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Author Topic: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - *hotfix* 4/14/22  (Read 778036 times)

Morrokain

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Re: [0.9.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - Lore update 1/20
« Reply #645 on: February 29, 2020, 05:16:53 PM »

Still, the enterprising titans controlling the industry soon caught on to the idea that such technology could be marketed for targeted mutation of the human genome for enhancement purposes.

So... they're kind of like the Morthan Solidarity?

Oh that was a cool read! I read the chapter and it is very close-
Spoiler
I would more consider that scenario, actually, as the state of the Domain at the time of it's collapse for those who could afford it. The Adamantine Consortium uses that technology for this purpose (and can survive on toxic planets, etc, as a result) - the origin of the Adamantine Consortium more qualifies as kind of a dark offshoot of that kind of thing gone awry from the experiment's intended results for some strange reason and in a worst-case-scenario kind of way- catalyzed into an extreme horror far beyond what would be considered remotely human. This source became something altogether different than what the stranded colonists caught within the radius of contamination were equipped to deal with- it is somewhat alien in nature yet human-engineered off a previously human consciousness.

Think Code Veronica: Alexander and Alfred/Alexia Ashford combined with The Cthaeh but still in it's infantile state and only recently self-aware. Instead of influence by omniscient understanding of the universe and perfect maliciousness spreading chaos in this case, the being's prodigy-so to speak- comes from viral transmission through a bite. Not-quite-zombie but darn close without intervention- whether to cure (if there is one) or make stronger and more self aware (dreadlords/barons).
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« Last Edit: February 29, 2020, 10:34:50 PM by Morrokain »
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Morrokain

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I think a lot can be by length of trail and projectile size. I think the speed of the various shots will do a lot to make the guns feel differently already even if they had similar colours - and a slow shot feels powerful even if it's not a huge fx. Personally I really like at least some damage type standardization, visually - it lets you know if you need to raise or drop shields.

For example, doing a quick check, the assault autocannon and the dual autocannon fill very similar roles (assault, ballistic, HE, no-flux). They even have similar per-shot damage and projectile speeds (if not the same speed) - but one of them is traditional HE orange and one of them is traditional kinetic white. And the orange one (the assault autocannon, I believe) is very hard to spot in a fight. Railgun shots are much, much easier to spot and I think that's because of the long trails (and the kinetic white).

The avalanche cannon is, imo, almost perfect in terms of fx design - it's got the fat projectile and long-ish body that says "strike weapon shot, better do something about this". It's just kinetic white. The fissure cannon is very similar but reads as HE.
Although I'd honestly switch those two around - the fissure cannon FX is slightly larger and "more dangerous" looking, but the avalanche has a lot more per-shot damage. Per-shot damage seems like a really important stat to look at when deciding how big and obvious to make a weapons FX.

Fire rate, sounds, projectile speed and burst size (and magazine size really) do a lot to make weapons distinct, even if their FX is very similar.

I took this to heart and reworked the ballistic weapon projectiles to increase combat intuitiveness of the TC. Yellow-orange-red is now the spectrum for assault-hybrid-strike/fire support HE damage (per hit is the modifier of color) and I've also made changes to visibly scale bullet size by damage/tier. I have plans to improve the kinetic ballistic line in this way as well (as far as power intuitiveness not really FX color).

For the more exotic Persean League ballistics... I have no solution as of yet. I am considering either making their bullet FX more exotic and better describe their damage/high tier nature in that way, or make them uniquely energy damage like the Mjolnir of vanilla (and therefore a unique ballistic niche for that faction). Thoughts and opinions if anyone has any would be appreciated.

I've fixed the sound/FX issues with the Micro Repeater line of weapons (Those weapons also now deal less overall sustained damage than before), and the simulations I've ran with faction equality considering the new additions has been positive overall, but there is more testing and possible changes to do, yet, along that front.

I also still need to finish mod compatibility changes for hullmods, ship systems and variants and purge any redundancy there, but I've made some additional progress and removed some unnecessary files to ease the load at game start in the future. General clean up is in effect.

Overall patch notes (not yet ready for release by any means):

Spoiler
Campaign Content Additions and Balance Changes
-------------

 --- Campaign Changes:
-------------
    - Revamped most new factions colonies to better follow industry count rules per colony size and size standards within vanilla factions.
    -

 --- Colony Changes:
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    - Reduced Archean Order colony size for several colonies.
    - Removed orbital station from Xolydunne so it can be more easily raided.
    - Reduced the resource deposit quality for Ilyss and Arkmaros in some areas.
    - Reduced industry counts on many Adamantine Consortium colonies.
    - Added Luddic Church colony with fuel production and heavy industry.
    - Added two additional Sci-Corps colonies to better separate out industries and resources.
-----

Combat Balance Changes
-------------
 - Reduced sustained DPS of Micro Repeater and Dual Micro Repeater.
 - Revamped ballistic weapon FX under these principles:
   - Yellow-Orange-Red color indication of assault-heavy assault-strike weaponry.
   - Bullet size now scales by tier to facilitate an intuitive learning of combat threats to armor and better teach a player when to raise shields.
-----

Misc
-------------
 - Reduced sound of Micro Repeater and Dual Micro Repeater.
 - Reduced bullet size of Micro Repeater and Dual Micro Repeater.
 - Removed override behavior of the mod on fighter wings, ships, and weapons.
-----
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DatonKallandor

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Sounds real good, looking forward to trying that.
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Space Cowboy

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Hi, to start I just want to say that this mod is awesome, I'm having a great time with it so far. I've been wondering if the scaling of npc fleets works differently in this than in the base game? I am currently trying to play as an explorer with a relatively small and efficient fleet in order to get to the far corners of the map and back. I'm running into an issue where every random fleet I encounter, whether it's pirates, prospectors, or major factions seems to have hyper scaled to the point where they have about 5-10 capital ships each on average. Is this intended? I don't remember the scaling happening this quickly in the un-modded game but I could be remembering it incorrectly. I've been trying to get away without using a capital because the fuel/supply cost limits exploring range but it's getting kind of impossible. I'm not complaining, I'd just like to know how the scaling works so that I can play around it. In my opinion though, it would be more immersive if there were more variable npc fleet sizes instead of every fleet becoming huge.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2020, 10:06:08 AM by Space Cowboy »
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Morrokain

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Sounds real good, looking forward to trying that.

Thanks! Should hopefully be able to release the changes fairly soon depending upon how much time I get to work on it.

Hi, to start I just want to say that this mod is awesome, I'm having a great time with it so far. I've been wondering if the scaling of npc fleets works differently in this than in the base game? I am currently trying to play as an explorer with a relatively small and efficient fleet in order to get to the far corners of the map and back. I'm running into an issue where every random fleet I encounter, whether it's pirates, prospectors, or major factions seems to have hyper scaled to the point where they have about 5-10 capital ships each on average. Is this intended? I don't remember the scaling happening this quickly in the un-modded game but I could be remembering it incorrectly. I've been trying to get away without using a capital because the fuel/supply cost limits exploring range but it's getting kind of impossible. I'm not complaining, I'd just like to know how the scaling works so that I can play around it. In my opinion though, it would be more immersive if there were more variable npc fleet sizes instead of every fleet becoming huge.

Thanks I'm glad you are enjoying it! I don't think I've done anything to make the fleets scale faster than vanilla fleets, but I certainly could be wrong. If I did, it would likely be a misunderstanding of the faction file settings so I'll have to double check there. Iirc, I thought I had set them close to or the same as vanilla as far as number of ships - at least for the factions you are speaking to (salvagers, independent, pirates, etc).

Just so I can rule out any other potential causes: Are you running any other mods alongside the TC?

I know fleet sizes in vanilla are changing in the next update too, so if it ends up not being anything I've inadvertently done then it will be changed eventually anyway. Thanks for the feedback and I'll check on it!
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Space Cowboy

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Thanks I'm glad you are enjoying it! I don't think I've done anything to make the fleets scale faster than vanilla fleets, but I certainly could be wrong. If I did, it would likely be a misunderstanding of the faction file settings so I'll have to double check there. Iirc, I thought I had set them close to or the same as vanilla as far as number of ships - at least for the factions you are speaking to (salvagers, independent, pirates, etc).

Just so I can rule out any other potential causes: Are you running any other mods alongside the TC?

I know fleet sizes in vanilla are changing in the next update too, so if it ends up not being anything I've inadvertently done then it will be changed eventually anyway. Thanks for the feedback and I'll check on it!

The only other mod I'm running atm is lazylib 2.4e. I'll try turning it off to see if that has any effect. I'm glad to hear that vanilla fleet sizes are getting an adjustment though.
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Morrokain

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The only other mod I'm running atm is lazylib 2.4e. I'll try turning it off to see if that has any effect. I'm glad to hear that vanilla fleet sizes are getting an adjustment though.

That shouldn't be what's causing this afaik. That is a library of scripts to my knowledge rather than any sort of new feature or faction mod that could possibly edit that behavior. The list of installed mods always helps troubleshoot to give context so thanks for sharing that, though!
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Sidestrafe2462

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Just read those last few posts

So happy I'm purging the AC now XD

Oh, the music in the main menu changed. Is that AO or some other mod?
« Last Edit: March 13, 2020, 08:05:20 AM by Sidestrafe2462 »
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Morrokain

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Just read those last few posts

So happy I'm purging the AC now XD

Oh, the music in the main menu changed. Is that AO or some other mod?

 ;D

Regarding music:

Yes it does- though other mods may as well I'm honestly not sure or even how overrides would work there. I think AO would override it because the mod id is alphabetically above most mods.
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LordKiwi

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Hi,
Okay first this is a great mod thank you for all the work/time you put in it!
BUT... I have few issues like: it's say on the mod page that Boggled Terraforming is compatible but when I turn on Archean Order, it turn off TB. and if I try to turn on TB again it will turn off AO...
And the second is that it cannot invade planets or spacial stations, I've tried to attack the station first but don't even show me the text line, maybe I do something wrong...
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Morrokain

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Hi,
Okay first this is a great mod thank you for all the work/time you put in it!
BUT... I have few issues like: it's say on the mod page that Boggled Terraforming is compatible but when I turn on Archean Order, it turn off TB. and if I try to turn on TB again it will turn off AO...
And the second is that it cannot invade planets or spacial stations, I've tried to attack the station first but don't even show me the text line, maybe I do something wrong...

Hi there i'm happy you are enjoying it!  :)

For issue number one: See the instructions on the main page for disabling the TC behavior of the mod- that is why TB is turned off when you enable AO. Also be sure to read the disclaimer there on mod merging and keep in mind that mods change all the time so if something ends up not being compatible let me know. My goal is for the next update is to have full mod compatibility.

Issue number two: I think those features are from Nexerelin so after you follow the instructions for issue one, install that mod and that should be an option. Unless you are referring to raids or orbital bombardments- that would be a bug if so.
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LordKiwi

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Ok, my bad... everything is working very well!
Thanks for the help
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kurtwulfgang

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Would like to point out that Imperium faction mod is not crashing this mod. I'm not seeing them much, but they're in an alliance and seem to be working well enough.

Midway through the game btw, 20 hour playtime, no problem so far.
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Morrokain

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Would like to point out that Imperium faction mod is not crashing this mod. I'm not seeing them much, but they're in an alliance and seem to be working well enough.

Midway through the game btw, 20 hour playtime, no problem so far.

Thanks! Added it to the list real quick. Working on ships systems then hullmods will be more tricky. But the issues with ships should be resolved for the next release according to my tests. The only unknown right now is the potential for seeded hulls to be a problem for the TC experience. I'm inquiring about that. Shouldn't have any more random crashes with any mods ideally, though, if my theory proves true.

A side note: Can anyone confirm any mods that specifically override vanilla variants of anything? Adding additional variants to existing hulls is fine, but does anything rely upon specific vanilla variants for anything? (I'm wondering if I can skip adding a prefix to them since that would be the most time intensive change of the group)
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Chaotic-Entropy

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Is there any way to cut down the number of portraits in the mod? Some are fairly in keeping and some are completely out of place (I'm looking at you, Eve Online...) and I'd love to be able to clear out some of the chaff but it causes errors.
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