteroid busters, and a bunch of missile ammo boosters is hilarious. [As an aside, I've realised that while I like certain things from JYD, I mainly use them for weapons. Which commission bonus is better is debatable, but the Intelligent ships do make for good surveyors.]
I'm sorry, I can tell this one comes across a bit ranty. I'm not going to edit it though because I feel a bit ranty about it. The ship is ridiculous. The other two are much nicer, I promise.[close]
Um because I like it? :) I like the Thumper but I wanted a line of them and they had to be a bit different than the vanilla frag weapons. The EMP is more a flavor effect as I called it electromagnetic but it does add a little bit to it. I'll have to compare it to the HVD and get back to you since I never considered it an analog to a kinetic weapon like that since it does 25% damage vs shields.Electromagnetic RailgunsThis gun falls afoul of the super long range problem. It has 1100K range and has great anti-shield stats. A small one is 4 points, deals 120 dps, is rapid firing, and has 1100 range.
Compared to this, why would I ever use a Railgun? Hell, it out-performs a Hypervelocity driver in the small slot.
Sure it's trash against armor, and the EMP while there doesn't seem to do anything, but it strips shields easily due to the range advantage, and once armor is past things pop due to being frag. And woe betide any missiles that cross it's path.
The lore also doesn't make sense. It's a electromagnetic autogun for destroying asteroids... Why does that result in better combat stats than a Hypervolocity driver? And why would it come as a (almost) fully-auto weapon like a chaingun?[close]
The Tender is a recent addition to the mod and has not gone through a balance pass like the other fighters. I'll give it a once over with your notes in mind for the next update.Tender Mining DroneSingle fairly tough drones with decent range... With 3 high explosive blasters? These things are effectively unlimited ammo light bombers, happily wrecking the day of fighters, frigates and destroyers while being tough and not using up crew, coming on both the Bawley and the Danube making them super easy to mass, making Pirates, Ludites and Derelicts a non issue.
These things are far too powerful. Part of it is their position in the early game and how cheap the Danube is, so they don't have super long staying power and nerfing the Danube will nerf them as a side effect. But I'd probably drop them to 2 Blasters, or 1 and possibly make them 2 fighters that are less tough. (Maybe not half, but they are decently tough.)[close]
I'm going to do a restart trying to avoid getting drunk on mass Danubes so I use the others more often, and force myself to stay away from the Electromagnetic Railguns. I will say I have been loving everything else though.Self control is key :)
I'll have to compare it to the HVD and get back to you since I never considered it an analog to a kinetic weapon like that since it does 25% damage vs shields.
No rush at all. IRL comes first and you are doing this for free after all. To pick out a segment though.Sorry for the delay in responding I was doing yard work - fun fun good times. I will take that into consideration as well. I should be able to wrap up TTSC next week and start on CFT after so keep any observations coming and I'll consider them in the update. Thanks again for the follow up!I'll have to compare it to the HVD and get back to you since I never considered it an analog to a kinetic weapon like that since it does 25% damage vs shields.
As a kinetic weaponnits not super efficient, but comparing with a light autocanon ship in combat makes it obvious.
200 reliable shield damage for 80 flux is tons more efficient than 120 for 120. But at almost double range you can start poking much sooner and have more ships firing without getting in eachothers way.
If you can work around the efficiency it's amazing. If not it's still OK as unlike say a Tac Beam, it deals hard flux.
In fact, a Tac Beam is probably a better comparison. It's longer range and trades armor damage for hard flux.
Is the source code for this mod in a public repository somewhere? I found a couple of typos and would love to contribute a fix back.Hello there, thank you for letting me know and offering to fix them. I would be happy to perform a spell/grammar check if you would inform me of where the errors you noticed are. I am almost done an update for TTSC and will be working on CFT after so I could have any corrections included with that update.
Is the source code for this mod in a public repository somewhere? I found a couple of typos and would love to contribute a fix back.Hello there, thank you for letting me know and offering to fix them. I would be happy to perform a spell/grammar check if you would inform me of where the errors you noticed are. I am almost done an update for TTSC and will be working on CFT after so I could have any corrections included with that update.
However if you would like to dig into it yourself, I do not compress any of my mods into JAR files so people can look them over and maybe learn from them. You can open any java file with a simple editor like notepad++ if you do not have a java complier. Also most of the text are in csv files which can also be opened with notepad++ or any program that can read comma-separated value files like excel.
Happy to point them out in the forums if you'd prefer that. I was just wondering if the code was on GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket etc, where I could contribute a change directly to save a step!Ahh ok gotcha sorry I misunderstood. No, I do not keep Github since I am a solo act so I never felt the need to keep a cloud copy. As to the error, thank you for letting me know where. That is a common overlook with spellcheck but now that I know where it is, I'll do a line by line check and fix any I find for the next update. Thank you for getting back to me so fast.
The typos I found were all in the `data/strings/description.csv` file. Replace `it's` (contraction for "it is") with `its`.
Thanks for making the mod, really enjoying it
I would like to, if possible, have an option some day to set my Carter's Freetraders to hostile to pirates from hour one. Roleplaying-wise, I have absolutely no use for pirates except as a threat and, once I get powerful enough, an optional hunting target. This is non-essential, since I can easily become hostile with pirates by simply attacking their fleets etc.This is kinda easy to do because there's often friendly pirate ships fleeing from interactions with traders, often on their own. Just attack them with their transponder on.
Hi quick feedback on my first run as a Carter's Freetrader faction captain that I did a few weeks agoHello again thank you for weighing in. 5ColouredWalker beat me to a reply but I would like to add to the discussion.
(posting this before trying out a Tri-tac run):May I shamelessly suggest TTSC :) Sorry couldn't resist ;)
a) Even with Ruthless Sector mod, the game start was really easygoing because most factions (including Pirates most especially) are non-hostile to me. If the purpose/lore requires being friendly with Pirates then sure, mission accomplished. Some players may enjoy not having to worry about pirates, or even, for whatever reason, being friends with them.Ruthless Sector is a must have in my games and I play on Starfarer mode so I get it. CFT is designed to be a morally grey faction to start with. As 5ColouredWalker pointed out, I included a pirate world (Porthleah) in Pengersick that you can choose to interact with or to attack for the purpose of giving a player a means to quickly establish their faction alignments if they did not want to play as neutral.
Gameplay-wise, I really like the beginning and middle and tend not to hang around once I have a powerful homeworld established with high income. The impact of "friendly pirates" is especially felt very early, when I was flying around with two ships and very far into the black, exploring at high risk.The end game is what you make of it and it is pretty subjective but essentially I feel the same. I really enjoy looking for wrecks to salvage to build a fleet and gradually gaining more ships than I was losing. Once I find a good system and a home base is established I focus on the story Vanilla, and mod, then focus on defeating the baddies but eventually I start over.
My only risks were [REDACTED] and alarm-system summoned pirates.*cough* Hiver Swarm *cough* 8)
I would like to, if possible, have an option some day to set my Carter's Freetraders to hostile to pirates from hour one. Roleplaying-wise, I have absolutely no use for pirates except as a threat and, once I get powerful enough, an optional hunting target. This is non-essential, since I can easily become hostile with pirates by simply attacking their fleets etc.You can modify the faction relations fairly easily to accomplish that. First get an editor that can read Java script, I recommend notepad++ it is free and automatically recognizes Java. Now navigate to your CFT mod folder and look for a file called CFT.json located in data\config\exerelinFactionConfig. First make a backup copy if you fear you may make a mistake but open it with your editor and navigate to line 9 which should read, "pirates":0.1, now change that 0.1 to -0.6 which will start your game with CFT hostile to pirates on a new game. The more negative the number the more CFT will hate the faction up to -0.9.
b) The logistics support, with my fleet composition of nearly 100% Carter's hulls, is subjectively, the best I've ever had. Especially since I tend to max out the yellow skill tree.Oh I am such a yellow tree boy it is my go to on every start even if I am playing a more aggressive run. Ty for the nice words!
c) The combat capability of the Carter's fleet is solid. I felt no need to reach for other faction ships to fill gaps. I didn't play long enough to deploy the big girls and boys of the faction fleet ships but had no complaints. I would like to one day return and replay and see how a Carter's-composition fleet evolves to fight late game [REDACTED] formations.Both CFT and JYD are designed to be factions that if a player wanted to, they could roleplay using exclusively faction ships. Both mods have so many ships included in order to cover every type of role a player would need. Some call it ship bloat but I see it as a feature ;D
d) I didn't play long enough to find a favorite among the equipment/weapons of the faction to comment.Well just like my ship philosophy, I include every damage type of weapon in my mods for the same reason. Though I guess I went a bit overboard on PD weapons with CFT and I am thinking of culling them. Some input from player on that would be appreciated (assuming anyone actually read this far into my TLDR)
I'm not giddy from seeing my suggestions implemented. What're you talking about.I am a bit confused here, are you upset that I made changes to the mod?
I'll shall be very busy for a little bit, but I'll try to get some time in next weekend.
That said, my most interesting runs have been me leaning into pirates/path, and the Hegemony/others getting mad a me. Might be something worth a try.Yep, having the factions play against each other while you manipulate them and profiting in the process is what CFT is all about.
You also get rich super fast transporting Heavy Mechs to the path in the system that also has Tri-Tach. That said, expect to have to support the home system with invasions.
I am a bit confused here, are you upset that I made changes to the mod?I am very happy. Sorry, I am not is a joke denial I use in my family.
Phew, good to hear, I felt you had several valid points and implemented what I thought made sense. I though perhaps you were upset that I did not implement all your suggestions.I am a bit confused here, are you upset that I made changes to the mod?I am very happy. Sorry, I am not is a joke denial I use in my family.
Hi, I found there is a Monofialment Tow Cable hull description bug.Good morning,
So I've been playing with this mod in my playthrough, and had dabbled a little bit with it and thought some of the logistics stuff seemed a bit too efficient compared to vanilla, but maybe that's ok, because it lets me reduce some of my overhead. The one exception is the mining values. They seem completely on a different scale than other mods. I get over 300 mining out of one ship fully fitted out for mining which also doubles as a salvage/sensor ship. I feel like the mining is on par with or better than capital ships from other mods at a fraction of the cost?CFT is focused on trade/smuggling depending on which path you choose and exploration. Their ships reflect that with their cargo capacity and logistics to support long range exploration and hauling. You do make a good point regarding their mining strength, JYD is my mining focused faction and I used that as a baseline when I made CFT. I will revisit the mining strength of all CFT assets in the next update.
Now, I ran into a bounty that generated a fleet of these ships and trying to fight against them has been the least fun experience of the whole playthrough. I'm trying to figure out why. Part of it may be that my fleet just isn't strong enough to do meaningful damage to them, but I've beaten other fleets of "similar strength" before. I think the issue is that they're too powerful for their DP cost.I do get comments on discord that my mods are too OP but I guess that is how I enjoy them. I will look over the fleet and see what I can adjust while keeping the fun factor intact.
For example the Naruebet costs 10 DP, but comes with 2 fighter bays. It has 60 OP, 3500 hull / 275 armor, 85 speed, 2600 base flux capacity. The closest vanilla equivalent (10 DP/ 2 bays) is a Condor, which is a bit sturdier, but has less than half the speed, a worse shield, and only 45 OP. The condor is a cheap carrier you use when you have nothing better that has to pick between fielding OK squads and the rest of its fit and is totally screwed if anything actually flies up to it. The drover comes with 80 OP and is a lot more similar to the Naruebet, but comes in at 14 DP.That is a nice breakdown and comparison thank you, it helps me when I do some research.
The Triton has a similar issue. Unlike other battle carriers it has 6 bays. The vanilla 6 bay carrier, the Astral is slow as heck has only 270 (vs 355) OP, and costs 2 more DP to deploy at 50. The Triton is another ship that is much less screwed than its vanilla counter part if you try to rush it, while being cheaper to deploy.I will also keep this analysis in mind when I look over the Triton.
The Dhow... I just hate fighting phase ships. They just phase out and stick around for a long time neither allowing you to kill them, nor allowing you to ignore them and target something else lest they immediately come back and shoot you. It's a bit worse than a Doom, at 18 DPs vs. 35! for the Doom, and is ostensibly a cargo ship. The smaller phase ships can be more annoying with them constantly trying to flank you, but their CR also drops pretty fast. The Dhow just has way too much staying power for a <20 DP ship.I am not a fan of phase ships and do not use them but I felt that since I was sharing my mods with the player base that I would include a couple in each of my mods. As I have no personal experience using them I most likely made some fat fingered stats that need addressing.
I don't know that the ship's stats need to be nerfed, but their DP should definitely go up if they're going to be this much stronger.This sounds like an easy way to balance them and will consider it but I will still go through the lineup and see what could use a +/- adjustment.
Also, the Inferno MIRVs were fun when I used a few, but seem kind of broken when fielded en masse on ships that have enough OP to afford their greater OP cost. They also seem to really hard counter my ships with 300 degree shield arcs. I know they're meant to go for the engines, but I feel like other things that try that like the Salamander are a bit worse at making such pinpoint strikes through a narrow gap. Not sure how many HP they have, but they also seem really good at evading PD for a small missile. I get that that's their point, but most missiles aren't good at crippling ships that haven't had their shields taken down yet. Like they completely ignore non-360 degree shields and also take out engines which makes it easy for other ships nearby to gang up on the target.I did put a high OP cost on them as a balance but if someone wants to spend all their OP on Infernos then that is their prerogative. I only have them equipped on a couple variants and no more then two or three so fighting them should not be an issue. I will compare the line of Infernos to vanilla counterparts and see what I see.
Yeah, I did find the infernos hard to fit on most ships, so the OP cost does definitely balance them. I think your medium version of them only costs 9 though which is cheaper than only 1 more than the smalls and cheaper than most medium launchers. Maybe there's some other stat differences I'm missing? Ammo seems more limited for those, although that might just be because the small launchers come with so many shots. Considering that expanded missile racks and the skill could get a ship up to 3x base capacity, the small launchers basically have infinite ammo.Well as I stated earlier I will look over the line of inferno missiles to make adjustments with your comments in mind. I generally do not consider things like expanded missile racks when I balance because things like that effect all missile weapons equally so balance-wise it is a net.
One other thing I've noticed since then: the Wavemotion Gun is also under-costed. I love the look of it and I'm using it all over my fleet, but when looking at detailed combat breakdowns and fitting it on a ship with a High-Intensity Laser, it seems to do around the same amount of damage in a fight (it has slightly higher DPS but slightly less range). The balance seems fine, but the HIL costs 20 OP and the Wavemotion Gun only 15. I've kept using it since it looks so cool though and also because my fleet is full of TTSC kinetic energy weapons lol.The WMG is my nod to Space Battleship Yamato so I tried to make it similar and am glad to hear you enjoy the look. Also happy to hear you are using TTSC. It is my least used mod and I am always glad to hear a nice thing about it. :)
Sup miners! This mod has top quality, best looking utility ships.Good morning and thank you! - I spent many hours on these ships to make them unique since I received some negative feedback on my first mod (JYD) that used some direct copies on spiral arms and it is so nice to get good feedback on them.
I just stumbled on disturbingly OP weapon, thought it might be good idea to write here.You got your feedback in just in time as I am working on an update for CFT this weekend.
Hellfire rockets spam is way too powerful, I rig Bombardier (or any ship with 3+ medium rocket slots) with 5 Hellfires, it can wreck any ship, or fleet just spamming them from any distance, description say 1000 distance, but they are work even flying beyond screen. Damage is soo high that it can overload capital ships. There is so many of them, that no PD can counter it (1 launch carry 24? rockets), and damn they fast!
All that ofcourse in player hand, AI is timid in using them, and follow 1000 distance limitation.I balance weapons on how the AI uses them as that is how they are used 90% of the time. I used the Bombardier variant setup when I tested them and it seemed fine at the time but that is only 3 Hellfire rockets. I'll run some tests with the setup you use and see how it preforms on my end and make adjustments accordingly.
Lag riddled weapons from fighters and OP faction literally runs Heg out of town. I need to stop looking at these faction mods since there's never ANY balance. >:(Hello there, I apologize I must have missed your kind message earlier. Constructive criticism is very helpful and I appreciate you taking the time to share it.
do you have a link to 0.95.1 anywhere?I do keep a repository of 0.951 version of my mods on dropbox for players such as yourself: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6nziqgcj2d3o1q/Carter%27s%20Freetraders.rar?dl=0
thank you so so so much! I figured it would not have everything but I really wanna try your mod and my mod list is very big and for older version and I dont want to have to make all teh edits to the mdos I have again cus it took forever to customize it for myself!You are welcome, happy to help. I am all about giving players options so I keep my mods open/uncompressed so they can be easily customized.
Hiya. You gave me some advice on Adjusted Sector to allow it and CFT to work. Did as you said and the sector generated just fine.Hello there, glad I could help you get it to work. I switched to RAT's sector adjustment setting and no longer use Adjusted Sector so I did not have a work around 100% ready for your crash.
Only immediate issue im finding is talking to the contact that you start off the game with when being commissioned with CFT. It will go fine, open contacts, select your CFT contact, ask for work and in the dialogue box sometimes a error in orange text shows saying RuntimeException: Problem loading class [data.scripts.campaign.cft_SmugglingMission]. It still allows me to select other missions just fine, like for example any bounty missions so it dosent bother me any just thought id give a update. Ill be sure to come back if i have anymore problems. Thanks again and keep up the good work :3I know why that happened, I had you delete bar_events.csv which gives that specific mission from bar events but neglected to have you delete person_missions.csv in data\campaign which gives out faction contact missions so delete that csv. If you want a complete removal to the last remaining reference to the smuggling mission then delete the script itself, cft_SmugglingMission, which is in data\scripts\campaign. That should not cause any crashes doing that in a saved game but best to keep a copy of those deleted files if you do not plan to restart just in case.
Hiya. You gave me some advice on Adjusted Sector to allow it and CFT to work. Did as you said and the sector generated just fine.Hello there, glad I could help you get it to work. I switched to RAT's sector adjustment setting and no longer use Adjusted Sector so I did not have a work around 100% ready for your crash.Only immediate issue im finding is talking to the contact that you start off the game with when being commissioned with CFT. It will go fine, open contacts, select your CFT contact, ask for work and in the dialogue box sometimes a error in orange text shows saying RuntimeException: Problem loading class [data.scripts.campaign.cft_SmugglingMission]. It still allows me to select other missions just fine, like for example any bounty missions so it dosent bother me any just thought id give a update. Ill be sure to come back if i have anymore problems. Thanks again and keep up the good work :3I know why that happened, I had you delete bar_events.csv which gives that specific mission from bar events but neglected to have you delete person_missions.csv in data\campaign which gives out faction contact missions so delete that csv. If you want a complete removal to the last remaining reference to the smuggling mission then delete the script itself, cft_SmugglingMission, which is in data\scripts\campaign. That should not cause any crashes doing that in a saved game but best to keep a copy of those deleted files if you do not plan to restart just in case.
Thank you for posting an update, I saw your message on the Adjusted Sector forum but figured it would be better to reply here. Nice to hear you enjoy CFT so much please let me know if you run into any other issues and I will do my best to help.
Yup. Did as you said and i made 4 different saves and it generates just fine and no longer get that error when talking with the contact. Thank you again for the help.Excellent, glad to help. Thank you for the update.
v1.7.1 released today -Save compatible with v1.7a
-Unlocked the turrets on the Bawley, changed them to Synergy and added 10 OP - Gives the player more options
-Updated to 0.97a
Enjoy!
Thanks for the quick update.You are welcome, I am not just a mod author but a player that wanted to dig into .97a as soon as I could :)
Freeing up the Bawley is also very nice.I found it underperforming with the small PMB's and was going to switch it to missiles but figured it would be best to leave it up to the player to choose.
downloading, gonna try me a .97a game with pure Carter's ship mix...well okay, has to have a pair of Omens and one Victory class battleship unless I find a better large capital...I designed the mod with that in mind. There is every type and class of ship offered so a full CFT run is quite possible. As to a better large capital may I humbly suggest the Triton. Though a capital carrier, it can get up close and project quite the punch if you fit it out with low op fighters and max defenses and weapons. I'd be interested in hearing your experience if you would be willing to share it.
If it weren't for the speed difference I'd tell you to just use Bawleys, but 50 speed is a lot to overcome unless you use SO.The Bawley has a 90 max speed, are you thinking of a different ship? Though to think about it, a fleet of just Bawleys would be quite the challenge run, wolfpack tactics indeed! :)
That said, back to playing again and Escort Package is a very nice mod for Clippers as an alternative to SO, the extra speed makes it finally feel like it comes into its own without tanking its range or endurance.Well that would make it a speedy brawler for sure. Not that I have a favorite CFT ship but the Clipper is the one that stays in my fleet an entire run. I consider it an achievement if I keep the one that is salvageable in Pengersick from start to finish.
downloading, gonna try me a .97a game with pure Carter's ship mix...well okay, has to have a pair of Omens and one Victory class battleship unless I find a better large capital...I designed the mod with that in mind. There is every type and class of ship offered so a full CFT run is quite possible. As to a better large capital may I humbly suggest the Triton. Though a capital carrier, it can get up close and project quite the punch if you fit it out with low op fighters and max defenses and weapons. I'd be interested in hearing your experience if you would be willing to share it.
That's the spirit! - Personally I usually put mining drones in the slots and maximize the tanking potential. I made it more of an energy platform and did not give it large mounts but with that flux pool and the right shield hull mods it can really take a beating and can still dish out some damage. I make my mods to be outside the norm and open potentials that would not otherwise be available with the cookie cutter loadouts. Some call it OP, I call it use your imagination and fly! :)downloading, gonna try me a .97a game with pure Carter's ship mix...well okay, has to have a pair of Omens and one Victory class battleship unless I find a better large capital...I designed the mod with that in mind. There is every type and class of ship offered so a full CFT run is quite possible. As to a better large capital may I humbly suggest the Triton. Though a capital carrier, it can get up close and project quite the punch if you fit it out with low op fighters and max defenses and weapons. I'd be interested in hearing your experience if you would be willing to share it.
hmm I usually am adverse to carrier capitals but perhaps could try a squad of PD fighters and make the Triton loadout fully dash-brawler mode...pending a review of the speed and ability to get the big boy moving...oh my. Triton really moves at speed 65. No large mounts or heavy ballistics integration, but still...challenge accepted!
(p.s. And look at that Triton flux pool...)
Balance thoughts! In a spoiler because I'd rather not clutter up the thread. Away from my comp so my specifics might be off.OK dear reader brace yourself because I am removing the spoiler box to give a proper reply. Prepare for TLDR clutter, you have been warned.
On one hand, I like it when ships OP budgets are high because it gives more mod room, but:Well I based it on the Buffalo and removed some cargo space to add the two additional turrets. All CFT ships have generous OP budgets so players can mix/match and come up with w/e they like. It is the major point of contention on discord that my ships are overpowered because of this but my counter argument has always been, it is a single player game. You can choose to fill those points with w/e you would like and it would not effect anyone else's gameplay. Options, that is what I am all about, giving players flexibility to build ships however suits them. OK sorry that came off mean but I take your point and will think more about it.
Verguld is a much better Tarsus. Built in militarised, trades 1 turret point out, and I'm away from the compute but a solid 20ish more OP. It has enough space I can throw on two logistics, unstable and safety overrides to go super fast, and still load on with ok mining OP.
This is without capacitors, but still, a bit much. Does cost more supplies though, but not sure the balance is right.
The new Bawly feels a bit too potent. Sure it's too slow for a lineship. But it's got BP to be one and a logistics, better cargo space than a Shepard, better fighters than a Shepard (for combat/mining, not necessarily pd though. I feel like it's BP should be put in the high 20s or low 30s. But I haven't looked at DP recently.Well again as I stated on a previous post, I think you have the Bawley mixed up with another ship. The Bawley is a frigate sized logistics ship that has been in the mod since the start, so I am confused when you refer to it as a newly added line ship. Maybe I am just being obtuse but if you could give me some clarity that this one:(https://i.imgur.com/vG4D4fg.png) is the one you referring to so I can properly respond.
Also my 50 speed note was the difference in Omen speed and Bawley speed. Which turned out to be 60 speed :PSince you are referring to the Omen and the Sheppard frigates I think we mean the same ship but I just want to make sure.
The Heavy Frigate feels less like a sidegrade to a Lasher and more like a upgrade with its extra OP. I'm not sure if 1DP is worth it with how tanky it can get (can be built to have much better shields and armor, then has dampners). It might be worth considering a 7, that also feels high? Unsure.Since the Jackdaw is the only Heavy Frigate in the CFT lineup, I'll go ahead and and respond with that ship in mind. I labeled it a Heavy Frigate because it it is beefier than a normal frigate like the Lasher but not as buff as a destroyer. I will compare it's DP to vanilla frigates/destroyers and give it a sweet spot number to better represent the vision for that ship.
The flux efficiency or pinpoint accuracy of the fragmentation 1000 range guns feels like it needs adjusting. The small versions feel like beam weapons, and while they look like autocanon sidegrades trading away any armor damage and being more flux intensive, if your fleet line has room to give and then speed to chase (which, ok, not garunteed), they do a bit too well IMO. For example, I traded heavy autocanons for the medium one on my Clipper, and I saw a immediate boost. While the medium is less accurate, it's still flux efficient as a kinetic option and saves 5ish points on it, while 7op is more thumper territory.Well yes I made that line of weapons to 1) give them frag weapons but 2) to give them mining laser like ballistic weapons. I did struggle to get it right as the game does not have anything similar. I felt I was offering a new line of weapons to give choices to players but in that process I may have not hit the mark correctly. I'll give them a lookover as well.
Speaking of Clipper, the base load out might need a redesign. Using a Ion Laser and 2 of the frag guns and no missiles vs the base load out, even with wasted OP on non combat mods, while there was some initial push back, the base Clipper was trounced handedly.Not a bad idea, I'll give it a try in game and if nothing else I can make that a second variant.
I would suggest swapping the bassalisks to the asteroid guns and leaving the mining main, because it's a great gun, and it means it would have super high kinetic pressure, and would tear apart targets once opened by the explosive medium.
Lastly, the huge Pirate Base planet is only size 4 and has 4 industries, giving it a stability hit. It should probably loose 1 industry and gain 1 size. Or size 6.I fixed the same issue with the pirate base in JYD and I guess I should have made the changes I made there over here. I'll have that in the next update.
Though it's real fun cleaning up after mercenary and pirate fights at the start of a Carter's run. And still hilarious seeing Derilicts confidently charge Bawleys and die in a hail of emp and fighter's high ex blasters.The entire line of combat engineer ships are a favorite. Even when I play as another faction I use them and always salvage the Clipper in Pengersick if nothing else.
Maybe I am just being obtuse but if you could give me some clarity that this one:(https://i.imgur.com/vG4D4fg.png) is the one you referring to so I can properly respond.
OK sorry that came off mean but I take your point and will think more about it.
Yep, same ship. Call it my fault for using new too early, the redesign was just opening the weapon slots after all.OK thank you for the follow up, I prefer clarity whenever discussing a mod.
The new Bawly feels a bit too potent. Sure it's too slow for a lineship. But it's got BP to be one and a logistics, better cargo space than a Shepard, better fighters than a Shepard (for combat/mining, not necessarily pd though. I feel like it's BP should be put in the high 20s or low 30s. But I haven't looked at DP recently.Here are the differences I made between the two in the current balance pass: The Bawley has 300 less HP, 50 less armor, 10 less acceleration, 20 less turn speed, 110 less turn acceleration, 20 more mass, 10 less shield arc, 10 more minimum crew needed, 10 less fuel carried, costs 1 more supplies/rec, 1 more supplies/mo and costs 4k more credits vs the Sheppard. For those penalties it gains, 300 max flux, 125 flux dissipation, 22 ordinance, 1 fighter bay, .4 better shield efficiency, 5 max crew, and 100 cargo.
Also my 50 speed note was the difference in Omen speed and Bawley speed. Which turned out to be 60 speed :P
Nah, not being mean. Explaining the position helps me keep in mind you're building for a wider player base, some of which will have very different things they want from your work.Thank you for understanding. I recently did a search on my mods on discord since I am working on updates for two of them to see if I can glean any thoughts about them that I do not get on the forum. Whenever I do that I have to brace myself for the trolling and bullying I get there but even in the darkness there is a glimmer of light and I can separate the two and maybe learn valid concerns. Unfortunately for you, I had just done that when I read your forum post and I guess I was still processing and I felt I sort of took it out on you and for that I truly apologize as you have been a frequent collobarator on my mods and I appreciate your comments.
Hello - I just wanted to offer some balance feedback - not actually used the mod yet, but noticed the commissioned crews bonus the mod provides is quite significant - if it existed in isolation of the pirate commission bonus, it'd maybe not seem as overtuned, but as it stands the pirate commission bonus is -20% sensor profile, so the CFT bonus is the pirate bonus AND much more.Great, I appreciate any feedback, thank you for taking the time to offer it. CFT is primarily a smuggling faction that does not use pirate behavior vs pirates use pirate behavior and some times smuggle. I set the % higher to reflect that since one of the goals of the mod is to make smuggling more viable as a play style.
This could be the case that the pirate one needs to be changed and buffed slightly, but I do also feel the power level of the CC bonus for CFT is without a doubt in the highest tier of available bonuses, almost being on par with the sensors tech skill - also I think the way sensor profile reductions work, the more of them you get, the more wildly effective they are for trivialising elements of gameplay that revolve around staying off radar - so this also counter intuitively sets up CFT to basically be super easy mode for the playstyle they're intended to revolve around - especially coupled with having neutrality across the board (imo you'd think a group of known smugglers would be high on hegemonies to squash list) - though I understand a lot of players probably love how conductive this all is to getting a huge economic fast start if they prefer that, basically allowing them to amass huge profits with relative impunity at the start of the game even on a lvl1 captain.Well i do have them set to neutral to all at start but based on how you play that will change. If you stay out of trouble you should remain neutral for some time unless Nexerelin tosses in some random event that changes it (and that will happen). As a commissioned officer holding a letter of Marque, you have the ability to guide the factions relations. As stated, Nex will make changes to the faction relations based on your standing with other factions. So in your example of being neutral to Pirates and Hegemony, Hegemony will eventually notice and NEX will lower your relations. So it is up to the player how CFT evolves as the game progresses. You can go all in and make them a pirate faction, a law abiding faction or stay neutralist. Actually maintaining that neutrality is a challenge in itself as changes will happen outside of your control but you have the ability to offset them by your actions.
Anyhoo take this all with a pinch of salt - if/when i do playtest this I can speak to it more, but I figured if i do grab it I'll edit the bonus and minimise it to something like 10% Sensor Strength, 10% sensor reduction, 10% cargo.Oh no salt needed :) I intentionally keep my mods open source and easy to edit. I made my mods to offer choices to players and tailoring it to your specific style falls directly into that philosophy.
Overall the mod sounds excellent, balance quibbles aside.Quibble away, the more feedback I get the better I can make the mod for everyone. I guess I am the final arbiter of how it ends up but you can look at my mod's changelogs and you will see how player suggestions have greatly impacted them.
Thanks for your reply and insight into your thoughts as the designer - I think overall this mod is the perfect addon for someone who wants to RP a famous smuggler who gets caught in political strife and has to pick sides, it does sound like a very fun experience you've designed :)That is a great summation of the mod's focus. John Carter would be proud :)
I'm still exploring all the different mods available and trying to settle on which I want to make up my first full on modded playthrough - it has been nice reading through all the threads for the mods, this is a very healthy community!I did make CFT and JYD to be insular factions that offer every type of ship so if a player wanted to they could exclusively use only the faction's ships for RP reasons. There are so many good faction mods to choose from, I am flattered you are considering one of mine.
@All I hope you like the new ship and the changes in general. I would appreciate any feedback on them since I am a solo show I have blind spots and appreciate any feedback I get in general.
@5ColouredWalker you wrote: "I would suggest swapping the bassalisks to the asteroid guns" for the Clipper but there is no CFT asteroid gun so I was unsure what you meant so I went with medium Electro-Magnetic instead. I keep my faction mods as faction specific as possible and only use vanilla weapons if I arm them outside of the faction weapons. Also as it is a utility/mining ship it made sense to arm it with all CFT mining weapons. I look forward to any follow-up you may have now that the forum is back up and running.
You know, I was thinking of putting a note in that the Knarr could probably work for a explorer start, and now you come in with one.I see you.
I'm gonna pretend it's cause I said so and you can't tell me otherwise! :P
That was the exact gun I meant, so you were on the ball with interpreting my 'I need to get it out of my head so I can sleep ramblings.'.I SEE YOU!
Meanwhile having played with the gun more I look forward to trying out it's change as I've been having fun combining it with various Ion weapons. Bar the Heavy Ion Canon from a different mod I've tended towards a fleet composition that's a sort of static gun line of disabling that slowly pulls ships out of position and then mines them like asteroids.When I balance a ship I only combine the factions weapons with vanilla weapons. There are so many modded weapons out there, and lord knows I am guilty of that, you could really make an unbalanced ship combining weapons from different mods that the author has not intended/considered.
Gives me a fun head canon of Pirates/etc coming fighting, and then since combat based on the NPC combat time taking days, becoming 'aggressive mining actions' with enemy crew having to debate trying to engage in repairs and resisting, or desperately broadcasting their surrender or attempting to mutiny...Ooo maybe I'll add a "fun head cannon" to the weapon lineup, thanks for the idea :)
But Starsector doesn't model morale so it ends up with the super dark images that I'll not share.There is sort of a morale mechanic when NPC ships take a look around the deployed battlefield wreckage and NOPE the heck out so insert that into your dark images. But yea, keep them to yourself this is a family friendly mod after all.
A less dark version does exist using the explosive mining weapons making the process much faster but allowing them to fight back.Less dark is good, you are making progress.
I've also recently figured out something I can do to counter the fact I tend to mine much faster than my holds can keep up by putting Converted Fighter Bays on my Danubes. Tanks their mining ability and makes them actual freighters as far as combat ability goes, but now they also don't tank fighter skill abilities while also being super easy to unconvert into combat vessels if I take losses. I really should have realised this sooner and makes fighter's more useful without just using inbuilt drones.May I suggest a little utility mod: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22882.0
Also, something I've noticed is that a Cutty and a Odam largely fill similar roles at different stages of the game, without the Odam gaining additional combat power.Well I made them at roughly the same time and I guess I had a progression scaling in my head. Oh and the Odam is a personal favorite :)
Odam and Cutty both can effectively manage 6 small weapon slots, with Odam putting it's PD on fighters (Which the AI knows how to give to others which is neat.). The Odam is already built to be a tank and has a much larger flux pool, but as a destroyer the Cutty is much faster and with it's built in and investment in shield mods can also tank against cruisers (Though it needs to run and vent much sooner... But it has a ability that lets it do that.)
It may be worth considering up-arming the Odam. I'm not a modeller so I'm not sure how painful if any adjustments would be, but I think changing the front to 1 central medium, or changing the side kinetics/energy to 2 mediums and 2 smalls (Either 1 of each on one side to make it 'lop sided' like the bigger Apogee it's a sized down cousin of, or maintaining it's pleasing symmetry', might help it not feel as toothless and make the comparison less apt).Scaled Down Apogee pocket cruiser is a pretty accurate description of what I was going for. I can take a stab and implementing your suggestions and I am not opposed to non-symmetrical ships so I'll consider that as well.
It also means Stabalised Shields becomes a necessary to fulling arming it instead of a nice convenience though unless venting is adjusted, but I don't feel it should as it means you have the choice of making it a greatly balanced tank or a more combat capable pocket cruiser.
Anyhow, I've been running .97 on a bunch of pre .97 mods, so with this updating I'm going to do a round of updating and restarting my campaign... Also gets me out of playing around in a high-remnant system as my first settle because deciding using Salvage Yards (Industrial evo) to double up on the loot was a silly and annoying idea that I wasn't really equipped for, though it turns out a Vasa and a High Tech level 2 station is pretty good at.Nice to hear the Vasa is useful. I personally do not use phase ships so they are made from an inexperienced standpoint but I did try to make the ones I mod have a niche role.
Edit:I do have my playable faction mods set to be friendly at start though that will change over time. JYD and CFT are both neutralist factions so they should remain friendly for some time and Dazs lore wise they cooperated to make CJHM. Speaking of 'pain in the ass to implement' ideas, I have tinkered with combining all my mods into one mega mod with the intent of TTSC, CFT and JYD vs Hiver as the goal. But then I woke up and realized I am not that smart.
Also, thought that probably goes on the 'pain in the ass to implement' pile and is purely a pipe dream, how feasible would varients design of Carter ships be that rely on JYD's being installed work to symbolise the factions cooperating?
Totally not just because JYD Missiles fit my prefered missile style (Still alpha strike but can reload), and that JYD bomber drones are sweet.
Lastly, I'm on a well earned vacation for a month. While it won't be fully empty I will be more active than usual. Now I just need to actually learn to program and I could do more than provide suggestions :PI learned by reading the admittedly outdated guides posted on the forum and discord as a start. I then looked over existing mods for examples of how it all ties together. It took some time but eventually I had the basics of JYD ready to post a test release in the modding forum. I keep my mods open with no compression so feel free to scrounge around in them with a java editor. I use notepad++ but mod authors have told me I am insane to not use an actual java editor so maybe not for you. Lastly, just sit down and do it and be brave and ready to receive feedback and criticism once it is released.
I SEE YOU!;D
Oh, totally not a 'Something to consider for balance' matter, more a 'something fun you might enjoy hearing'.Meanwhile having played with the gun more I look forward to trying out it's change as I've been having fun combining it with various Ion weapons. Bar the Heavy Ion Canon from a different mod I've tended towards a fleet composition that's a sort of static gun line of disabling that slowly pulls ships out of position and then mines them like asteroids.When I balance a ship I only combine the factions weapons with vanilla weapons. There are so many modded weapons out there, and lord knows I am guilty of that, you could really make an unbalanced ship combining weapons from different mods that the author has not intended/considered.
Gives me a fun head canon of Pirates/etc coming fighting, and then since combat based on the NPC combat time taking days, becoming 'aggressive mining actions' with enemy crew having to debate trying to engage in repairs and resisting, or desperately broadcasting their surrender or attempting to mutiny...Ooo maybe I'll add a "fun head cannon" to the weapon lineup, thanks for the idea :)
Actively used!I've also recently figured out something I can do to counter the fact I tend to mine much faster than my holds can keep up by putting Converted Fighter Bays on my Danubes. Tanks their mining ability and makes them actual freighters as far as combat ability goes, but now they also don't tank fighter skill abilities while also being super easy to unconvert into combat vessels if I take losses. I really should have realised this sooner and makes fighter's more useful without just using inbuilt drones.May I suggest a little utility mod: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22882.0
In that case if it weren't for my thought just below I'd say you did perfectly. They're both tanks, and with investment they both have the 360 degree shields and good PD coverage to make line holders.Also, something I've noticed is that a Cutty and a Odam largely fill similar roles at different stages of the game, without the Odam gaining additional combat power.Well I made them at roughly the same time and I guess I had a progression scaling in my head. Oh and the Odam is a personal favorite :)
Odam and Cutty both can effectively manage 6 small weapon slots, with Odam putting it's PD on fighters (Which the AI knows how to give to others which is neat.). The Odam is already built to be a tank and has a much larger flux pool, but as a destroyer the Cutty is much faster and with it's built in and investment in shield mods can also tank against cruisers (Though it needs to run and vent much sooner... But it has a ability that lets it do that.)
To be honest I was more thinking 'What's a variety of options so I can reduce mental labour', and prefer symmetrical. I will hold off on saying more because I don't want to push you either way.It may be worth considering up-arming the Odam. I'm not a modeller so I'm not sure how painful if any adjustments would be, but I think changing the front to 1 central medium, or changing the side kinetics/energy to 2 mediums and 2 smalls (Either 1 of each on one side to make it 'lop sided' like the bigger Apogee it's a sized down cousin of, or maintaining it's pleasing symmetry', might help it not feel as toothless and make the comparison less apt).Scaled Down Apogee pocket cruiser is a pretty accurate description of what I was going for. I can take a stab and implementing your suggestions and I am not opposed to non-symmetrical ships so I'll consider that as well.
It also means Stabalised Shields becomes a necessary to fulling arming it instead of a nice convenience though unless venting is adjusted, but I don't feel it should as it means you have the choice of making it a greatly balanced tank or a more combat capable pocket cruiser.
But then I woke up and realized I am not that smart.Hey now! You're managing multiple mods and presumably life around it, showing plenty of smarts and talent.
Lastly, I'm on a well earned vacation for a month. While it won't be fully empty I will be more active than usual. Now I just need to actually learn to program and I could do more than provide suggestions :PI learned by reading the admittedly outdated guides posted on the forum and discord as a start. I then looked over existing mods for examples of how it all ties together. It took some time but eventually I had the basics of JYD ready to post a test release in the modding forum. I keep my mods open with no compression so feel free to scrounge around in them with a java editor. I use notepad++ but mod authors have told me I am insane to not use an actual java editor so maybe not for you. Lastly, just sit down and do it and be brave and ready to receive feedback and criticism once it is released.
But more seriously, just opened up, it's a little odd that for the exploration start neither have surveying equipment, but they are salvagers with tons of sensor range.Hmm good point. I guess I did not put survey equipment on them because I got a lot of flak about JYD having so many built in hull mods. Not that that is a reason to not do it, just how I was thinking at the time.
It also works ok with Nex Rerolls, Dow Phase Tender comes up a lot which is a nice stealth logistics start for smuggling/spysat deployment. Odam can also show up for Surveying [After this run I might try Dow/Odam]... Rolling a bunch the Knar hasn't come up which feels odd given the Arethusa does, but I've got no clue how Nex handles that.The mod author decides what default ship roles each ship has, then Nex uses those designations as a picking pool. I can certainly look at the Knarr and see if it makes sense to place it in the same pool as the Arethusa. Also, if you look at the bottom of the pick ship start list there is an option for custom start. Press that and you can pick any assortment of ships from across the modiverse. Though know that Nexerelin WILL shame you if you pick too many credits worth of ships to start with.
Edit: With said skills fuel range and supply cost is actually very reasonable, and would probably be ok even without them.
Checking the ships they're both capitals which feels like a big thing to start with, but I'll give it go. Start with a tour of Pegersick and Dogstar as a Captain start for a super fast start and I'll give a report on how it feels. Captain will let me fill out my Industry/Tech mandatories (Cargo/Salvaging/Containment/Makeshift/Sensor/Navigation), funds will allow purchasing for a frigate/destroyer accompaniment.Well I wanted to put the Arethusa in one of the starting options and when I saw the Bolster sitting there all alone, it sort of made sense to pair them since the Bolster has minimal offensive capability for its size. I am limited in the amount of game starts I can add to that screen but a medium explorer start sounds like a good idea if I can implement it. I'll certainly explore the idea when I have time.
Edit: With said skills fuel range and supply cost is actually very reasonable, and would probably be ok even without them.
Oh, totally not a 'Something to consider for balance' matter, more a 'something fun you might enjoy hearing'.Well as I stated earlier, we both seem to suffer from TLDR syndrome. Though this is a public forum, I doubt anyone else reads our posts so keep it coming, I enjoy our correspondence.
And saying this and remembering earlier posts statements has me going on a slight 'rant':
To be totally honest at present the only thing in this one I'd consider overpowered are the Tender Mining Drones and how easy it can be to spam them [4 OP for a decent drone with a good high ex weapon. Should probably be costed closer to a broadsword in the 8-10 range], and that's been made harder with Danube becoming more reasonably costed (Though that doesn't really effect AI. I did a scroll through the discord, apparently others hate fighting against the fighter swarms... I haven't had trouble, and that's without bringing my own, but I haven't done a dedicated fight against run).The mining tenders in general were an attempt at making a smaller version of JYD's heavy mining drone so the balance may be off. I'll take a look at them when time allows.
The OP budget is a bit generous for some but that's intentional, the rest feels a mixed of balanced and 'this is how the faction plays'. Most weapons are rapid fire and suck at dealing with armor (Almost everything including the missiles are low individual damage high rate of fire, and the ships themselves trend towards smaller mounts), and tend to be flux hungry. In my hands Carter fleets do well against high tech fleets, ok against midline, and manage against low tech due to the fact that if it's not hegemony they're fighting trash (Tender drones absolutely wreck Derelicts and Pirates are Pirates) and if it hegemony/modded they're in for a bad time or you're a player cheesing the AI.It is how I balanced the weapons in general so that is sort of on purpose. Whenever I add a new asset to my mods I do my best to offer something that does not already exist in vanilla or another mod. In doing that I really do not have a metric of something that already exists that I can copy/paste from so I get it wrong some (many) times. That is why I appreciate posts like yours to get my head out of the forest so I can see the damn tree I am about to walk into. Consider yourself my Beta tester and quality assurance department all in one. :)
Carter PD also feels poor (Energy PD is fine, kinetic PD feels too flux inneficient and has the same 'high dps low single shot damage' almost all Carter weapons have)That is how I balanced them since most PD weapons at spam machines. The fog of war is my spammer but the rest are variations on a theme. I sort of went overboard with them to be honest and I have been thinking of removing a couple as they are all edge case weapons for niche reasons.
and most ships aren't particularly fast (trending towards slow), being reliant on anchor ships, so if you're fighting a Carter fleet that isn't packing a large droneswarm then your own carriers/missiles will trash a Carter's fleet.That is how I tried to balance them. They have better armor than a high tech ship so that slows them down and gives hi tech a chance to skirmish in and out. However they do not have as much as a low tech ship so that give low-tech an edge of their own.
I've recently picked up a mod that adds fortified Caches (Random faction fleet guarding, size depends on cache size). In particular using a 'Ruthless Sector thinks this is balanced' DP comparison VIC has humbled me, and that mod while definitely Vanilla + previously from memory has more recently trended to Vanilla balance + Weird toys from more recent interaction.Ruthless Sector is a must have in my gameplay. I always add the spacer start debt option, starfarer mode, redacted in hyperspace, only use ships that I salvage and ironman mode to make it as difficult as possible and make scavenging play a challenge. I do like VIC and am glad it got updated to 0.97a
In that case if you're following the ion idea, there's no need to make a medium size one unless you want to, and given how Carter ships are armed I'd suggest a small shield penetrator...Oh no I was making a joke of making a literal "head cannon" with the sprite of a head and a stream that shoots out thoughts. :) CFT already has too many weapons and as I said earlier, I am actually thinking of paring off a couple. So to add a new weapon there would really have to be a specific need.
Actually, if you use PD weapons offensively (Which from memory is totally viable), JYD provides everything except shield penetration. I think PD Prep is from your mods too so it works entirely within the 'Dazs Mods' ecosystem...Well PD pep from CJHM was originally part of JYD. I got so many complaints from players who wanted to try my mods but did not install them due to all the hull mods they had so I tore them all out of JYD and CFT. That is how CJHM got its name Carter's (CFT) Junk (JYD) Hull Mods, aren't I so clever eh?
Speaking of which I may pick up the ones I'm missing, particularly since Nex has added a 'No Invasions until X' setting. I'll try it after this one for a round where Hivers are less omni-present early.I actually recommend that on the Hiver forum. It gives the player some breathing room until you can build up funds and a good fleet. But know once you start that first colony, they have had time to build up as well.
Actively used!Nice! Ore refinery as also originally part of JYD but I made it it's own thing for players who mine but do not like my ship designs.
It is easy to overfill though when a haul brings in 2-5000 Ore + extra Rare/Volotiles when mining Volcanic/Cryovolcanic worlds with what I'd consider a early-midgame fleet.Mainly the reason I have such large cargo holds in CFT and JYD ships is that exact reason. Salvaging a mining station can be a HUGE influx of ore it makes it meaningless to salvage one w/out a way to reduce the load (ore refinery) or carry it.
Normally I'll quickly mine through 8-4 times stripping the planet for a while then wait around a couple of in game days chewing through it. Fortuneately Carter's ship's Salvage Bays cause processing to be faster, though it doesn't quite line up with Carter's mining speed.CFT has decent mining capacity but JYD is designed around it. So If you want to seriously mine, use JYD and CFT ships in tandem. That being said, I can certainly revisit the mining strengths of CFT ships/weapons since mining is just a side gig for them.
I'm not sure how that could be balanced due to using Salvage to determine processing speed without creating an additional hull mod for the mod or Carter's or just nerfing the mining power of Carter's equipment (Which is something you could reasonably consider). But taking time is a balancing factor I feel, and speed up mod goes up to 24* if I really don't want to wait, not that my computer can really handle more than 4*. (Though I'm about to try someone's work around to manage JRE-23, which will be interesting)
In that case if it weren't for my thought just below I'd say you did perfectly. They're both tanks, and with investment they both have the 360 degree shields and good PD coverage to make line holders.Thank you for the kind word.
To be honest I was more thinking 'What's a variety of options so I can reduce mental labour', and prefer symmetrical. I will hold off on saying more because I don't want to push you either way.Aesthetics wise symmetrical looks nice to me but to be honest it IS a lot easier to design over non-symmetrical.
Hey now! You're managing multiple mods and presumably life around it, showing plenty of smarts and talent.Lol well my mods are more quantity than quality. I come up with an idea and do my best to ride with it but then I run into a wall. I would LOVE to add story content but the times I have tried I just could not get it to work. For a recent example, I spent hours trying to convert JYD's Vayra's bounties into using Magiclib's format and even with examples and a provided template I just cannot make it work. No idea why and no clue what is wrong. I compare my work to others and it looks all correct but when I load the game it CRASH with some reasons in the log that makes no sense to me. Pretty much every other mod author has made the switch over but it just seems my brain is wired different. IDK, I am happy with what I have put out, I just wish I could do it better.
Or at the very least lots of dedication. I know I get told I'm smart often enough by peers only to not feel it.
I have the time, so I may well try.Oh Archaeon Order is the LAST mod I would recommend looking at lol. Start with a simple mod like HMI's Brighton federation, it is one system with a couple ships and weapons. And you can always look over one of my mods and ask questions, clearly I enjoy responding. :)
If nothing it might go better than me thinking 'It'd be nice if Archaeon Order was compatible with other factions', downloading all the tools, then looking at them and immediately being overwhelmed.
I'll be honest, my only thought with Archeon was buffing ship health numbers as a start.Understood. Archeon is like playing a different game but it is out of date and not really a barometer to learn from to create a mod for the base game.
That said, got a little bit into a run with the new Exploration start before restarting deciding that I ran into too much money to fast and got to a point the start didn't really matter. So, thoughts before I reload and try for one of the random rolls because I really don't like how the fleet composition ended up:Was it the initial fleet composition that ramped up your credit earning or was it a a good start with lots of salvage and easy to get credits?
I actually restarted [And got a sparser generation to the north unfortunately], and fuel and supply costs are fine for the start even without Makeshift and Containment skills, this could work as a level 1 start (though starting with 2 capitals is a little incongruous). Also, with 4 planets and 11 markets (Common/Military/Black, 4 worlds, -1 for the jump point station lacking a military base), Survey Equipment is easy to find to effectively start with so the ships not having them isn't a issue.Well the exploration start in most mods are capitals and are meant to be a head start to get to the mid game faster. I would not recommend it if you want to experience the early game.
Ships are more modable than the Knar after comparison in a market, so perhaps the Knar needs to be opened up. One ship is a Battle Carrier, the other is a Carrier, though it's all Tenders offensively.I locked down the Knarr initially as I saw it as specific type of vessel. That being said I do believe in offering options so your point is taken. I will make a note to address that in the next update.
Far Sight and Sensor Cloak are both hull mods from your mod, are started with, and let you pretend to be super far seeing destroyers, or frigates if Insulated Hull Mods are in the starting line up, which is hilarious.Well CJHM is another beast entirely. The options that are granted are not really earned if you use the base start of them being unlocked. It was a request from a couple players so I switched it to that mode. The initial option that I released the mod with is still available (instructions on how to enable it on the CJHM forum) to make it so the only way to obtain them is discovery in salvage or purchasing them from a faction market.
I'm not going to talk to much about load out because we all have our favourites and there's a difference between 'this is what the faction would choose vs a loner would choose'. The Bolster is all light weapons, 4 tenders, 2 mining pods, and 2 medium PD slots in the rear. It makes a great consolodated logistics ship and looks like it might make a ok fighter carrier. However while fitting a role similar to having 2 Danubes it costs 50 DP to use, rendering it unusable. My initial thought was to compare it to the Atlas/Prometheus in how it feels to use, though looking at stats it probably falls under better. Not much better though. A Legion however is 40 DP, better armed, and you get to choose your fighters. At a Guess it might be worth knocking down to 30 to put it at a midpoint between the Pirate/Pather capitals and a Legion.Interesting analysis, I appreciate you "showing your work" it really helps me understand your point. Another note to look into for the next update.
The Arethusa has a built in Large Pule Laser, and if you build it as a broadsider you get 2 medium energy and a large weapon on target. If you use it forward facing you get 6 light weapons and a large on target (Warning, leaves no front PD) and medium PD (Which can also be offensive). Overall in combat it's slightly worse than 2 Clippers in feel, but it's OP Budget lets you fill some space with logistics, it has fighters, and it procs having a capital for Escort Ship hullmods, so I think it's perfect, though it's flux stats leave it a bit fragile feeling. It's great at soloing small derelict fleets though.I spent some time trying to balance that one with strengths and weaknesses. It is more of a niche ship than a proper front line capital but if outfitted and played correctly is can be a a great damager. Or you could just never deploy it as use it as a mining stat buff and logistics ship. W/e you like the options are there for the player to go create a role for it.
I Tried some midgame worthy combats using both (A bit early for a early fleet, but two capitals). Neither ship quite has the flux for it and they can also get overwhelmed by wolf packs even or even individual cruisers. The Arestia + Support worked much better.CFT does not have and real tank ships to hold the line while the dps ships eat away at the enemies. I find the Triton can fill that role if you use its deep OP pool and high flux capacity and tank with it using shields (with the proper hull mods) and not as a carrier. I install either 0 or 1 op mining drones in the slots to act as the ships' PD and free up OP for hull mods and more damaging weapons.
Since you use Ruthless Sector I will bring this up as balance, while they make a ok if incongruous start, the huge crew value means you start 10K in the red each month right at the begining. Which feels painful, which made me have to quickly get a move on on making money... Which then meant I felt far too rich and large to do exploring, and was then still bleeding money due to the two capitals needing 880 crew between them plus other ships for more cargo and to cover their combat weaknesses.Well I cannot really balance the mod by using another mod that some players do not use. I get your point but I made them salvagers with good mining stats and cargo holds to offset the cost of running them. All I do is offer options, up to the player on how to use them.
Also, I've noticed the Dhow (Phase Tanker) turret line up is a little odd, it seems to either have a missing or extra turret in one of the two front lines. I fill them with mining lasers and don't put it in combat anyway so it's not something I particularly care about, but figured I should mention.Ahh the phase ship quandary again. I'll look it over but balancing that type of ship is not my strong suit, I appreciate the mention.
For my new start having found the custom options, I'm going to try with just a Astoria, to be psuedo big and tiny at the same time. Let's call it a inheritence.Glad I could help point you in the direction to a custom start. I generally do not use it but in some starts the randomizer lotto does not really fit what I want so I am glad it is there. Personally I never start with a faction commission, I use a custom start or Free start and play as an independent salvager. I find it helps balance things out if I do not have a Galatian stipend and faction commission payouts.
Honestly, early salvage plus the initial large storage space which comboed into a pair of 'concerned traders' with large valuable shipments (Both supplies I think). I breached 1 million before leaving the core.That said, got a little bit into a run with the new Exploration start before restarting deciding that I ran into too much money to fast and got to a point the start didn't really matter. So, thoughts before I reload and try for one of the random rolls because I really don't like how the fleet composition ended up:Was it the initial fleet composition that ramped up your credit earning or was it a a good start with lots of salvage and easy to get credits?
Good to know, I'll consider enabling that on my end.Far Sight and Sensor Cloak are both hull mods from your mod, are started with, and let you pretend to be super far seeing destroyers, or frigates if Insulated Hull Mods are in the starting line up, which is hilarious.Well CJHM is another beast entirely. The options that are granted are not really earned if you use the base start of them being unlocked. It was a request from a couple players so I switched it to that mode. The initial option that I released the mod with is still available (instructions on how to enable it on the CJHM forum) to make it so the only way to obtain them is discovery in salvage or purchasing them from a faction market.
In my current run that's going well, I'm effectively running a Arethusa, 2 Cutties, and a tail of Vergulds. The combo can take most small early fights with some difficulty, and due to starting weapons I stumbled into a build with the Arethusa that feels really good, 2 small mining blasters and the large, 2 medium Electromags and 2 small, 2 medium PD beams, and the rest standard PD.The Arethusa has a built in Large Pule Laser, and if you build it as a broadsider you get 2 medium energy and a large weapon on target. If you use it forward facing you get 6 light weapons and a large on target (Warning, leaves no front PD) and medium PD (Which can also be offensive). Overall in combat it's slightly worse than 2 Clippers in feel, but it's OP Budget lets you fill some space with logistics, it has fighters, and it procs having a capital for Escort Ship hullmods, so I think it's perfect, though it's flux stats leave it a bit fragile feeling. It's great at soloing small derelict fleets though.I spent some time trying to balance that one with strengths and weaknesses. It is more of a niche ship than a proper front line capital but if outfitted and played correctly is can be a a great damager. Or you could just never deploy it as use it as a mining stat buff and logistics ship. W/e you like the options are there for the player to go create a role for it.
I'd argue the Odam very much fills that role (It kinda has to, doesn't have the speed or armament to do anything else, fortuneately it does it well, even without heavy hull mod use). But yes, the Fortress Shield capital isn't as tanky as it feels like it should be if we're just talking about capitals. Other ships can be finangled into the roll with the right modifications though.I Tried some midgame worthy combats using both (A bit early for a early fleet, but two capitals). Neither ship quite has the flux for it and they can also get overwhelmed by wolf packs even or even individual cruisers. The Arestia + Support worked much better.CFT does not have and real tank ships to hold the line while the dps ships eat away at the enemies. I find the Triton can fill that role if you use its deep OP pool and high flux capacity and tank with it using shields (with the proper hull mods) and not as a carrier. I install either 0 or 1 op mining drones in the slots to act as the ships' PD and free up OP for hull mods and more damaging weapons.
OK you have given me a lot to think about for both CFT and JYD (keep it coming if you have more) and our correspondence is the initial frame work for a changelog to-do list. I just finished up the CJHM update I had planned and I have multiple requests to add Lunalib to Hiver so players can choose their difficulty levels. I have time dedicated to that this weekend and hopefully this will not be yet another failed experiment. That being said, I will start on updates for CFT and JYD afterward so if you or anyone else has an opinion, request or TLDR Rant (my favorite) get it to me by Monday (my personal cut off if I cannot get Lunalib to work for me) and I'll consider it for the next update(s).
Honestly, early salvage plus the initial large storage space which comboed into a pair of 'concerned traders' with large valuable shipments (Both supplies I think). I breached 1 million before leaving the core.OK so more of a playstyle effect then. The are a trading(smuggling) and exploration based faction so that tracks using two of their capital explorers.
Good to know, I'll consider enabling that on my end.It is how I personally play with CJHM. It adds a layer of discovery and frankly joy when I finally find my personal holy grail, cargo pods :) And frankly one of the reasons I do not require a dock to install it is that I want to put it on ASAP.
In my current run that's going well, I'm effectively running a Arethusa, 2 Cutties, and a tail of Vergulds. The combo can take most small early fights with some difficulty, and due to starting weapons I stumbled into a build with the Arethusa that feels really good, 2 small mining blasters and the large, 2 medium Electromags and 2 small, 2 medium PD beams, and the rest standard PD.Excellent, thank you for the follow up. I do playtest new ships before I release them but it is so helpful to get a field report from another player.
Running all weapons + Shield it doesn't have the flux for, but it can reasonably run Shields + EMs or Mining blasters, or drop shields to run both. Makes for a fun balancing act which honestly has me feeling like the Arethusa is either perfect as is, or in a good fun place.
In fact I'm at a place where the start really doesn't matter any more, and I think my final report will be 'I love the Arethusa, it works as a 'super' ship start and a multiple consolidated ships for fun early game exploration'. I've also tried built in Survey Hullmods only to regret it later, but the Arethusa will make it into future fleets effectively a psuedo-battlecarrier that Clipper's ping off.Sounds like a good role for it. I try to give my ships a long lasting reason to keep them in your fleet and that would be a great use for it.
Also I've gotten into a couple of fights that confirm Carters struggles with Low Tech, Missiles and Fighter Spam. A couple of Cache's vs JYD and boy am I glad they didn't have any long range medium mounts, had to play those very carefully focusing on outranging with electromags before diving in to kill overextending ships.Well even though I made both mods, I really tried to give the community something different to play with. JYD is my low tech mod, CFT mid tech and TTSC high tech. JYD being my first mod, it does have some midline ships and beam weapons and I had considered removing them and putting them in CFT but that would make two mods not save game compatible and it would force a player that likes CFT but not JYD to have JYD assets and vice versa. OH and the work involved, that is also a factor :)
I'd argue the Odam very much fills that role (It kinda has to, doesn't have the speed or armament to do anything else, fortuneately it does it well, even without heavy hull mod use). But yes, the Fortress Shield capital isn't as tanky as it feels like it should be if we're just talking about capitals. Other ships can be finangled into the roll with the right modifications though.I did try and give them all specific roles though some of the larger ones are just scaled up analogs of the smaller ones. I may revisit the Bourbon in the next update by giving it more defense but I think it serves a role as is and would not want to tip the scales too much. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated.
And this is part of the impetious to send this as I was sitting on it to respond later, only to realise the start had stopped being relevent as I stockpile stuff to prepare for being a larger fleet/begining colonisation.IDK first thoughts, most honest thoughts I think. I do apprecaite the follow ups as I prefer clarity to ensure I get it correct when I do make changes. Speaking of, CFT is now on that list as I have publicly given up on the Hiver/Lunalib integration. I have requests for JYD and CJHM as well but I feel that all your input has given me reason to put CFT to the top of the list. I may start on that later today but tbh after melting my brain yesterday on the Hiver thing, I need to time to decompress and idk maybe actually play the game :)
Definately. Also held off on settling/expanding the fleet too much until I explored most places and ignored money when it got high enough. It's not actually optimising, but gotta remember to not optimise the fun out for myself by trading in the core until I have more money than god and then realising I have nothing to do with said money.Honestly, early salvage plus the initial large storage space which comboed into a pair of 'concerned traders' with large valuable shipments (Both supplies I think). I breached 1 million before leaving the core.OK so more of a playstyle effect then. The are a trading(smuggling) and exploration based faction so that tracks using two of their capital explorers.
You asked for ship opinions. Now I'm going to do so. By Size Category. Not just the Bourbon because I've had thoughts, though I will say starting on the Bourbon became a heavily edited rant and gave me the energy to go through them all.I'd argue the Odam very much fills that role (It kinda has to, doesn't have the speed or armament to do anything else, fortuneately it does it well, even without heavy hull mod use). But yes, the Fortress Shield capital isn't as tanky as it feels like it should be if we're just talking about capitals. Other ships can be finangled into the roll with the right modifications though.I did try and give them all specific roles though some of the larger ones are just scaled up analogs of the smaller ones. I may revisit the Bourbon in the next update by giving it more defense but I think it serves a role as is and would not want to tip the scales too much. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated.
And here you have me feeling bad for being too broke to donate :P And yes, you totally could have asked for a better layout, I can see where I've gotten tired. But thanks :)Lol no need for you to donate $, I find your analysis far more valuable.
Going to bed after having stayed up way to late retesting some cruiser ships to see if memory/napkin math matched out. (Basically the ones I was unsure of because I hadn't used as much).Nighty Night, sleepy tight. I just got some more good feedback on the HIVER thread so I'll be putting aside some additional time today on CFT to try and get ahead of my estimated update time.
Chester: Manages to feel too tight and decently balanced at the same time. Forgoing missiles I managed to put in decent fighters, weapons, Integrated targeting unit, and only be 1 off maxing capaciters/vents, however 2 EMags + Pulse Mining Blaster generate 745 Flux. A Chester Maxes at 590 Discipation before mods, and has fighters and shields to keep up. A Clipper has 620. Chester's shields are 50 flux cheaper, but a Chester is also paying 10 more ordinance points for that disapation, has worse shields (Smaller arc and worse conversion percentage, but they are omni shields) and (Currently) isn't fast enough to get out of trouble as easily as it gets into it. I kinda want to test a Foudre + Clipper Fight vs 2 Chesters to see if Chesters are really worth it, but that might just be Clipper's speed being overtuned per my previous suggestion.
Dromon: With it's speed, works more as a slowly advancing battlecarrier or a bomb carrier that punishes those that approach. With the two built in wings it's ordinance budget feels far too generous (Can easily fully kit it out as if I was using S-mods without them). That said building it as a slowly advancing carrier with more Appollos, Xyphos or Longbow's feels a bit bad given it's ship system rewarding bombers.Thank you for the further updates. I'll add these notes to my current working changelog.
Kerberos: As I remember, leaving all the small slots empty and 'sacrificing' two medium slots for PD, using heavy machine guns and medium pulse blasters, this thing easily goes over it's flux budget even with safety overrides. It's very much overarmed.
Griffon: Testing it in AI hands shows that the AI doesn't know what to do with it (with a aggressive officer). Instead of working around the side and bullying frigates/destroyers it tries to back off and hide behind the front line relying on it's fighter swarms. Perhaps a ship based mod to give it's fighter's no engagement range so it tries to get stuck in? OP budget also feels tight but manageable. Feels like a side option to the Vasa given it's same deployment points, where you trade the potential reward of mines/phase for the safety of having a shield.
Coventry: Works better than I expected with a backup of Foudre or Dromon. While I suggested it was too slow I'd only speed it up to 60/65 to bring it into line with the Dromon and Bourbon. As an alternative to the suggestion to change the system to Fast Missile Racks, perhaps it could instead go 4 Physical Slots instead of 2 Kinetic/Energy. Or perhaps those slots can switch to Hybrid so there's still the option of using energy weapons?
As for how I reviewed them, I took them into a colony crises. Not quite running them into multiple remnant ordos as a meat grinder, but grinding through a couple of League Blockade Amada and a Hegemony Inspection Fleet back to back should work since Carter's does better against high tech (Tri-tach) and Pirates/Luddites are themselves. A Church fleet could be a problem with the Invictus, but the system I'm colonising is entirely wrong for that.Well no faction is totally balanced and have their strengths and weaknesses. I am going over your notes and have already started on some changes based on your observations and balanced with my personal opinions on how they relate to that ship's lore. With that in mind, the update won't be a 1:1 changelog based on your reports but it will be heavily influenced by them.
holy smokes these guns are OPThis update was a ship balance pass, I do plan to do a weapon and wing pass after I have addressed some comments about my other mods. I will certainly take your comments in mind when I do so.
You know that if you make a weapon do more than five times the damage of it's peers and cost no flux but then make it frag, it's still overpowered, right?
Respectfully...Respect is always appreciated, thank you.
A lot of these would be great if they could get intermingled into the other existing factions.Well there are other aspects of this mod that add to the game that vanilla does not.
This seems much less of a Faction and more of a Vanilla edition.
Thats not a bad thing, it's a REALLY good vanilla/independent faction boost.I do appreciate that, I have been working on this faction for quite some time and am still trying to get it correct.
You make really cool stuff. Thanks :)
I'm experiencing some oddities when trying to refit the large energy mount on the Knarr. This is a new game with the latest (1.9) version. I can't seem to mount any weapon but the Large Pulse Mining blaster--if I try, the new weapon just vanishes. The same thing happens with the Knarr's forward medium energy mounts. Also its drones are built-in--not sure if that's intentional as most the other ships seem to have been unlocked.
holy smokes these guns are OPYour comment spurred me to pause the update I was working on and look over the Electromagnetic line of weapons. When I made them the only damaging frag weapon to base on was the Thumper. All the other frag weapons are PD weapons. So taking the Thumper vs the MED version of the Electro gun, the Rail Cannon, I did a comparison:
You know that if you make a weapon do more than five times the damage of it's peers and cost no flux but then make it frag, it's still overpowered, right?
You make really cool stuff. Thanks :)Why thank you, that is so nice to hear. It is honestly what keeps me trying to improve my mods.
I'm experiencing some oddities when trying to refit the large energy mount on the Knarr. This is a new game with the latest (1.9) version. I can't seem to mount any weapon but the Large Pulse Mining blaster--if I try, the new weapon just vanishes. The same thing happens with the Knarr's forward medium energy mounts. Also its drones are built-in--not sure if that's intentional as most the other ships seem to have been unlocked.When I made these ships it was with a specific vision in mind and upon further reflection I realized that by releasing the mod to the general public that I was not making it just for me. In the latest patch I addressed this by unlocking weapon mounts and wings on multiple ships. Going over my changelog notes I see that the Knarr did get those turret mounts unlocked but not the drones. Also, I looked at the variant and apparently I did not assign weapons to those now open mounts and that is probably what is causing your mount issue. I apologize for the oopsie as that is clearly an oversight on my part which I will address on the next update. I guess CFT just got bumped up in the to-do queue :)
Overall I'd say that the Medium is fairly balanced vs it's peer the Thumper.
I appreciate the breakdown of the other sizes. I had a hard time with those as they had no vanilla counterpart to base them on. I see you did take that into effect and that helps me make a better judgement. I am inclined to keep the OP the same for the QOL reason that increasing it would force players to reequip their ships that have them installed and from personal experience I know that can be quite the balancing act. That being said, I will be adjusting the line with your TLDR notes in mind.Overall I'd say that the Medium is fairly balanced vs it's peer the Thumper.my opinionI would (And think I have) said that while damage/flux is fine, the medium has 300 range over the thumper (Meaning it's probably worth a couple more points of ordinance.). Similarly with the light one which while damage wise is fine compared to the autocanon (closest point of comparison), it similarly vastly outranges with no increase in ordinance points, and being beam-like better hit chances than dual autocanons and railguns. That one does have a Kinetic/Frag disparity.
The Large is cheap in slot at 14. Closest comparison is the Storm Needler at 28, which is far better (Not gonna rattle off the numbers) but has notably shorter range. The more comparible in OP is the Mark IX Autocanon, which has worse DPS but a much better conversion rate against anything except exposed hull, much better flux, at the trade off of slightly worse accuracy and 100 less range, which is a much smaller distance.
At a guess, I'd peg 'balanced' ordance points to be 6 for small (Longer range than railgun with marginally better accuracy, but Railgun has useful anti-armor properties), 10 for Medium (Longer effective and accurate range than the Heavy Autocanon, which becomes much better and has slight anti-armor benefits at closer range), and 16 for Large (Accuracy is much closer, range distance is smaller, and much better flux efficiency and conversion means that Large is a more questionable pick when going for the 'longest range' option, where Railgun and Carter's Heavy Railgun dual for dominance.)[close]
Tldr, I think costs should increase to 6/10/16 for each size. However this isn't a weapon focused balance pass so this should probably be saved till later, as is anything else I'd continue on about in the topic.
Hello ! Sorry to bother you with that.No worries, never a bother to get a message from someone about my mods.
I made a mistake updating my mods. I have a 0.96a-RC10 save I want to keep, but I updated your mod, rendering it incompatible.Can do, I keep a repository of back editions of my mods on dropbox. Here is a link to v1.7a which is the version prior to the .97a update
Would you be ok with giving me the version that worked with 0.96a?
Darn me falling asleep. You missed the Bawley, which if staying unlocked needs its deployment points readjusted (currently 4 points for 2 wings and 55 ordinance points). Though reserve wing does make the Naruebet the better carrier, and unlocking the Knarr does indicate you're looking to unlock wings more broadly.
If so unlocking the Danube would be interesting. 4 wings is a ton on a destroyer, but it has a lot less ordinance than other carriers so it'd be much more vulnerable using it as a dedicated carrier. A interesting trade off. I think there's one more locked I noted in my previous post patch post
Coventry changing mounts to hybrid allowing 4 mediums ballistic for autoloader then going to fast missile racks is funny, but probably better.
Electromag being more flux inefficient is a easy way to adjust without having to rebuild ship layouts and is a way to make them less autopicky. I'll need to try it before commenting further. Instead of becoming my default ballistic mount it may become '1 for suppression, 1 other kinetic for damage'.
All the other frag weapons are PD weapons.Yes, and? That doesn't mean that you should ignore the weapons that are flagrantly OP, just because they're labeled PD. I guess that's what you got hung up on, rather than that they were frag.
This
(https://files.catbox.moe/rz1zf6.png)
isn't okay. It isn't even vaguely in the same realm as any other gun in the game. It's literally the strongest thing I've seen in the game or a mod worth installing, and not by a narrow margin either.
200 DPS versus shields. 200 damage shots every second versus armor. x4 damage to hull.The paixhan significantly outdamages the pulse laser (again, a good, MEDIUM, 10 OP gun) against armor and hull and does 2/3rds the hard flux, for roughly zero flux usage to fire, in a small slot, for less OP. 200 base versus armor is HUGE. It strips armor better than basically anything in a small slot that's not a single use missile, obliterates ships with stripped armor, and applies huge shield pressure for free (literally, 1/10th the flux/damage of it's competitors, which are designated efficient pressure guns). Keep in mind that a 10 flux a second discount on a weapon that constantly fires (which as a PD gun (for free, without needing the PD AI Smod) it will be) is an 'extra vent' i.e. 1 OP saved. This is a better-than pulse laser that uses a small slot and ~25 less OP.Vanilla Competitors(https://files.catbox.moe/i00sed.png)(https://files.catbox.moe/tlehou.png)[close]This doesn't need a balance pass. What possible process led you to think that a gun that puts 800 damage shots out every second for free was okay in the first place?DPS comparisonLight pulse laser:
shield DPS: 150
shield damage/240 flux: 300
Armor DPS vs. 1000 Armor: 7.14 -> 22.5|15 (85% reduction cap|90% reduction cap)
Armor DPS vs. 500 Armor: 13.63 -> 22.5|15 (85% reduction cap|90% reduction cap)
Hull DPS vs. 1000 base Armor: 75
Flux used: 120
Pulse laser:
shield DPS: 300
shield damage/240 flux: 300
Armor DPS vs. 1000 Armor: 27.27 -> 45|30 (85% reduction cap|90% reduction cap)
Armor DPS vs. 500 Armor: 50
Hull DPS vs. 1000 base Armor: 200
Flux used: 240
Paixhan:
shield DPS: 200
shield damage/240 flux: 3200
Armor DPS vs. 1000 Armor: 33.33
Armor DPS vs. 500 Armor: 57.14
Hull DPS vs. 1000 base Armor: 640
Flux used: 15[close]
Unironically, halve it's damage, then increase the flux usage.
Culvern also is a vulcan that pays 1 OP (5 vs. 4, same slot) for a more than 50% increase in effectiveness, which is too good but not especially worth writing home about. It's nowhere near the ridiculousness of this warcrime cheatgun, but is overtuned.Overall I'd say that the Medium is fairly balanced vs it's peer the Thumper. When I release new concept weapons with no direct vanilla analog I do my best but with nothing to compare to I do make mistakes. It is not perfect and upon doing this deep dive I do plan to make it's flux efficiency closer to the Thumper, maybe a little higher. I welcome any other thoughts on the matter as I work on the mod so I can get it right.I never mentioned the medium EMR, though yes it is a horribly overtuned workhorse gun.
The thumper is a very good gun but they have totally different roles, so it's an odd comparison overall, even if it was the prototype for some of it's stats. In either case, the EMR is significantly superior to the thumper in terms of overall stats because you've given it EMP damage and a staggering, tremendous range increase for free.The main difference is that the Rail cannon has a longer range and does some minor emp damage, more to add flavor as I labeled it an electromagnetic weapon than actual use.Longer range on an actual longrange gun is a huge deal - though it's conventionally paid for in OP rather than flux ratio - and you've given the EMR 1000. It outranges everything that isn't designated for that role and it doesn't pay for this range in any way, and should be 10-12 OP for being a 1000 range thumper alone.some minor emp damage, more to add flavor as I labeled it an electromagnetic weapon than actual use.Minor EMP damage? It's over a quarter the EMP damage of the ion beam, which does all but nothing besides EMP. It's a little under half the EMP damage of the Mjolnir (and the gun appropriately has about half the DPS of the Mjolnir, but gives up armor stripping for hull shredding). The flux per shot should be bumped up to account for the EMP or the EMP removed (I wrote everything before this sentence without having seen your update).Increased the energy per shot of each weapon in the Electromagnetic line of weapons by 10% -Ty doll for pointing out they needed an adjustment and 5ColouredWalker for comparison suggestionsThis neatly addresses the the flux efficiency of the free EMP, but in no way the range of the gun. The EMR is still by far the OP cheapest longrange pressure gun.
(From what I recall the small and large were somewhat mediocre but I haven't done a comparison)
Edit: added damage comparison, fixed spelling error
The paixhan significantly outdamages the pulse laser (again, a good, MEDIUM, 10 OP gun
Minor EMP damage? It's over a quarter the EMP damage of the ion beam
Respectfully...
A lot of these would be great if they could get intermingled into the other existing factions.
This seems much less of a Faction and more of a Vanilla edition. Thats not a bad thing, it's a REALLY good vanilla/independent faction boost.
I think it's clear at this point that this is a troll mod designed to waste people's timeI am sorry to hear you feel that way, I did my best to address your points.
I'll avoid appearing in this travesty's patch history again thankyou very muchOK I still intend to make some changes to the mod with your observations in mind. I will follow your request and not add my standard thank you in this or JYD's changelogs.
This 1.9 update letting us fully kit out carriers is amazing, great job to everyone involved.Excellent thank you, I'll pass it along to 5ColouredWalker if he does not notice it as it was his breakdowns that convinced me to do it.
You can do this yourself by editing Nexerelin's data/world/factions/independent.faction file, just look at the CFT.faction file from this mod and copy over the relevant parts of the knownShips array. Usually you can get most ships by just copying the "cft_bp" tag but in some cases hulls aren't tagged (special ships mostly) and you'll need to copy the contents of the "hulls" array over.I do not have any module ships in this mod so adding the cft.bp tag should add all of them. Thank you for adding to the correspondence.
is it just me or are their fighters QUITE overtuned?Hello there, I have a CFT update in the works and I would like some clarity to your statement so I can address your concerns better.
and thats an understatement
Hey there, I quite like the faction and added features.Thank you, it is always nice to hear that.
I have come across one thing in terms of balance, which to be fair may just be me not having figured it out much yet, but after looking at it, I'd say it's worth a comment.I appreciate you taking the time to share it. I have put time aside this weekend to work on CFT so your timing is perfect.
Your mod adds a lot of ships, and I'd say a lot of them are balanced well.Well the Triton was a tricky one for me because my vision for it was a cross between a carrier and a battleship. It is just good enough to act as either with the right support ships but not as good as a standard battleship.
For example the Triton, which is probably the strongest carrier you can get, much better than let's say the Astral, but it still feels nice to use and not too broken for the DP cost, let's be real the Astral could need an upgrade after all.
But the issue I've found is with the Bawley class and the Barkentine class, the Barkentine class even more than the Bawley.Makes sense due to their respective classes, I'd lean to making the Barkentine slower since it does have more armor and almost twice the mass of the Bawley.
Both have a speed of 90, which isn't insane, but reasoanbly fast to kite around anything large. I'd argue the Bawley should be faster than the Barkentine by the way, but anyway.
The problem I have is this, in a full deployment with 240, if I were to carrier spam, I can grab 5 Tritons, at a speed of 65, so they can get surrounded fairly easily if not protected, and they provide me with a total of 30 fighter wings.Interesting scenario I had not considered. I am always fascinated by the ways players theory craft setups. When I plan out ships I think of them in terms of what role they would play as part of a balanced fleet. In your scenario yes the Bawley fleet has more wings but FAR less offensive weapons. As I stated earlier, the Triton is a beefy carrier hybrid and the game is set to handle it as a combat carrier if it is not controlled by the player. If you take advantage of it's deep flux pool and fit it with the right hull mods and weapons you can make it a non standard tank.
That's not bad, but with the Bawley at 4 DP per pop, I can get 60 Bawleys, or 120 fighter wings.
Yes the ships themselves are less heavily armed, no doubt. And the Bawley doesn't have that many OP available, but with only 2 wings on each, it's still ridiculous.
I don't know why you would do this to your PC by the way.
The Barkentine is even worse, technically it's less DP efficient with it's fighters, since you only get 3 for 10 DP. But it has much better stats overall, still the same speed as the Bawley, and frankly an incredibly good OP set up. It has few weapons, sure, but that also means less OP needed to spend on weapons. Considering you could stud it out with 3 fighter wings each costing 20 OP and have room to spare, you could have 3 Longbows or Daggers on it without any problem. .When I set up those respective ships the Barkentine was a light carrier and the Bawley was a logistics ships with locked drones. In the last patch I decided to unlock the wing slots on the Bawley as well as several others and I probably need to revisit that and make sure I balanced the all correctly.
And then you add the ability. Temporarily doubling the fighters. Absolutely a cool ability. But with the OP cost for it, that means I can get 24 of them. 72 wings STANDARD already, so more than double the Tritons would provide, and they can DOUBLE this number temporarily in battle.Well yes that is it's strength that sets it apart but it far more fragile that the Triton and is set to be a standard carrier so it will stay back and use it's wings as it's weapons whereas the Triton will move in and use it's weapons. I think of that ability as a first wave shot but once those initial wings are shot down that is it.
On top of it, I mentioned speed briefly. The reason I did this is because yes, they aren't "super" fast and get outsped by a lot of Frigates. But no frigate can fight something with 2 - 3 fighter wings. Have 2 broadswords on a Bawley, and no Frigate can ever actually chase it.Well again, I do not think in terms of fielding an entire fleet of one class of ship. Nothing wrong with that, it is just not how I play I guess.
So the ships which would be fast enough to go after them, surround them and kill them, can't do it, because they can't tie them down, but all the large ships that could pop their shields quickly really cannot keep up with them.
Of course there are some exceptions, if you're in a Hyperion and teleport behind them with some rockets you could nuke a Barkentine, but the AI doesn't do that very well, and considering how ridiculously strong and maneuverable Hyperions are, while costing way more DP and maintainence than a Barkentine or Bawley, it gets a bit ridiculous.There are other ships that do that, heck I have a couple in my mods. Of course I cannot plan for all scenarios that a player can come up with but do try to provide the tools.
As for capitals and cruisers, you could try killing a Barkentine by charging it with an onslaught, or other ships with strong forward thrust abilities, but that's again 10 DP/4 DP worth a ship, while youre extending forward being flanked from all sides by the fighters spammed by the other 4 Barkentines or 11 Bawleys you can get for an Onslaught or whatever other capital, with cruisers not faring better since they usually just have less PD.My goal with my mods is to offer opportunities to players to set up non-standard fleets. The ships in CFT have all hybrid mounts for that exact reason.
I like the faction being carrier heavy, but maybe those two need a slight rework.When I set up CFT it was not with the intention of making them so fighter heavy as that is JYD's focus. I guess I just really like the fighter concept which is deeply rooted in my growing up watching space anime :) Those are some good suggestion and one I will add them to my working changelog.
You could either increase the OP cost, reduce the fighter wings. You could give the Bawley built in wings. Reducing the speed of the Barkentine where it can't kite as easily might be a good option as well. Let it be powerful but if a capital or cruiser decides to chase it down it dies if it doesn't get help.
I think there's some slight tweaks that would let them be really really good ships without being THIS good.
Also, some of the fighters do seem REALLY strong, although I haven't tried them enough to give completely fair feedback.IF you scroll up you will see a post by Maethendias stating that the fighters are too OP with my reply asking for specifics. I did that since I am a solo act and I sort of live in a bubble. One of the main drawbacks on not working as part of a team is I miss things so I truly rely on player feedback to fill in those holes. I appreciate the comparison you make as it gives me a poin of refrence that I can use when I make changes this weekend.
One that comes to mind would be the Cutter. Comparing it to a Broadsword, it costs slightly less, has slightly more hull, FAR more armour, and while it's by no means as good for kinectic pressure, it has double the range with better accuracy on it's lasers with good damage and EMP plus some PD, and any armour hits hurt far more than a broadsword ever could. So unless the enemy has an omni shield all around it can absolutely delete you. And I say this as a firm believer that Broadswords from the vanilla wings are absolute top tier, so take that as a reference for my train of thought.
Sorry for the Ted Talk. :DOh my don't sweat it. I prefer clarity when a player gives me feedback so I can make the correct changes. The only way to do that is giving enough details without it being a word salad which you have done. Whereas me, well, look at any of my replies in this or heck any of my mods and I out TLDR Ted talk you :)
Hey, thank you for the quick response, I appreciate it. And completely understand the intention with the faction and some of the design decisions.Samesies :)
The one thing I want to clear up though is that I understand the Barkentine is supposed to be more of a standard carrier compared to the Triton, but I didn't really mean to say they are direct competition. I personally really like using the Triton, and I think it's actually in a pretty good, strong spot.Fair point, I honestly wasn't sure of your intent in comparing them so clarity helps.
But the Barkentine excels too much in it's niche, it's a carrier, which is already always terrifying for smaller ships.
Frigates and Destroyers not only can't threaten it if it has any decent wings on it, but honestly they'll probably just get fluxed and die, since they can't ignore the fighter wings to go foward at full speed. And they need to go full speed to have a chance of catching the barkentine, which can just disable it's shields and try to maintain distance against any smaller ship.
Normally things like Frigates and destroyers force the ship to shoot back, put up it's shields, until other ships get into range to support. But a carrier is a bit unique since it can let it's wings fight without breaking it's 0-flux speed bonus, and it's wings often have a much larger engagement range than the weapons of smaller ships. Well, often a larger range than most weapons period, but you get what I mean.I have already adjusted the Barkentine by lowering it's speed from 90 to 70. I felt since it has heavier armor than normal and I set it to have more mass because of it that it did not make sense for it to be so fast. Raising the OP is a minor change and I think it is warranted so I will include that. Most likely it will be 11 since I just nerfed it a little.
So the problem is that the ships which could theoretically hunt it, or at least get close to it to slow it down, can't really contest it to actually make it slow down. It's actually kinda funny how quickly smaller ships evaporate if they try to chase a carrier with decent wings.
And I think in itself it is fine for the Barkentine to be this powerful, the solution is simple, have heavier ships with good PD or really good range to flux the Barkentine quickly as you hunt it. But with how speedy the Barkentine is, it can stay out of most capitals' and cruisers' range without problem.
That's when you'd have your smaller ships tie it up in a battle to slow it down, so you can get in range, but as I described, with the current speed of it, plus the fact that smaller ships are incredibly vulnearable to fighters, this is pretty much impossible to do.
I think, and this is just my personal opinion, leave the firepower of it as is, maybe reduce it's OP slightly, but that doesn't have to be either, I like strong carriers. Maybe increase the OP slightly from 10 to 12, and then lower it's speed so it can't kite quite as much as it can now. Because you frankly need a cruiser to kill it, and even a cruiser can die to it pretty quickly when it uses it's ability.
That would leave it being a really fooking strong carrier for little DP, but at least you have some more counterplay options beyond getting specific ships to try and hard focus it.
I'll try out more of the fighters from the faction to see if I can find some things. Which ones are good and so on.I looked over the Broadsword as you had suggested and decided to adjust the Cutter by lowering the armor from 250 to 200 and raising the acceleration from 125 to 150. I try not to change op costs on weapons and wings as a way of balance as it really messes up a players loadouts. So in the case of raising the Cutter it would be a hassle for a player who likes carriers and equips them to have to go and reconfigure their fleets.
With the Cutter I'd honestly say just raise it's DP slightly, yeah it's really good, but there are lots of really good fighters, and there's no harm having things that make you not want to just spam Broadswords when it comes to kinetics.
I think 8 - 9 OP instead of 7 is probably the sweet spot for them.
Cheers. :DSalute!
As I state in the notes, this is far more noticeable in a new game with 2.0 installed as a saved game will have already formed NPC fleets.
Thank you for the nice words :) Yes the 2.0 update is fully compatible with a saved game. I made the note you reference because it deals with the faction file that Nexerelin reads when it starts a new game. It will also be read when you load a saved game and use whatever changes were made to it.As I state in the notes, this is far more noticeable in a new game with 2.0 installed as a saved game will have already formed NPC fleets.
Very awesome, thanks! Based on this line I take it this update should be save compatible?
I haven't been playing recently but I've had a thought I need to share to get out of my head.And I am here for it. :)
For (some) carriers, what about stealing an Idea from VIC/imperium and adding a hull mod that unlocks dronebfighter carriers wings, either generally or to just other drones, effecting the miner ship line and/or Griffon.I can certainly look it over as I use both mods but I certainly do not want to copy anyone else's work.
Deals with the issue of Bawley/Danube being super carriers by leaving them limited without a mod. Wouldn't suggest it for all ships (I.e. the ones previously without PD), but something I had to get out of my head. Something that both allows you to say 'I have a specific vision for these ships' and 'You have the freedom to build them differently'.Well I already do have a custom ship system made for the Arkyd Combat Engineer Drone Deployer that deploys 4 mining drones as it's special. It is only on that one drone but I am pretty sure I can either convert into a hull mod or just swap out the current ship systems on those ships. It would take some careful implementation though as I just cut back on the carrier aspect of CFT as is was never intended to be as fighter heavy as it was.
Also something that randomly popped into my head while I'm tired energy posting. It's amusing Danube's only have synergy mounts but mining weapons are normally Hybrid (mining laser/hammer+other mod added)I believe I have it equipped with mining lasers on the variant but I am unsure what you mean since Synergy is Energy/Missile which would satisfy your mining laser/hammer comment and Hybrid is Ballistic/Energy.
But then again being able to add EM guns to Danube's would be ludicrously strong, able to act as PD if nodded, and otherwise being anti shield pressure supported by anti armor fighters.Well I went with energy/missile since it uses carrier logic and tries to stay away from direct battle. Synergy made more sense to me so a player can either mount pd weapons to help it stay protected or missile weapons to give it some long range support damage.
I like the hullmod idea for those ships, kind of gives you the best of both worlds.As I state earlier I can try to convert my ship system into a hull mod but are you suggesting is be an open hull mod that can be installed on any ship or one that is built in on certain ships?
While I could be wrong I was assuming that 5ColouredWalker meant that the ships would by default have built-in fighters that can't normally be swapped out for other fighters unless the ship/ships are fitted with a hullmod specifically for those ships that would unlock the built-in fighters and allow them to be replaced by fighters of your choice.So if I have a ship with built in wings, this theoretical hull mod would unlock them and allow them to be open wing slots? I guess I'll wait until 5ColouredWalker sheds some light on that but I certainly appreciate the quick response.
I thought that I had played another mod awhile ago that did pretty much this but I don't remember what that might have been assuming I'm not remembering incorrectly...Well rack that brain of yours! ;D I could use an example of how it was done because at this stage it would take some deep diving to see if it is possible.
I will try but unfortunately I won't have access to my PC until the weekend. :(That is OK, it is just a kind request no rush needed. I appreciate you making the effort.
While I could be wrong I was assuming that 5ColouredWalker meant that the ships would by default have built-in fighters that can't normally be swapped out for other fighters unless the ship/ships are fitted with a hullmod specifically for those ships that would unlock the built-in fighters and allow them to be replaced by fighters of your choice.So if I have a ship with built in wings, this theoretical hull mod would unlock them and allow them to be open wing slots? I guess I'll wait until 5ColouredWalker sheds some light on that but I certainly appreciate the quick response.
Thank you for checking in. I am unsure if I can do that level of code but I can certainly try.While I could be wrong I was assuming that 5ColouredWalker meant that the ships would by default have built-in fighters that can't normally be swapped out for other fighters unless the ship/ships are fitted with a hullmod specifically for those ships that would unlock the built-in fighters and allow them to be replaced by fighters of your choice.So if I have a ship with built in wings, this theoretical hull mod would unlock them and allow them to be open wing slots? I guess I'll wait until 5ColouredWalker sheds some light on that but I certainly appreciate the quick response.
Shogouki has the right of it.
As for taking code,.I don't think either mod has something that does that so no help there.
And Synergy mounts can't take Hybrid weapons, so the Danube can't take Mining lasers. I think. I'll check come morning.I just checked, the Danube variant is armed with two mining lasers.
That said, Mellenia and Mechabellum have been eating my time. Not done much Starsector lately.I remember looking into Mellenia but saw a lot of negative reviews so never got into it. I had not heard of Mechabellum though so I looked it over and it looks like something I would like so thank you for that. With all the updating work I have been doing on my mods over the last couple weeks, I haven't really been playing Starsector myself. I do plan to get caught up and eventually do so but I get the burnout and wanting to play a different genre to refresh yourself.
Hey there, I've been looking into the fighters a bit more, and the Barkentine post nerf.Hello, good to hear from you again Aaroooon. I got a big ole mug of coffee and I'm ready to dig into this meaty reply :)
My findings so far are this, MOST of the fighters from CFT are fine in terms of balancing. Skiffs, Dinghys, also the more powerful ones.I am unsure regarding the parsing of this sentence. Do you mean that the Skiff and Dinghy are the exception and too OP or they are the better balanced ones?
The two biggest problems I have found so far are the Skjold and the Cutter. The Skjold is slightly weaker than the cutter just because it is missing a fighter per wing, it does incredible kinetic pressure, 195 per dart gun so roughly 800 damage against shields, and still 200 against armour, plus an additional 300 to both shields and armour from it's wavemotion pulse lasers, so each fighter puts out around 500 against armour plus some EMP, and 1100 against shields.The Skjold is 12 OP with a crew of 3, 200 max flux, dissipation of 85 and refit of 10.
For reference, Broadswords as the best kinetic fighters in the base game do around 600 damage against shields and 150 against armour.Well as I state earlier, I balanced that armor by giving it such a small flux capacity and regen. The flare launcher was to tie in with the theme of the Skjold being a big chunky fighter that can hang in there to soak up some PD while the more flux efficient ones can deal the damage.
The Skjold has one less fighter per wing and it does cost 50% more OP, it is definitely a lot better than the Broadswords, especially since it has 400 armour compared to the Broadswords' 100.
I think a pretty good nerf would be something like taking it's Flare launcher away, since even without that it has such a ridiculous amount of armour, it doesn't even need it to be a top tier fighter.
Then there is the cutter, cutters are really really really really strong.Rather than taking away one of it's pulse weapons, what if I change the firing arc on the Culverin from 360 to say 45 degrees? It is already rear facing but with this proposed change it will focus on being a pd mount as intended and that will remove that 800 fragmentation from the calculation vs the main target and work as intended as a defensive weapon vs interceptors and/or missiles.
800 frag damage from the culverin, so 200 against shields and armour, plus another 300 from the wavemotion pulses. So it does 500 damage per fighter against shields, falling behind the Skjold a bit since 2 skjolds would do 2200 shield damage per second, while 3 Cutters only do 1500, but it has much better armour damage, also 1500, while Skjolds only do 1000.
They do have only half the armour of the skjolds, but one more fighter per wing means an extra fighter thats launching flares, and an extra fighter shooting down other figher wings for PD purposes.
I'd suggest just taking away one of the pulses, same for the skjolds honestly, the damage they do even without is still really really good. Or, let them have their really high damage but make some of it beam based, so they can't flux shields to the extend they can now, forcing you to somehow pressure the shields more to get the value from the fighters.
And this brings me to the synergistic effect of Cutters plus Barkentine, larger wings do better on the Barkentine because it's ability means more new wings get spawned.Interesting OK I'll do some tests on my end.
So with a single Barkentine you can normally have 9 Cutters, during the ability 18. This means you're putting out 9000 damage per second against shields and armour.
I've found that 2 Barkentines usually murder a Paragon relatively quickly without issue if they have nothing but Cutters.
I also attempted an Onslaught against 2 Barkentines and the result was pretty laughable, it kinda just gets murdered between them.
I've done my testing with Officers but no skills on them enhancing the fighters or speed of the Barkentine, or it's ability, and no fleet wide abilities to make fighters better either.Well fun is intended, two destroyers taking out a capital, not so much :)
Right now I will admit, using Barkentines is a looooot of fun and so are the two fighters I mentioned, but I think they are a bit too strong at this moment, especially once you buffs from skills and other ships into the mix.
I think to make it a bit more reasonable you need to tweak a few things, first, make the extra wings spawned from the ability use fighter capacity if they are destroyed as well, as far as I can tell right now they do not.Ok that is some good reasoning and I'll break it down better when I get to CFT again.
Then, the cooldown for the ability needs to be longer, it is incredibly strong right now, with it the Barkentine can actually nuke weaker capitals on it's own by using Cutters.
Maybe make it so that you get a Cooldown reduction for each wing that returns without dying, with the shortest if all wings return being something slightler longer than right now or around the same, because right now you simply spam the ability whenever, since there is no cost to the fighters dying, you simply get to spam free wings to do an incredible amount of damage over and over.
Honestly, even with 2 fighter wings rather than 3 the ship would probably be one of the best carriers in the game, but right now it is honestly broken for it's cost, especially in conjunction with one of the two fighter types I talked about.
Maybe another way to deal with the ability would be to only spawn an extra wing for each of the wings currently active, because right now even if the ship is caught without any fighters, it can fully deploy its entire set of fighters.
Now that I am thinking about it, I might like that better, make the extra fighters use fighter capacity, dont reduce the cooldown tooooo much, but only spawn an extra fighter for each fighter not currently being replaced. That way it cant spam wave after wave over and over even when its main fighters are regenerating or dying to just suicide in, instead you have to slow down, get your fighters and then send them together, or just spawn fewer. That might be a good trade off.
I've also taken out any consideration from other mods I use, like Exo-Tech stuff allowing to add an extra fighter wing on ships, which obviously breaks the Barkentine beyond belief, since I understand you can't balance for what other mods may or may not add.I really appreciate that. I see people on discord make claims about my ships being able to do things but it is generally with the mention of putting a max level officer or some hullmod from another mod. Keeping it variant vs variant is a much better method of comparison and how I try to balance ships when I make them. I certainty do not always get it right so I appreciate when feedback is comparable to how I balance. You've given me some interesting things to think on and I will break your comments down to bullet points for a to-do working changelog for when I get back to CFT. I just finished a substantial time chunk of work on Hiver and TTSC is next on the list but CFT will make it after that.
Heya!Hello there, I recognized your name but couldn't place it so I went back and saw you were the author of Smugglers' Tricks back in the day. Welcome back to the forums.
This mod looks awesome and I'd love to give it a try. Is there any chance of a non-Nex required version?Well for a fellow smuggler I can certainly try. I do have an option on one of my other mods but it's not a 1:1 comparison since it generates it's assets differently but I can take my notes from that as a starting point and add that to the next CFT update. As I state earlier, I have some work to do on one of my other mods so I cannot give an accurate ETA as I generally have more free time on the weekends but with Easter this week that free time will be spent with family.
I am unsure regarding the parsing of this sentence. Do you mean that the Skiff and Dinghy are the exception and too OP or they are the better balanced ones?
When I made them I did not consider them rivals but I did balance the larger Skjold by giving it less flux whereas the Cutter is far more able to keep the pressure on. On paper it may seem the Skjold has incredible pressure but in my tests it unleashes a good first salvo but then runs out of flux fast and has a lot more downtime vs the Cutter.
Rather than taking away one of it's pulse weapons, what if I change the firing arc on the Culverin from 360 to say 45 degrees? It is already rear facing but with this proposed change it will focus on being a pd mount as intended and that will remove that 800 fragmentation from the calculation vs the main target and work as intended as a defensive weapon vs interceptors and/or missiles.
Hello there, I recognized your name but couldn't place it so I went back and saw you were the author of Smugglers' Tricks back in the day. Welcome back to the forums.
Ah, OK. The more I read your post the more I thought that was the case but I just wanted to make sure I was not missing anything.QuoteI am unsure regarding the parsing of this sentence. Do you mean that the Skiff and Dinghy are the exception and too OP or they are the better balanced ones?
No no, I meant most fighters in CFT's lineup feel pretty balanced, some examples for the ones that feels balanced are the Skiff and Dinghy.
Well I cannot really judge a wing strength when it is using a special from a carrier. If that is the case when you use a carrier with no special abilities or hull mods then I can take a look at adjusting the wing's refit, which I believe is 10 for the Skjold, as a way of balancing.QuoteWhen I made them I did not consider them rivals but I did balance the larger Skjold by giving it less flux whereas the Cutter is far more able to keep the pressure on. On paper it may seem the Skjold has incredible pressure but in my tests it unleashes a good first salvo but then runs out of flux fast and has a lot more downtime vs the Cutter.
Honestly, the only reason I am bringing them up together is because they are both very very strong. I agree the Cutter is actually better than the Skjold. I think the Cutters would be a trade off for the same OP, killing a bit better, overloading shields slower but providing slightly more screens for bombers.
I think one of the reasons that might be supercharging them a bit right now is the fact that they sidestep some of the low flux with the barkentine.
Because you spawn new wings that can unload every time you pop the ability and they are quite sturdy so they can usually get to their target, unload a few volleys and by the time they die the ability is usually almost back up again even against capitals.
I tried sendnig a Barkentine against a standard loadout Conquest, I did give it Safety Overrides so Im not sure if it might get caught without, but with it the conquest died by the time the ability comes out for the 3rd - 4th time usually, although I only ran it a few times.Well try that same setup but with Broadswords and see what happens. I did make them better than the Broadsword in some ways but also with some weaknesses. I did not see the need to add wings that were direct analogs to vanilla.
Keep in mind, Im doing most of these tests just with Cutters, since I think Skjolds generally do almost the same but slightly worse, better at killing shields but not as scary when your shields are down.
Yea that is what I was thinking. Also it would put that rear mount in the position it was meant for. In retrospect I honestly am unsure why I gave it a 360 arc in the first place.QuoteRather than taking away one of it's pulse weapons, what if I change the firing arc on the Culverin from 360 to say 45 degrees? It is already rear facing but with this proposed change it will focus on being a pd mount as intended and that will remove that 800 fragmentation from the calculation vs the main target and work as intended as a defensive weapon vs interceptors and/or missiles.
Honestly try it, I think its a good start cause it would lower the Kinetic pressure against shields quite a bit, and it would also mean that once your armour is down you just dont instantly die to 800 frag dps from each fighter hitting your hull.
I'll keep checking on them and see how they perform compared to some other vanilla fighters and against capitals.The issue may be a mix of the Barkentine's ability combined with the wing's strength. If you plan to do more testing keep that in mind. Maybe use another carrier with Cutters and this way we can better determine what is the true cause. If the Broadsword vs Cutter scenario performs differently on another carrier then it may be more a Barkentine issue.
A large chunk of their power does come from the Barkentine as well, although I do want to clarify, I did try a control group with 3 Broadswords on the Barkentine as well, and usually they performed a lot worse than both the Skjolds and the Cutters, because a lot of Capitals, especially Low Tech ones can shrug off a lot of that damage while lowering shields, against Cutters they often just take too much damage quickly, Skjolds still do okay, but not nearly as well as Cutters. Both the Skjolds and Cutters are a lot scarier against things that aren't shields, compared to the Broadswords, although the Skjolds honestly felt fine, I think the reason I call them a bit too strong is because of the way they annhilate shields. This is why Cutters feel stronger because they don't really need another ship to shoot the enemy or another type of bomber to do damage when the shields are being pressured, just by using more Cutters you overload the shields and once they are down they start doing a pretty good amount of damage and stripping the armour off the target all by themselves. So the Skjold just feels like Broadsword on steroids, the Cutter feels like a Broadsword that actually murders you the second your shields are down. And on top of that they're also pretty strong at shooting down other fighters of course, not insane, but you know, it just gives another reason to not use anything else. Why grab an interceptor if you can just spam an extra wing of cutters, do way more damage to ships and still get a pretty decent interceptor.I made the wings in this mod to to work with each other when I planned them out prior to release. In theory the fighters, interceptors and bombers synergize with each other. The fighters were more to harass while the interceptors well frankly intercepted other wings so the Bombers could do the heavy lifting. I reason I stated earlier that I did not consider the Skjold and the Cutter as rivals is that one is a drone and one is manned so when I balanced them it was with the other drones/manned in the lineup. If a fighter is taking the role of a bomber then that is certainly something I need to address.
Heh yea I am an old fart and been playing since the game was called Starfarer :)Hello there, I recognized your name but couldn't place it so I went back and saw you were the author of Smugglers' Tricks back in the day. Welcome back to the forums.
I can't believe people still remember that! I think there's a similar in the base game now funny enough ;D
No pressure on anything friend just was curious if it would be a simple change or not. Love the ships. Vanilla+ runs are sometimes hard to find content for haha.That was brought to my attention quite clearly with Hiver Swarm. I spent a good chuck of time making a vanilla+ version of it recently as I incorrectly assumed other players use many mods when they play using one of my mods. As to Nexerelin, I have been playing with that enabled for so long I sort of just think of it as part of the base game when I make mods. It's wrong of course so thank you for brining me back to reality. :)
I definitely don't think that the Cutters and Skjolds are taking the role of bombers, they do tear through lightly armored targets but anything with moderate to heavy armor stalls them a lot. And even though they're tanky any ship with good PD isn't going to be threatened unless we're talking like 1 on 1 in a sim. In fleet battles they've been very effective at chewing up light targets but aside from shield pummeling they don't stand much of a chance at heavy targets in fleet warfare.Thank you for your analysis, I will keep it in mind when I get to CFT. I *should* have some free time tomorrow to knock out a TTSC update and if that hold true then CFT will be next in the queue. Figure some time next week, next weekend at the latest I'll have a CFT update out so any more observations before then will be considered as well.
CFT_danube.ship still have "tow_cable" in builtInMods, despite being deprecated hullmod.Hello again. The same reason that it does not show up correctly in CFT is the same in JYD. The hull mod effect does work as intended, it is just the text that is formatted incorrectly. As it is based on game code, I cannot change it on me end w/out re-writing it entirely. I had tried once but it did not work but I did not put too much effort into it at the time since the mod effect itself does work. I do have a CFT update in the queue and I will try again for that patch.
I just realized I accidentally posted my questions about the Hellfire MIRV launchers in the Carter's Hullmods thread instead of here... :-[Heh, that's OK I got the notification either way. I was just having some fun poking at you :)
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I wasn't really commenting on what the correct range for the missiles should be, just that their performance in regards to effective range seemed much farther than the range on the tooltip.When I read your follow up on CJHM, I had a clearer view of what you were getting at and figured this is what you meant.
I also just remembered that one thing I found kind of odd was that the medium version fires in bursts of 3 shots yet it has only half as many missiles as the small version. Even doubling the ammo capacity either via the skill Missile Specialization or Expanded Missile Racks the medium version of the Hellfire MIRV exhausts its ammo super fast.I designed that line so long ago I do not remember how I calculated them TBH. I'll give them a once over and see what I can do to address that while keeping them viably balanced.
For some reason when I updated it caused all of the CFT ships which usually have hard-coded drone fighters to not have those hard coded. Which is hilarious, but also how do I fix this? xDHello there, I assume it has been a couple versions since you updated. I state that because back in version 1.9 I unlocked all the ships that had built-in wings as a balance change. You would need a 1.8 version of the mod to have them all hard-coded. If you would like I could host and post a link to that version.
Whoops, I guess I didn't read back far enough in the changelog. I thought I had made a mistake somewhere, but if it's intended then all good. Thanks though! ;DOh do not worry about it, lord knows I've made plenty of mistakes :) I hope you enjoy the current version but either way I hope you have fun with the game.
v2.1 -Save game compatible - Note: The new "NoNex" optional does require a new game if enabled
-Cutter: Changed the Culverin firing arc from 360 degrees to 45 degrees rear facing - Repositions it in it's proper role as a PD mount and not contribute to overall DPS - Ty Aaroooon for your insights
-Skjold: Increased armor from 400 to 500. lowered wing count from 2 to 1, cost from 9k to 6k, OP from 12 to 10 and refit from 10 to 9 - Puts it in it's role as a heavy fighter - TY Aaroooon & Shogouki for your comments
-Triton: Raised the fleet points to 30, supplies per month to 50 and deployment cost to 50 - Better reflects it's big-boy status
-Hellfire MIRV Launcher: Increased the ammo count from 30 to 60 giving it 10 more shots to keep it relevant throughout a fight - TY Shogouki for pointing it out
-Katyusha Missile: Increased the projectile speed from 225 to 300 and launch speed from 125 to 150- Helps it's performance as a point defense distractor
-Culverin: Fixed a long standing typo by changing the chargedown from 0.01 to the correct 0.1 and adjusting the damage to compensate - TY BirdWanderer for pointing out that it was below the hard cap
-Fog of war: Reimagined it to be a 2 OP PD weapon by adjusting it's stats - I try to offer options that are not already offered and 3 OP PD weapons are common whereas 2 OP is lacking
-Saker: Added a burst delay of 0.1 - Fixing an oopsie on my part where it was blank - TY Maritusa for pointing it out
-Increased the range of all CFT unguided rockets to 1200 with the exception of the Chet - Puts them in line with Vanilla rocket ranges - I exempted the Chet for theme reasons - TY Shogouki for your commentary
-Added optional files to enable CFT to work w/out Nexerelin - Instructions on the Forum OP - TY Morrow for giving me the idea
As always, I am so thankful to all the players who make suggestions and comments that I can use to make the mods the best it can be for all of us. I look forward to any additional commentary so if you have a suggestion or issue please keep them coming -Enjoy!
Hello Shogouki, always a pleasure to get a message from you as I know it will be well written and not a rant. :) I am unsure if that is a thing I can do with fighters. I had it 360 for that very reason but I did not want to remove one of it's primary weapons to balance it so this seemed a good way to not only lower it's DPS but also it's survivability which both went into balancing it. I just finished a marathon updating spree on all my mods an plan to take a couple days off from modding unless it's a crash report but I will look into it and get back to you then.v2.1 -Save game compatible - Note: The new "NoNex" optional does require a new game if enabled
-Cutter: Changed the Culverin firing arc from 360 degrees to 45 degrees rear facing - Repositions it in it's proper role as a PD mount and not contribute to overall DPS - Ty Aaroooon for your insights
-Skjold: Increased armor from 400 to 500. lowered wing count from 2 to 1, cost from 9k to 6k, OP from 12 to 10 and refit from 10 to 9 - Puts it in it's role as a heavy fighter - TY Aaroooon & Shogouki for your comments
-Triton: Raised the fleet points to 30, supplies per month to 50 and deployment cost to 50 - Better reflects it's big-boy status
-Hellfire MIRV Launcher: Increased the ammo count from 30 to 60 giving it 10 more shots to keep it relevant throughout a fight - TY Shogouki for pointing it out
-Katyusha Missile: Increased the projectile speed from 225 to 300 and launch speed from 125 to 150- Helps it's performance as a point defense distractor
-Culverin: Fixed a long standing typo by changing the chargedown from 0.01 to the correct 0.1 and adjusting the damage to compensate - TY BirdWanderer for pointing out that it was below the hard cap
-Fog of war: Reimagined it to be a 2 OP PD weapon by adjusting it's stats - I try to offer options that are not already offered and 3 OP PD weapons are common whereas 2 OP is lacking
-Saker: Added a burst delay of 0.1 - Fixing an oopsie on my part where it was blank - TY Maritusa for pointing it out
-Increased the range of all CFT unguided rockets to 1200 with the exception of the Chet - Puts them in line with Vanilla rocket ranges - I exempted the Chet for theme reasons - TY Shogouki for your commentary
-Added optional files to enable CFT to work w/out Nexerelin - Instructions on the Forum OP - TY Morrow for giving me the idea
As always, I am so thankful to all the players who make suggestions and comments that I can use to make the mods the best it can be for all of us. I look forward to any additional commentary so if you have a suggestion or issue please keep them coming -Enjoy!
My only concern about the Cutter change is that more often than not mine run into hostile missiles and fighters in the front. I wonder if there's a way to make the PD weapon only fire at missiles and fighters so that it could remain 360 degrees but still not contribute to attacking larger ships?
The ships are BEAUTIFUL! They all looks... so industrial! They are just genuinely awesome to look at.Coming from Weyland Yutani that is quite the compliment, thank you! :)
Lore - "The excise men knew immediately who had broken in as he was known to be an upright man." Imagine the evidence that catches you is the fact that you're too good of a dude lol! Someone has read the lore, squeeee!
The ships are BEAUTIFUL! They all looks... so industrial! They are just genuinely awesome to look at.Coming from Weyland Yutani that is quite the compliment, thank you! :)Lore - "The excise men knew immediately who had broken in as he was known to be an upright man." Imagine the evidence that catches you is the fact that you're too good of a dude lol! Someone has read the lore, squeeee!
For real though, welcome to the forums and I must say what a nice treat to wake up to your comments.
Lol See! We know good ships when we see them!That is so nice to hear, I hope you enjoy your time in game.
They're honestly fantastic, exactly what I was looking for.
The lore is a good chunk of the fun!Yep that is the point of this mod. I sometimes like to smuggle but the assets to do so are almost all pirate related.
I like the lore in this case specifically. It kinda shows that in this universe you can be an "Honourable Bad Guy", the whole honourable rogue and all that, commit crimes without automatically being a pirate. It adds a whole new element, and it's just fun.
Thank you for the warm welcome!What a nice thing to read, I appreciate that. Oh and you're welcome, I guess? :)
I've been playing the game for a few weeks, and thought I'd try out some new mods, but I'm super picky. But this is absolutely one that'll be on my list from now on.
So, thank you for the treat!