Sort of an update regarding YRXP 3.0, I've been playmodding again recently (playing normally then stopping whenever I see something I don't like and fixing it) and I think i've gotten quite a few aspects of the mod to somewhere I'm satisfied with.
Private stream archive - capturing the hypershunt close to my colonies
The largest and most visible updates are the handful of new ships you'll see in the video. The big one is a battleship-size vessel with a Ballistic Shield, similar to the Snowstorm and Honeycomb - of course the armor bonuses are scaled up for its size too. It is about halfway complete - I'd just finished with its shipsystem,
Ramming Speed (shared with one other ship), and what I am to add next is a built-in melee weapon that only activates at the same time as Ramming Speed, and causes a
boarding action whenever a ram is successfully pulled off. That it's offset to the side might be an issue, but oh well. Visible only in the deployment screen (bit expensive and wasn't what I needed at the moment) is destroyer-sized, cruiser analogue with a huge detacheable armor/combat module, which, if destroyed, basically reverts the ship to one of the existing missile destroyers. Lastly, and which featured prominently later on in the video, is the new version of the
Snowstorm mod. KRM. It has new weapons in the form of swivelling arm-mounts (pretty cute, I think) and rather than the three Shooting Stars, I instead gave it a built-in alternative to the Sparkler medium mount, but which launches the kinetic Sticker-HV missiles. It also features the new iteration of the "Homing Laser" weapon - super agile and accurate, but has a shorter overall range, and, best of all, doesn't mess with enemy PD's anymore! I think I am quite satisfied with how it looks now, but maybe I can up either the firepower or fire rate a bit.
I've also given a large overhaul to the missile system, thanks to the new mod functions Alex released in the latest RC. This will be the new system with regards to YRXP missiles:
Most will have limited ammo - Sparklers, Orb rockets, even the MLRS ones. They still have sizeable ammo stores by default (doubleale via EMR) so they're not completely useless. Only PD missiles will have infinite ammo/reloading ammo by default. When a YRXP missile is mounted on a YRXP ship and (only if you have Commissioned Crews) also have Yuri crews, then
all missiles will have periodic reloads (similar to YRXP v1.0, iirc) EXCEPT for the Last Smile. Many thanks to Alex for making this a reality!
Speaking of missiles, I've put in a lot of elbow grease into balancing the spectacle of having lots of missiles flying across your screen, as well as reducing the strain on the CPU. I've
optimized most of the missile AIs,
increased the burst fire rate of most missiles again, but overall
reduced their flight-time to a few seconds. I've also reduced the fire rate of some pretty intensive missiles like the Aurora Crown (mostly due to its flarespam - which I have also reduced). In addition, due to the overarching effect of the pilot skill,
Missile Specialization, I've had to mostly reduce the fire/reload rate of most missiles (primarily Aurora Crown and Ticklish) to compensate. It's not just the doubled ammo store, but that +50% fire rate made certain missiles (again Aurora Crown and Ticklish) incredibly strong. I have a feeling that skill is going to get some more vanilla tweaks later on, so the balancing continues....
Lastly, with regards to guns. I've decided that mountable YRXP (ballistic) guns will mostly be the "
gatling gun" variety. That is, all of them will be short-ranged, rapid-fire and low-alpha damage (think Assault Chaingun). This will extend to all forms of guns - HE, Kinetic, Frag and PD. That means a few things -
most cannon-type weapons are out (probably a couple of exceptions), and in return, I added, and will add, some more gatling-type weapons. Obviously, this is for the use of the new set of extremely well (frontally) armored ships with
Ballistic Shields. I think this contrast in ship-types could make for interesting gameplay and fleet compositions.
Author
Topic: [0.97a] Yuri Expedition v.3.0.3 || Faction Pack || Update 08/31 [YRXP] (Read 335973 times)