Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ThePerilsOfSelfBetterment]

Hey all, relatively newish player here. Really enjoying the game in it's vanilla version but I am looking for a bit more, so naturally I checked out the mods. At first I just had a few utility mods for things like music, radar, improved leveling curve, etc. but then I started checking out the expansion related stuff, and have quite a few questions that I was hoping some of the veteran players could answer for me, so without further ado...

Do mods take a toll on CPU/RAM?: Poking around in the discord/reddit/these forums I think I saw some people mentioning this, and having an older laptop (2013 ASUS) I have to worry about these things. I haven't had any crazy issues game play-wise yet but some of the larger battles, especially ones with lots of missiles/fighters have dropped the FPS a bit.
For example, if I were to download and run every single faction/expansion mod currently available for 0.9a at once, would it effect me? Also speaking of FPS, is there a way to see it during battle? I know it's in the top right corner in the campaign overlay but can't seem to find it during fights, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Nexerelin vs Archaen Order: The way I understand it is that Nexerelin just adds more bells and whistles while being compatible with most(?) other expansion/faction/utility mods while Archaen Order is more of a standalone thing. Is this correct? Both of them seem to have what I'm looking for (more content game play-wise rather than just more ships/weapons) but idk which to start with.

Stacking Expansion/Faction Mods: Are there any of the Faction/Expansion mods that should/shouldn't be played together? I watched a friend enable pretty much all of them at once and the core sectors were an absolute mad house but it also seemed to really make the game feel more alive, although so of the weapon/ship combos across different factions did look pretty goofy. I also kind of like the idea of having such a ridiculous amount of ships/weapons to choose from.

Nexerelin With or Without Mods: Working off of the last question, would you recommend Nexerelin by itself or with some of the compatible faction/expansion mods?

GraphicsLib: I noticed that a decent amount of the mods require GraphicsLib (and the other two Libs) and as I said before I have some worries about my laptop being able to handle certain graphics. I downloaded this one already just to mess around with the settings file and noticed the guide said I can turn off many components of it (mainly shaders) and it will still work for mods that require GraphicsLib. How exactly will this work? Will the mods just have downgraded graphics or will I not be able to see lasers/chunks of ships/missiles etc.

Anyways that's it for now. I'm currently in the process of downloading every single mod that seems interesting to me and can throw up photos of my mod list and/or my laptop specs if people want.

Also my laptop is already set to high performance while plugged in, my drivers are usually up to date (not that this has seemed to help too much over the years) and I have lowered the battle size a bit.

I know this is a lot to answer and I appreciate any and all input/time/effort 

P.S This is my first time posting on these forums, apologies if I messed up the bold fonts

[Midnight Kitsune]

Hey all, relatively newish player here. Really enjoying the game in it's vanilla version but I am looking for a bit more, so naturally I checked out the mods. At first I just had a few utility mods for things like music, radar, improved leveling curve, etc. but then I started checking out the expansion related stuff, and have quite a few questions that I was hoping some of the veteran players could answer for me, so without further ado...

Do mods take a toll on CPU/RAM?: Poking around in the discord/reddit/these forums I think I saw some people mentioning this, and having an older laptop (2013 ASUS) I have to worry about these things. I haven't had any crazy issues game play-wise yet but some of the larger battles, especially ones with lots of missiles/fighters have dropped the FPS a bit.
For example, if I were to download and run every single faction/expansion mod currently available for 0.9a at once, would it effect me? Also speaking of FPS, is there a way to see it during battle? I know it's in the top right corner in the campaign overlay but can't seem to find it during fights, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Nexerelin vs Archaen Order: The way I understand it is that Nexerelin just adds more bells and whistles while being compatible with most(?) other expansion/faction/utility mods while Archaen Order is more of a standalone thing. Is this correct? Both of them seem to have what I'm looking for (more content game play-wise rather than just more ships/weapons) but idk which to start with.

Stacking Expansion/Faction Mods: Are there any of the Faction/Expansion mods that should/shouldn't be played together? I watched a friend enable pretty much all of them at once and the core sectors were an absolute mad house but it also seemed to really make the game feel more alive, although so of the weapon/ship combos across different factions did look pretty goofy. I also kind of like the idea of having such a ridiculous amount of ships/weapons to choose from.

Nexerelin With or Without Mods: Working off of the last question, would you recommend Nexerelin by itself or with some of the compatible faction/expansion mods?

GraphicsLib: I noticed that a decent amount of the mods require GraphicsLib (and the other two Libs) and as I said before I have some worries about my laptop being able to handle certain graphics. I downloaded this one already just to mess around with the settings file and noticed the guide said I can turn off many components of it (mainly shaders) and it will still work for mods that require GraphicsLib. How exactly will this work? Will the mods just have downgraded graphics or will I not be able to see lasers/chunks of ships/missiles etc.

Anyways that's it for now. I'm currently in the process of downloading every single mod that seems interesting to me and can throw up photos of my mod list and/or my laptop specs if people want.

Also my laptop is already set to high performance while plugged in, my drivers are usually up to date (not that this has seemed to help too much over the years) and I have lowered the battle size a bit.

I know this is a lot to answer and I appreciate any and all input/time/effort 

P.S This is my first time posting on these forums, apologies if I messed up the bold fonts

As someone that has played SS on two other craptops, I can certainly help you.
First of all, what are your specs? Do you have a dedicated GFX card? If not, what is your integrated one? How much RAM do you have?
As for your questions: As you have seen, battles heavy with fighters and missiles can drop your FPS. One note is that SS will drop the FPS in chunks. IE 50 FPS runs at the same speed as 30. Speaking of FPS, it is displayed at the middle bottom of the screen in combat.
As for RAM, yes more mods will need more RAM. But if you dont have a 64 bit system, you will not be able to use more than 2 gigs. And if you dont have a dedicated GFX card, it will need more RAM. Also you will have to change the amount of RAM allocated in the VMPRAMS file

Nexerelin adds in 4X elements to SS and is usable with most other mods. Archaen Order on the other hand is a TC mod that should not be used with any other non utility mods due to how much it changes the game.

Most faction mods should work together well but I would avoid Xenoargh's mods as they too change the game too drastically to be used with other mods.

Nexerelin is something that I would play only after you get good at vanilla

GLib can be turned off in the settings.ini file, allowing you to play mods that need it without having all that impact on your system

[Vayra]

Do mods take a toll on CPU/RAM?: Poking around in the discord/reddit/these forums I think I saw some people mentioning this, and having an older laptop (2013 ASUS) I have to worry about these things. I haven't had any crazy issues game play-wise yet but some of the larger battles, especially ones with lots of missiles/fighters have dropped the FPS a bit.
For example, if I were to download and run every single faction/expansion mod currently available for 0.9a at once, would it effect me? Also speaking of FPS, is there a way to see it during battle? I know it's in the top right corner in the campaign overlay but can't seem to find it during fights, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Yes, more mods is harder on your RAM and VRAM. As Midnight said, you will have to edit your vmparams file to let SS use more RAM. But there's no harm in downloading a whole buncha mods and enabling/disabling stuff until you figure out what the best setup for you is. Re: CPU, I don't think Starsector is particularly CPU-limited... Maybe in huge battles? Just leave the battle size in settings.json alone and you should be fine.

Nexerelin vs Archaen Order: The way I understand it is that Nexerelin just adds more bells and whistles while being compatible with most(?) other expansion/faction/utility mods while Archaen Order is more of a standalone thing. Is this correct? Both of them seem to have what I'm looking for (more content game play-wise rather than just more ships/weapons) but idk which to start with.

Nexerelin allows base-game-compatible stuff to work more like a 4X game. Archaean Order is a total conversion and not compatible with anything else, and plays completely differently from Starsector more or less. So yeah, pretty much what you said.

Personally, I would recommend Nexerelin.

Stacking Expansion/Faction Mods: Are there any of the Faction/Expansion mods that should/shouldn't be played together? I watched a friend enable pretty much all of them at once and the core sectors were an absolute mad house but it also seemed to really make the game feel more alive, although so of the weapon/ship combos across different factions did look pretty goofy. I also kind of like the idea of having such a ridiculous amount of ships/weapons to choose from.

Everyone has their set of favorites and some are more balanced and setting-friendly than others, but there aren't really any that you ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT play together or anything, no. At least none that come to mind.

Nexerelin With or Without Mods: Working off of the last question, would you recommend Nexerelin by itself or with some of the compatible faction/expansion mods?

With, definitely, once you've played for a while and gotten the hang of the base game anyway.

GraphicsLib: I noticed that a decent amount of the mods require GraphicsLib (and the other two Libs) and as I said before I have some worries about my laptop being able to handle certain graphics. I downloaded this one already just to mess around with the settings file and noticed the guide said I can turn off many components of it (mainly shaders) and it will still work for mods that require GraphicsLib. How exactly will this work? Will the mods just have downgraded graphics or will I not be able to see lasers/chunks of ships/missiles etc.

You can edit a config file to turn off the shaders and it will operate in 'compatibility-only mode'. You'll still see all the regular Starsector graphics, just none of the fancy stuff GLib would normally add.