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[Bhdeale]

This is a work in progress! Please be patient, this is my first StarSector mod 

Download: 1.1.4 <--- I am a Link, so is the flag

Overview:

Red Legion is a faction mod with its own ships and refits and a short series of story missions to become their ally or help others topple their regime. It contains several new hand-crafted star systems in conflict with various factions from the base game. Regardless of whether or not you join the Red Legion or seek to destroy them, they add an aggressive, expansionist high-tech faction to the game.

Built on top of an original pirate force, the Red Legion fits within the game's lore and vanilla balance. I've used existing ships and their strengths and weaknesses to keep them in line with the base factions. There is a string of missions to uncover the source of their technology and ultimately become their ally or destroy them. While obviously not canon, my goal is to explore something very plausible within the game's lore.

I also intend to use this as a means of learning to make ships, weapons, a reasonable faction, integrate with other mods, and even make some custom intel items and missions. In the end this will become a functional high-tech, post-pirate force in a hotbed of interesting conflict systems.

My goal is to not only add some fun additional content, but explore a faction which could reasonably exist which expands the lore of the game (obviously my own interpretation of the sector). The Red Legion should feel like it is a player controller faction - aggressively expanding, using diplomacy and conquest to grow and overcome the other factions.

This is very much a work in progress and is not close to completion at this time. Thank you for your patience and I welcome feedback from new players and veterans alike.



Features:

Done

• Mid-sized aggressive polity
• Integration with Nexerelin
• Integration with Commissioned Crews
• Integration with Version Checker
• Integration with Vayra's

To Do

• 13 new ships, 11 refits, 5 weapons, 6 fighter/bombers, 3 hullmods are currently planned
• 4 star systems, 3 of which are contested with other vanilla factions. (2 of 4 complete)
• A short mission series culminating in a Boss Fight with the leadership of Red Legion - or their enemies.
• Mission line to uncover the source of the Red Legion's technology. What did Lady Crimson find out there on the rim?
• Integration with Starship Legends

Dependencies:
Requires LazyLib 
GraphicsLib not yet
MagicLib not yet

Incompatibilities:

• I have not tested any "overhaul" mods at this time

Fluff:

Bandits roam about looking for the vulnerable who have something valuable. They take these to sustain themselves, but like an early hunter-gatherer this is inefficient for long term growth or survival. In time, a bandit will discover a place which provides them with everything they need. They set up shop, using their predilection for violence to protect their new home. These stationary bandits become kings, lords, and despots. Now they cannot flee from trouble - they must protect their investments and so they create laws and alliances. Now they are a polity. They create civilization.

One such bandit mercenary is Sable Crimson. After taking an impossible contract and completing it, the independent world which hired her could not pay. Instead, she took their planet and began exploiting it for her own needs. In time pirates former associates came seeking their cut, and conflict ensued. Seeing such terrible troubles, Lady Crimson ventured out to the rim in search of answers. In this time her husband, Frederick, was nearly killed and much of the Crimson Guard was destroyed protecting what little was theirs. Nigh upon the hour of their defeat did Lady Crimson return with a terrible and unknown warship. She crushed the fleets of the invaders and setup a new government. Her military oligarchy, the Red Legion, was formed from her former Crimson Guard with herself and her husband at the head. They struck out at once to conquer near-by worlds and even settle a few new ones. They roamed far to strike pirate outposts for the materials needed to establish basic infrastructure and their well-guarded freeports attracted immigration.

Hegemony Intelligence has long suspected the Red Legion has been using AI to bolster their administrative capabilities, and their ship production clearly involves a nano-forge with newly recovered blueprints. The invasion began after only a cycle of intelligence gathering. During this time the Red Legion used its special flagship and supporting fleet of advanced ships like a wrecking ball. With so many threats, the Hegemony was forced to adopt a more passive "wait and see" initiative for an opportune chance to strike.

The Red Legion expanded to encompass 4 star systems. They began to trade technology with corporate interests such as Tri-Tachyon. They continued to funnel material and ships into pirate and independent forces through free ports. They attracted a lot of Pather interest. They even located an old orbital ship-yard from the Domain-era. This was the time for the Hegemony to strike - with so many fronts open and the Red Legion stretched thin they pushed in to seize the ship-yard. Even now, the battle rages on.

The Red Legion represents a considerably useful faction. Be it a stronghold to conquer to strengthen your own realm, or a source of new technologies and plentiful salvage from their many conflicts. Perhaps you're looking for a new job? The Red Legion has room for new commissioned officers.

Details:

Ships:

Ships are broken down into a couple of design sets. The Red Legion has

• Red Legion Ships - these are built from the presumably new blueprints they found and a few high-end refits. They are high tech ships with supplemental tech to make up for missing components and parts from the blueprints. These are mostly destroyer and cruiser hulls focusing on speed, shield efficiency, forward striking power, and overlapping pd. Most Red Legion ships have more weapon hardpoints than is reasonable to try to use, allowing flexibility but not offering obvious designs. They offer a mix of energy and ballistic weapons, but few hybrid slots. They represent the bulk of the Red Legion ships and fleets and are the cutting edge of their "Strike Hard, Strike First" policy.
• Red Legion Auxiliary - these are the pirate ships, junk ships, refits of refits, and other low-tech and scav-tech ships which would normally make up desperate militias and pirate forces. There are also a few new hull designs which did not fit primary military functions without further iteration. These 'originals' are more mid-tech with more hull and armor and less speed and shields and more limited number of weapon mounts (like existing sector ships). They round out the additional roles and the rest of the Red Legion fleets. They make up the bulk of manufacturing outside of the capital, Argon. Without more advanced ship-yards or a nano-forge, most planets make due with supplementing their Red Legion Ships with these auxiliary hulls.
• Crimson Guard - these represent the old, custom ships of the elite forces which used to make up the mercenaries formerly known as the "Crimson Rangers". They have had numerous upgrades, custom refits, and additional tech loaded onto them. Most of these are Battle Cruiser and Battle Ship hulls with a focus on the individual power a strong, generalist captain would need. These are the elite guard built from the old world - lots of low-tech and pirate-tech bases with new equipment. Most of these ships are built as duelists and generalists in much the same way a StarFarer might build them. The few custom hulls are not produced directly, but are after-market upgrades applied and sold through the Red Legion orbital yards.
• Hell - Any ship design with "Hell" prefixed is a special after-forge design. With a strong emphasis on the "alpha strike" and higher speed, agility, and flux capacity, these are upgraded, tuned, modded, and otherwise "premium" versions of the core Red Legion Ships. They are high-tech with high-cost addons. Expect these ships to be fancy and top of the line, but with often crippling costs. Be it expensive deployment and maintenance or very limited combat time and fragility. These are useful for the Red Legion because they can be used directly around the shipyards and perform short-range defensive strikes and home-fleet operations. For anyone else... well you'd better have quite the budget and be careful with these expensive High-tech ships.
• Crimson Dragons - 3 Custom ships exist with this classification. Flying a pair of custom ships of an unknown design, it is possible you may encounter the Lady and Lord Crimson, or their mysterious friend, Drakas, in one of the 3 Crimson Dragons. Each represents a boss-like end game fight with the hopes you may salvage their ship. These unique modified ships are based off some prototype developed right around the collapse. Note, if you should ever conquer Argon Prime by taking the White Citadel (Nexerelin only) you will be able to recover the fourth Dragon they are building. This is a "fail-safe" way to end up with the ship for your own playthrough if you have the force of arms.

Spoiler

Antagonist
Size: Shuttle (Frigate)
Tech: High Plus Low
Design: Red Legion Auxiliary
Role: Cargo or short-range assault craft
This clear design iteration on the kite has advanced it with high-tech updates. The Antagonist was designed as a civilian shuttle, but the Red Legion has bolted missile hardpoint extensions onto either side to fulfill auxiliary wartime roles. Its only real advantage is its speed.
Contains an efficient cargo variant and several combat variants centered around their missile armaments.
Availability: Global - One of the Red Legion's first mistakes was allowing this blueprint to find their way into everyone else's hands.
Hardpoints: 1 Small Energy (Turret) 2 Small Missile
Strengths: Moderate availability, Speed.
Weaknesses: Civilian design, Short deployment time, Flimsy


Blood Seeker
Size: Light Frigate
Tech: High
Design: Red Legion and Red Legion Aux variant
Role: Fast Attack / Interception / Pursuit
Description: Designed to chase down fleeing enemies and groups of two or three, the Blood Seeker is fast, even for a light frigate. Light frigates are often overlooked by junior captains who are less judicious with deployment and assignment. Able to apply pressure, relieve another ship who is out of position, or run down fleeing pirates, the Blood Seeker is well built for rapid, short-range strikes. Given its logistical limitations and short deployment time, it is best to either lead an attack with a group of Blood Seekers, or keep them in reserve where their high speed will allow them to quickly join the fight where they are needed most. Cheap, expendable, and fast, it lacks any civilian application and often makes a poor escort on its own.
Availability: Red Legion
Hardpoints: 2 Small Energy (Turret) 2 Small Missile (mounts) 2 Small Ballistic
Strengths: Moderate availability, Speed, Ability to spread Armor damage
Weaknesses: Short deployment time, Flimsy, Weaker than a Lasher or Wolf but it is faster.


MOAR SOON^TM
Blood Thirster   Red Legion   Destroyer   Medium Destroyer
Blood Drinker   Red Legion   Cruiser   Medium Cruiser
Gore Hound   Red Legion   Frigate   Heavy Frigate
Gore Fiend   Red Legion   Destroyer   Heavy Destroyer
Gore Drinker   Red Legion   Cruiser   Heavy Cruiser
Burning Brand   Red Legion   Frigate   
Iron Stitcher   Red Legion   Frigate   Strike Frigate
Hell Seeker   Red Legion   Frigate   Elite Frigate
Hell Drinker   Red Legion   Cruiser   Elite Cruiser
Hell Hound   Red Legion   Frigate   Elite Heavy Frigate
Hell Fiend           Red Legion   Destroyer   Elite Heavy Destroyer
Hell Brand           Red Legion   Frigate   
Hell Knight   Red Legion   Cruiser   Elite Cruiser
Hell Guard           Red Legion   Cruiser   Elite Cruiser
Hell Champion   Red Legion   Capital   Battleship

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Red Legion Ships have several common Variants:

• Strike are designed to punch above their weight class and deal high damage at the cost of high flux. They perform opening and finishing strikes on enemies working with other ships
• Assault are designed for sustained close DPS with moderate survivability or speed to achieve their assault position
• Pursuit are designed to run down and destroy fleeing or isolated targets by using high speed and well grouped weapons, often supported by limited high damage missiles
• Support are designed to provide extra missile firepower, PD coverage, and EMP damage in support of other ships. They vary between being long range supporting ships and smaller close range escorts
• Artillery are designed to pour continuous fire down range and act as second line ships, often using large volumes of ballistic, long range lasers, or reforgable missiles to lay withering suppressive damage into the enemy line

Systems:

• Argon is the capital of the Red Legion. Contains their star-fortress, The White Citadel, their homeworld (formerly an independent planet) Argon Prime, and two supporting colonies providing organic and mineral wealth.
• Dawn is the hopeful expansion of new colonies that brought challenges to the Red Legion's control. A moderate independent world was conquered to offer a strong base, and a second planet has recently been terraformed and colonized, representing the technological capabilities the Red Legion has recently come to possess. This has attracted both pirate and Pather presence who have setup bases in the Dawn system.
• Gale is remarkable only because of the domain-era ship-yard discovered in system. The Hegemony has setup a pair of starbases to establish a foot-hold and claim the system. In response, the Red Legion has setup a starbase and colonized two small moons to provide material support in-system. The ship-yard appears to have become active, and has produced a small defensive fleet of autonomous defenses - in direct defiance of previous laws and doctrines!
• Tradewind is the fourth expansion which provides trade routes out to the rest of the sector, and ample ruins for tech-mining. A major freeport colony has been setup at a gas-giant, and Tri-Tachyon has established a light presence in system to establish easy trade access. However, sensing the "evils" of both groups, the Luddic Church has dispatched forces to establish a foot-hold in the region to disrupt both polities ongoing operations. With so many ruins in this system, it is clear the Luddites plan to "cleanse" them, but the Red Legion and Tri-Tachyon would prefer to exploit them.

More to come

ChangeLog

Spoiler

1.1.4
Fixed Antagonists - I removed the medium energy hardpoint which was added by accident. It was hidden under the small energy hard-point so likely you didn't notice. If you somehow added/used the medium hardpoint, then this will break your save.

1.1.3

• added ship_data.csv
• added first png of the antagonist
• antagonist gets better sprite and update stats and now 4 varients
• fixed file loc
• Maxxing efficiencies of v/c for firesupporter
• roudning out the goodies in tradewind and adding utility to make debris clouds
• better descr for antagonist and blood seeker
• Adding blood seeker variants
• Adding default roles for the blood seeker
• Changing redlegion blue print tags to redlegion_bp for consistency with other mods and vanilla
• updated hardpoints and bounds for the updated antagonist art
• Updated data for blood seeker and descriptions for my ships
• moved varianets to variants folder oops
• updated attributions

1.1.2

• Moved homeworld (nex) to Argon Prime
• Changed music from tritach to diktat
• Made RL hate ideology from -.5 to -.75
• Added Tradewind system with free storage station and conflict and lots of descriptions and even some market change descr for other factions in the system
• Moved inner JP for argon to be nearer to argon prime
• Internal code cleanups and description fixes
• Added abandoned gate to Argon to imply it was once part of the edge of the Domain in the sector. Also works nicely with any gate-related mod for insta-travel etc

1.1.1

• fix for commissioned crews to it inputs the description and will format nicely. This was it applied highlighting in desc of hullmod and also when i change value in the future it will auto work itself out for display to the user
• cleaned up tips
• vayras integration and testing complete
• adding redlegion as a raider faction, focuses on hegemony, pirates, and luddites
• added a test uniquebounty to see how it goes

1.1.0

• nexerelin support fully working, corvus, random, and custom
• small cleanup on descriptions
• more expansive market options for red legion
• high tech pieces and some mid-line for red legion markets and fleets
• color cleanup on gui and red legion coloration
• starting blueprints for red legion player

1.0.1 Contains working integration with Commissioned Crews. The Red Legion possesses True Grit and so can hold their ships together a little longer, increasing Hull Points by 10%
1.0.0 Was initial release with the faction, its starting star system, and version checker integration.

[close]

Photos courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/

[Bhdeale]

Today I finally got my mod to run in the game; it took a bit to link sources in and remember StarSector was built using java 7 
Found some useful tutorials I will help fill out over time since I'm making a faction. Figure having to explain what I'm doing will help me do it right and learn better.

Vayra has a good tutorial started here: https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding 

It is a bit older but I found this helpful: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10057.0
and also http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10114.0

I also made a background for Argos, the home system of the Red Legion by blending the cool star I found in Pexels with a vanilla background. For some of you I'm sure it's very simple but for me it was like an hour of not figuring it out in GIMP. Then I switched to use paint.net and figured it out in like 15 minutes



Aiming to have an initial test release with just the faction, systems, and basic generic markets and use pirate fleets from vanilla to get stuff to exist since it is the basis for all the extra stuff to go on top of. It also means I can work on integrating with Nexerelin and Commissioned Crews with less other pieces to juggle!

[Bhdeale]

Finally got the faction to spawn correctly with a system and everything!

There are a lot of options for how to do so. I dug into a dozen other factions mods and they all do it a little different. Evidentally you can use csv files to define most stuff, but as a programmer I really don't like them as much even if they're very tidy for a lot of information. I found some modders use a lot of java script code to make stuff. In particular, tahlan by Nia Tahl was very well written and provided a fairly clean example of an alternative to tons of csv files (you'll still need some!)

Again, tutorials and docs:
https://fractalsoftworks.com/starfarer.api/index.html?overview-summary.html
https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Star_System_Tutorial
But mostly I ripped into Anvil, Tiger, and Tahlan for some examples for their factions.

Just a reminder to anyone who is new to coding, please don't just straight copy other people's code. Learn from them and try it yourself - their code is their property even if they give away the product for free like a mod - you should seek their permission to just duplicate their work. 

Also, fortunately the game is very forgiving about loading json formatting issues like dangling commas which is nice. There are a lot of defaults needed for the faction, too.

Here's some screenshots I'm way too proud of

Spoiler

[close]

I also made a flag by editing an old flag from a DnD game (just a cut and inverted, trimmed triangle) and added the letters from giant font letters lol
Again with more paint.net




I also found this neat map modders have been maintaining
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11422.0
I added myself to the modiverse map! Got good locations. I first made a copy for myself on G-Drive so I could play with the formatting and locations to find good places. Check it out
It also helped me find out someone already had "Argos" so I renamed my system to "Argon" to avoid any possible scripting collisions or problems. Lots of code stuff has ids and stuff by string so it seemed likely.


Anyhow, next up is to flesh out the faction's home system and get them spawning some stuff in vanilla to interract with, add some descriptions, starting relationships, etc.
Then I can work out how to do a release! Then comes integration with other mods like Nexerelin, Vayra's, and Commissioned Crews and then I have to make real content lol

---

Oh man, so much stuff. Finally got the home system more or less done, and some basic faction stuff done too now. Will post again in the morning and update the tutorial wiki with my findings, and post some more pretty pictures yay. Can prolly look to do first release for simple test too. Got version checker working, totally had version_files.csv in the wrong directory 

[Bhdeale]

Hey Starfarers! I like to learn by teaching, so I helped by adding a tutorial on making your own star system to Vayra's initial Intro_to_Modding page. Maybe I should make my own child pages? Not super good at wikis but I hope it is helpful. It was very useful for me to have to organize and think about what I did to present it as well as I could. Anyway, check it out: https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding

With that I've got some better screenshots of what I'm up to, and will try to make a release of the game just to test how that all works since I have an absolutely tiny MvP I will be iterating on. Even made it work with the VersionChecker: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8181.0

Screenshots:

Spoiler

[close]

[Bhdeale]

First Release! Woot woot
In all fairness it is just the faction, a lot of text/descriptions, and one custom star system for now But I got it working with version checker and vanilla well enough. Yay!

Next up:

• Nexerelin Support Done!
• Commissioned Crews Support Done!
• Tradewind star system
• Adding some high-tech vanilla ships to fleet/markets
• Adding custom market to Argon Prime & White Citadel to include expensive Crimson and Hell ships
• Add my first ship variants/hulls
• Resolve feedback and bug fixes

[Bhdeale]

Yay 1.1.0 release - it is save-game compatible but you'd do best to start a new one to explore my mod since I've integrated Nexerelin support

It wasn't too hard, fortunately Nexerelin itself makes some good examples and is fairly self-explanatory. It helps that the Red Legion is a mash-up of pirates and high-tech so I have examples to pull from Tri-tachyon faction. Looked at Anvil, HMI, and Interstellar Imperium for some examples of how they integrated with Nexerelin, and II had a custom-start.

The fleets for a nexerelin start are a mix of pirate, high and mid tech with some utility thrown in. Again all vanilla for now.

The nexerelin custom start isn't very special yet (I played with fixed starting levels and such but there isn't a lot for me to add yet) but gives you an AI core and a large fleet to represent your time in the Crimson Guard and being rewarded by the newly formed Red Legion. I'd like to use it to make a special intel mission line and perhaps a more specialized high-level starting scenario.

Anyway, next up I need to integrate with Vayra's Wow that was easy, the mod basically did most of it for me I just had to add a little config and wanted to try having the RedLegion work as a raider faction and play with some of those extra options. Also added a unique bounty to see if I did it right. Would like to add more in the future

[Bhdeale]

Found some bugs I'm working on for 1.1.2

• Tariffs are coming out to 5% because I was trying to modify vanilla tariffs but Nexerelin is already doing this (its why 30->18) so I need to play nice when modded
• I don't think the Tri-Tachyon music fits so I'll be switching to something else
• Integration with Starship Legends works but I need to tweak values some more after playing with them. Such a good mod
• I need to switch player start from White citadel to Argon Prime as it is slightly more convenient and a little less confusing. I was worried people might miss the station but was a little less ideal (free storage, smaller market, not regional capital, etc)
• Size adjustment some more, looked at more vanilla systems and will be trimming down Argon a little more to be less taxing to traverse
• Special Forces names for Nexerelin integration
• I was going to release Tradewind system but it is ... lacking so I'll make another pass on it

I also wanted to find a way to make a "gun runner" market condition which increased weapon spawns. This lead me down a merry chase but ended up with me finding a small bug (or me looking at old code, not sure which yet) in Nexerelin which also overrides vanilla markets to increase weapon spawns for the player. With so many mods it seems like there should be a configurable multiplier on the amount of weapons and fighter chips spawned, but because of the way the actual code works there isn't, it requires some custom logic. Nex already had logic to add ~50% more stuff but it wasn't working when I extended and changed it myself.

The post on Nexerelin page about the logic bug

I'm hoping to either make a separate utility mod which extends Nex, or perhaps Histidine will add it to Nex directly, but I was playing with how weapon market logic works and figured I'd write it here for the curious.

First go look at starsector-core included src ... \campaign\submarkets\OpenMarketPlugin.java and you'll see it actually does ship and weapon spawns only when the player opens a market and looks at it. If you wander over to commodities elsewhere in the core, you'll see there is a "meta" item called Hulls and Weapons which is what markets make and trade in the economy. They are an abstraction which is part of determining things like Fleet size and money, but not part of spawning weapons and ships. Some of these commodities inform spawns, like fuel in the market means more tankers (weighted 20 to 40 based on amount).

Code

float tankers = 20f;
			CommodityOnMarketAPI com = market.getCommodityData(Commodities.FUEL);
			tankers += com.getMaxSupply() * 3f;
			if (tankers > 40) tankers = 40;

But you'll see weapons and ships actually just get added (to the "cargo" which is what is for sale in the market itself). You'll also note that, let's say a large military market of size 10 would have a lot of weapons? You're right, but look at how the distribution works by checking out "addWeapons" in BaseSubmarketPlugin.java (same campaign\submarkets folder) and you'll see what I mean.

Code

int num = min + itemGenRandom.nextInt(max - min + 1);
		
		if (num > 0 && !pd.isEmpty()) {
			pickAndAddWeapons(pd);
			num--;
		}
		if (num > 0 && !kinetic.isEmpty()) {
			pickAndAddWeapons(kinetic);
			num--;
		}
		if (num > 0 && !missile.isEmpty()) {
			pickAndAddWeapons(missile);
			num--;
		}
		if (num > 0 && !nonKinetic.isEmpty()) {
			pickAndAddWeapons(nonKinetic);
			num--;
		}
		if (num > 0 && !strike.isEmpty()) {
			pickAndAddWeapons(strike);
			num--;
		}
		

		for (int i = 0; i < num && !picker.isEmpty(); i++) {
			pickAndAddWeapons(picker);
		}

This means if you have a tiny market and only have 3 "weapons" to "pick" from, it will first pick a PD weapon, then a kinetic, then a missile and stop. If you have 10 "weapons" to "pick" from you will get one of each of the 5 categories, and then 5 picks from your "factions" list, be it the faction you are or say the black market which has random ones in it plus pirates.

This means if all you do to increase the number of weapons for sale is double the "weapons" you'll mostly be getting tons more from the faction list - which is possibly what you want, but I found it was a bit better to run through the "addWeapons" logic a second time. A small market with only 3 picks would end up with more PD, Kintetic, and Missile which makes sense to me - a small market has limited inventory focused on necessary functions and not on other weapons. Now lets say a Huge military market with 14 picks gets doubled, so you are sort of ensuring additional baseline weapons like PD, Kinetic, Strike, etc get made and THEN you add more factions weapons too. This also makes sense to me that a large market needs to add variety+volume to their baseline weapons like PD and such.

My beef with playing with 70 mods is that when I go to market, it will have some random, not generically functional weapons sometimes and then lots of neat, very specific faction weapons people have added. When starting a new game with low resources, it is very hard to outfit your ships. While there is some joy in the challenge of "I have 15 EMP weapons and some 1 OP HMGs, let's pray for success!" this was also frustrating. I figured by "doubling" or "trippling" the number of weapons spawned it would capture a little more variety and be a little more functional, less frustrating.

It was interesting to learn that, for the most part, commodity availability had nothing to do with weapon spawns. Also that the weapons are not traded (since they are not actually consumed by NPC factions) they exist only for the player. IE PD weapons aren't in high demand somewhere they aren't being made. It would be an absolute nightmare to make a simulation of that - imagine what factions would need to do if they didn't have their "needed" weapons for their loadouts? You'd be simulating a player and that's a crazy amount of code and logic for something that is solved much more abstractly here. I was mostly just surprised that there was no scaling factor, but when you're making a game you don't anticipate what a hoard of modders will do to your game

Anyhow, TLDR weapons are more and less complicated than I thought, just need to work out what to do. I'm hoping a real modder like Histidine will actually add this instead of what I hacked together lol

---
As a consequence of trying to override logic in Nex, I had to extend it and then ran into load-order problems. "Red Legion" comes after Nexerelin alphabetically so my mod overwrites were not working at first. Here's a short write up of what I learned

Mod load-order its just reverse alphabetical, IE higher ones (A) override anything lower (Z) and with both me and Nexerelin trying to overwrite the same vanilla submarkets the winner was whoever was higher in the alphabet. It is amazing all these mods work together because this means they are not colliding on any IDs in a critical place, which also explains why some libraries have ZZ in their name to load first so other mods can always depend on them (Audio, GraphicsLib).

This is certainly pretty intuitive since most mods add their own content and there are only a few major "change all the stuff" mods. Certainly prevents the user from needing to order mods, or from the code needing to self-analyze. Just surprising coming from NexusModManager and all the Skyrim/Fallout4 modding which does a lot (not perfect or complete) to and auto-detect and auto-sort and present collisions to the user. Obviously that was a much more massive game and community, so props to StarSector and its community for keeping this all organized and working pretty easily

[NinjaSiren]

Downloading this mod now. Adding this mod to support Hyperion Systems with Nexrelin, and possibly help you on making ships or market/encounter music.

[Bhdeale]

Downloading this mod now. Adding this mod to support Hyperion Systems with Nexrelin, and possibly help you on making ships or market/encounter music.

Hey cool! I certainly wouldn't mind getting some help with music. Once I've made some ships and establish a theme I could accept some assistance with making more

[Bhdeale]

I did it! I made ruined hacked together my first ship!

I'm way too proud mostly because it and its 4 variants spawn in the game, and like work and mostly look decent while they do it

I discovered that Krita is a step up from my paint.net experience but not as complex and alien to me as GIMP was. Worked pretty well! There are by far the most examples and tutorials about ship-building and ship design.

https://starsector.fandom.com/wiki/Intro_to_Modding
David Baumgart, the artist who made the existing Starsector ship sprites has a bunch of cool you tube videos and blogs on their official site for example http://fractalsoftworks.com/2014/05/16/let-me-draw-you-a-starsector-ship/
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=3342.0 Was very helpful and I'm still working through these many guides!
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=4270.0

There is also an unofficial discord I just discovered (I'm slow, okay!) http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11488.0

Also you can (obviously only those included so far) check ship names to try and be more unique and avoid name collisions/confusions with other mods via https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9550.0

Anyhow the Antagonist is an edited original Kite (has the same blues as many high-tech ships) and so I moved the ...intakes? up towards the front, removed the outer most pair of engines, and then cut out the wings to make a smaller hull (as many high-tech are vs low-tech) and then edited the area around the engines and some of the brighter spots to have the orange/rust/brown of low-tech where integration has occurred or other downgrades. Then I literally slapped on some large low-tech looking braces for missile hard-points so it can be used as a strike-craft! This captures really well what many of the Red Legion Auxiliary ships will be - a sleek hull with big blocky chunks added on.

I've got a bunch of partially made sprites but I need to iterate a lot more on them before I'm going to be happy. I did really enjoy spawning 20 antagonists and flying them in the simulation against a single hammerhead I felt proud enough to share the antagonist since its mostly a sprite-edit with a little recoloring but now I know how to make ships, variants, and include them in the campaign

[Timid]

Neat. It could use more marketing material...

[Bhdeale]

Neat. It could use more marketing material...

I'm open to suggestions, I'm not very good at marketing 

So I'm not a very good artist but I did finally iterate enough times trying to follow some actual artists and made the Blood Seeker. I'll try to cut a release once I do some more work on vanilla, blueprints, variants, and re-iterate on cleaning up the Antagonist I made.



Spent a lot of time iterating from a basic outline, into sections, then adding some shading, highlighting, and then darkening and lightening different portions consistently across sections to get them to appear to have lighting & depth. It is a far cry from the Wolf I've spent hours staring at now, but I'm finally proud enough to move on to make another ship

[Bhdeale]

1.1.3 is released!
First two ships are in the game, each with 4 variants. Cleaned up my artwork on both ships, still want to revisit once I've had more practice
Save game compatible, it may take up to 30 in game days before new ships show up
Note however the changed to Tradewind won't show up unless you start a new game

[Nick XR]

I'm open to suggestions, I'm not very good at marketing 

I can't unsee this looking like a Furby 

Spoiler

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[close]

[Bhdeale]

Here you are @Nick XR, may it fuel your nightmares




In all seriousness I'm working on the third star system and reskins of my own ships and a couple vanilla ones which will use the Red Legion Engineering hull mod. I'm also working on the Legends integration which again, the mod mostly already does on its own because it's awesome