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[theDragn]

This mod intends to expand the options for high-tech fleet doctrines. It includes over a dozen new hulls, over a dozen new weapons, under a dozen new fighters, and about a dozen reskins, including a new Domain Battlegroup.
It also includes one new low-tech light capital to give the Hegemony a fighting chance.

High Tech Expansion can be safely added to an existing save.
Please note that 1.4.X versions are not save-compatible with 1.3.X versions and earlier.

This mod requires LazyLib. Get it here.

This mod requires MagicLib. Get it here.

Incompatible with:

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• New Galactic Order

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Detailed ship information:

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Fighters:

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Blaze
Role: Fighter
A drone phase fighter with a plasma streamer. Melts light targets, but isn't very effective against heavy armor or good shields.


Khanjali
Role: Strike Fighter
An expensive and powerful fighter designed to kill anything smaller than a heavy cruiser. Carries a high-damage plasma weapon, twin fighter-grade IR pulse lasers, and a miniaturized active flare system.


Kaskara
Role: Assault
Carries a close-range High Intensity Laser that fires in short bursts. It excels against isolated targets, but is quite fragile due to its small shield arc.


Kukri
Role: Bomber
A Dagger refit that carries Tawa Standoff Torpedoes. Reliable and effective against all types of defensive layers, but not quite as effective at specific roles as specialized bombers.

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Frigates:

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Scute
System: Flux Compressor
Two medium mounts and nothing else, so make the most of them. Gains a slight increase to range and projectile velocity as flux level increases, compensating somewhat for its low top speed.

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Destroyers:

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Iris
System: Fortress Shield
Specialized for PD support, the Iris gets a hefty bonus to PD weapon range and is nearly impossible to kill unless isolated. It's tough enough to fill a spot in a battle line, and slow enough that it doesn't have many other options.


Moray
System: Phase Skimmer
A cheaper (and more common) Medusa that trades PD and universal mounts for a medium missile.


Persephone
System: Fast Missile Racks
A fairly generic destroyer. Can put out a lot of firepower, but it's not as pursuit-oriented as other high-tech options.

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Cruisers:

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Aphelion
System: Active Flares
If the Apogee is a van, this is a minivan. Trades out the large missile and large energy for excellent turret arcs, a fighter bay, and even more active flares.


Bombardier
System: Missile Autoforge
Six small missile mounts, for when you really want something to die. Stupendous alpha damage, but it's not very effective once the ammo runs out.


Gila
System: Fortress Shield
Maximum forward firepower and the flux stats to fuel it. A fantastic duelist, but it relies heavily on escorts to prevent flanking in fleet combat.


Flamingo
System: Targeting Overclock
A large energy, a large synergy, and lots of support weapons. Has an oppressive range with its system on, at the cost of a relatively low top speed.


Peregrine
System: Flux Compressor
No missiles at all and very few weapon slots. Has a built-in hullmod that vastly improves weapon damage, and it's remarkably slippery with its system.


Tigershark
System: Plasma Jets
An Aurora that trades good PD for a large universal hardpoint. Fills a similar role but with an emphasis on sustained firepower due to the different slot layout.


Shoebill
System: Microvent Actuators
A compact heavy cruiser with very high durability. Vulnerable to being outranged by capitals, but can thoroughly dominate most other cruisers.


Gloom
System: Active Flares
A heavy phase cruiser designed for a support role. It has a salvage rig and a Drive Field Compressor, which improves fleet maneuvering outside of combat.
It can hold its own in combat thanks to a powerful built-in beam weapon, but it has a relatively high supply cost for its combat power.

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Capitals:

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Incursion
System: Plasma Burn
As offensive as the Paragon is defensive. For both meanings of "offensive".


Equality
System: Subsystem Realignment
An advanced adaptive battleship capable of switching between speed, offensive, and defensive modes.
Has an exotic Harmonic Energy Projector that improves weapon range and projectile velocity as flux level increases.


Spire
System: Reserve Deployment
Designed to exclusively carry fighters and interceptors, the Spire can keep its squadrons active even in heavy combat environments. Not quite as tough as a true combat capital, but it certainly has the armament of one.

Aggressor
System: Accelerated Ammo Feeder
A cut-down Onslaught designed to fill the battlecruiser role, the Aggressor has an excellent thrust-to-weight ratio for a low-tech capital.

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Weapon information:

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Arc Emitters
Role: Point Defense
Fires arcs at random hostile targets in a wide cone. Inefficient with fairly low DPS, but they deal unavoidable hard flux damage with a side of EMP.
The medium version has a chance to produce a chaining arc, and the large can produce multiple chaining arcs.
Because of their random nature, Improved Point Defense AI does not cause them to ignore flares, but it will still improve damage to missiles.
Despite their lackluster stats, they are still quite decent— they can disable most missiles with a single hit.


Toroidal Plasma Railguns
Role: General
An ancient weapon design, these fire tiny rings of plasma at significant fractions of lightspeed. They have mediocre DPS, but excellent range and good per-shot damage.


Plasma Streamers
Role: Assault
It's a space flamethrower. Extremely short range, very good efficiency, extremely high burst DPS. Deals a portion of its damage as soft flux instead of hard flux. Not great against heavy armor due to its low per-hit damage.
An excellent choice for Safety Overrides builds.


Plasma Lens Projector
Role: Anti-Armor/Strike
Fires a homing projectile that produces an explosive lensing effect on contact with hull or armor, punching deep inside the target. Extremely powerful against unshielded targets.
Benefits from Expanded Magazines, and synergizes well with Autopulse Lasers.



Tawa Standoff Torpedoes
Role: Torpedo
Homing torpedo that explodes into an inaccurate burst of three plasma projectiles when it nears its target, avoiding the worst of enemy point defenses.
It's more expensive than other missiles, but also a lot more general-purpose. Less effective against smaller targets due to the spread of the secondary projectiles.


Atropos-class Torpedoes
Role: Torpedo
Two additional launchers to round out the selection of torpedo weapons.
Their damage is fairly mediocre compared to Reapers, but they have above-average ammo reserves and a fire rate that's fast enough to squeeze in a follow-up salvo.


Kneecapper MRR
Role: Disabler, Suppression
A pre-aimed rocket that splits into a cluster of ion bomblets. Deals a small amount of energy damage and a crippling amount of EMP, with a chance for multiple arcs from each bomblet. A reloading system keeps the launcher topped up during long fights.


Ahab Harpoon Repeater
Role: Finisher
Holds a whole lot of harpoon missiles. Fires them in bursts of three, with a short reload time. Excellent support weapon, but its smaller salvos are easier to intercept.


Fissure LRM Launcher
Role: Long Range Support
Combines an oversized Breach warhead with a two-stage LRM motor. Deals a whole lot of unreduced armor damage over a large area, but it's generally pretty sluggish, even with the sprint stage.

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Around 202 post-collapse, a secret Tri-Tachyon vault holding blueprints for the elite Fourth Domain Battlegroup was broken into, and various blueprints quickly made their way into the hands of independent shipbuilders.
In response, Tri-Tachyon began open production of IV Battlegroup hulls, though only in very limited numbers.

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Vayra's Sector Content:

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The Ashen Keepers ships do require Vayra's Sector; the rest of them spawn either as Vayra's Sector bounties, or as MagicLib bounties if you don't have Vayra's.

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This mod includes support for Industrial Evolution and Version Checker. Everything can be reverse-engineered and printed, aside from the unique bounty flagships.

Credits:
Helmut- Bombardier, Incursion, base for Plasma Streamer sprites
AxleMC131- Moray
Vinya- Aphelion
DrakonST- Invader, Invader XIV
Anonymous- Kingfisher, Tigershark, Peregrine, Gila, Iris
Nicke535- homing projectile script
Vayra- fixing my egg sprites
Unofficial Starsector Discord- help with descriptions, balance, and spriting

High Tech Expansion Mod by theDragn is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Any derivative work must also comply with Starsector's EULA. Sprites that were not made by theDragn belong to their original creators.

[IonDragonX]

They look sooo beautiful!

Suggestion : since Beam weapons are getting a buff in .95 in the form of increased damage at close ranges, why not try to show some love to non-beam energy types? something like faster missile speed or lower flux per shot?

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Suggestion : since Beam weapons are getting a buff in .95 in the form of increased damage at close ranges, why not try to show some love to non-beam energy types? something like faster missile speed or lower flux per shot?

That buff you're referring to is a player & officer exclusive skill, and it applies to energy projectiles too, not just beams.

[theDragn]

Suggestion : since Beam weapons are getting a buff in .95 in the form of increased damage at close ranges, why not try to show some love to non-beam energy types? something like faster missile speed or lower flux per shot?

I really don't have any intention of trying to fiddle with vanilla weapon balance. I might reduce the Peregrine's built-in hullmod bonus slightly in anticipation of 0.95 (or if enough people tell me that it's too strong), but otherwise I'll leave weapon balance up to better modders than me.

[hefewy]

These look great! I feel like High-Tech doesn't get as much love as Low and Mid in vanilla-like ship packs like these, so you're doing a good service. Definitely gonna start a new game with this.

[theDragn]

1.1.0 version released. Lots of nerfs all around; hopefully things are in a more reasonable position now. Added six new missile weapons, two fighter wings, and a new capital. See the patch notes dropdown for full details.

Also given a quick patch to 1.1.1, to make the large missile weapons less rare. Tritach now knows the Nyx and Tawa Battery, and the Ahab is now part of the missile blueprint package.

[Rain]

As an enthusiast of pewpew and high-tech, I have greatly enjoyed these additions. You also gave me a great idea for an Apogee setup!

[Chairman Suryasari]

The spriteworks look great, and the little detail on these ship make them really look like a plausable high-tech ship especially the Onslaught.

My only concern is probably the Onslaught-lite, does she have a TPC? since you know, the entire arm of vanilla Onslaught is the TPC itself, a relic from old technology as siege weapon, it better change it to something else, many mod that have similar weapon like TPC exist, like Underworld and HMi, maybe give the little Onslaught modified TPC instead normal TPC.

[IonDragonX]

Edit: Oops. Thought you meant the Incursion, not the Invader.

@theDragn The mission that you created has loadouts that still have unused OP.

[Chairman Suryasari]

I just checking in, the little Onslaught use TPC.

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The spriteworks look great, and the little detail on these ship make them really look like a plausable high-tech ship especially the Onslaught.

My only concern is probably the Onslaught-lite, does she have a TPC? since you know, the entire arm of vanilla Onslaught is the TPC itself, a relic from old technology as siege weapon, it better change it to something else, many mod that have similar weapon like TPC exist, like Underworld and HMi, maybe give the little Onslaught modified TPC instead normal TPC.

Underworld has 2 TPC variants, one on the Dragon and one on the Infernus.  IIRC they're both fluffed as salvage from Onslaughts.

Neither the description of the TPC nor the Onslaught itself suggests that weapon is taking up the entire arm of the Onslaught.

A bulky energy weapon from the early epoch, the TPC is built directly into the Onslaught's hull and provides overwhelming firepower.
Designed before modular energy weapons were a reality, this weapon was coded into the Onslaught's blueprint because no other ship was large enough or had reactors capable of generating the requisite power.
Even though it's outperformed by some of the later epoch modular designs, the Thermal Pulse Cannon remains an integral part of the Onslaught's arsenal.

A venerable design the Onslaught-class battleships were first created to serve the Domain of Man eons ago, before the development of advanced strike weapons, fighter craft, modern energy weapons, and shield systems.
When first launched from orbital dock, they must have surely dwarfed any other ship in existence and intimidated entire systems. Some even say that they were built to combat non-humans in a long forgotten war, in which the Domain was triumphant. Much later, Domain engineers made modifications to the blueprints to include a shield system, upgrade the FTL drives and reduce the necessary crew complement....

[theDragn]

Edit: Oops. Thought you meant the Incursion, not the Invader.

@theDragn The mission that you created has loadouts that still have unused OP.

This mod doesn't add any missions.

[IonDragonX]

Edit: Oops. Thought you meant the Incursion, not the Invader.

@theDragn The mission that you created has loadouts that still have unused OP.

This mod doesn't add any missions.

Really? wow. I loaded vanilla, the three libraries, audio plus and your mod. No other mods. The 2nd to last Mission in the list basically showcases many of your ships but its probably a bug of mine.

I went through all my mods to check for name conflicts, here's what I found:

• Vayra Ship Pack 1.1.4 has a frigate called Kingfisher
• The Star Federation 0.7.1 (FTL) has a destroyer called Invader
• Kingdom of Terra 0.11 has a cruiser called Wyvern
• Arsenal Expansion 1.5.3i has a fighter called Bombardier
• The Nomads 1.4.11-rc2 has a battleship called Gila Monster, which is close
• Roider Union 1.1.0 has a destroyer called Bombard, which is close

[Chairman Suryasari]

There is a mod that add random showcase even from other mods.

[Chairman Suryasari]

Underworld has 2 TPC variants, one on the Dragon and one on the Infernus.  IIRC they're both fluffed as salvage from Onslaughts.

Neither the description of the TPC nor the Onslaught itself suggests that weapon is taking up the entire arm of the Onslaught.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/jfe6nl/a_lore_based_examination_of_the_onslaught_that/

There is an old thread about Onslaught lore, i believe that the entire arm of Onslaught is TPC because how old Onslaught are, how Onslaught and TPC was designed, and why there is no such thing as mountable TPC for other ship to use.

TPC was designed long before modular energy weapons were a reality so they use bulky, unoptimized and specialized blueprint to make it. TPC is a part of Onslaught itself, they're design for each other hence :

"Designed before modular energy weapons were a reality, this weapon was coded into the Onslaught's blueprint because no other ship was large enough or had reactors capable of generating the requisite power. Even though it's outperformed by some of the later epoch modular designs, the Thermal Pulse Cannon remains an integral part of the Onslaught's arsenal.."

I know there is no statement that said the arm of Onslaught is the TPC itself, unless Alex release some sort lore book, but for now i firmly believe that TPC is unique to the Onslaught because of reason above.

And for other TPC-like weapon, they're more or less a jury-rigged or hack-job so i have no problem with it unless it's original un-modified TPC. Hellfire Cannon is Huge, like insanely huge and of course unmountable, for Light TPC, i think most of it component is inside of the hull itself, thus why it's also unmountable, both are non-modular weaponary.

But then again, it's your mod, i put no effort in it, and please don't take it the wrong way, i love this mod for adding such high quality ship into the game, i just give my feedback, no hard feeling okay? It's just a game with .PNG and Javascript in the end of the day 

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