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[R.U.A]

This topic begins with my discusstion in discord on Diable's new blizzaia. Though with a "bomber" tag, it's kinetic weapon and 30-ammo-4-burst grenade makes it more like a heavy anti-ship fighter, in other words, another raven. And I said blizzaia on Matriarch of II would be extremely powerful. Then AxleMC said "Test just your mod alone (along with any dependencies). Always good advice." I just cannot agree, and I would take an example-the champion variant in recent 2nd tournament of Fossic(Forum of Starsector in China).

https://flic.kr/p/2iMwEpZ (I have trouble with image tool on forum...hopes the link works.)

This is an erymantianBoar(I'll use Boar in the following post) in SCY equipped with basic PD weapons, an Ion Beam and 2 Swarm MIRV of SRA. A fleet with 3 Manticore(also equipped with Swarm MIRV), 6 Boar above, 4 SO Brawler and 4 Shark almost defeat every fleet under the rule of this tournament.

OK let's go to the point. Definitely Swarm MIRV is too powerful with 250*10 HE damage and shock wave and low Ordnance Points and INFINITE AMMO, while it's stats is generally equal to non-infinite-ammo missiles. However, put it in SRA and vanilla it's not that IMBA, because ships with large missile slots all have this or that disadvantage-Conquest have a high dp and is ususally viewed as gunship, Apogee is some kind of lacking firepower, Gryphon is powerful but only have 1 large missile slots using 20 dp(the same as Conquest) while it's shipsystem doesn't match infinite-ammo missiles well. However, we've got Boar, a ship having 2 large missile slots, 1 large built-in kinetic missile and a radar-style system which proved to match well with lrm, using only 23 dp.

Of course, large missile in vanilla and in SCY isn't that powerful(some even embarassing). If only consider vanilla and SCY or only vanilla and SRA, the ship or the missile all seems ok. But the variant of combination is terrible. Only shield bypass Onslaught with Devastator and flaks and the cover of Diable's Derecho using its system was proved able to afford this crazy missile tempest.

Another example is DME whose weapons can be described as "all a little stronger than vanilla". These weapons combined with ships "all a little stronger than vanilla" would come to a devastating powerful variant.

I'm not meaning SCY or SRA or DME or Tart or MShadowy or Soren is bad. I really like these mods and really appreciate authors' hard work. I'm talking about a theory of balancing mod just as the topic said, "mod balancing worth more concern on combo between mods". I don't think only testing with mod itself and vanilla and gives it a tag of "generally a little stronger than vanilla" or "generally a little weaker than vanilla" is enough. That's ignoring balance issues.

I would appreciate any friendly disscussion on this topic. I really need your idea, thanks a lot!

[Tartiflette]

There are a couple of reasons why modders do advise to never balance against other mods:

First and mainly, because it avoids an arms race. If every mod is measured against the same metric, there is a better chance to obtain more consistent results. And it prevents modders to try to "one-up" other mods which can lead to terrible rounds of 0 stacking until nothing is comparable anymore.

Secondly it would also set an impossible standard to uphold. With the amount of mods available, not even mentioning outdated ones that could get revived someday, it would be impossible to test everything against everything and find all the exploits possible.

Additionally it also avoids some blame game. Nobody can dodge a balance issue because "they are balanced vs X mod" that also happens to have a dubious balance.


Now with that out of the way, obvious edge cases between mods should definitely be looked at when found. That doesn't mean any of the modders are obliged to act on it, but by the same token, they certainly should be mindful of possible widespread abuses. That is "do not balance against other mods" does not mean "never take other mods into account when balancing".

In this instance though, that SRA missile does seem a bit too powerful even when compared to vanilla, so that would be the first thing to check. Then if it is still abusable on the boar I would take a look at it.

[AxleMC131]

(Putting this here too for other folks' sake)

Pretty much everything Tart's said there is correct.

It would be madness to be keeping every other existing mod in mind when designing your own. Sure, if you really want to do that you can, but that really sounds like more effort than it's worth. If you're concerned about how even major established mods might behave with your concepts... Then you might want to rethink your concepts.

There's also a Chinese Whispers issue if you start balancing your mod against another mod. What happens if someone then balances their mod against yours? And then another mod is balanced against that one? You end up with a bunch of mods that are madly imbalanced compared to vanilla, and no-one noticed until it was too late because each change was minor.

Tart's also right about edge-cases. There are absolutely specific situations where you should compare your mod to another, but usually these are rare conflicts that create major exploits or even, in some cases, game crashes. When that happens, absolutely go and work out a solution, but you'll probably find your users will point these out to you. And, as Tart says, you are neither obliged to go looking for these conflicts yourself nor to do anything about them if you don't wish it (though it's kinda mean to not fix a game-breaking crash).

[Harmful Mechanic]

Also, in a single player game, you're not obligated to use something yourself. You are the curator and arbiter of what goes into your play experience. If what you want is high difficulty, play something like Junk Pirates against a slew of modded super-science, sell blueprints to pirates - get really crazy with it.

Starsector isn't a competitive multiplayer game, and meta, such as it is, is mostly something we all toss back and forth for fun.

[R.U.A]

Thanks for your reply. Actually I think there's some misunderstanding(maybe for my bad English heh).

I don't like modding against mod, too. Back to 0.652a, the arsenal race is terrible. I agree with the idea that balancing should take vanilla as standard. But I think when modders creating, there should be more consideration. If I'm going to make a infinite ammo missile, what disadvantage should it have? What if a modder creates a Missile-featured ship?

Why I say "combo between mods"? My argue is there are modders balancing around vanilla, but doesn't do well. And usually, the problem is revealed by the combination of different mods. Considering the combo is a way to help modders balance around vanilla.

Still I would take a missile example. I can make a extremely powerful large missile giving it extremely high OP to balance, and vanilla and my mod doesn't have large missile specialist, so high OP cost seems to be fine. But, in my opinion, the case should be that:
 I make a extremely powerful large missile with extremely high OP, then I would consider if there is a ship using large missile as main weapon. And a talent player make a extreme ordnance, sacrificing lots of other things to pile up the amount of that missile. Considering this, I would rather give up making a extreme weapon.

I do see some mods making extreme things like the example, using extreme disadvantage to make up for extreme design, and adjusted to make sure in vanilla it's ok. Mutipile mods can break this fragile balance, and "extreme" is not a good thing. Sometimes we can hardly realize where is broken for a design, which is unavoidable, but more consideration on mod design always helps.

I would stress that I'm not going to force modders to do so or make it a rule of our community. It's an advice or a discussion. I agree most of the work still rely on player feedback, but modders probably needs someting better than normal player to be modder.

[AxleMC131]

There is a way to make "extreme" weapons that are nearly unbreakable by no matter what other mods you install.

You make them built-ins on ships within your mod. Now no other mod can exploit the weapon by putting it on one of their ships.

Regardless, I see your point, but I still must say that those sort of things modders are not obliged to worry about. If a player points out a particular exploit between mod A and B, then fine, either author can make an effort to do something about it. But sometimes there's not much that can be done about it, without making the offending content from either mod bad in its own light.

[SCC]

The only things a player using your mod absolutely has to experience is your mod itself, your mod's requirements and the base game. However, players modding their games is only a fraction of playerbase. Another fraction of that number is how many players will play with a mod A, same with mod B, and players playing with both at the same time is an even smaller number. The result is that those balance issues affect only a small part of all players, while the effort to remedy that can (but doesn't have to) be disproportionately big. Giving up your toys, just because someone's toys work badly with yours, might feel bad, too.

There's also the issue with the fact that ships, weapons, etc. have their unequal advantages and downsides. The more combinations of these happen, the more likely it is to find preferential matches that synergise with each other better, than all other, without being overbearingly better outside of that context. However, if a weapon is particularly busted, it might actually be imbalanced in general.

[R.U.A]

The only things a player using your mod absolutely has to experience is your mod itself, your mod's requirements and the base game. However, players modding their games is only a fraction of playerbase. Another fraction of that number is how many players will play with a mod A, same with mod B, and players playing with both at the same time is an even smaller number. The result is that those balance issues affect only a small part of all players, while the effort to remedy that can (but doesn't have to) be disproportionately big. Giving up your toys, just because someone's toys work badly with yours, might feel bad, too.

There's also the issue with the fact that ships, weapons, etc. have their unequal advantages and downsides. The more combinations of these happen, the more likely it is to find preferential matches that synergise with each other better, than all other, without being overbearingly better outside of that context. However, if a weapon is particularly busted, it might actually be imbalanced in general.

That is interesting. As far as I know, most of chinese community tend to play mutilpile mods together. But it seems to be quite different here. As you said, players playing with both at the same time is an even smaller number. Should that means someone would prefer only playing with 3 libs and BRDY, for example, rather than playing 3 libs, SWP, NEX, BRDY, II, DIABLE, SRA... and even more mods? That really makes things different.

[Kpop]

This thread was basically ended at Tartiflette's post. There is no possible way modders could balance around every possible combination of weapons where several emerge as standout performers.

This would require less of an independent modding scene and more a group that has to run every new weapon, fighter or ship through a coterie of fellow modders to do immense amounts of playtesting to check for certain situations out of thousands where numerous factors end up pushing a certain loadout over the top. An impossible task.

[SafariJohn]

That is interesting. As far as I know, most of chinese community tend to play mutilpile mods together. But it seems to be quite different here.

If you look in the bug reports subforum or wander over to the unofficial Discord server's support channel, you will see there are plenty of people around here that play with as many mods as they possibly can.

[Thaago]

I'd go as far to say that most people who use mods at all play with as many mods as they possibly can, for good or for ill, if reports are to be believed...

Mods that are overpowered because their weapons are only balanced given the ship design of the faction (either weak or strong) is a product of creativity: they are trying out different ship doctrines, oftentimes ships that play in very different ways. I wouldn't want this to stop, as those can be the most fun to add variety to the game.

The only possible solution to faction mixing imbalance, given the sheer number of mods, is: a) Balance stringently against medium vanilla power level, not the outliers and b) lock weapons with a certain tag (IE faction name) to ships with the same tag using a custom hullmod or other OP altering method.

[Wyvern]

As a variation on Thaago's above solutions, one of my (unreleased) personal projects includes hulls that, while balanced with vanilla weaponry, would be rather out-of-line when using premium mod weapons.  (The ships have their firepower limited primarily by weapon slots rather than flux stats.)  The fix I used is a Proprietary Targeting Firmware hullmod that causes non-vanilla weaponry (and heavy blasters) to have a chance of failure during combat - and that provides some overall buffs to weapon damage if the variant is using exclusively standard weaponry.

[Wyvern]

As a variation on Thaago's above solutions, one of my (unreleased) personal projects includes hulls that, while balanced with vanilla weaponry, would be rather out-of-line when using premium mod weapons.  (The ships have their firepower limited primarily by weapon slots rather than flux stats.)  The fix I used is a Proprietary Targeting Firmware hullmod that causes non-vanilla weaponry (and heavy blasters) to have a chance of failure during combat - and that provides some overall buffs to weapon stats if the variant is using exclusively standard weaponry.

[R.U.A]

I'd go as far to say that most people who use mods at all play with as many mods as they possibly can, for good or for ill, if reports are to be believed...

Mods that are overpowered because their weapons are only balanced given the ship design of the faction (either weak or strong) is a product of creativity: they are trying out different ship doctrines, oftentimes ships that play in very different ways. I wouldn't want this to stop, as those can be the most fun to add variety to the game.

The only possible solution to faction mixing imbalance, given the sheer number of mods, is: a) Balance stringently against medium vanilla power level, not the outliers and b) lock weapons with a certain tag (IE faction name) to ships with the same tag using a custom hullmod or other OP altering method.

Generally I'd agree with your solutions :b.

[SCC]

If you look in the bug reports subforum or wander over to the unofficial Discord server's support channel, you will see there are plenty of people around here that play with as many mods as they possibly can.

I'd go as far to say that most people who use mods at all play with as many mods as they possibly can, for good or for ill, if reports are to be believed...

Most people who report issues with mods use many mods. It can mean that people either don't play with few mods, or that those who do, simply don't have issues. There's also a nonzero number of people who have issues that come from running out of (V)RAM, so at least sometimes playing with many mods creates the issue in the first place.