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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods  (Read 16782 times)

ShadowDragon8685

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[0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« on: May 07, 2020, 08:47:32 PM »

So, since I've been working on hullmod-related mods lately, and I decided to just roll all of my previous hullmod-related mods into one mod.

So here it is;

Advanced Hullmods

Get it here.


What's in it?

Several new mods, most of which I made because I absolutely loathe paying twice for something. I'll pay in Ordnance Points or I'll pay in drawbacks, but not both!Seriously that's why I tossed Shadowrun 5 in the bin.
Spoiler
Armored Weapon Mounts (Advanced)
Like the idea of armored weapons but find yourself not installing the armored weapons hullmod because you don't like the downside? This Advanced form of Armored Weapons has 75% of the efficacy of the vanilla hullmod, and 0% of the drawbacks. Not compatible with conventional Armored Weapon Mounts.

Augmented Drive Field (Tweaked)
Do you ever find yourself with a ship that only needs +1 Burn, and begrudging the extra Ordnance Points spent on Burn you can't actually make use of? Then Tweaked Augmented Drive Fields are for you! Half the Ordnance Points cost, half the Burn! Not compatible with Augmented Drive Field or the (Detuned) version from this mod.

Augmented Drive Field (Detuned)
Conversely, do you ever find yourself with ships that go faster than the slowest ship you plan to keep around, and wish you could shed that excess Burn capacity for something "nice" (not thrilling, but... "nice"), like, say, fuel economy? For the princely sum of zero (0) Ordnance Points, even on a capital ship, you can voluntarily shed one (1) Burn rating in exchange for a thirty percent (30%) fuel economy boost! Not compatible with Augmented Drive Field or the (Tweaked) version from this mod.

Heavy Armor (Advanced)
Like the idea of extra armor, but find yourself never installing it because you don't like the downside? This Advanced form of Heavy Armor has 75% of the efficacy of the vanilla hullmod, and 0% of the drawbacks. Not compatible with conventional Heavy Armor, or Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering monobloc construction.

Logistic Capacity Increase
If you're like me, you gotta have more Logistic mods. All the Logistic mods! For a price in Ordnance Points, you can have one (1) more Logistic hullmod on your ship.

Unstable Injector (Advanced)
Like the idea of SPEEED, but find yourself not installing an Unstable Injector because you don't like the downside? This Advanced form of Unstable Injector has 75% of the efficacy of the vanilla hullmod, and 0% of the drawbacks. Not compatible with conventional Unstable Injectors, nor with Safety Overrides.
[close]

Some vanilla hullmods have been modified
Spoiler
Solar Shielding has been revamped in-line with my original Sundiving mod, as much as Starsector will actually let me. Due to the way a Starsector class is coded, making it prevent starts from hellaciously gobbling up your CR is not possible, but this still reduces the rate at which the coronal environments degrade your Combat Readiness by 90%. So you may be out of supplies, but you won't be out of CR when you jump those guys lurking on the other side of your star. Solar Shielding was also recategorized as not-a-logistics hullmod.

Militarized Subsystems is no longer a Logistics hullmod.
[close]

Lastly, Relaxed and Eased Logistics have been incorporated in the form of extra hull_mods.csv files. Change the filenames to hull_mods.csv to change the Logistics hullmods' costs:

Relaxed Logistics are 50% cheaper.

If that's too much cheaper for you,

Eased Logistics are 20% cheaper.

Will not be fully compatible with any mods that change of the above-mentioned vanilla mods. Very strange things may occur if you try. Or you may not even notice if something has been changed out-of-spec with this mod by another.

Stretch goals: non-crappy recolor/pathetic paint.net modified hullmod icons, if I can sweet-talk an artist into making me something.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2020, 09:05:34 PM by ShadowDragon8685 »
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SamTheHacker93

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2020, 05:27:33 AM »

Looks Fun  :D
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Cyan Leader

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2020, 03:44:09 AM »

Several new mods, most of which I made because I absolutely loathe paying twice for something. I'll pay in Ordnance Points or I'll pay in drawbacks, but not both!

That's something I can agree with. I feel too many Hullmods, both from vanilla and mods, tackle a downside just because the mod itself is an upgrade, but sometimes it feels unnecessary. For example, there is no downside to spending 20 OP in Flux Capacitors/Vents, why should there always be one for other things?
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Tartiflette

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2020, 04:50:39 AM »

Counterpoint: those allow for stronger effect without creating openings for exploits. The perfect example for that is SO that is ludicrously powerful, and would be a complete and utter no brainer without the drawbacks even if it was twice as expensive to make kitting monsters.
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ShadowDragon8685

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #4 on: May 16, 2020, 05:56:17 PM »

Counterpoint: those allow for stronger effect without creating openings for exploits. The perfect example for that is SO that is ludicrously powerful, and would be a complete and utter no brainer without the drawbacks even if it was twice as expensive to make kitting monsters.

Counter-Counterpoint:

Then leave the drawbacks in place, reduce OP cost to 0.

"I'll pay in Ordnance Points or drawbacks."
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dead_hand

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2020, 07:16:08 PM »

Several new mods, most of which I made because I absolutely loathe paying twice for something. I'll pay in Ordnance Points or I'll pay in drawbacks, but not both!

That's something I can agree with. I feel too many Hullmods, both from vanilla and mods, tackle a downside just because the mod itself is an upgrade, but sometimes it feels unnecessary. For example, there is no downside to spending 20 OP in Flux Capacitors/Vents, why should there always be one for other things?

You are penalized already in that case by a less than optimal OP to Flux conversion rate. So you are paying a hefty OP price for giving the ship a bit of edge.
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Nia Tahl

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2020, 06:40:53 AM »

Counterpoint: those allow for stronger effect without creating openings for exploits. The perfect example for that is SO that is ludicrously powerful, and would be a complete and utter no brainer without the drawbacks even if it was twice as expensive to make kitting monsters.

Counter-Counterpoint:

Then leave the drawbacks in place, reduce OP cost to 0.

"I'll pay in Ordnance Points or drawbacks."

Except that's not how things work in reality. OP costs and drawbacks serve different purposes in balancing hullmods.
Drawbacks exist to counterbalance particularly potent effects while OP costs specifically limit the ability to stack hullmods. If every hullmod with a drawback was 0OP, you could stack all of them with no limit.
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ShadowDragon8685

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #7 on: May 18, 2020, 10:35:02 AM »

Several new mods, most of which I made because I absolutely loathe paying twice for something. I'll pay in Ordnance Points or I'll pay in drawbacks, but not both!

That's something I can agree with. I feel too many Hullmods, both from vanilla and mods, tackle a downside just because the mod itself is an upgrade, but sometimes it feels unnecessary. For example, there is no downside to spending 20 OP in Flux Capacitors/Vents, why should there always be one for other things?

You are penalized already in that case by a less than optimal OP to Flux conversion rate. So you are paying a hefty OP price for giving the ship a bit of edge.

They said Capacitors/Vents, not the hullmod extensions thereof.
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ScytheSe7en

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #8 on: June 13, 2020, 05:30:26 AM »

This mod is awesome, but why isn't it in the Mod Index?
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EvilPineapple

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #9 on: June 14, 2020, 03:09:40 AM »

75% of unstable injector with 0% of the range penalty is busted. Do AI use these mods? It's not as big of a deal if it's just up the the player to abstain.
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Terethall

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #10 on: June 14, 2020, 12:57:36 PM »

75% of unstable injector with 0% of the range penalty is busted. Do AI use these mods? It's not as big of a deal if it's just up the the player to abstain.
You should be able to remove offending mods by deleting their row in the .csv and their .java file in data/hullmods, and deleting their graphic in graphics/hullmods, in the mod folder. The mod directory is tiny and easy to navigate to find these files. Personally, I just like this mod for the Solar Shielding change, the Augmented Drive Field options, and the Logistics Capacity Increase mod which I think is a cool idea. The rest aren't my cup of tea for various reasons so I removed them.
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ShadowDragon8685

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #11 on: June 17, 2020, 11:58:38 PM »

You way overdid it. Just put a hash-tag/pound symbol (#) in the front of the very first cell in the very first row in the .csv, and if there's a .java overwriting a vanilla .java file, just rename it to .java.bak to disarm it.
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Agalyon

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #12 on: November 18, 2020, 04:11:13 PM »

Since this seems to somewhat of a contested topic, I thought I'd drop my likely unwanted 2 cents here. I've thought about the balance of these hullmods quite a bit in my own playtime, having spent far longer than I care to admit just fiddling with ship loadouts and I've always wondered if many hullmods are actually a "trap option" in lots of cases. Now just to be clear, I definitely don't mean ALL cases. Theres a certain joy to finding the perfect puzzle piece to make a loadout work, especially if its one of (for me) the admittedly underused hullmods where you, as is the topic, pay with both a downside and OP cost.

I think the actual biggest barrier to entry in arriving to an answer is just how many choices there are in starsector, how many different situations with different priorities, different playstyles to consider, and even how the AI decides to behave on a given day. That being said, I often find the most effective strategy being to use as few hull mods as possible to load up on vents and capacitors. Whether this is a symptom of the above or the hullmods actually being questionable is hard to say, but one thing I'm confident putting my money on is that these hullmods are rarely consistently good. Which is fine, but while I'm tempted to say maybe the point of hullmods is be niche here, there are some that are very clearly good in at least vastly more cases than the "trade off" mods.

The other big issue imo is that many hull mods have to be balanced around extreme cases. A good example is armor, as because it effectively scales exponentially having too much could be insane in specific cases while still underwhelming (for the cost) in others. So in effect, the hullmod has to be more tame for everyone else because of the fringe cases. If every hullmod could have better upsides there would probably not be any need for a mod like this, at least in theory.

To the point, I think everything introduced here is fine except for unstable injector because range and speed are such strong stats. They're such core stats changing them at all is usually a bad idea, because they all but define ships and weapons. As an example to the contrary, the armor mod is fine because 1 the downside is not directly related to the upside, and 2 the 75% effectiveness prevents the aforementioned extreme cases from being a problem. Part of the issue with UI is how range and speed ARE so related and both stats are so powerful changing the ratio places it firmly into the category of stuff like hardened shields where the cost pays for itself and its nearly always good on every ship.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2020, 06:27:23 AM by HeartofDiscord »
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Chairman Suryasari

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #13 on: November 19, 2020, 01:36:50 AM »

This mod is awesome, but why isn't it in the Mod Index?

Mod Index is for modder who ask the moderator to add their mod on that catalogue, it's not necessarily a list of "Editor Choice" list  ;D
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Feuerholz

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Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« Reply #14 on: November 21, 2020, 12:19:21 PM »

The mod requires MagicLib but doesnt state that. Led to some shortly confusing moments here since i'm just a random beginner player 8)

Also, i guess the reason both Augmented Drive mods as well as a few of the others aren't available immediately is because i have to find them first, which is governed by the "unlocked" boolean in hull_mods.csv? Will the game just randomly throw these at me?
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