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[Killer of Fate]

TL;DR this was originally a blog post being a part of a series of letters, however because I linked a mod to it that I was working on in conjunction with the said letters, it was interpreted as a modding post, even though the mod itself wasn't finished and was just a proof of concept. These balance changes are currently unfinished...

They consist out of fleet PTS changes, game mechanics changes (such as changed to accessibility and costs of industry upkeep), officer costs, speed in hyperspace, as well as a myriad of very significant balance changes, such as making Mjollnir deal 300 damage per shot at 300 flux cost with 400 localised EMP damage. Feel free to try it out, but I'm warning you that this mod isn't finished yet, and some things may appear out of place. However I have been doing some testing, and you should feel free to try it out, but save your save file before using it, as long-termly it might be annoying to deal with.

Spoiler

letter about Mjollnir

ok. So, I have been doing lots of testing. Balancing... Making my own balancing mod, for the people, by the people (well, I doubt I'm really part of the people). And I have been doing... Stuff? Increasing armour on Midline ships, slightly, their speed. Increasing shield profiles on Fury, Shrikes, Tempest... But also locking Aurora to front shield, finding out it's dumb. Deciding to nerf front shield conversion. Buffing Heavy Mortar... Changing how Invictus works... And that's the thing... Invictus.

The Dev really nerfed those two ships... Invictus, Pegasus. And they also designed Retribution to not be overpowered. Overall that content patch didn't really change much. It was an addition. And to prevent power creep, these additions were made subtle, not ridiculous. They were BALANCED, but BALANCE is a myth created by the ruling class. There is no balance in Starsector. There is no logic. And there is no consistency... Things happen, you fail. You die. Skill doesn't matter. Plans don't matter. Only meta matters. So, the question is can we destabilise it and change how it works? Yes. Should we? I guess... Will it happen? Probably not.

Let's keep this short, because I'm sure people hate reading. What are s-mods? What are ships? And why are they all bad? It feels like when the game develops its vessels, it always aims to make them as restricted in their role as possible. They always have not enough. And they always fail. The game is always stingy about OP. And if the game isn't... There are other potent restrictions. Dominator is slow and underfluxed. Onslaught too... It's always like this... There is always something wrong going on. And players are supposed to feel that wrong coursing through their veins. This is why I imagine dev struggling to make fits for enemy ships, and at some point just saying "*** it" and doing random things that don't make any sense. Because no matter what you do, the ship will always fail. The only way to make it not fail is via s-mods... And probably officers... So, here is where the Mjollnir part starts.

Mjollnir makes no sense. The only ship that can use it effectively is also probably one of the worst capitals in the game. It shoots highly inefficient projectiles that deal meh damage and meh EMP. So, it's bad, right? No... It's not... In fact it's probably one of the best weapons in the game. It's just not designed for anything that exists...

No Low Tech ship can use it... They will all overflux... Not in their base form. And sure... Conquest can use it. But meh... In reality... The weapon is designed for ships that walk outside the realm of average Starsector ships. It's meant solely for the player. Mjollnir is like Plasma Cannon and Heavy Blaster. Except unlike those two, the only ships capable of properly utilising it to its full potential do not exist. They do exist. But they are the creation of player min-maxing than actual mechanical randomness. Mjollnir in theory has no weaknesses. It has infinite range. Good anti-shield and good anti-armour damage. So, if you create a ship that can run it... By getting all the necessary character skills. Ordnance Expertise+, maybe Shield Shunt, just a lot... A lot of flux. And then run it... It's just death itself.

Mjollnir is a perfect mechanic. It's a perfect tool that as soon as it can be utilised offers infinite potential. There are other mechanics like that... The other one I know is the infinite shields. Shields being an infinite source of durability are restricted heavily by the fact that there are tons and tons of tools to counter them... Somewhat. And on top of that ships that usually use shields are restricted heavily. Until they aren't. If there is a ship that uses shields to their full potential. It is basically invincible. You could say the same about armour... But not really. I have tested fights against Guardians with 2700 armour. And that is not infinite durability. You can still EMP their PD and then utilise existing weapons such as Breach, Reaper torpedos, etc. etc. There are just "delete armour" tools that are always accessible. But are there such for shields? Yes... And no?

If you combine s-mod Stabilised Shields with that shield skill+, you will get 30% soft flux venting. Add to the fact stuff like being able to scale down shields to a very low level... And they are basically infinite. It's just... Pointless to fight them at that point. Two Paragons can hold their ground forever.

So, why am I talking about all this?

Well... It's um... Uhhhhhh... I wanted to remove those. I needed to explain why these things are kinda odd... And that they present infinite destruction. The way how I discovered Mjollnir is just stupid, is by giving Invictus its stats back from before it was nerfed. And assuming that the reason it had its flux nerfed and the reason it has so little OP... Is cause if you can have Mjollnir equipped on it and have enough flux to power it indefinitely, all it does is just delete everything. Every thing in the game has weaknesses. Range, specialisation of damage, limited durability... But limited mobility isn't a real weakness if all enemies come to you, and ships can cover each others back. And Mjollnir has no weaknesses... Because high flux spending isn't a real weakness if you can deal with it...

The point being that there are mechanics that cause you to interact with the enemy. And mechanics that interact with you. The enemy having high PD is a mechanic that prevents you from dealing damage to them which you have to counter by interacting with the enemy. A mechanic like lacklustre OP, low flux, limited shields is a thing that limits you directly... And you can only solve them by interacting with yourself.

I guess we can divide Starsector into two kinds of pain in the ass. The pain caused by the fact that the enemy responds to you, and the problem of the fact that you simply can't use something. And Mjollnir is the latter. And as soon as that problem is solved... It becomes infinitely powerful.

So, in my balance mod, I will underline Mjollnirs' secondary aspect. Its EMP. Currently its EMP is entirely irrelevant. It simply does not exist. So, I will just reduce its damage, increase its efficiency and buff its EMP. That way it will still have universal nature, but not universal in that it deletes everything as soon as you manage to power it, but universal in that it can adapt to the danger it deals with. But still requires a secondary aspect to finish the job...

Reinforce something with another thing to make it work... Create complexity. Don't let one thing do everything, otherwise you're betting on it becoming infinite. Fill shield with mobility, or fill shield with armour. But make shield, armour, mobility limited... Fill armour with long range... Fill one kind of damage with another kind of damage... But don't let it all do one thing... Otherwise you get Mjollnir. And making it cost a lot of flux won't make it disappear. It will simply make it discriminatory against ships that exist...

Or something?

[close]

[Phenir]

Let's keep this short, because I'm sure people hate reading. What are s-mods? What are ships? And why are they all bad? It feels like when the game develops its vessels, it always aims to make them as restricted in their role as possible. They always have not enough. And they always fail. The game is always stingy about OP. And if the game isn't... There are other potent restrictions. Dominator is slow and underfluxed. Onslaught too... It's always like this... There is always something wrong going on. And players are supposed to feel that wrong coursing through their veins. This is why I imagine dev struggling to make fits for enemy ships, and at some point just saying "*** it" and doing random things that don't make any sense. Because no matter what you do, the ship will always fail. The only way to make it not fail is via s-mods... And probably officers... So, here is where the Mjollnir part starts.

Remember when smods got introduced and all the ships lost a ton of op, flux, shield efficiency, etc to make up for their existence? Me neither.

So, in my balance mod, I will underline Mjollnirs' secondary aspect. Its EMP. Currently its EMP is entirely irrelevant. It simply does not exist. So, I will just reduce its damage, increase its efficiency and buff its EMP. That way it will still have universal nature, but not universal in that it deletes everything as soon as you manage to power it, but universal in that it can adapt to the danger it deals with. But still requires a secondary aspect to finish the job...

Reinforce something with another thing to make it work... Create complexity. Don't let one thing do everything, otherwise you're betting on it becoming infinite. Fill shield with mobility, or fill shield with armour. But make shield, armour, mobility limited... Fill armour with long range... Fill one kind of damage with another kind of damage... But don't let it all do one thing... Otherwise you get Mjollnir. And making it cost a lot of flux won't make it disappear. It will simply make it discriminatory against ships that exist...

Or something?

I took a peak at what you did with mjolnir. You did the opposite of your goal. At 1 flux efficiency and 300 flux cost (400/s), it becomes the go to weapon for everyone that can mount it, which is anyone with a large ballistic mount (except maybe invictus cause lol 4 large ballistic, probably could still do it by abusing active venting). Especially because now it has a significant emp payload. Emp = enemy is not shooting you = you have more flux now because you can drop shield safely, further enabling mjolnir usage. EMP is not free, else ion beam wouldn't have 3 flux efficiency. Look at Hephaestus. 440/s and that thing slaps as long as you got kinetics to support it. Mjolnir is that but doesn't need kinetics anymore and is considerably "cheaper" to fire by virtue of subtracting shield upkeep.
Now conquest is just like every other ship, slap on mjolnirs lol. When before it was unique in its ability to use mjolnir out of the box. Good job nerfing conquest.
I don't know what game you are playing but the one I am playing, I don't see onslaughts or retributions running mjolnirs even with smods which says to me that yes having a high flux cost is indeed a weakness that has to be considered. Because you also have to pay for your other weapons, PD, shield upkeep, and shield damage taken.

[Killer of Fate]

if you shunt a XIV Onslaught you can run Mjollnirs on it. Though arguably I only saw that operate against a Persean League fleet.

Spoiler

[close]

The flux efficiency of Ion Beam is caused partially by the fact that the EMP pierces shields and jumps around. Whereas the Mjollnir's doesn't. Mjollnir's EMP functions the same way Salamander's does. Meaning it has limited utility in that it will only affect weapons at the position of impact.

Increasing effectiveness and adding EMP would make the weapon really powerful on paper. But in reality Mjollnir in that mod became the most weak in terms of overall DPS. Making it a generalist gun kinda like the Pulse Laser, albeit with high range and an extreme logistical cost. Evolving into a quasi-support weapon, though further testing is needed.

Even though the addition of s-mods did not affect the design of ships, it did affect the perception of viability of ships. It's nearly impossible to convince anyone on the forums that a weapon or a ship is underpowered, because you can just stack 3 s-mods to make a ship viable. Even though that technically won't make it viable in general... It will just make it strong in the context of s-modding. Whereas the context I want it to be strong in, is the context of generic gameplay. Aka. in enemy hands.

The point is to create a stronger interaction between the player and the NPCs by giving NPCs higher competence which imo can be achieved mostly via tweaks here and there so that their ships and weapons are more attuned with their non-smodded, non-super optimised intelligence. This would also increase build variety as with the current non-smodding designs, these are affected by extremely limited hull capabilities. Which can only be bypassed by building an extremely modest variant or s-modding it.

So, basically... You might notice the mod is called "remnant nerfs", though technically the intention is not to nerf Remnants. Remnants have ships built around their reckless behaviour. They're fool-proof. The point is to observe the behaviour of NPCs and generic builds, and see whether ships can be changed to allow them to also be fool-proof without at the same time creating a balancing shitshow... So, nerf Remnants... By making everyone Remnants. As the intention is to change how the game works from it being too easy and then too hard, to just being relatively hard all the time. Which sounds self-defeating, kinda... But considering it's a sandbox game and not a non-linear experience, it could actually improve gameplay.

[Phenir]

if you shunt a XIV Onslaught you can run Mjollnirs on it. Though arguably I only saw that operate against a Persean League fleet.

Spoiler

[close]

That invictus killing the conquest is case in point. Completely fluxed out just as the conquest dies. If it wasn't a conquest, i.e. anything that can tank slightly better, that invictus would be dead weight while it vented. You can also see the AI being terrible at actually applying pressure despite having numbers advantage. It still goes for capture points, splitting up its own fleet.

The flux efficiency of Ion Beam is caused partially by the fact that the EMP pierces shields and jumps around. Whereas the Mjollnir's doesn't. Mjollnir's EMP functions the same way Salamander's does. Meaning it has limited utility in that it will only affect weapons at the position of impact.

Increasing effectiveness and adding EMP would make the weapon really powerful on paper. But in reality Mjollnir in that mod became the most weak in terms of overall DPS. Making it a generalist gun kinda like the Pulse Laser, albeit with high range and an extreme logistical cost. Evolving into a quasi-support weapon, though further testing is needed.

Well good thing weapons tend to generally but on the edge of the hull facing the enemy. And even in the case where you can't completely neuter the enemies offensive, you are still significantly reducing incoming damage which still means more flux can be put towards damage raising the efficiency of the weapon in a roundabout manner.

Even though the addition of s-mods did not affect the design of ships, it did affect the perception of viability of ships. It's nearly impossible to convince anyone on the forums that a weapon or a ship is underpowered, because you can just stack 3 s-mods to make a ship viable. Even though that technically won't make it viable in general... It will just make it strong in the context of s-modding. Whereas the context I want it to be strong in, is the context of generic gameplay. Aka. in enemy hands.

Oh right, I forgot how underpowered paragon is because it has 200 less armor than the onslaught, lmao.

[Killer of Fate]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Spoiler

The reason I nerfed Mjollnir is cause I changed Invictus' stats causing it to be able to deal very high damage in a short period of time by the nature of having access to more flux.

You have to understand that my balancing decisions are kinda based in a separate reality of the game, which you can observe in that tiny mod I linked... And that the nerfing of Mjollnir was a consequence of things shifting a significant amount in all possible aspects of the game.

Basically, here's what happened. I wanted Invictus to cost less DP, because I feel like when fighting Luddic Church fleets, too much DP is getting stuck within a ship that technically does a lot but also does nothing. By the virtue of getting stuck on the other side of the map.

I wanted to make Invictus less pricey, believing that all the other balance changes I have performed which operated as various buffs to other ships made it less stupid to deal with. But the problem began when I increased Invictus OP to 300 and restored its old flux stats. The ones from before the nerf. And realised that whilst every Ballistic weapon of large kind is usually restricted by a DPS that halves against a durability, effectively cutting the damage of a Ballistic ship in half, but allowing for greater efficiency, Mjollnir had no such weakness. And Mjollnir could have been used by relatively flux rich Invicti to instantly kill enemies on the other side of the map. It can also do so with just simply combination of various things like the one in the video I linked. And whilst this strategy might have trouble working against a Radiant or a Paragon, 90% of enemies in the game will die instantly to that kind of firepower.

So, I nerfed Mjollnir. But currently I realise the nerfing of Mjollnir affects too much my Derelict builds, which I have reworked into not being bad. So, I am restoring Mjollnir, and instead I will simply nerf Invicti by lowering its durability. But also keeping the 50 DP thing...

I was worried about lowering durability, because Invicti's AI seems to be kinda cowardly in my playthrough, even with an aggressive and full assault behaviour, the Invictus will still not approach enemies at close ranges, hanging in the back and never choosing to tank. This is most likely caused imo by the fact that Invictus has theoretically only 1000 effective armour, and aggression is caused by the amount of armour. Thus when you give a Harbinger 1300 armour for eg. it will become really aggressive, or when you know... Give burn drive to an Apogee, it won't charge forward. Same goes with Invicti. It won't charge forward, it will always hang in the back and keep firing, because durability isn't tied to hull durability or long-term durability, but current damage resistance. Recently someone made a post about Grendel being too cowardly, and that is what caused that behaviour as well in the Grendel. This is also why giving a ship hull durability is actually more effective on ships with a shield, because it does not affect aggression on armoured ships... So it's better to get something else there to enhance AI's behaviour.

So, upon sleeping on this decision, I'm choosing to revert the Mjollnir buff. Though you have to understand that it still is basically an s-mod weapon, because in normal circumstances of the game there is only one ship that can really use it, it's highly inflexible, but it also becomes overpowered as soon as it can be used. Considering it operates outside the rules of all other ballistic weapons. So, it's a mechanic that has to be designed in a way that the player can't use it. Because as soon as they do, the world ends. But whatever...

The same kinda applies to shields. I would argue that Paragon is probably the strongest ship in the game, because it is the only ship that executes the shield concept to its extreme. Gaining relatively infinite durability by using hard-flux venting mechanics and extreme efficiency. At that point making Fortress Shield kinda unnecessary. So, yeah...

ps. actually no, that is also dumb... Hmmmm... I guess I should nerf Mjollnir after all.

I tested it, and I just believe that a weapon with 900 range and universal damage should not exist... Because it's... Just a ticking balancing time bomb.

[close]

okay, ignore all the dumb *** I've written here...

Here's TL;DR

this is a balancing mod in which things happen. I want Mjollnir to be usable by more than ships that have ridiculously high flux venting, because if it is used that way, then it becomes overpowered and allows them to easily burst ships across long distances with very little setback. So, I reworked Mjollnir into a generalist weapon that although does substantial damage, the damage is no way near as high as it was before. However the EMP charge allows it to still win duels by the nature of exposing enemies to damage. However it no longer is a DELETION TOOL just like the Plasma Cannon is.

This will allow it to be equipped by space stations, standard ships, etc. Even Manticore, whereas previously it was only used exclusively by ships that were the Conquest, or ridiculously min-maxed ships. Because it was just very difficult to maintain otherwise, and unless it reached critical damaging mass, it would be useless... Then passing that tier and becoming ridiculous.

That is all.

[Killer of Fate]

@Phenir I changed my mind about Mjollnir, nerfing it whilst would make it harder for Shield Shunted and s-modded bla bla bla ships to exist, it forms an important part of many ships with limited weapon slots. Whilst Conquest imo is underperforming in vanilla or at least too frustrating to utilise in my case. I needed Mjollnir for my buffed Derelicts. As soon as I nerfed Mjollnir, my slightly tweaked version of Rampart could no longer do this

Spoiler

[close]

well it obviously still could, but it would be far slower.

It was also important for Guardian, as is in this mod in an attempt to normalise it, I changed its hybrid slots to ballistic.

[TK3600]

Mojnir is very close to being balanced. Just make it 1.2 flux/dmg and it will be fine, based on its scaling to Plasma cannon, who is balanced.

[Killer of Fate]

Mojnir is very close to being balanced. Just make it 1.2 flux/dmg and it will be fine, based on its scaling to Plasma cannon, who is balanced.

Mjolnir feels ok... The reason it has less flux efficiency than Plasma Cannon is cause it's cheaper and has bigger range