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[Albreo]

Do you wish to know how angry Hegemony look like? Its war-weariness went over 86000. What is war-weariness anyway?



So you have chosen death... not yet.

There's a bug where retreating ship's fighters were left behind in the ongoing fight. Just chasing last remaining ships to find out there are 200 fighters at the map edge.

Ps. Holy crab, I'm pvping 3 fleets at a time.

[Morrokain]

Do you wish to know how angry Hegemony look like? Its war-weariness went over 86000. What is war-weariness anyway?

War weariness is a Nex thing so I'm not completely sure (sorry I should have more knowledge of this stuff once I get into full testing- I'm about 95% there- just some description work to clean up) . In this case asking on the Nex thread may help. An assumption: It probably relates to how much the faction fights/expands and presumably has a negative side effect as a result. I'm not sure what that would specifically be, though, I'm just going off of other 4X games as an example. It could be more d-mods, it could be less faction resources, or it could just be that the faction attacks less, etc.

As far as Archean Order economy, I'm really close to getting the TC where I want it while doing the resource/industry rework. The consideration here is: as I've discovered, one of the side effects of relatively balanced systems is that market procurement missions become rare. That is a cross cutting concern here so I need some way of handling that. I have some ideas, though, like outlier fringe systems.

That being said, as it turns out I also felt the need to reduce the carrier count in Hegemony fleets and I've removed some of their stations for various reasons. I think I may have even messed with industries a bit. I'm still tinkering with things. Fleet composition for several factions has had some edits.

There's a bug where retreating ship's fighters were left behind in the ongoing fight. Just chasing last remaining ships to find out there are 200 fighters at the map edge.

Vanilla bug (iirc). Shouldn't impact the battle it just looks a little weird. lol.

Ps. Holy crab, I'm pvping 3 fleets at a time.

Good thing or bad thing?

[Albreo]

Good thing or bad thing?

Good thing that I manage to beat all of them. I'm going over to NEX to complain about how things can be this ridiculous. The moment I beat the crap out of one of their station they immediately sent 5 invasion fleets and I only have 8 planets.

There's a problem with NEX Relief fleet that spawn so fast that the moment I fly in with the goods the shortage already resolves.

Also, a minor complaint on Onslaught reload boost ability that down shield which seems to be very very bad in most situations. Downed shield vs Reaper is a very bad idea. Combine with slow speed and quite short of range weapons it has to get into a brawl quite personal and usually get rekt real fast. I would prefer the ability to generate hard flux instead. Most of the heaviest ballistic weapon can only fire two salvos, so, it pretty much not that useful.

I already scout all sectors on the map and only manage to get 2 Andamatine ship blueprint one frigate and one capital carrier. Never managed to get an Andamantine blueprint package or paragon blueprint. You really want it to be hard to get eh?

Archean Apocalypse cannon firing sounds nice to my ear but reload speed is awful. I would prefer low alpha damage but increase rate of fire instead.

[Morrokain]

Also, a minor complaint on Onslaught reload boost ability that down shield which seems to be very very bad in most situations. Downed shield vs Reaper is a very bad idea. Combine with slow speed and quite short of range weapons it has to get into a brawl quite personal and usually get rekt real fast. I would prefer the ability to generate hard flux instead. Most of the heaviest ballistic weapon can only fire two salvos, so, it pretty much not that useful.

I'll look into some fine tuning there. I won't guarantee it will be hard flux rather than lowered shields, but it may prove possible while still being balanced. Is the primary issue here AI control or that you as the pilot feel it is not worth using?

For some explanation: I get that torpedoes in general will get an advantage since even the accelerated PD fire rate of the secondaries often isn't enough to stop all of them when multiple are fired at once, but is it also strike weapons ? I could see that. Just to warn you, though, the shields are poor enough on the ships that typically have that system that if I do make it cost hard flux it may cause a higher percentage of overloads that will actually cause more overall vulnerability (no weapons firing at all under those circumstances). It will also hurt the ability of the ship to use its strike weapons. Those are the general considerations of changes along those lines. Also, the speed increase from the system is supposed to support the AI making use of it so they waste it less in situations that they can't actually close the distance to firing range of the target for the active duration to have any real effect.

I already scout all sectors on the map and only manage to get 2 Andamatine ship blueprint one frigate and one capital carrier. Never managed to get an Andamantine blueprint package or paragon blueprint. You really want it to be hard to get eh?

Yes. The Adamantine Consortium and Archean Order ships may actually be unboardable (requiring a story point to use at all) in future releases. You will get the blueprint package if you can get commissioned with them though. They will likely require a very hard quest. The capital carrier is technically the most powerful ship the Consortium have (AI-wise at least), though, so congrats on that find!

Archean Apocalypse cannon firing sounds nice to my ear but reload speed is awful. I would prefer low alpha damage but increase rate of fire instead.

Hmm. I'll try it out. It's kind of a strike/fire support hybrid weapon. Too little armor penetration makes it really weak, but this may be a good reason to buff the ships themselves a bit. I'll definitely consider this feedback.

Thanks for all the dialogue!

[Albreo]

All vanilla factions in Diplomatic Profile seem to have duplicate traits. If it's applied twice, this might be the reason why hegemony is so aggressive in my game. Modded factions don't have any problem. I have checked with NEX only start and that side worked fine with no duplication.

[DatonKallandor]

Also, a minor complaint on Onslaught reload boost ability that down shield which seems to be very very bad in most situations. Downed shield vs Reaper is a very bad idea. Combine with slow speed and quite short of range weapons it has to get into a brawl quite personal and usually get rekt real fast. I would prefer the ability to generate hard flux instead. Most of the heaviest ballistic weapon can only fire two salvos, so, it pretty much not that useful.

I've found that Combat Capacitors are best used with the Assault weapons that generate flux. Those are usually not worth it in my experience (you're better off going with either the 0 flux assaults or proper strike weapons) - but slap all the bonuses of combat capacitors on it, and the benefit of turning off the shields (yes benefit, because that way the AI is forced to use all the flux for offense) and you get a lot of firepower.

If that ship system turns out to be under powered, maybe it should toggle on the low-flux speed boost while active. Lose shields, gain speed and firepower.

[Morrokain]

All vanilla factions in Diplomatic Profile seem to have duplicate traits. If it's applied twice, this might be the reason why hegemony is so aggressive in my game. Modded factions don't have any problem. I have checked with NEX only start and that side worked fine with no duplication.

Thanks for the picture- I'll look into this. It likely has to either be that the Nex settings in Archean Order are wrong or a Nex bug. Maybe a merging issue? Anyway I'll investigate.

I've found that Combat Capacitors are best used with the Assault weapons that generate flux. Those are usually not worth it in my experience (you're better off going with either the 0 flux assaults or proper strike weapons) - but slap all the bonuses of combat capacitors on it, and the benefit of turning off the shields (yes benefit, because that way the AI is forced to use all the flux for offense) and you get a lot of firepower.

If that ship system turns out to be under powered, maybe it should toggle on the low-flux speed boost while active. Lose shields, gain speed and firepower.

This is generally how I think about that system too. (Well, except heavy assault weapons otherwise being unattractive but thanks for your feedback there) Combat Capacitors already boosts speed- but- yeah toggling the zero flux boost could definitely help the AI. To counter the increased power to the player, I could reduce its regeneration rate per charge, etc.

[Morrokain]

Archean Apocalypse cannon firing sounds nice to my ear but reload speed is awful. I would prefer low alpha damage but increase rate of fire instead.

Hmm. I'll try it out. It's kind of a strike/fire support hybrid weapon. Too little armor penetration makes it really weak, but this may be a good reason to buff the ships themselves a bit. I'll definitely consider this feedback.

Thanks for all the dialogue!

I experimented with this. The reduced recharge rate inevitably makes the weapon even more powerful than intended despite the reduction in armor penetration. The reason: the AI can kite more effectively with it considering its superior range and the continuous harassment from incoming projectiles. The window of opportunity from reduced recharge rate is crucial to making the weapon balanced on Tri-Tachyon vessels with more dissipation and allowing a strike opportunity in the interim even for Archean Vessels that (other than the dreadnought in the new update) have much less dissipation overall to balance their efficient shields. Still a work-in-progress, but those are the design goals of the current metrics.

I'll keep testing.

I've also further reduced the shield capacity of the Revenant- but increased it's armor. It was way too powerful as a light battlecruiser for its deployment cost due to its ability to strike and retreat. Now it has more trade-offs. (Hopefully?)

I've made another pass at deployment costs and stats vs combat viability during battles (This is really hard, and though I've made a rather light pass this time I will try to expand upon it later).

Notes of changes so far:

Spoiler

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

 - Overall Campaign Changes:
-------------
    - Revamped most new factions colonies to better follow industry count rules per colony size and size standards within vanilla factions.
    - Reworked mod economy to be more even in market share and resource spread between factions (in general) while hopefully still nurturing trade opportunities for the player through the simulation environment.

 --- Colony Changes:
-------------
    - 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 remote Luddic Church colony with refining, heavy industry and an additional military base with a large hazard rating.
    - Added two additional Sci-Corps colonies to better separate out industries and resources.
    - Removed Orbital Station from Yama and reduced the station at Nachiketa to an Orbital Station (down from a Battlestation).
    - Added Fuel Production and High Command to Gilead (based in the star fortress instead of the surface from a lore perspective)
    - Added Orbital Works to Tartesseus (again not on the surface- see above).
    - Increased size of Traveler's Triumph Station to 5 and added Heavy Industry.
    - Upgraded Traveler's Triumph Station to a Battlestation (up from an Orbital Station).

 --- Fleet Composition Changes:
-------------
    - Reduced number of dedicated carriers in Hegemony fleets. (partly for vanilla lore adherence and also to create more faction variety in battle tactics between factions)

-----

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.
 - Doubled cooldown of Phase Teleporter.
 - Added weapon slots and increased OP (if necessary) to most civillian ships to help prevent them from being overly vulnerable against fighters and missiles during retreat battles.
 - Added additional weapon slots and increased OP of some pirate and luddic conversion vessels (they are too weak).
 - Added a rear-facing small weapon to the Valkyrie MkII to help give minor protection to its engines against interdiction-class missiles and upgraded its central missile weapon to medium size to better combat fighters.
 - Added a built-in beam range increase to the Onslaught XIV hull to support it's built in foward weapons. (The AI uses them as a cost effective alternative more often now - even when equipping Devastators)
 - Added 3 additional small weapons (rear-facing) to Buffalo MkII and reworked variants for better synergy in attack builds.
 - Reduced per shot damage of Excaliber Cannon and Apocalypse Cannon line of weapons. Increased recharge/fire rate for those as well.
 - Made some ballistic weapons Energy damage instead of High Explosive damage.
 - Increased Revenant, Paragon and Megalith armor.
 - Increased Megalith dissipation.
 - Decreased Revenant max flux and dissipation.
 - Increased armor and hullpoints for:
    - Pirate Atlas and Prometheus conversions
 - Rebalanced high tier vessel deployment costs. (FP cost slightly adjusted in a couple cases but mostly the same from before)
-----


Bug Fixes
-------------
 - Updated Salvage Rig and Ox sprites and hullmods. (That slipped through the cracks apparently between my update from .8 and .9)
 - Fixed another rare yet likely possible occurance of the Hegemony Legion not being found while starting a new campaign and causing a crash. (I never encountered a crash, but I caught an outlier in the faction file that used the old id)
 - Fixed the cost of a couple buffalo variants.
 - Fixed some of the buffalo variants weapon mounts. (they were supposed to be ballistic)
-----


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, ship systems, and weapons.
 - Reworked the pirate falcon sprite.
 - Removed all non-essential sprites from the graphics folder. (May improve load performance as lots of duplicates from vanilla were kept there as a refence when spriting)
 - Cleaned up a few more descriptions and encounter flavor dialogue. (I try to do this as often as I can but I always find more typos and awkard wording. I'll keep trying to clean this up as I go and as I notice things)
 - Updated descriptions based upon market changes in the campaign.
-----

[close]

[Morrokain]

All vanilla factions in Diplomatic Profile seem to have duplicate traits. If it's applied twice, this might be the reason why hegemony is so aggressive in my game. Modded factions don't have any problem. I have checked with NEX only start and that side worked fine with no duplication.

Thanks for the picture- I'll look into this. It likely has to either be that the Nex settings in Archean Order are wrong or a Nex bug. Maybe a merging issue? Anyway I'll investigate.

Ah yeah I think I figured this out after taking another look at the file structure of Nex config. The JSON merging is duplicating the traits for the vanilla factions and probably doing a couple other unintended things. My fault- Sorry I didn't catch that during the initial Nex tests.

It will be fixed for the next release.

[Albreo]

Ah yeah I think I figured this out after taking another look at the file structure of Nex config. The JSON merging is duplicating the traits for the vanilla factions and probably doing a couple other unintended things. My fault- Sorry I didn't catch that during the initial Nex tests.

No need to apologise, I'm already grateful enough that you keep updating it.

Remnant Brilliant-class en masse are very tanky and should cost a bit more DP, scarier than a single Radiant.

Remnant Flash Bomber not worths 30 points. Phantom Phase Bomber is pretty OP. All torpedo ships (Cobra and Dagger) have a super short range, almost point blank and a guarantee it will never return from the trip.

Adamantine Consortium is categorised more of a pirate, no one is thinking about capturing their planet, so it can expand freely.

There's a lack of mining weapon options but this should be low in the priority list.

Some bug on Eventide planet under player control, it has 2 star fortresses (one hegemony, one high tech) where one keeps rebuilding and still under Hegemony control even when the planet is no longer. I have shut both down and rebuild a new one instead.

[Morrokain]

No need to apologise, I'm already grateful enough that you keep updating it.

Thanks, I hope to continue doing so for a long while. 

Remnant Brilliant-class en masse are very tanky and should cost a bit more DP, scarier than a single Radiant.

Interesting. I would have thought the Radiant was ridiculous due to its system. Any more details you can provide for this would be helpful in this case so I can better understand. Does tanky mean shields or overall defenses, for instance? You already said it should have more DP (thanks for the specifics there!) but why is it scarier than a teleporting Radiant with capital weaponry? (I assume this is considering the effectiveness as a DP group for the comparison)

I'll try and get a mock-mission going for test purposes and see how the synergy works. I haven't fought Remnants en masse very often and so I need some kind of way to test these considerations before I can reliably make any changes. This may be pushed back to a further update if I'm honest. There is a lot of changes yet to be made first.

Remnant Flash Bomber not worths 30 points. Phantom Phase Bomber is pretty OP. All torpedo ships (Cobra and Dagger) have a super short range, almost point blank and a guarantee it will never return from the trip.

Thanks this is helpful. (I always ask questions to get a better perspective if you haven't noticed  ) Is the engine homing aspect of the Phantom the issue- or is it the phase defense + projectile hitpoints that cause more reliability in the strike?

Adamantine Consortium is categorised more of a pirate, no one is thinking about capturing their planet, so it can expand freely.

Not really sure what you mean by this. As in the faction stations that periodically spawn and harass (like pirates/luddic path) make the Adamantine Consortium too strong? What are you specifically observing? It could be that setting pirate behavior has an overall effect in Nex, for instance, that I'm unaware of.

There's a lack of mining weapon options but this should be low in the priority list.

I'll look into that. The sprite and weapon design won't be a problem there. I *think* I understand how to get mining weapons/ships into factions for Nex. It might take some time and certainly won't be in the next update, but it's noted.

Some bug on Eventide planet under player control, it has 2 star fortresses (one hegemony, one high tech) where one keeps rebuilding and still under Hegemony control even when the planet is no longer. I have shut both down and rebuild a new one instead.

I reached out to Histidine about this. It is something Nex seems to be doing (at least as far as the high tech battlestation- I don't see this in AO without Nex) and I've tried a couple things to override it but they haven't worked. If it turns out that this is intended then I will have to either remove my edits to that entity for the TC or create an alternate version for mod merging specifically with Nex- and another for faction mods. Likely it will be the former solution.

[Frod]

Hello, just registered to say thank you for brilliant mod. In my list it is number one, as I absolutelly agree with your combat balance. By the way is there any way to make combat map bigger? Also can't wait for your next update to fix issues with NEX compatibility, when are you going to upload it approximately?

[Morrokain]

Hello, just registered to say thank you for brilliant mod. In my list it is number one, as I absolutelly agree with your combat balance.

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words.

By the way is there any way to make combat map bigger?

Might want to see if Adjusted Sector or Grand Sector has any settings for that- but I'm not aware of a way to do it at least.

Also can't wait for your next update to fix issues with NEX compatibility, when are you going to upload it approximately?

The *target* release is before this weekend- maybe late tomorrow night. The Nex issues that were discovered is prompting me to try and release it sooner rather than later after I finish cleaning those up.

I never found the procurement mission bug, but I have a couple other things I want to try and do to reproduce it. I'm also debating on sneaking in a few additional colonies that will act as procurement mission generators for the new factions when not running Nex. It seems a little too static otherwise.

Removing the hullmod overrides will have to wait until the update after this one as it will take too much time. I may leave variants alone completely unless it really messes with other mods. We will see I guess. 

An aside about that:

If anyone has given feedback that is not currently implemented in the released notes and would like it to be considered for this update, please remind me! I try and stay on top of that but occasionally I get distracted and forget about things. Generally, I will scroll through the last several pages of the thread to see if I missed anything before I release an update, but I likely won't have time to do that in this case.

[Frod]

Might want to see if Adjusted Sector or Grand Sector has any settings for that- but I'm not aware of a way to do it at least.

Sorry, I meant the map while tactical battle. Not the campaign map, but combat. Is it even possible to do it larger?

[Morrokain]

Sorry, I meant the map while tactical battle. Not the campaign map, but combat. Is it even possible to do it larger?

No worries I knew what you meant. I wasn't sure if those mods also included combat map settings rather than strictly campaign ones. As far as it being possible, likely I don't think so, but I've never really messed with that specific thing so I can't say for sure. It somewhat scales with fleet size (I think), but I don't know what file does that- or if it's even available to modders. Alex would be a better person to ask there for viability, but I don't think I would spend time on that as it would likely be complicated. Never say never, but that is my initial feeling at least.

Some bug on Eventide planet under player control, it has 2 star fortresses (one hegemony, one high tech) where one keeps rebuilding and still under Hegemony control even when the planet is no longer. I have shut both down and rebuild a new one instead.

I meant to say earlier: I think I have this fixed up for the next release. The problem would likely also affect Asher and that has been corrected as well. I don't think any of the other edits Nex makes affects the TC afaik. (Thank you to Histidine for providing the info and giving advice on how to solve this!)