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Author Topic: [0.97a] Hiver Swarm - V1.1.2 - 03/27/24  (Read 235907 times)

Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.0 - 10/03/22
« Reply #225 on: October 25, 2022, 12:34:03 AM »

Lol one of the ships is literally just a Leviathan class Reaper from Mass Effect but painted green.
Hello there. Yes I get a lot of comments about that ship, mostly from people who would like to see a Mass Effect Mod. I saw it on Spiral Arms and thought yea that needs to be a Hiver ship :) I did modify it a bit with the re-coloring, landing lights and some other minor changes to make it just enough off to avoid IP infringement. I hope you are enjoying the mod and I am always open to any ideas to make it better if you would like to share them.

Island

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.0 - 10/03/22
« Reply #226 on: October 28, 2022, 02:49:50 PM »

Some more (IMO) thoughts after more encounters with hiver -

selling price of the weapons is too high, even if meant as a miniboss reward. Usual mid-game fight gives me 25ish weapons, 250k each, on average, which would sell for around 3kk. I don't know what's your math behind it, but getting 500k for one hard midgame fight seems like a more appropriate reward, not current 3 millions.

Then missiles visuals does not match gameplay at all. In vanilla and like 99% of the mods, big nuke = big visible missile, crappy anti-fighter firecracker = tiny missile. In your mod I can see a few swarmer-ass looking missiles incoming - aaaand they strip half my armor as if they were harpoons. Very nice feedback, yes.

Then fighters are just mind-boggling. I get they are meant to be strong, but why would you make them also tanky to the point of eating multiple shots of cruiser's main weapons, not PD? Scorpyfly (I think) is not just OP enough to solo a destroyer, or face tank like 5 shots from Interstellar Imperium's Tripple Beam Cannon (large energy main cannon of a capital ship) but also feels stronger than most frigates from your own mod. It's like they're not just OP, but to the point where the mod's own line up feels unbalanced against itself.

Other fighters are more sane, although still IMO too tanky, and heavy hitters are not visually distinct enough. For example torpedo bombers in vanilla are easily distinguishable from fighters, but here, unless I pause the game and read fighter's stats, I can't tell which ones of these is carrying a fat torpedo in addition to regular IR pulse laser on steroids loadout. I think it's the rhombus-shaped ones, but would be a lot more readable if they had like a missile rack sticking out or something.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I just feel the mod has a lot of potential, and it could shine much brighter with less "vanilla thing but number is 10x bigger" cases.
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Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.0 - 10/03/22
« Reply #227 on: October 28, 2022, 03:22:08 PM »

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts Island. I apologize for not having the update I was working on out yet and I will defiantly look over your notes for it but I have a bad case of Pneumonia and it has been sucking the life out of me the last couple days. I've been to the doctor and I am on sort of a bedrest routine at the moment but I'll hopefully be able to get back to updating mods again in a week or so.

Island

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.0 - 10/03/22
« Reply #228 on: October 30, 2022, 08:46:42 AM »

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts Island. I apologize for not having the update I was working on out yet and I will defiantly look over your notes for it but I have a bad case of Pneumonia and it has been sucking the life out of me the last couple days. I've been to the doctor and I am on sort of a bedrest routine at the moment but I'll hopefully be able to get back to updating mods again in a week or so.

No pressure at all, real life goes first of course, hope you get well soon!
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Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.0 - 10/03/22
« Reply #229 on: October 30, 2022, 09:27:10 AM »

No pressure at all, real life goes first of course, hope you get well soon!
Thank you for the well wishes. I am on the mend and can go a whole 30 minutes without coughing which is a relief. I looked over your notes and have some questions that clarity would help me address them better:

selling price of the weapons is too high, even if meant as a miniboss reward. Usual mid-game fight gives me 25ish weapons, 250k each, on average, which would sell for around 3kk. I don't know what's your math behind it, but getting 500k for one hard midgame fight seems like a more appropriate reward, not current 3 millions.
Well that was a compromise I made when I increased the D-mods their recovered ships took. You may have a point though in that they may be too high since I looked at them as individual loot and not as a whole as you point out. I'll review them for the upcoming update. As a side note, I have made an alternate weapons file that is optional that players can overwrite the base one that will make the weapons unsalvageable.
Then missiles visuals does not match gameplay at all. In vanilla and like 99% of the mods, big nuke = big visible missile, crappy anti-fighter firecracker = tiny missile. In your mod I can see a few swarmer-ass looking missiles incoming - aaaand they strip half my armor as if they were harpoons. Very nice feedback, yes.
Yes that is an issue with some of my missiles in general. It was brought to my attention on the Carter's Freetraders thread as well. When I designed those missiles I was more concerned over the performance and have been balancing them based on that. I do thank you for pointing out the visual aspect can be as important and have been remiss in addressing it. I have already changed the CFT missiles and have a better understanding of the code. I will take what I learned from that and adjust the Hiver missiles for the upcoming patch.
Then fighters are just mind-boggling. I get they are meant to be strong, but why would you make them also tanky to the point of eating multiple shots of cruiser's main weapons, not PD? Scorpyfly (I think) is not just OP enough to solo a destroyer, or face tank like 5 shots from Interstellar Imperium's Tripple Beam Cannon (large energy main cannon of a capital ship) but also feels stronger than most frigates from your own mod. It's like they're not just OP, but to the point where the mod's own line up feels unbalanced against itself.
Well as a swarming race I felt that carriers should be the backbone of their fleets. It is also a trait shared by the Hivers of SWOTS but also is high armor and tanky ships. Perhaps I went overboard in trying to keep in lore with Kerebos's ship design and it needs a revisit. I am interested in your opinion on how to keep them a relevant threat if their armor and HP were reduced but also manageable to an extent for the player to fight against.
Other fighters are more sane, although still IMO too tanky, and heavy hitters are not visually distinct enough. For example torpedo bombers in vanilla are easily distinguishable from fighters, but here, unless I pause the game and read fighter's stats, I can't tell which ones of these is carrying a fat torpedo in addition to regular IR pulse laser on steroids loadout. I think it's the rhombus-shaped ones, but would be a lot more readable if they had like a missile rack sticking out or something.
Another great visual suggestion, thank you, it merits attention and I will look into it for the update.
Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I just feel the mod has a lot of potential, and it could shine much brighter with less "vanilla thing but number is 10x bigger" cases.
No complaint taken, I appreciate constructive criticism. I see many comments on discord that are just trollish in nature and I do sometimes pick up an idea from them but it is comments such as yours that are well reasoned and thought out that are truly helpful.

Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.01 - Graphic & Balance Update 11/06/22
« Reply #230 on: November 06, 2022, 06:47:41 AM »

Better late than never update v1.01 released today - My apologies for the delay but I had a bad case of pneumonia that knocked me for a loop and then catching up with R/L obligations put me two weeks behind in the scheduled release date.

Sprite updates for several ships, balance changes to make them more manageable, error corrections, new optional files that make ships and weapons unsalvageable and a new ship - Changelog on the forum OP and in the embedded RAR has all the details.

A special TY to Hyperion505 who supplied the replacement ship sprites in this patch. They can been seen on the Ship Image on the forum OP so give them a look see and a HI-5 to Hyperion 505!

As always, I am thankful for all the comments and suggestions that make the mod better for all of us so if you have any, please keep them coming.

Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.01 - Graphic & Balance Update 11/06/22
« Reply #231 on: November 06, 2022, 02:13:45 PM »

Note: If you have a captured Aphid in your 1.00 save then by updating to 1.01 will crash the game. There is a mismatch in the weapon mount classifications on the ship. This will not effect saves that do not have an Aphid as the game only saves loadouts on player ships. I apologize for not catching that but I will not be uploading a change at this point because that would crash any 1.01 save with an Aphid.

But if you want to load your 1.00 save with an Aphid in your fleet with version 1.01 then there is a work around:

Install 1.01 then go to data\hulls and make a copy of the current Hiver_aphid.ship and put it somewhere for temp storage other than the hulls folder. Now open hiver_aphid.ship with notepad++ and change lines 23 and 32 from WS0005 and WS0006 to WS0003 and WS0004 and save. Load your game, sell/scrap your Aphid then save your game and exit. Go back to data/hulls and delete your edited copy of Hiver_aphid.ship and move the original file back to data\hulls. You can now load your 1.00 save and capture or console command (addship hiver_aphid_standard) a new Aphid if you would like one still.

Island

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.0 - 10/03/22
« Reply #232 on: November 09, 2022, 12:23:08 PM »

and have some questions that clarity would help me address them better:
Sorry for the slow reply, was away from stable internet and starsector.
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Well that was a compromise I made when I increased the D-mods their recovered ships took. You may have a point though in that they may be too high since I looked at them as individual loot and not as a whole as you point out. I'll review them for the upcoming update. As a side note, I have made an alternate weapons file that is optional that players can overwrite the base one that will make the weapons unsalvageable.
D-mods are barely a debuff at this point, and when you grab that skill that reduced DP of Dmodded ships - turns into a straight up buff, so I'm not sure it's the right way of compensating. Maybe a better balance for strong ships would be something like a hullmod in bioships that just makes ship less likely recoverable, like reinforced bulkheads but with negative number. I think other mods have these, like (I think) Second Wave options salvage chance hullmod.
But in general I feel like unsalvagable weapons are a lot less interesting way to approach balancing. Endgame enemy is good, but new toys is also good.
Weapons just should be hard to field in other ways. If it's something like giant damage of Templar guns - have them very flux-inefficient. Or if it's one of bugs' <0.7flux/dmg energy guns - make them obscenely OP-expensive. Now (or at least at 1.0, didn't with play the latest patch just yet) some guns are sane, like that buffed up 700 units ranged green IR laser with 1.3 flux/dmg, if maybe a bit too OP-cheap. But others are ridiculously powerful. Rising their OP cost a lot, like twice or more would be an easy place to start. It wouldn't affect hivers, as their ships already have more OP than they can shake a stick at, but maybe would allow players to find niche use for them, without making literally every vanilla weapon obsolete in comparison.

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Well as a swarming race I felt that carriers should be the backbone of their fleets. It is also a trait shared by the Hivers of SWOTS but also is high armor and tanky ships. Perhaps I went overboard in trying to keep in lore with Kerebos's ship design and it needs a revisit. I am interested in your opinion on how to keep them a relevant threat if their armor and HP were reduced but also manageable to an extent for the player to fight against.
It's gonna be a big poorly structured IMO, but hivers sound like something relying on numerous heavy fighter drones that stay in a fight, hit hard, and are more heavily armored than vanilla fighters. You should have to invest heavily into PD, but at the same time if most of your weapons are dual use PD, and every ship has a integrated PD hullmod, fighters shouldn't be a problem, and you should be killed by bug cannons instead.
The biggest dissonance I'm getting from some hivers fighters right now, is that instead of staying in the fight and hammering at your unshielded sides, they frontload fat alphas of missiles like vanilla bombers, while also bringing destroyer-level armour. Like pick one, bro.
So instead of having bomber-like role, they should fly in, and fly around the target ship while spoon feeding dmg from pulse lasers and light phase lance sort of weapons. Devastating to unshielded and uncovered ass of low tech ships, and punishing high tech ships with no armour, makes you disengage until you get the fighters off you.
Maybe increase replacement time a bit to give some breezing room, especially for something as big and scary as scorpyfly.
If fighters are carrying missiles with limited ammo, have them fire them with few seconds cooldown, to give the player a chance to defend, and have the feeling of being swarmed by scary fighters instead of bombers just unloading and leaving.

Also more of a preference, but I'd prob not give them shields, as you often have to manually clap them with main cannons, and it's a lot more satisfying to see them explode and have a moment of rest while they deploy a replacement, than see one eating a salvo and continue biting your knees 2 seconds later. Not difficulty or balance wise, just the feeling.

Also, and I have no idea if it even can be implemented, it would be cool to give anti-fighter fighters more of a role. Like instead of just needing PD, also have a need for defensive fighters. But it's tricky because hiver fighters are already tanky to stay in fight under heavy PD, and defensive fighters usually have peashooters. Idk, maybe have some fighters with long range guns but less armour, that would be more vulnerable to fighters, but less so to PD? Or some code trickery like increased damage taken from fighters/reduced damage dealt to fighters? Skills modify that for your own fighters, so maybe there's a way.

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No complaint taken, I appreciate constructive criticism. I see many comments on discord that are just trollish in nature and I do sometimes pick up an idea from them but it is comments such as yours that are well reasoned and thought out that are truly helpful.
Yeah, well, hiver balance is sort of a meme there. But you can't expect a wall-of-text criticism in discord, instant chats just don't do that very well, so nobody's even trying.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2022, 12:26:53 PM by Island »
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Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.02 - Happy Birthday Hivers! 11/18/22
« Reply #233 on: November 18, 2022, 07:06:36 AM »

V1.02 released today - Save game compatible with v1.01

Some code changes, the details of which can be found in the changelog found in the RAR or on the forum OP. The major part of this update is a new Replacement Ships.rar that now also includes replacement weapon sprites. I want to thank Sparranova for all their help with base and part sprites that were used in the new ships sprites. With their help (as well as Prontus' original artwork on Spiral Arms I used as a base) I was able to kitbash together a consistent look to the the alternate pack. The image on the forum OP is updated with the new sprites if you want to take a peek :)

I am currently working on an all biological insect looking ship pack as well, no ETA on that but I wanted to get this update out in time for the 1 year anniversary of Hiver Swarm's release.

I am constantly thankful for and impressed with the Starsector community and their willingness to help a noob like me with my mods. I hope you all enjoy the changes and I look forward to your future comments and suggestions.

littlejam

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.02 - Happy Birthday Hivers! 11/18/22
« Reply #234 on: November 24, 2022, 05:17:59 PM »

I always loved being the underdog in the sector. And you did a great job making the replacement ships graphics. They. look. awesome.
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Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.02 - Happy Birthday Hivers! 11/18/22
« Reply #235 on: November 25, 2022, 04:06:14 AM »

I always loved being the underdog in the sector. And you did a great job making the replacement ships graphics. They. look. awesome.
What a nice Thanksgiving gift! Thank you for the kind words I'll make sure to pass them on to Sparranova on discord who submitted cleaned up parts for me to kitbash with.

ApolloStarsector

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.02 - Happy Birthday Hivers! 11/18/22
« Reply #236 on: November 26, 2022, 06:47:02 PM »

Fantastic mod. I love the idea and execution. Suggestions:

1) Too aggressive and too strong compared to the vanilla factions. Sindria conquered by hivers in the blink of an eye.
- Delay invasions by a cycle, decrease invasion fleet size, or decrease invasion frequency?
- I do like having an OP enemy, though. I like the direction you've gone (just maybe a little too far).

2) The vendor price for hiver weapons should be much lower. I made about 4 million credits after selling the weapons from a single medium-large battle.

Well done! This game badly needed insectoid aliens.
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Dazs

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.02 - Happy Birthday Hivers! 11/18/22
« Reply #237 on: November 27, 2022, 05:13:37 AM »

Fantastic mod. I love the idea and execution.
Good morning, thank you for the kind words I truly appreciate them!
Suggestions:

1) Too aggressive and too strong compared to the vanilla factions. Sindria conquered by hivers in the blink of an eye.
- Delay invasions by a cycle, decrease invasion fleet size, or decrease invasion frequency?
- I do like having an OP enemy, though. I like the direction you've gone (just maybe a little too far).
I have adjusted them several times over the course of the mod and it is tricky because some people play a closer to vanilla game and some people play a heavily modded game. The more faction mods a player has installed, the harder it is for the Hivers to succeed. They are currently tuned for a modded game with several faction mods (I currently have around 30 but that may be overkill). Some mods are more powerful than others but overall the Hivers will roll over the Vanilla factions (in my games they go after the Lud with a vengeance first). I guess I can make an alternate version that is weaker for those than play a more vanilla game, I'll give it some thought.
2) The vendor price for hiver weapons should be much lower. I made about 4 million credits after selling the weapons from a single medium-large battle.
They are more expensive than standard because I wanted a risk vs reward balancing offset for the amount of ships and crew you loose when fighting them. In the last patch I lowered the prices quite significantly, are you perhaps referring to their past pricing?
Well done! This game badly needed insectoid aliens.
Well Alex has his vision for the game and I respect that. I just thought an alien menace would add spice for those that found the game to easy combat wise.

My mods are a work in progress so any clarity or additional feedback is appreciated, it only makes the game better for all of us.

ApolloStarsector

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.02 - Happy Birthday Hivers! 11/18/22
« Reply #238 on: November 27, 2022, 10:23:49 PM »

I did see your response to someone else about the balance being tuned for faction mods. So I’m currently doing a run with BLUE, RED, UAF, BRDY, and some others - all of which I avoided including in my other recent game with Hiver Swarm due to them being too OP (I thought, haha). Now I realize I want this power in the sector to check Hiver ambition!

A swappable config file or something would be a good idea, but up to you! I’m not sure if I found that big vendor price after the very most recent patch or not. In any case, I don’t mind being shorter on money, so I used your alternate non-lootable file.

Thank you!
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PilotBland

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Re: [0.95.1a-RC6] Hiver Swarm - V1.02 - Happy Birthday Hivers! 11/18/22
« Reply #239 on: November 28, 2022, 01:00:09 AM »

The balance for this mod is way, way out of wack for a vanilla-ish experience, I'm struggling to understand some of the balance choices, these fleets are incredibly strong compared to any other neighboring factions and decimate the core worlds in the matter of a few cycles in which every portion is inhabited by hivers. The fighters are EXTREMELY tanky compared to any other fighters and hard-hitting again, compared to any other fighters / bombers which require support to be all too impactful or are usually moreso nuisances.

I've sort of tried to understand your point on trying to not make the faction pushovers and maybe you're just competing with the other mods that ALSO overpower their factions, but these guys really take the cake with fleet size and kind of detracting from what I assumed would be bio-engineered ships which're fleshy, weaker yet more numerous or maybe some glass cannons or... something balance-y

but no, their weapons are INCREDIBLY strong, their hull + armor is incredibly durable (and apparently regenerates, which is easy to do when theres so many ships deployed per swarm fleet...) and they're numerous compared to other vanilla mods.

I think, if you want, you should establish a design philosophy for the hivers like oh, the fighters are weak but they're numerous and swarm like locusts, cause I ACTUALLY REALLY ENJOY the aesthetic and idea of bug-men from the corner of the system waging war and stirring ***. I wanna kill aliens, I think that's missing from vanilla.

A balance or an alt-mod where the stats are for a more vanilla-ish experience in their values would be cool

srry for ramble its late and im just sad I have to disable this mod and make a new save since bug-men basically consumed my vanilla-ish core worlds in 5 cycles
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