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[senor]

Hey, i love the mod.  The art style and the ship roles and everything.  Well, CEPC type weapon effects (the green bullet) is maybe a little plain.  But other than that I think it's all great.

My one comment on balance issues is that the Harmonic Shield Conduits seem quite a bit too strong.  I like the idea of using strong / efficient shields for defense, but the harmonic shields hull mod seems to be over the top.

heavy alpha strike still brings down the shields of course, but heavy sustained / consistent damage seems to be kind of a walk in the park.  flying a morningstar around in the simulation against almost every other destroyer was a cake walk, without focusing on out-ranging opponents.  I didnt actually test against every destroyer, but most of them, and it was an easy fight every time.

What do other people think of it?  Tri-Tachyon, according to the lore and my imagination, seem to be the high tech, shield focused vanilla faction, and i think the Harmonic Shield Conduits help SHI ships to easily out-class them.

Edit: I should specify that im running shadowyards 4.4a, but the patch notes dont mention any changes to Harmonic Shield Conduits that i noticed.

[Nanao-kun]

Hey, i love the mod.  The art style and the ship roles and everything.  Well, CEPC type weapon effects (the green bullet) is maybe a little plain.  But other than that I think it's all great.

My one comment on balance issues is that the Harmonic Shield Conduits seem quite a bit too strong.  I like the idea of using strong / efficient shields for defense, but the harmonic shields hull mod seems to be over the top.

heavy alpha strike still brings down the shields of course, but heavy sustained / consistent damage seems to be kind of a walk in the park.  flying a morningstar around in the simulation against almost every other destroyer was a cake walk, without focusing on out-ranging opponents.  I didnt actually test against every destroyer, but most of them, and it was an easy fight every time.

What do other people think of it?  Tri-Tachyon, according to the lore and my imagination, seem to be the high tech, shield focused vanilla faction, and i think the Harmonic Shield Conduits help SHI ships to easily out-class them.

Edit: I should specify that im running shadowyards 4.4a, but the patch notes dont mention any changes to Harmonic Shield Conduits that i noticed.

One on one simulation fights are mostly useless for determining strength. Most of the time, you'll be getting shot at from every direction.

[MShadowy]

It's a bit tricky to tell, overall.  Generally speaking however, I'm of the opinion that it's fairly well balanced, since it pushes you remain at potentially dangerous amounts of hard flux and risk overload in order to sustain greater firepower.  In a one on one fight it's potentially overwhelming, as you noted, but generally one on one fights aren't going to be a thing.

Regardless I'll look into it.

In other news, I'm currently working on the light configuration, and recently got material maps for shaper lib stuff all set up.  I'll probably be releasing a minor update, mostly consisting of further graphical tweaks, released in the nearish future.

The most major of the is definitely the for the Mimir, however, whose sprite has been considerably reworked in order to make her outer hull details a bit sharper, as well as to make the trench section along her bow significantly more interesting.

Probably not quite done yet.

[senor]

One on one simulation fights are mostly useless for determining strength. Most of the time, you'll be getting shot at from every direction.

i can understand there will be a balancing difference between one-on-one fights and group fights, but that does not make them useless.  They are at least an easy way to demonstrate how much flux can be regen'd/saved by simply turning off the shield momentarily, allowing the flux to dissipate very fast.  Even leaving the shield up and briefly ceasing fire, or out-ranging an opponent can allow the flux to drop a fair amount.

I think, in a group fight just a moment's break could allow a Harmonic Shield Conduit ship to vent flux to zero very fast.  Any kind of ship that is surround and being shot from all sides would probably be forced to drop shields or overload, yes.  But in a group fight that isn't totally lopsided, a player's ship might take fire from only one, two or three enemies at a time.  With some other friendly ships around the player can probably back off a little bit, maneuver, or simply briefly drop shields in order to manage flux very easily.

If I have some time i may try out some group fights to get a better idea of how the system works in group fights, and if so, ill be sure to post more impressions here.  I often stack flux vents on my ships in order to improve passive venting, so perhaps that is compounding the effect of the Harmonic Shield Conduit mod?

In any case, it's a great mod.  Keep up the good work, MShadowy.

[Taverius]

That's just balancing - just like the BRDY 100-50% by hull size active venting bonus is balanced by lower general flux numbers.

[DornoDiosMio]

I want to use the ms_harShields on ships of other factions.  Obviously this will be overpowered, but, that is part of the fun to me.

I tried unlocking it in the csv file and also looked at the ms_harShields.java file, but, my experience with this stuff is pretty basic. I tried a few different things, but, the mod is always 'locked' when I attempt to add it to another ship. I didn't see anything in the script that would cause that to happen aside from the "isApplicableToShip" part, but, changing that did not seem to work.

Edit:

Figured out the issue by checking out the handy starsector.log file where I realized the ms_harShields.java file I modified was in fact not being compiled by the game due to its inclusion within the UomozJAR.jar file. ms_harShields.java was not inside the source folder included with the mod so I mistakenly assumed it wasn't within the jar, but it was!  So this discovery lead to my eventual success and also kept my brain from shrinking for at least 1 day.

Turns out I was doing it properly to begin with, it's just that the changes were ignored (Story of my life!).  So I took the easy way out and just deleted the file from the jar with WinRar and modified the version in /data/hullmods/.

Now to abuse my newly found powers, muhahahah!  Also to the creator, thanks again for the incredible work you have done on this mod! You should be very proud! I can not imagine playing a game of Starsector without SHI!

[MShadowy]

That's just balancing - just like the BRDY 100-50% by hull size active venting bonus is balanced by lower general flux numbers.

Honestly having looked at the things a bit more closely I suspect that the issue may have more to do with SHI's weapons, but it's not entirely clear.  There may possibly be a bug with the Harmonic Shield Conduits hullmod that's improving damage reduction beyond what's supposed to be the case -- on the other hand, the bog standard variant of the Medusa used by the simulator has... uh... kind of a lousy loadout.

Regardless something needs fixing, it seems.  Time to get to it.

[DornoDiosMio]

That's just balancing - just like the BRDY 100-50% by hull size active venting bonus is balanced by lower general flux numbers.

Honestly having looked at the things a bit more closely I suspect that the issue may have more to do with SHI's weapons, but it's not entirely clear.  There may possibly be a bug with the Harmonic Shield Conduits hullmod that's improving damage reduction beyond what's supposed to be the case -- on the other hand, the bog standard variant of the Medusa used by the simulator has... uh... kind of a lousy loadout.

Regardless something needs fixing, it seems.  Time to get to it.

The issue might be that the percentage based flux dissipation is being applied to all flux not just hard flux as I believe is intended.  This is obvious if you take a big ship and load it with tons of weapons and try it both with and without the Harshields. In an empty scenario you can see the benefits of the Harshield even though the ship has no hard flux. Flux dissipates more quickly whether the built up flux is hard or soft.  I did not realize this until just now after reading this thread and playing around with the mod on some different ships.

Anyways, I hope that is moderately helpful.

[MShadowy]

Hmmm... the effect may also just be too strong.  Some experimentation is no doubt going to prove necessary.

Regardless I now at least have a plan for how to approach theses issues.

Aside from graphical tweaks, the next SHI release is going to have a number of balance changes.  Very likely, this will include the following - some damage reduction to all CEPC weapons, reduced flux dissipation to all SHI ships larger than fighters, and several further tweaks to the Morningstar, which appears to be somewhat overpowered in it's current state.  Most specifically I'll probably end up replacing it's current drone system with a different kind of drone system, so that it no longer has quite so great a range advantage.

I may also increase the shield upkeep costs for all SHI ships with a 0.2 upkeep to 0.3.  We'll see.

[Nanao-kun]

Hmmm... the effect may also just be too strong.  Some experimentation is no doubt going to prove necessary.

Regardless I now at least have a plan for how to approach theses issues.

Aside from graphical tweaks, the next SHI release is going to have a number of balance changes.  Very likely, this will include the following - some damage reduction to all CEPC weapons, reduced flux dissipation to all SHI ships larger than fighters, and several further tweaks to the Morningstar, which appears to be somewhat overpowered in it's current state.  Most specifically I'll probably end up replacing it's current drone system with a different kind of drone system, so that it no longer has quite so great a range advantage.

I may also increase the shield upkeep costs for all SHI ships with a 0.2 upkeep to 0.3.  We'll see.

When I use a Morningstar and it's drones with the Mayorate hullmod that increases sensor range, I can see the entire map.

[MShadowy]

Alright, new dev version ready with the adjusted curves; the core of the problem was that they were additive, and as such started off giving a greater than 100% increase to passive flux dissipation even without any hard flux in the given ships system; when hard flux was added it became rapidly quite nuts.  This has been fixed and things should now be much more reasonable.  Please note that the description is a bit off, as I'm not sure how to express the match, and that the percentage increase approaches but never reaches the listed values.  I've also gone through and added some logic to ensure that it couldn't be fitted to the Shamash or Scylla, and changed the prefixes of the PotniaBis, Thresher, and Southpaw from "ms_" to "msp_" to ensure that they also cannot fit the system.

There's also been some playing around with some of the values on some of the ships, but nothing terribly final as of yet; I also have not yet gotten around to completing the more in depth of the planned Morningstar revisions, so she's likely still a little overboard.

Beyond that this includes revised sprites for the Inanna and Mimir, as well as material maps for all Shadowyards ships, though I've not yet gotten to applying such to the weapons, nor have I gotten too much done with the weapon animation for the Mimir's Nidhoggr Lance, so that's not present either.

=dev version download=

[DornoDiosMio]

...the core of the problem was that they were additive, and as such started off giving a greater than 100% increase to passive flux dissipation even without any hard flux in the given ships system; when hard flux was added it became rapidly quite nuts.  This has been fixed and things should now be much more reasonable.  Please note that the description is a bit off, as I'm not sure how to express the match, and that the percentage increase approaches but never reaches the listed values.  I've also gone through and added some logic to ensure that it couldn't be fitted to the Shamash or Scylla, and changed the prefixes of the PotniaBis, Thresher, and Southpaw from "ms_" to "msp_" to ensure that they also cannot fit the system.

Cool, I must admit I was having a lot of fun with the overpowered version, lol.  In the long run it is much better to have everything carefully balanced I must admit.  I mainly resorted to fiddling with things because Uomos Corvuz latest version was particularly harsh early on.  So then you change a thing or two and all of a sudden you find yourself 'tweaking' everything.

I'll give this new version a spin in the next couple of days. My current game is quickly winding down as I destroy everything in site.

[HELMUT]

Just got this with the last dev.

Code

777659 [Thread-5] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.O0OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO  - java.lang.RuntimeException: Ship hull variant [ms_potniaBis_Hull] not found!
java.lang.RuntimeException: Ship hull variant [ms_potniaBis_Hull] not found!
	at com.fs.starfarer.loading.L.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.õÖÖ000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.<init>(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.<init>(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.createFleetMember(Unknown Source)
	at data.scripts.world.anar.SHIConvoySpawnPoint.addRandomShips(SHIConvoySpawnPoint.java:165)
	at data.scripts.world.anar.SHIConvoySpawnPoint.spawnFleet(SHIConvoySpawnPoint.java:118)
	at data.scripts.world.BaseSpawnPoint.advance(BaseSpawnPoint.java:63)
	at data.scripts.world.BaseSpawnPoint.advance(BaseSpawnPoint.java:46)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.BaseLocation.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.A.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.B.ØÓÒ000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.oOOO.A.Ò00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.O0OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$2.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

[MShadowy]

Did you overwrite the previous version?  As mentioned above I changed out all the prefixes on the SHI pirate vessels to "msp_" for book keeping purposes; as such if any of those three vessels earlier variant and possibly ship files are still present it's likely to foul things up.

[HELMUT]

Ah it's possible, probably forgot to get ride of the previous version, will try again and i'll tell you.

Otherwise i noticed something, the Anar system feel a bit empty. I only see the local pirates at the start of the game but they tend to disappear as the game progress. Same with SHI, later on, only the Shadowyard armada regularly spawn with perhaps a scout or two.

Edit: Nope, still got the problem, doesn't appear immediately though, perhaps when a pirate fleet fielding one spawn?