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[Dgibster]

Hey all, running near the end of my vanilla play through and I am planning on doing a modded playthrough next. I'd like something that doesn't stray too far from vanilla. Right now I am looking at Dark.Revenant's Ship/Weapon pack and Underworld mods, especially cause I am hoping to do a pirate/underworld playthrough next. Still not sure about doing Nexerelin, though it would help me with its pirate start. So, what are your guys's recommendations?

[MajorTheRed]

Well, I can promote my mod here: Stop Gap Measure (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13083.0). It add a few systems and several dozens of ships, each accessible to certain factions. It's mostly oriented toward fleshing vanilla a little bit and the ships are designed to fill lacking designs in the original game.

Also, I strongly recommend Disassemble Reassemble by AxleMC131 (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12360.0), in a way a sister mod but with probably better sprites and more crazy designs.

[lethargie]

Dark.Revenant's Ship/Weapon pack is really the standard if you want something polished that does not introduce anything that takes you out of the game. Unknown Skies by tartiflette also add a lot to the joy of surveying new systems without changing combat or faction in any way.

Anything further is quite subjective to the notion "dosn't stray too far from vanilla". I personally prefer faction pact, who can offer more streamlined and  coherent content that in my opinion fit well with the global esthetic of the game. Others cant stand them because they do not emulate the existing specific esthetic. On the flip side i dislike adding tons of vanilla content because it bloat the ship diversity too much for my taste but others might find it reinforcing the decaying atmosphere.

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=177.0 is a quite up to date mod index that should help you test the water for your own taste. Remember that some faction mod will integrate some ship to the pirate faction and add pirate markets in their systems, Shadowyard by MShadowy for example has a lot of ships skinned for pirates and the Persean league. Blackrock by Cycerin also comes to mind. Diable avionic does not have pirates ship, but start the game friendly with pirates by default.

[Wyvern]

In terms of best matches to vanilla power levels, I'd suggest Outer Rim Alliance and Interestellar Imperium and Legacy of Arkgneisis.  (Especially Interstellar Imperium; it's not just balanced, it's also awesome.)
Perhaps also my Planetary Shield: Access Control semi-utility mod that makes the Planetary Shield generator a bit more useful - at a definite cost.
Oh, and speaking of utility, I highly recommend both Automatic Orders and SpeedUp.

Nexerelin is neat, but can also be somewhat hazardous; it includes dynamic reputation events that, on average, trend downwards - useful for keeping wars going between the major factions, but can be problematic for a player just starting up their own colonies.  Note that these dynamic events do not apply until you have at least one colony, so I actually find I have the most fun with Nex when I go with the (supposedly-hard-mode) start where you don't start with your own faction.  Overall, though, it doesn't really mess with game balance per se.

One other thing to keep in mind: the more mods you add, the farther from vanilla balance you get - even if each mod is, on its own, a balanced addition, simply due to enabling combinations between the added weapons and ships.

Other mods that I'll recommend despite straying a bit further from vanilla:

• Ship/Weapon Pack - this goes in my "outside vanilla balance" pile - albeit almost entirely due to the IBB hulls: special one-off vessels that you can find and capture via missions.  There may be a way to turn that off entirely via the mod's settings file?  If there is, doing so would put back into vanilla balance... but also remove a lot of the fun factor, at least for me.
  
• Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering - this one comes with some neat exploration content and [redacted]-style non-player boss faction stuff.  The main place where it departs from vanilla balance is that its fighters and carriers tend to be a bit stronger than vanilla options.
  
• Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority - a really nice faction mod; also currently the only mod to support a new station type - get in good with the SRA and you can even build them at your colonies!  The main departure from vanilla balance is that SRA has several energy weapons with extended ranges relative to their vanilla counterparts; never without some tradeoff, but that's still a potentially-significant change.  (Aside: ORA also has some extended-range energy weapons, but they've got harsher costs to them than SRA's guns, so I give ORA a pass on balance.)
  
• Sylphon RnD - pretty purple ships!  And I do like the subtle implication that (some of?) their hireable officers and administrators are actually AIs.  Has some significant departures from vanilla balance - most notably in exploration content; Sylphon includes a partially-implemented boss faction that - if you're lucky enough to find some of their blueprints or weapons or hulls - can be a dramatic change from vanilla standards.  Also has extended-range large energy weaponry, though the rest of their (non-boss-faction) guns fit in pretty well.
  
• Tahlan Shipworks - In general, the ships in this mod trend towards the upper levels of vanilla balance - along the lines of the Hegemony's XIV hulls - while the weapons are more in line with vanilla (trending towards high performance but with OP costs sufficient to make them premium choices rather than obvious upgrades.)  Also, some of them are really fun to fly, and they're all well-crafted.
  
• Blackrock Driveyards - Very high quality faction mod, with ships that trend towards high mobility high risk setups - but those high mobility ships can also mount regular vanilla ballistic weapons, which puts this solidly outside vanilla balance in my opinion.  I recommend it anyway, but know what you're getting into.

[lethargie]

I find the flak ship/weapon pack balance get for the IBB ship preposterous. If you don't start the special conversation in bar you will never, ever see them. Having a toggle in the mod setting file "improving" the balance is ludicrous. If your willing to edit the setting file, you should be willing not to start the optional conversation in the bar.

I agree with the hint you gives except for dassault miyokan. It modify a lot vanilla experience, the boss-faction it add not only has dedicated systems, but also spread a bit around it, making it hard to avoid meeting them. And they wield special no-blueprint weapon that you can loot that are quite outside vanilla balance. Its a fun  mod nonetheless, but it far from stockalike, farther than most faction mod.

[Vayra]

The #1 mod for Vanilla aesthetic and balance IMO is Disassemble Reassemble, closely followed by Ship/Weapon Pack (or beaten by SWP if you ignore the IBBs), Underworld, and Seeker UC (only available through the Discord and like SWP having some outliers albeit exceedingly rare ones). Arsenal Expansion is also good and pretty close to vanilla, and includes a quest! It does contain a hostile faction but that can be disabled in an .ini file in the mod directory.

Just to plug my own mod for a second here, Vayra's Sector includes a Pirate start outside of Nexerelin and (more importantly IMO) an overhaul to the bounty system making it usable during a Pirate run, as well as a pile of vanilla-friendly ships on... I'd say not quite the quality level of SWP or Disassemble Reassemble, but I'm proud of them and don't think they stand out too far either. It does also add a faction, but like AE that can be disabled via a settings file in the mod directory.

If you're not opposed to adding some factions as well, I find Shadowyards fits very well into a vanilla sector and really feels like a part of it in a way most other faction mods don't.

[LazyPandas]

I use quite a few mods and have been eager to try more. I can give my opinion on some of them:


Another Portrait Pack: Cosmetic. Not 100% vanilla style but it adds a lot of variety to prevent duplicate officers and I like a bunch of them as PC portraits.

Audio Plus: Great mod which adds a lot of new music that fits the game and updates some of the vanilla weapon sounds.

Blackrock Drive Yards: Very high quality mod with a large variety of frigates/destroyers that feels like they were built for the player to pilot. Favors mobility and going "all in" with their ships and I find almost all of them very fun to play. For example, there's a fragile, experimental frigate with regenerating armor that sucks in projectiles with your right click then blasts out a bunch of energy missiles. Your F ability also jumps through space and blasts the surrounding location with plasma arcs. If you stick to in-faction weapons it doesn't seem too strong. Cool graphics, sound fx, and mechanics.

Combat Chatter: Adds a bunch of messages to the top left of your screen that are mostly helpful. Will let you know when your AI ships overload or get below a certain hull % while there's occasionally flavor text thrown in.

Common Radar: Adds a radar in the bottom right of the screen that I think shows force strength on each side as well as some basic icons. Nice to have though I don't look at it as much as I thought I would.

Console Commands: Used for testing purposes, doing silly things, or performing a "save transfer" if you need to start a new game without losing progress.

Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering: A high quality mod that's not even close to balanced. This is the faction I'm aligned to in my current game and it seems like literally every single ship, weapon, and especially fighter is faster, stronger, longer range, and more efficient than any vanilla (and probably most other mod) equivalents. It's a carrier/fighter focused faction that also adds a hidden boss faction with three spawns of three system clusters in fixed positions NE, W, and S of the core along with I think a couple lone systems here and there. There's a lot of questionable design decisions that are blatantly broken, though the faction itself is fun to play and fight against if you enjoy carrier gameplay. Definitely a pass if you want something vanilla comparable.

Diable Avionics: This was the faction I played with on my first modded playthrough. Extremely cool looking with a lot of phase skimmers and a couple unique mechanics like controllable fighters (that are basically transforming mechs?). Overall it's got very slow, long range projectiles or short range burst beams with a focus on missile saturation and the wanzer mechs. The ships themselves are sleek, mostly integrated with phase skimmers, heavily armed, decently shielded, and somewhat fragile otherwise. The Maelstrom is probably my favorite capital in the game other than the Conquest. I would pass over this faction if you're looking for something strictly vanilla comparable but I had a blast playing it and would say give it a shot if you can look past that.

Disassemble Reassemble: Adds a large number of ships that fit really well into vanilla. Highly recommend.

Graphics Lib: Utility mod that some mods require that makes everything prettier. My PC couldn't handle it but luckily there's an option to turn it off but leave mod compatibility.

Grytpype and Moriarty Defense Authority: I have not interacted with them much though it adds some nice additions to the background and independents. No comment on balance. Doing a non-aligned playthrough next time and will definitely try some of these ships out. Adds a few space cop patrols to hyperspace near their system.

Junk Pirates: If you're looking for a rag tag faction of cobbled together pirate ships you might want to consider this mod. I have not had a chance yet to interact or test their ships yet so no comment on balance.

LazyLib: Utility mod

Lightshow: Adds a greatly needed color differentiation to lasers. Highly recommended.

Luddic Enhancement: This is something that should be in the base game imo. Adds a handful of smaller low tech vanilla ships with new paint jobs to the Luddic Church and 3 civ ships to the Luddic path as well as create a new system with a LC military world and tiny hegemony base. Highly recommended since it adds a tonne of flavor that is much needed to those factions while being as vanilla as you can get.

MagicLib: Utility mod for animations

Mayasuran Navy: I have not had a chance to play or interact with a lot of their ships outside the missions yet so I have no comments on balance. It adds a bunch of neat looking midline ships to the Persean League.

Nexerelin: I can definitely see why not everyone would since it completely changes the way starsector is played. Overall I like the changes and think you should consider it. 

Outer Rim Alliance: I think this faction was built specifically with broadside ships in mind and it looks like the AI can actually use them properly. Focuses a lot on high flux cost, long range energy weapons (but not beams) while a lot of ships have a bunch of hybrid slots for missile options or spamming close range energy damage. I have not played around much with them though they seem fairly good at a glance in terms of balance. I'd recommend it.

Planetary Access Shield Control: Makes the planetary shield generator do a bunch of new things with some drawbacks. I think overall a positive change.

Portrait Pack: Adds a bunch of vanilla style portraits to spice the game up.

Practice Targets: Adds 4 different squares that spawn in front of you in the simulator. Highly recommended if you do a lot of ship testing.

SCY: Have not had a chance to play or interact much with these guys yet unfortunately. It has the most in depth lore out of any mod I've seen with two PDFs you can download though.

Shadowyards: Another good faction mod. Adds a few pirate hulls you might enjoy too. Recommended.

Ship and Weapon Pack: Seems to integrate perfectly into vanilla and adds an optional quest chain for super ship bounties that you can ignore. Highly recommended.

Speed Up: Hold middle mouse to increase game speed in combat by 2x. I don't think I can play without this. Recommended.

Sylphon RND: Have not had a chance to play or interact with them as much as I would like but it seems to add a lot of unique mechanics and a boatload of new ships. Low manpower requirements and integration of AI cores seems really cool. Has glowing purple and red graphics and spooky phase jumps. No comment on balance.

Toggle Weapons Groups: I THINK this allows you to swap between alternate and linked fire in combat. Also adds the 6 and 7 keys to control groups.

Trailer Moments: Adds some neat graphics and particle effects to Gauss cannons and such.

Underworld: If you're playing pirates then download this. Highly recommended.

Unknown Skies: Adds a bunch of new conditions and planet types. It really spruces up exploration

Version Checker: Lets you know if there's a new version of a mod at the start of a new game.