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Cluster in the outskirts (current - check screenshot in spoilers)

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Spread around the core systems

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Spread all over the place

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Total Members Voted: 16

[gun&drink]

I do suggest that you update the mod, a closer look at the screenshot and I quickly see that you must still be using v0.3, that may fix the similar ships a bit

Okay, now I feel dumb now  . I will reply to your post in detail once I do a quick check in the new version, as some of the things I have pointed out may have changed
that being said, upon updating my starsector crashes, giving the following fonal lines of log in the end:

45943 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore  - Loading variant [C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\data\variants\fighters\xyphos_Fighter.variant]
45944 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils  - Loading JSON from [ABSOLUTE_AND_CWD: null (C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\data\variants\fighters\xyphos_Fighter.variant)]
45944 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore  - Loading variant [C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault.variant]
45945 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils  - Loading JSON from [ABSOLUTE_AND_CWD: null (C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault.variant)]
45945 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore  - Loading variant [C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault_LRabSabsLrlas.variant]
45946 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.loading.LoadingUtils  - Loading JSON from [ABSOLUTE_AND_CWD: null (C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\..\mods\FDS\data\variants\affliction\fds_affliction_assault_LRabSabsLrlas.variant)]
47475 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.specs.HullVariantSpec.<init>(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.OO0000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.OO0000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.ResourceLoaderState.init(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

nevermind, this only happens after overwriting the old mod directory with thenew one, deleting and copying the new fixes it

[gun&drink]

Okay let's do this again:
- I like the new dagger changes, it's far more usable now and definitely has a place
- I didn't see any changes about market spawn and such, but both weapons and ships in markets seem really limited. after forcing market upgrade about 15 times I was able to get a few hatreds and remnant daggers, but ootherwise corusant is an endless river of wraths, revenges in the ship side and autoblaster batteries/heavy beams on the weapon side. not a single large energy weapon appeared in all of this process
some of this may be because some ships have been removed from the market (I can kinda understand the terror as it is a killing machine, but I would look for an alternative way to introduce it to the campaign when you have the rest of the balance of the mod in an stable position) but there is something fishy going on right now with the markets
-I heavily disagree with the changes made in the heavy beam and he council spear. the heavy beam was already a bit hard to justify with 14 OP, but now with less range, less efficiency and 16 OP (I think it was 14 in the previous version, this change isn't in the changelog) it's not really worth it. if it was in the 13-11 range of OP I could see some use to it accompanied of the remnant dagger due to same range.
the coucil spear went from being awfully efficient and strong but extremely slow (which was still reasonable IMO) to being a tachyon lance with a bit of extra range but worse everything else: less efficient, less damage per shot and less shots per minute. even the OP drop doesn't make this changes worth it
-the removal of alot of the blaster/autoblaster weapon variants is understandable, for the reasons I pointed out in my first post. I still believe that with the right changes they can be a really fun combination, but they can wait until they are reintroduced. Gladiator Beam wasn't a favorite of mine and needs some work but I could see some use due to the long range it had for a medium weapon

First of all, thanks for your feedback, I see you took the time to write all this down and I appreciate it, like I have already said countless times, I do enjoy listening to other people's feedback since that is what really helps me put all this together to amke something you (the players) will enjoy.

The sprite work is not mine, all credits should go to MrDavidoff. I am using his sprites with his permission as placeholders to replace the old (in)famous 2k long pixel ships and I do plan on reworking all the current sprites, even if only a simple polish.

Regarding ship balancing, All ships have been through loads of stat changes, you can look at the changelogs for yourself, and before I even released the first version of this mod further work has been done to put most ship stats to a "decent" level with further tweaking after release thanks to the feedback of some Discord users

I have considered making an IBB ship several times, I even have a couple of sprites reserved for that/those ship(s), although that is not quite a priority at the moment and I will have to discuss further details with someone, possibly SWP's creator, to know exactly what are the needs and work that needs to be done.

Again, most of the sound files are also from MrDavidoff, although I have pulled some from other Star Wars based mods like the one mentioned in the credits section. And no, sound is not "unappreciated", at least not for Starsector. Just ask literally anyone what is their opinion on Blackrock's sound quality and you'll see what I mean.

you are welcome, it's the least I can do when you are doing free content for the community which people enjoy

I didn't know that the sprites and sound were from MrDavidoff, but I still thank you for putting them into use. it's no easy task to balance and put into work a mod even when you have the sprites, and even more so when you are planning on polishing them. can't wait for those sweet IBBs you just mentioned

I have tried balancing the Gravity Well with a value of flux generated per second to limit the time the system can effectively stay active, but the ship is already quite vulnerable as 20% of the ship's flux capacity is automatically filled with hard flux, the ship can't vent while the system is active and it takes 30 seconds both to reach full power and to finish the cooldown, not to mention decreased shield efficiency while the system is active (unless I switched something and it actually buffs the shields, need to test it carefully). Other than that I have tried to make the ship more of a support ship with stats comparable in some levels to cargo ships or combat freighters, and code restrictions to prevent multiple ships to deploy their system simultaneously when there should only be one active at a time, both to prevent a null-area over a given region and to prevent performance issues.

The ugly sprites when damaged are not really an issue that only affects the Loyalty, and that may be due to a number of reasons, one of them possibly the excessive amount of greebles in all ships making the damage sprites even more noisier. I will see what I can do about that...

The Terror had 7 bays in the past, so you have seen nothing
But yeah, the lack of a carrier is damaging the faction as a whole because some ships have 1-2 wings but nothing over that. This problem only exists because I am using sprites that are not mine and I have failed to find a proper carrier sprite from the collection that was given to me. This is definitely an issue to be fixed in the future because I really would like this faction to have more fighter power.
Ohh and fighters will be balanced someday, its another item in my TODO bucket.

The doctrine for the ships is still being considered and drafted. A valid choice would be heavy slow battleships and cruisers and fast frigates, destroyers and fighters, as it would fit the current lore, but this is also an item in my TODO bucket, which is starting to turn into a barrel.

The hullmods should be only two, one of them built-in in the Rancour, which I consider to be quite powerful as it is. It allows the ship to move with the 0-flux boost at up to 20% flux, 4 times what vanilla gives you through a skill iirc. The other is a mod that decreases repair time by 50% and the time the ship remains disabled by 10%, which should quite powerful as well.
More hullmods would certainly spice things up, and maybe even add a faction-wide hullmod similar to Neutrino's to give the ships some special effect, but that has to be analysed first.

The descriptions are a work in progress, as all the mod is in fact. At first the Submission was supposed to be a large combat freighter with a dedicated combat sibling, the Remorse, which has been removed in the previous update. They both are cruiser sized, it might have been a lapse when naming/labeling the ships, thanks for pointing that out.


The ships should be easier to distinguish right now. As of v0.4.0 there should only be two battleships, one of them with fighter wings, and two dreadnaughts, one of which is currently only available in a custom mission. Before this update that problem was severe, and still is, but now it should only really be a problem for fighters and frigates, which still have some "duplicates". Were you referring to the Hatred/Suffering or to some other ship(s)?

to be fair, I didn't have the chance to experience the gravity well in detail as the ship didn't show up in the market in my regular run and I had to use console command to test it a little, so my opinion isn't as fleshed out as some of the other weapons and ships in the mod. still, it should be treated with extreme care for future changes IMO

the 'duplicate problem is way less severe now that the campaign catalog is smaller. I was mostly referring to things lime Hatred/Suffering and  Submission/Remonse, but for what I have seen right now in the market it's not such a problem right now

regarding the doctrine of the ships and the lack of dedicated carrier, take your time. as long as you know that right now that's a problem the faction has it's good enough for me. Also Jesus, that 7 bay Terror sounds terrifying

I think I missed the first hullmod you mentioned in my run, but that one actually sounds very interesting. the second one didn't really bring much to the table to me mainly because it seemed like a different take on the vanilla automatic repair unit. I'm probably not the best player to use as a judge in hullmods, as I consider them something really important (and something I can be specially harsh on) when a mod decides to introduce them for the simple fact that one cool hullmod completely changes the way I make specific builds all across the mods, so take my criticism with a grain of salt
mildly related to this, but when you find the time update the catalog of weapons, ships and hullmods in the first page, as it makes finding whatever new I can find and test way more easy. a simple list in text would be fine really, just to know "oh, this exists" without having to go to the command prompt where something could be missed easily

Ahh, weapons.... One update almost entirely dedicated to weapon balancing, but mostly targeting damage and flux values. The actual market price and OP cost still needs tweaking, obviously, and like with the ships many weapons were also removed in v0.4.0 as they weren't really adding anything different to the game. Needless to say, there will still be changes to most weapons.

it's really difficult to find the balance on those kind of things, just keep working on it and slowly but surely it will take shape

Once again, thanks for all the feedback! I really want to make a mod that people will enjoy, and leaving a "Star Wars" mod left to oblivion again like many other did is not in my plans, progress may be slow but I want to see this mod stand in the Mod Index some day, once it has reached a proper level of balance and content.

cheers mate, good luck

[Johnny Cocas]

Fringe Defence Syndicate v0.5.0 WIP
- Fighter rework;
- Cargo ship tweaks;
- Full variant rebuild;

Full changelog in the first page!

[stormbringer951]

Quick thoughts based on 5-6 battles of fighting FDS and a bit of testing with the Anguish.

I knew this would be a bugbear for me going in as soon as I browsed the OP, but a lot of ships are still similar-looking. Quite a few are hard to ID from the silhouette alone, and as all the ships have very similar line/panel work and many share pretty similar patterns of turret layout, it's hard for me to ID FDS ships, and for the more similar ships within each family, even after I learn the small differences, they can be extremely hard to tell on the tactical map or at a glance in battle. I understand to some extent that this is one area where changes may be unlikely because lots of Star Destroyer type ships do look extremely similar, and sweeping changes would require retiring/heavily redoing a lot of art, but at-a-glance recognition is still an issue for me.

Some weapons are not well-enough differentiated: PD Mk II and PD Mk III can be merged into one intermediate weapon between PD and LRPD lasers, or scrapped entirely maybe. The recoloured Swarmer doesn't offer any hint it has lower ammo cap and does 400 frag damage unless you already checked the stats somewhere.

Tali MRMs are strong, being excellently maneuverable and extremely fast with a decent HE payload to abuse ships that are backing out after losing the flux war. All this means the AI uses it very effectively. I find it hard to visually parse them from swarmers, since they are only a little bit larger with a bit more of an engine glow. In the middle of a pitched battle where my attention is divided, especially if missiles are coming from offscreen, I often don't notice they aren't swarmers until they are closing very fast and take a surprisingly large chunk out of my / an ally's armour. Among other MRMs with a similar role, Jongleur ESADs have a very distinctive red warhead and bright engine glow and Thunderbolts are a striking red with the Diable engine style, both of which draw attention, while Hornets have that trademark wiggling flight path which is very attention grabbing. Other missiles with a similar engine glow often have a beefier more noticeable missile sprite, or some other thing which makes them easy to ID within a second or so (hornet flight path, annihilators unguided + that launch volume, pilums are slow). I would quite like to see Tali MRMs have a more recognisable or imposing sprite or distinctive engine glow / contrail.

The Anguish is way too strong.

Tali launch early in attack run feels perfunctory. However, it still delivers 4 sabots per fighter bay, which is a lot. In 1v1 simulator tests, 2x bays of Anguishes is enough to always overload an Eagle from zero flux. 4x bays overloaded every capital ship I tried (Mimir, Kurmaraja, Onslaught, a few others I can't recall right now) except the Paragon, which picked them off with extended-range phase beams and used fortress shield to tank the sabot volleys for negligible hard flux. Fighter cover doesn't seem to do much. The really good beam interceptors are stopped by the shield, and the ships don't tend to have long to shoot them with main guns before being completely overloaded. A 2x bay trident strike against the sim regular Eagle loses 2-3 bombers due to beams on the way out. A 2x bay Anguish strike hasn't taken losses yet in my tests because the Eagle overloads every time. In actual fleet battles where ships already have some amount of flux built up and allied ships to distract them from the bombers and follow up on the overload, performance is even better.

Anguishes are very competitively armed with a turreted weapon and shields. While regrouping, they have enough range on the Tali MRM to act like a cheap version of a Hellrider Rafale and endlessly fire Talis from standoff range, while hovering protectively over their carrier and brawling anything that come close.

After a quick look at other fighters, this is also a problem with the Remorse wings. IMO extremely long range stand-off bombers are hard to balance if they do more than nominal damage since they rarely take losses due to never even getting close to enemy guns even on strike behaviour, and in a player battlecarrier / fast carrier you can use them as a standoff-range regenerating missile launcher while kiting around with zero-flux speed boost on regroup.

Anguishes are slot-efficient, which is an important attribute for FDS since current ships have fighter bays sprinkled over many ships rather than concentrated in a few carriers to be stacked in a DP-efficient manner. However, they can take several roles extremely well: they can act as effective support fighters (an infinitely reloading Tali MRM rack + support fighters hovering that are competitive with heavy fighters), and they have an overwhelming sabot strike sometimes followed up by a significant amount of damage to the overloaded ship when they sometimes stick around and follow up.

Anguishes cost 1 more OP and 1 less bay than 2x longbows, which is already a bargain even if you got nothing else - you can use them on 1x bay carriers, you have the choice to leave the bay empty, if you have no OP and don't care about replacement rate you can add talons, if you have OP you can stack more expensive fighters. In addition to twice the sabot density of Longbows, they also come with a shield with which they are survivable against most PD solutions and which they sometimes accidentally protect their sabots with, they have turreted guns with which to casually eat interceptors and brawl medium to heavy fighters, and a standoff missile into the bargain. Hyenas were very underpriced efficient strike bombers that broke shields and armour with perfect synchronized timing (IMO no bomber should be able to do both competitively since it scales better the more you can stack, and you lose reasons to make trade-offs with the right mix of specialist wings) but Anguishes get other perks that more than make up for that and the hefty OP increase.

[Johnny Cocas]

First of all, thanks for the feedback!

The ships are still quite similar, yes, and I already have some ideas on my mind on how to differentiate them visualy, but that is an issue that will only be fixed in the update that will rework the ship sprites, so it will take a while...

The Tali MRM was balanced against missiles like the Hornets, and they are indeed faster than the Hornets because the Hornets can to some extent dodge incoming fire while Tali's can't, they are a more direct kind of missiles. Meanwhile, I could do something else to help the player know that missile will hurt, will look into it.

The Anguish is a very special case, I decided to keep it as an experiment but I just might remove it in the next patch, to nerf it to the level where it is balanced it will be just like the other fighters in FDS, not worth keeping it in that case.

Regarding the other fighters they will still take another nerf as they are too well equipped, and I'll have to see what will take to make them engage at "normal" range, maybe create a missile variant with a smaller range (and dmage while I'm at it, Talis being fired by fighters will still hurt a lot otherwise).


I will fix most of these issues by the next update, so stay tuned

[Johnny Cocas]

Fringe Defence Syndicate v0.6.0 WIP
- Hullmod mechanics fixed;
- Ship tweaks and Weapon Balancing;
- Started work on sector layouts;

NOTE: Some variants will have extra unspent OP, this will be fixed ASAP as I can't do it right now.

[Andreasaa2000]

There is a typo in the desc. for the Hatred class capital ship. Just a small one, and thank you sincerely for this mod. Ive been looking for exactly this. Great job.

[Johnny Cocas]

There is a typo in the desc. for the Hatred class capital ship. Just a small one, and thank you sincerely for this mod. Ive been looking for exactly this. Great job.

Well thank you
And thanks for pointing out the typo as well

[Johnny Cocas]

Mod updated to 0.7.0 and later patched to 0.7.1, changelogs for both updates will be released as soon as possible, as in whenever I have the time to do it.

The 0.7.0 update was a quick update with some smaller changes that were ready to some extent, all other changes are related to code and need more time to be ready and/or tested, a thing I am lacking lately.


Thanks for your patience...

[Johnny Cocas]

Changelogs available! Check the changelog section in the first page to see what was added and changed;

[Delta7]

Those fighters look cool as hell in December! They look a lot like what I was going for back in my ship designing days of BSF.

As for the space wedges... I very much approve. Venators, Victories, Acclamators, Imperators/ Imperials, Tectors, Etc.

Also, why does this color scheming and naming remind me vaguely of several BSF factions? Novian ships, despite being giant space spiders, had a very similar color scheme (although admittedly, so do some midline SS ships,) and these ship names and space triangles remind me of various other Battleship Forever factions.

[Delta7]

lucrehulk?

The ship weapon pack has the Cathedral, if a giant space circle with fighter bays is what you're looking for...

Although I will admit that it would be cool to see the Lucrehulk in starsector. Very cool.

[Johnny Cocas]

So, it's been like... almost 6 months since the last update...

Thus, I figured this would be a good time to say that the mod is not dead, and some free time is starting to finally appear.

Right now I am in the process of updating the mod to Starsector v0.9, and with this update the new star systems will also be released, although still a WIP and without a real ETA on sight (sorry...).

I'd like to thank everybody who has put their faith into this mod, and I don't want to let anyone down. News may be slow, for now, but I will not give up, you can trust me on that.
This update will mainly be a 0.9 update mod, like many others, while also adding the reworked and rebuilt star systems. There will now be less systems, but with more content in each of them, making them feel more alive.


So, what's next after the first v0.9 update?
New AI for the Suffering's Hyperspace Jump ability, some new weapons and/or weapon tweaks, new portraits (currently in negotiation with third party help, a.k.a. friends), and the ship sprites, eventually, with this list of features reflecting the probable order of release.

On a side note, I am already drafting some ship outlines, trying to make one ship per role per size (if possible), in order to prevent rescaled models or clones that do almost the same as the previous, only with buffed stats, with the main challenge here being maintaining the "murder wedge" style while making each ship feel unique. Ohh, and fighters, I can't think of a good shape for a fighter.... I'll most likely take the general shape of the ones already being used and reskin them or something... We'll see


Don't lose hope, and sorry for making you wait.

- joaonunes, mostly known on Discord as "Johnny Cocks"

[Johnny Cocas]

The mod has finally been updated to Starsector v0.9!

A proper changelog will be released soon.

Please note that this build has NOT been properly tested, if any kind of problem appears due to this mod please give me a heads up, either here on the forums or on Discord.

Cheers!

[DinoZavarski]

One idea about Loyality. If you hardcode in it extreme modifications from SWP and repair droids it feels much more familiar to fly. Actually it becomes really quite a fun. Also i think this ship just MUST have shielded cargo holds.

Why not creating hullmod that emulates this mix - something like "illegal modifications".