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1

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Scy V1.60RC1 (2020/04/19)

« on: July 21, 2020, 11:06:17 PM »

I found that in v1.60 all armor modules in SCY gain 1 OP while in v1.58 they don't. Is that by design(eg. to solve ship with module retreating problem)?
As a result all these armors now can be select in ordanance panel and add an Extreme Modification, and then add some useful hullmods-or add some hullmods from other mods and cause an crush. Some people have feedbacks on this problem.

2

General Discussion / Re: [0.9.1a-modded] Mod balancing worth more concern on combo between mods.

« on: April 08, 2020, 08:35:05 AM »

Another solution for making exceptional yet balanced weapons that I used in Seeker (available on Discord for now) is to add an "Interference" mechanic to them.

That is, if you are using more than one of those weapons on your ship, they "interfere" with each other and you get a reduced flux dissipation. Using two of those weapons is usually alright, using three is manageable with specific builds on large ships, more than that and you just don't have any dissipation left to fire them.

I intend to port that mechanic to MagicLib so that other mods can benefit from a unified cross-mod solution, but it requires some refinement on the UI side before doing so.

I'm against adding it in MagicLib, for it could cause new modders making "powerful with huge debuff" things. That's another way to extreme without enough balancing experience, and I don't think it should appear in a Lib.

3

General Discussion / Re: [0.9.1a-modded] Mod balancing worth more concern on combo between mods.

« on: April 07, 2020, 08:56:33 PM »

I'd go as far to say that most people who use mods at all play with as many mods as they possibly can, for good or for ill, if reports are to be believed...

Mods that are overpowered because their weapons are only balanced given the ship design of the faction (either weak or strong) is a product of creativity: they are trying out different ship doctrines, oftentimes ships that play in very different ways. I wouldn't want this to stop, as those can be the most fun to add variety to the game.

The only possible solution to faction mixing imbalance, given the sheer number of mods, is: a) Balance stringently against medium vanilla power level, not the outliers and b) lock weapons with a certain tag (IE faction name) to ships with the same tag using a custom hullmod or other OP altering method.

Generally I'd agree with your solutions :b.

4

General Discussion / Re: [0.9.1a-modded] Mod balancing worth more concern on combo between mods.

« on: April 07, 2020, 03:53:17 AM »

The only things a player using your mod absolutely has to experience is your mod itself, your mod's requirements and the base game. However, players modding their games is only a fraction of playerbase. Another fraction of that number is how many players will play with a mod A, same with mod B, and players playing with both at the same time is an even smaller number. The result is that those balance issues affect only a small part of all players, while the effort to remedy that can (but doesn't have to) be disproportionately big. Giving up your toys, just because someone's toys work badly with yours, might feel bad, too.

There's also the issue with the fact that ships, weapons, etc. have their unequal advantages and downsides. The more combinations of these happen, the more likely it is to find preferential matches that synergise with each other better, than all other, without being overbearingly better outside of that context. However, if a weapon is particularly busted, it might actually be imbalanced in general.

That is interesting. As far as I know, most of chinese community tend to play mutilpile mods together. But it seems to be quite different here. As you said, players playing with both at the same time is an even smaller number. Should that means someone would prefer only playing with 3 libs and BRDY, for example, rather than playing 3 libs, SWP, NEX, BRDY, II, DIABLE, SRA... and even more mods? That really makes things different.

5

General Discussion / Re: [0.9.1a-modded] Mod balancing worth more concern on combo between mods.

« on: April 06, 2020, 08:40:21 PM »

Thanks for your reply. Actually I think there's some misunderstanding(maybe for my bad English heh).

I don't like modding against mod, too. Back to 0.652a, the arsenal race is terrible. I agree with the idea that balancing should take vanilla as standard. But I think when modders creating, there should be more consideration. If I'm going to make a infinite ammo missile, what disadvantage should it have? What if a modder creates a Missile-featured ship?

Why I say "combo between mods"? My argue is there are modders balancing around vanilla, but doesn't do well. And usually, the problem is revealed by the combination of different mods. Considering the combo is a way to help modders balance around vanilla.

Still I would take a missile example. I can make a extremely powerful large missile giving it extremely high OP to balance, and vanilla and my mod doesn't have large missile specialist, so high OP cost seems to be fine. But, in my opinion, the case should be that:
 I make a extremely powerful large missile with extremely high OP, then I would consider if there is a ship using large missile as main weapon. And a talent player make a extreme ordnance, sacrificing lots of other things to pile up the amount of that missile. Considering this, I would rather give up making a extreme weapon.

I do see some mods making extreme things like the example, using extreme disadvantage to make up for extreme design, and adjusted to make sure in vanilla it's ok. Mutipile mods can break this fragile balance, and "extreme" is not a good thing. Sometimes we can hardly realize where is broken for a design, which is unavoidable, but more consideration on mod design always helps.

I would stress that I'm not going to force modders to do so or make it a rule of our community. It's an advice or a discussion. I agree most of the work still rely on player feedback, but modders probably needs someting better than normal player to be modder.

6

General Discussion / [0.9.1a-modded] Mod balancing worth more concern on combo between mods.

« on: April 06, 2020, 07:55:22 AM »

This topic begins with my discusstion in discord on Diable's new blizzaia. Though with a "bomber" tag, it's kinetic weapon and 30-ammo-4-burst grenade makes it more like a heavy anti-ship fighter, in other words, another raven. And I said blizzaia on Matriarch of II would be extremely powerful. Then AxleMC said "Test just your mod alone (along with any dependencies). Always good advice." I just cannot agree, and I would take an example-the champion variant in recent 2nd tournament of Fossic(Forum of Starsector in China).

https://flic.kr/p/2iMwEpZ (I have trouble with image tool on forum...hopes the link works.)

This is an erymantianBoar(I'll use Boar in the following post) in SCY equipped with basic PD weapons, an Ion Beam and 2 Swarm MIRV of SRA. A fleet with 3 Manticore(also equipped with Swarm MIRV), 6 Boar above, 4 SO Brawler and 4 Shark almost defeat every fleet under the rule of this tournament.

OK let's go to the point. Definitely Swarm MIRV is too powerful with 250*10 HE damage and shock wave and low Ordnance Points and INFINITE AMMO, while it's stats is generally equal to non-infinite-ammo missiles. However, put it in SRA and vanilla it's not that IMBA, because ships with large missile slots all have this or that disadvantage-Conquest have a high dp and is ususally viewed as gunship, Apogee is some kind of lacking firepower, Gryphon is powerful but only have 1 large missile slots using 20 dp(the same as Conquest) while it's shipsystem doesn't match infinite-ammo missiles well. However, we've got Boar, a ship having 2 large missile slots, 1 large built-in kinetic missile and a radar-style system which proved to match well with lrm, using only 23 dp.

Of course, large missile in vanilla and in SCY isn't that powerful(some even embarassing). If only consider vanilla and SCY or only vanilla and SRA, the ship or the missile all seems ok. But the variant of combination is terrible. Only shield bypass Onslaught with Devastator and flaks and the cover of Diable's Derecho using its system was proved able to afford this crazy missile tempest.

Another example is DME whose weapons can be described as "all a little stronger than vanilla". These weapons combined with ships "all a little stronger than vanilla" would come to a devastating powerful variant.

I'm not meaning SCY or SRA or DME or Tart or MShadowy or Soren is bad. I really like these mods and really appreciate authors' hard work. I'm talking about a theory of balancing mod just as the topic said, "mod balancing worth more concern on combo between mods". I don't think only testing with mod itself and vanilla and gives it a tag of "generally a little stronger than vanilla" or "generally a little weaker than vanilla" is enough. That's ignoring balance issues.

I would appreciate any friendly disscussion on this topic. I really need your idea, thanks a lot!

7

Mods / Re: [0.7.2a] ApproLight v0.4.6a(f1) -Prime-

« on: November 10, 2019, 05:26:37 AM »

Aw, I wanted to play with the godship and stuff, they dont seem to be in this version.

Sorry there won't be any boss ship stuffs anymore(except Higgs)

but will they be add back in some future update and also correct me if i am wrong approlight plus has knight mod integrated in to it
and  Atonement will be back when knight templar mod is updated by dark.revenanat( or if its a different knight templar mod)

 

Well, for various reasons boss ship won't be added back anymore, I think. It's hard to explain.
Yes, Knight is integrated with permission. But just don't expect Atonement.
(BTW, would this reply cause DR use 1 more week to update Templar? lol)

8

General Discussion / Re: End Game

« on: October 31, 2019, 07:52:53 AM »

Well, for vanilla we have remnants and mods like SAD add their own "remnants" for you to kill, which requires larger fleet. Give it a try.
However, personally I don't think that's a solution. After setting up several colonies players can easily produce capitals. I'm waiting for the next version that should have more stories or RPG content, or I would think about a mod adding more sandbox elements to Starsector.

9

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / Re: [0.9a & 0.9.1a]Saving Failure

« on: September 27, 2019, 10:14:09 AM »

This looks like an issue with Foundation of Borken - looking at its data/variants/FOB_gnophkeh_Standard.variant, there's:

    "displayName": "\u0013Standard",

I don't know if other variants there have the same problem. However, cleaning these up ought to stop the problem from coming up in the future.

I have talked with Originem and it is indeed cause by the FOB. Thanks a lot.

10

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / [0.9a & 0.9.1a]Saving Failure

« on: September 27, 2019, 02:36:53 AM »

I have met with this bug several times. All of these crushes occurred when Nexerelin and other supported mods enabled.

Code

Caused by: javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamException: ParseError at [row,col]:[69616,91]
Message: An invalid XML character (Unicode: 0x{2}) was found in the value of attribute "{1}" and element is "13".
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLStreamReaderImpl.next(Unknown Source)
	at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.StaxReader.pullNextEvent(StaxReader.java:58)
	... 193 more

I located the invaild character in campaign.xml:

Code

<savedVariant z="27397" hId="FOB_gnophkeh" v="0" c="18" hVId="FOB_gnophkeh_Standard" vDN="Standard" s="REFIT" mAAW="false" gV="true">

Deleting it will solve the problem. However, after some playing without a definite time, it still crushes.

11

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Blackrock Drive Yards v0.9.5a (10.06.2019) - Hotfix released

« on: September 05, 2019, 03:33:35 AM »

My friend met with a issue that dart SRM would chase phased ships, he wonder whether it's the SRM's feature or it's a bug.

12

Blog Posts / Re: Skills and Story Points

« on: July 09, 2019, 01:36:08 AM »

what the hell is "high scatter amplifier"?beam weapon could deal hard flux??
So what's the ratio?5%?10%?

It's 100% hard flux, but it also halves beam weapon range - as a multiplier! - so they stop being long-range weapons.

Really disagree with this. I can make a Tachyon Lance disaster with Advance Optics and the Amplifier, and just let other weapons go to hell to save OP for me.
Or to specify, Paragon + Tac-Lance + Adv-Optics + HSA = Let's strike all ships' face.

13

Blog Posts / Re: Skills and Story Points

« on: July 08, 2019, 08:01:51 PM »

I'm really shocked...
I guess there would be debuffs for certain hullmods being permanant. There would be.
Edit: Else I think a new API is necessary.
Waiting for formal update. Currently no conclusion can be drawn.

14

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Interstellar Imperium 2.0.0

« on: June 18, 2019, 10:49:16 PM »

Fantastic update!

15

Mods / Re: [0.7.2a] ApproLight v0.4.6a(f1) -Prime-

« on: June 11, 2019, 04:02:23 AM »

Have there been any Chinese releases for 0.9.1?

Currently, no. It’s still under working.