Hey, I took the chance on my first 0.96 run to finally give this mod (and IndEvo) a try, which was long overdue. I know both are considered staples of Starsector modding, but I've always been kind of scared away by the feeling there was just a bit too much in each mod for comfort. And, while I loved your content and by all means I believe I'm gonna keep (at least part of) it in future playthroughs too, I have to say I was kinda right: there is indeed still a fair bit of what I'd easily consider bloat.
What annoys me the most is weapons. The base HMI module alone adds more than 120 (!) weapons (granted, almost half of them are built in and/or not meant for the player), almost as much as what the entire vanilla game uses for about 10 factions. Problem with this is twofold: on one hand, some of the weaponry in the mod honestly adds very little gameplay/functionality variance - if at all - making it quite redundant, and on the other (which is not the mods fault but a vanilla one - yet we still have to consider the framework in which we are modding) we don't have any real sorting tool for weaponry, which is something that becomes a MAJOR headache in the mid to late game when you are using a few faction/content mods such as this, which leads to you having hundreds and hundreds of weapon types in storage.
An example of an obvious culprit for me is the remnant variants of vanilla weaponry: they are mostly just a slight improvement over the vanilla equivalent (maybe 100 more range, a bit more damage and/or some added EMP at the price of more flux and OP), but are pretty much identical in functionality, role and behavior (and pretty close in looks too). And there's like 25+ just of them. Honestly, at the end of the day... is it worth it? I really don't think so.
Something similar could be said about the proper HMI faction weapons roster too: it's a bit unneccessarily crowded too. Especially if you consider how the ships spritework is masterfully done to be vanilla friendly: there are many other faction mods out there that overdo it with weaponry, but at the very least they usually have the excuse they need a custom weapon for every role and every size if nothing else for looks, as their ships have a very unique style on which vanilla weapon sprites don't look good. It's still very annoying to manage (to the point I uninstalled a few of them I'd otherwise like), but there's a reason for it.
In my opinion, on the whole this could easily be trimmed down to something like a dozen weapons whitout really losing anything too important (well, other than all the work that went on them during these years, which of course has value in itself and is no trivial matter). Half a dozen uniques for the HMI proper, as they do obviously need some mining oriented equipment to carry the faction flavor (but sure as hell they don't need a mining themed weapon for each and every possible role and size, given vanilla weapons look - and feel - perfectly fine on their ships), and another half a dozen to spice up the techmining/remnant/mess content. That would be enough to have it covered, imo, with a more polished user experience overall.
Just give it a thought for future versions. In any case, other than this gripe of mine, I've had tons of fun in my playthrough with this, so thank you!
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Topic: [0.97a] Hazard Mining Incorporated (Maxwell Fiddling Ed., 0.3.8c) (Read 736050 times)