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[Albreo]

Wait, Flash bombers aren't the ones dropping the little purple bombs off?

No, those are from the Phantom bomber and it is a pretty strong Legendary class. Its damage is being balanced right now. If you think it's too weak you should test it some more and leave your opinion for Morrokain.

Do no ships have Ground Support Packages anymore? Just picked up a couple of Valkyries, they serve as little more than expensive crew transports right now.

No, sadly it has been removed. For me, it's not that important anyway since this mod's ships have bigger bunk than vanilla and far larger storage capacity. So, you can always carry 2000 heavy armaments with you anytime and those are enough to have invasion sucess rate of 70%+ after bombardment.

[Morrokain]

Sorry for my absence lately. I've been reading but not replying to save some time as I do some things. (Once again, thank you Albreo for answering questions.  )

1) Balance feedback - I appreciate it! Please state whether the perspective is from the Beta or the last official mod update on the OP. I am going to assume its the Beta, but if I'm wrong I may make unnecessary changes that I already have addressed because I am assuming the wrong context for the feedback. (Re: Phantom - I think there are some changes to strike craft not in the Beta DL yet. I'll try to get those in at some point today along with a few other things. From testing, it is better than torpedo bombers at this point - at least when used in large numbers such as when using the Astral.)

2) The Valkyrie still doesn't have Ground Support Package?? I could have sworn I fixed that. *Checks* Argh, nope it's not there! I added it and it will be in the DL when I update. Sorry about that. This isn't the first time it was reported and I must have forgot to actually make the change. Either that or I removed it later for some reason though I don't remember what that was. I probably just forgot.

3) I buffed the duration of Plasma Jets to help the Tyrant and Odyssey. It probably won't prevent them from being vulnerable to strike craft, however, so interceptor escorts from allied carriers is still advised. Reminder for those unaware: The allied carrier must be built with all interceptors (Anti-Strike Craft gunships count as interceptors to the AI) and non-strike fighters for the AI to defend allied ships. Escort orders are advised as well. If this is insufficient, I'll first look at buffing the speed boost of Plasma Jets, and if that doesn't do it then I will consider giving the Tyrant the mine system from vanilla. The Odyssey at least has 360 shields so that probably helps a lot in comparison.

4) Bombers vs Fighters - Good point, Darrow, the ability of fighters and interceptors to suppress weapon systems and engines is a powerful tool. Bombers are more about creating and exploiting vulnerabilities. Albreo pretty much sums it up. If the bomber squadron hits with little to no mitigation, then the damage to the ship is usually pretty severe. That isn't the standard experience, however, because that would make carriers too strong considering their range. If you are having trouble with AI carriers, that is very understandable because I am realizing that they have to be built pretty carefully. I need to get this information in the manual at some point, but the AI behavior of the carrier seems to change based upon the type of craft it has equipped. I've noticed that bombers, gunships, and fighters that use missiles and require reloading do not fit as well with craft that stay on target when equipped on the same carrier. The AI won't use regroup as much as it needs to in order to keep its replacement rate up. Similarly, strike craft without reloading requirements go best with other craft that don't, but the AI carrier will tend to keep engage on and trickle in reinforcements instead of building an attack wave. From what I can gather, both types of strike craft have uses depending upon the situation. Bombers and strike gunships are damage spiking craft that are often mitigated by PD but tend to stay alive longer and keep the carriers replacement rate up for a longer period of time assuming they are protected. It is different depending upon the particular wing, however, as some strike gunships and bombers also use projectiles which aren't mitigatable. Gunships and fighters that stay on target are powerful initially and then as they are destroyed it is harder for the carrier to replace them most of the time because the carrier keeps engage on and trickles replacements in which is a lot easier for the target ship to manage. Combining the two types using two separate carriers assigned to the same target will likely yield some pretty potent results - especially if flares are involved in the assault group carrier.

TLDR: Essentially, there is a trade off of reliable effectiveness vs survivability between the two. Combining to two types of builds on separate carriers and assigning them to the same target should be more effective. Combat ships can replace assault group carriers and perform the same role. At least in theory and from my testing. In practice, it may likely be harder to tell sometimes. Opinions certainly welcome and the more details the better.

5) Radiant difficulty: Heh heh, be careful what you wish for... something in the works for this.

[Morrokain]

Almost done with the new Radiant ship system. It can fight just about any 3 capitals 3v1 and either survive or deal severe damage/kill one or two of them depending upon the loadout. This system also makes it very effective against cruiser/destroyer surrounds or generally any overwhelming force. Its still killable don't get me wrong - but far, far, less so without the drawback of teleport kiting or drawing out the battle in unfun ways - like having to chase it down. Fighting a Radiant should now almost guarantee losses, however, no matter how many ships or even capitals you bring. (Evil Laugh)

(The base stats haven't changed at all - and obviously I can tone down the system or the base stats from here. Also, because players will eventually be able to own/pilot a Radiant, I have a solution to prevent it from being stupidly OP in the player's hands while not affecting the difficulty of REDACTED encounters.)

I've created a custom AI for this, so the Radiant won't waste charges of the system unless it is in a situation that would cause a lot of hull damage, overload or death. (Ideally - still getting the wrinkles out.) It also has its AI personality set to Reckless with the system active. So it shouldn't use it to kite but rather to do damage/defend.

Unfortunately I am having a bit of wrist pain at the moment so I need to take a break. When it feels better I will resume coding the AI and release the DL update for the Beta when its ready and I've tested a lot of the edge cases. (Though I'm sure someone will find more I've missed.  )

[Morrokain]

Another Beta Update including the new REDACTED ship system.

Summary:
1) Another small balance pass on strike craft.

2) Added support for Embassies for Industrial Evolution.

3) New REDACTED ship system with custom AI. High end REDACTED encounters should now be extremely difficult. Taking losses is very likely even when fielding multiple capitals.

4) Rework of the Obliterator Cannon medium weapon. Should look/feel better to fire and still be balanced.

5) *Edit* Bugfix: Added in Ground Support Package to the Valkyrie. (No redownload needed I just forgot to mention it in the original post.)


Some details on the AI for the system:
 - The AI should reserve charges of the system until the ship is in a serious situation, such as taking significant or consistent damage, or when flux is high and nearby threats are dangerous.
 - While the system is active, the AI should be extremely aggressive and should not vent flux nor lower shields.
 - The current drawback I have seen is that sometimes when the system is on cooldown or out of charges and the ship has high flux it can vent even when surrounded by enemies. (Prevents the system from activating when it otherwise could come off cooldown.)
 - The AI calculations shouldn't impact performance - or at least they should impact it very little.
 - The more the ship's hull is reduced, the more likely the ship will activate the system from damage or flux build up.
 - There should ideally be few ways for players to abuse the AI and cause the system to activate early and waste charges without dealing serious damage to the ship.
 - At very low hull (under 25%), the system should proc from any damage if there are charges available and the system is not on cooldown.
 - *EDIT* (Testing as the player in dev mode.) Note that while under player control the system will cause a high chance of critical malfunctions when activated for the entire active duration. This is in preparation for the next update that will allow the player to pilot REDACTED ships through story points.

I have no doubt that there will be some nerfs necessary later on, but for now the system is tuned to be very difficult to overcome unless the charges run out. Both REDACTED capitals have this system.

[Flying Dice]

Somehow I managed to make it seven years without making an account here, but now that I finally got around to it, I wanted to thank you for making this mod. It's done a lot of things that I've wanted for Starfarer/Starsector for ages, even more so than Nexerelin. So thanks!

[Albreo]

Omg, Flux vent ability. Not that unmanageable but make it have like 3 lives more. My only complaint is that it is unnoticeable when the skill is activated. Maybe you should make the shield glow red when it's activated like Fortress Shield. And would you be interested in MagicLib for some added SFX enhancement?

[Morrokain]

Somehow I managed to make it seven years without making an account here, but now that I finally got around to it, I wanted to thank you for making this mod. It's done a lot of things that I've wanted for Starfarer/Starsector for ages, even more so than Nexerelin. So thanks!

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for the compliment and I'm glad you are enjoying the mod. At some point I'm also going to release a couple of the TC's features as stand alone mods that can be run alongside non-TC faction mods. Fleet Dialogue is complex and work-intensive so it will be a bit, but the REDACTED features will be easier to do so I will release a mini-mod for those likely first. And, of course, I am still actively developing the Beta - so lots of things to look forward to in the future!

Omg, Flux vent ability. Not that unmanageable but make it have like 3 lives more. My only complaint is that it is unnoticeable when the skill is activated. Maybe you should make the shield glow red when it's activated like Fortress Shield. And would you be interested in MagicLib for some added SFX enhancement?

  I'm glad you like it. I agree on noticeability though. It actually has a pretty noticeable activation sound effect but despite high volume it is often covered up by the combat sounds of heavy weapons. I'm looking to try and make that more noticeable to start.

I should probably do the shield glow too though, and as far as MagicLib I'm definitely open to doing that but I've never used it before so I need to learn it. I was thinking of some kind of arcing lightning kind of effect at the point of activation - kind of similar to the Omen's system but more sporadic and with less emp damage so its more flavor than function if that makes sense.

[Nytrix]

Hello!

I just wanted to tell you that I absolutely love this mod. I basically play the game only with your mod + any "maybe" compatible mods.
I would love for this mode to be more compatible with faction mods , but that's just wishful thinking  . The critical advantage is that your weapons are reloaded. There is no limited missile ammo, or I didn't see one so far, which is something I adore in this mod. I do not understand that in Vanilla we have these huuuge ships flying in space... yet they come with 40 missiles... ugh.

Also trying out the beta version now with industrial evolution. So far so good.
Keep up the awesome work you do. Cheers

[Morrokain]

Hello!

I just wanted to tell you that I absolutely love this mod. I basically play the game only with your mod + any "maybe" compatible mods.
I would love for this mode to be more compatible with faction mods , but that's just wishful thinking  . The critical advantage is that your weapons are reloaded. There is no limited missile ammo, or I didn't see one so far, which is something I adore in this mod. I do not understand that in Vanilla we have these huuuge ships flying in space... yet they come with 40 missiles... ugh.

Also trying out the beta version now with industrial evolution. So far so good.
Keep up the awesome work you do. Cheers

Thanks! Welcome to the forums! 

Only strike craft missiles have limited ammo iirc. All ship missiles should regenerate eventually. For regenerating missiles (at least vanilla missiles) alongside faction mods outside of the TC, I'd recommend DatonKallandor's Missiles and Sundry mod.

Unfortunately, faction mods will always inherently be impossible to balance around considering this is a total conversion that makes a ton of combat changes. They balance around vanilla combat and this mod changes too many aspects of that for it to be an easy thing to do. When a TC capital has 20+ small weapons and the average vanilla capital has less than ten it becomes very difficult to somehow make those both work when combined. And that's before you even get into things like strike craft changes, designation specializations, different speed mechanics, etc. This mod is more of an alternative meta/rebalance mod that provides some additional variety to Starsector's mod pool.

What I will do, however, is port some of the campaign features of this mod into separate mini-mods designed to be used with vanilla/faction mods. Expanded Fleet Dialogue is already in progress, and last night I ported most of the unique REDACTED features into a separate mod that I will likely be releasing pretty soon. I want to test the custom AI more to make sure I'm not missing anything important and to make sure it runs as efficiently as possible first, but last nights tests were very promising. (I *think* I solved the vent when surrounded issue.)

But combat related things? That is up to individual faction modders and whether they want to make separate versions based around the TC combat - which of course I would gladly help with any questions.

[Nytrix]

Thanks! Welcome to the forums! 

Only strike craft missiles have limited ammo iirc. All ship missiles should regenerate eventually. For regenerating missiles (at least vanilla missiles) alongside faction mods outside of the TC, I'd recommend DatonKallandor's Missiles and Sundry mod.

Unfortunately, faction mods will always inherently be impossible to balance around considering this is a total conversion that makes a ton of combat changes. They balance around vanilla combat and this mod changes too many aspects of that for it to be an easy thing to do. When a TC capital has 20+ small weapons and the average vanilla capital has less than ten it becomes very difficult to somehow make those both work when combined. And that's before you even get into things like strike craft changes, designation specializations, different speed mechanics, etc. This mod is more of an alternative meta/rebalance mod that provides some additional variety to Starsector's mod pool.

What I will do, however, is port some of the campaign features of this mod into separate mini-mods designed to be used with vanilla/faction mods. Expanded Fleet Dialogue is already in progress, and last night I ported most of the unique REDACTED features into a separate mod that I will likely be releasing pretty soon. I want to test the custom AI more to make sure I'm not missing anything important and to make sure it runs as efficiently as possible first, but last nights tests were very promising. (I *think* I solved the vent when surrounded issue.)

But combat related things? That is up to individual faction modders and whether they want to make separate versions based around the TC combat - which of course I would gladly help with any questions.

Thanks for pointers. In the future I hope other modders who like your mod will include version for Archean Order. As I said just wishful thinking about this mod being playable with faction mods, I know it's impossible. 
Now I'm looking forward for new versions of this mode, I also really like that you are doing compatibility patches with mods that could be usable, like recently industrial evolution and of course it was great idea to do Nexerelin compatibility, that mode is must have I think.

[shpooky]

 so is it that higher tech means better ships/weapons now? instead of different doctrine like in the original?

[Albreo]

so is it that higher tech means better ships/weapons now? instead of different doctrine like in the original?

I would say no. This mod power level is being balanced around DP. A ship that costs more point to be deployed tends to be better than ships that cost less. This mod's factions also mostly incline to high-tech so you will likely see more high-tech ships than others. Apart from pirate's junks, most low-tech and midline can deal with high-tech ships no problem, with a correct loadout. As for weapons, your typical vanilla ballistics are buff up a lot and can shred Paragon's shield with ease.

[Morrokain]

Thanks for pointers. In the future I hope other modders who like your mod will include version for Archean Order. As I said just wishful thinking about this mod being playable with faction mods, I know it's impossible. 
Now I'm looking forward for new versions of this mode, I also really like that you are doing compatibility patches with mods that could be usable, like recently industrial evolution and of course it was great idea to do Nexerelin compatibility, that mode is must have I think.

Anytime. And I definitely will continue to integrate custom features of other mods as I am able to/learn about them.

so is it that higher tech means better ships/weapons now? instead of different doctrine like in the original?

Not generally no. High tech ships do tend to have higher DP because they are faster and therefore they can kite and trade off damage on powerful shields too effectively in larger numbers compared to low tech ships. Low tech ships can field higher numbers and their ship systems tend to compliment their heavy armor - though additional ships can matter less or more depending upon your battle size setting. One thing I want to possibly address later is better Combat Capacitors AI now that I've made a custom AI.

From the last released update to the beta iirc there was actually a buff to the lower OP weaponry especially in the case of ballistics. Low tech weaponry tends to have lower OP and low tech ships usually have few energy mounts. So they benefited the most from the changes as a general category. Midline weaponry was redesigned in some areas to be more versatile and the midline ships were generally buffed either in stats or specialized hullmods. (The exception being the Heron because it was OP due to the strike craft buff.)

I specifically spent a lot of time testing the Onslaught, Executor, and Paragon to make sure that they were fairly even. Though there have been changes since then, they all tended to win as much as lose 1v1 and in a fleet v fleet setting with a set number of allied ships of the same tech level. The ship variant really matters though. Some loadouts are really bad against other loadouts, for instance. And even in the fairly even loadouts scenario there is a lot of randomness there too such as whether the ship overloaded at any point or things like that.

That's a basic summary of the design goal. And all of that said, it is still a large WIP. That's why its a beta. At this point, I haven't even looked at more than probably 35% of the variants in the mod. There are a whole lot of them and testing each one a few times takes a lot of time. That's not even including the additional code work and description changes, etc, so I tend to go back and forth between working on different things.

This mod power level is being balanced around DP. A ship that costs more point to be deployed tends to be better than ships that cost less. This mod's factions also mostly incline to high-tech so you will likely see more high-tech ships than others. Apart from pirate's junks, most low-tech and midline can deal with high-tech ships no problem, with a correct loadout. As for weapons, your typical vanilla ballistics are buff up a lot and can shred Paragon's shield with ease.

That is the design intention when balancing, correct. Pirates are meant to be easier but low tech factions like the Hegemony, Sindrian Diktat or Trader Guilds (who also use midline) are not meant to be less difficult than high tech factions for the player. It is more that they offer different challenges.

There is a fair amount of random involved too from the perspective of the NPC factions - from fleet generation to loadout effectiveness to officer skills, etc.

As far as the overall campaign conditions while playing with Nex it certainly isn't fine-tuned or anything though. I set initial values that seemed to make sense and I think maybe looked over it once or twice after that for a couple of reported things.

For now, I am focusing on the variants and how the AI will use them to make the player's in-combat experience better before worrying about macro campaign balance concerns.

[shpooky]

Morrokain do you have a discord?

[shpooky]

also why is it that tri tachyon is ok with transponders being off in some sectors and not in other sectors ? is that your mod or base game?