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Author Topic: [0.96a-RC10] The P9 Colony Group - Faction mod (v0.54), Nexerelin Compatible  (Read 256480 times)

Zudgemud

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(this was played on 0.95a)

I've had this mod for a bit now, and while I'm not much of a balance guy, I will drop a list of potential issues/oversights I noticed.

First off, multiple missing descriptions:
Spoiler

Ship system:
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I've probably missed a few so it might be a good idea to check each one

The faction has a crest, but no logo, and it looks weird in the intel feed (also why is it called Dr? nothing in their name can be shortened to that)
Spoiler
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You've got missing columns in the shipsystem csv, when a custom phase cloak lacks "isPhaseCloak" set to true, it fails to benefit from the ship skill. In the same vein, when your phase ships lack the "PHASE" hint (in the shipdata csv), they fail to benefit from fleetwide phase skills.

The faction weapons lack a tech/manufacturer and as such get lumped in and lost in the "common" type weapon tab.

This ship has a shield upkeep of 0.9, meaning that when your shield is up you only have 150 effective flux for your weapons, if you don't install stabilized shields (which the ai often doesn't) (might be intended, but might as well point it out)
Spoiler
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The Samaa-DSI class appears to be built around its main beam, and as such has very few mounts. However said beam is terrible compared to the tachyon lance. On top of the mediocre (damage) stats, the long burst duration and kinetic typing mean it's effectively useless against armor (which is probably the intent, but it's also poor against shields due to low dps, and despite being terribly inefficient it still doesn't use the majority of the ship's flux). I can't tell if it arcs like the tachyon, but any additional text alluding to such functionality is missing ... oh and the entire description is missing.
Spoiler

Tach lance for reference
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Overall, I like the sprites and their glass cannon/low flux capacity approach to combat, but what they really need is some polish.

EDIT:
While looking around some more I've noticed that
- the Samaa-DSI has strangely low ppt for its class at only 450
- this destroyer has infinite ppt
Spoiler
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Thanks a lot for all the feedback and pointing out all the bugs you found! I'll try to address them all in the next patch.

As a  preliminary comment to your nice post, the DSI laser has a massive shield damage buff when it reaches full charge so it technically does instant overloads to most non paragon ships if it can catch them with it's shield up. The gun also doesn't have the tachyon effect due to the previous code crashing the game so I had to remove it. So I'll rewrite that gun and ship description for next patch, and probably buff it's ppt
« Last Edit: May 16, 2021, 09:36:03 PM by Zudgemud »
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KDR_11k

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The Silverfish can fire beam weapons while in phase, is that intentional? Not terribly powerful since it has a fixed phase duration and generates so much flux that any significant amount of shooting will overload it but still strange.
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Zudgemud

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The Silverfish can fire beam weapons while in phase, is that intentional? Not terribly powerful since it has a fixed phase duration and generates so much flux that any significant amount of shooting will overload it but still strange.

Oh hey, I remember that bug! Another one to try and bash for next update.

Thanks for the feedback.
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KDR_11k

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Oh, other oddities with the Silverfish: It can equip heavy armor despite the sensor mod claiming it's not compatible, using the ship system while in phase fails to cancel the time warp effect and it needs near-full capacitors to not overload when using its phase drive?
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Zudgemud

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The Silverfish can fire beam weapons while in phase, is that intentional? Not terribly powerful since it has a fixed phase duration and generates so much flux that any significant amount of shooting will overload it but still strange.
Oh, other oddities with the Silverfish: It can equip heavy armor despite the sensor mod claiming it's not compatible, using the ship system while in phase fails to cancel the time warp effect and it needs near-full capacitors to not overload when using its phase drive?
 

Just gonna mention that in the next patch the silverfish is fixed and I made the phase a right click speed boost that replaced the current ship system, all forward facing mounts built in and high energy focus as a ship system. It also got a great increase in armor regeneration. The way the AI handles this ship currently is balls to the walls offensive and annoying, basically reckless officer mk2. Still not very powerful in AI hands (unless you have a very slow turning ship and lack anti armor damage) but much more fun to use for players.
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KDR_11k

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It's a neat ship but you pretty much have to fit it with stuff like taala beams. Can't stick missiles on it because that just wastes the staying power from its regeneration. The beams fit in its considerable flux dissipation budget and the EMP effects reduce the return fire it takes while burning through the target's armor and hull.
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brengrad

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Super regret adding this faction to my playthrough, Way to over powered.
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Master Troano

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Super regret adding this faction to my playthrough, Way to over powered.

What ships are you using in your fleet? I have no issue fighting P9 whatsoever. They're really squishy against fighter swarms. I have a Mayasuran Arjuna as my flagship, along with a Diable Avionics Storm Battlecarrier and a Mora. Most P9 ships melt against fighter swarms.
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Drglord

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I will second the thought this is just outright broken. I haven't even taken the ships yet but looking at the description i see multiple ships with 3000 flux vent... I don't think anything can come even close to that in firepower. But i'll admit they look great
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Zudgemud

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Super regret adding this faction to my playthrough, Way to over powered.

What specifically did you think was overpowered? Generally most P9 ships are easily overwhelmed and have terrible durability, so once they get outflanked or bursted into overload they generally pop. Long range kinetics and any burst damage weapons are thus good against them, as are fighters and missiles that saturate their limited PD capabilities.

List of stuff that I know is broken OP in the current version and that is fixed in the upcoming patch:
Sike, it was always supposed to have terrible peak time to compensate for its speed and damage, but I seem to have given it way way too much peak performance time in the last update, something which is even more noticable with skills that prolong it, so I gave it terrible peak performance again (240 to 90s).
SL-t1,5p, had literally no peak performance time and could in theory outlast everything, this was fixed.
T3 cannon, gave it energy damage instead and halved the damage, still works good as a sniping weapon but is no longer just a better gauss cannon.
SKS cannon small energy gun having 950 range. This series of guns shooting streams of pink shards have now variable range on all sizes of the guns, with small, medium and large guns having 700,800 and 900 range respectively. So less spammy kiting by fast ships.
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Drglord

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I just realized you pay 1500 upkeep for the shields... Oh well i can't say until i actually try the ships. I said they LOOK OP since 3000 flux means you have 3 times the firepower of an onslaught. It's a weird way to balance that with ridiculous shield upcosts. Will see how it goes when i try them. Anyway everyone appreciates your time and effort and as i said they look amazing. Thanks
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Zudgemud

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I will second the thought this is just outright broken. I haven't even taken the ships yet but looking at the description i see multiple ships with 3000 flux vent... I don't think anything can come even close to that in firepower. But i'll admit they look great
I just realized you pay 1500 upkeep for the shields... Oh well i can't say until i actually try the ships. I said they LOOK OP since 3000 flux means you have 3 times the firepower of an onslaught. It's a weird way to balance that with ridiculous shield upcosts. Will see how it goes when i try them. Anyway everyone appreciates your time and effort and as i said they look amazing. Thanks

The factions ships should balance all that flux by having terrible flux capacity and various shades of low defences (generally terrible PD, terrible HP, often low armor and often huge sprites that likes to catch all the bullets). The terrible flux capacity makes them prone to overloads from spike damage and makes several low ROF weapons basically incompatible with their ships as the ships cant fire the guns without maxing out their flux cap. However, the ships do have a passive flux vent that allows them to dissipate hard flux over time, so if you don't keep up the pressure and try to go one on one with their ships they can tank quite a lot with their shields and often use their agility and firepower to wear you down. Well, this was the intent at least...

Hope you enjoy the mod!

I think I will release the next update tomorrow, it will mainly be bugfixing and balancing, still some stuff to fix and test though.
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Zudgemud

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New version is out, lots of bugfixing and some balancing.

Most important changelog:
Silverfish, it works! The AI is suicidal in it but it is a fun player ship. Upped repair rate but lowered armor, also built in all turrets and updated sprite accordingly. Now has very good staying power as long as you do not eat too much high explosive damage at once (fear harpoons, torps and hellbores!).
Sike, now has 90 second peak performance time and more flux, use it well.
SL-t1.5p, now has a normal peak performance time and more gun arc, allowing it to shoot more things at once and infront of it.
Agg-R, fixed asymmetrical turret arc.
Louse, made it more durable, now it wont lose to a mule if fit for fighting.
Kaala, fixed shield upkeep to a more reasonable setting.

T3 cannon, gave it energy damage instead and halved the damage, still works very well as a sniping weapon but is no longer just a better gauss cannon.
SK-X cannon, This series of guns shooting streams of pink shards now has variable range on all sizes of the guns, with small, medium and large guns having 700, 800 and 900 range respectively. So less spammy kiting by fast P9 ships. They have also been renamed with an S, M or L suffix to indicate mount size.

Fixed missing or faulty descriptions.
Fixed the dumb "Dr" prefix, I think, I had it listed as "personNamePrefix" but I guess that setting did not work as I thought it did?
Made a lot of minor balance changes and fixed the AI behaviour for some guns and ship systems.
Added double barrels to a couple of guns.
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envenger

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I really like the unique looking ships, Have not tried facing them yet.

But is there any reason this mod is not in the mod index? I missed that they exists if i hadn't read the forums.
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Zudgemud

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But is there any reason this mod is not in the mod index? I missed that they exists if i hadn't read the forums.

Thanks for the reminder, I forgot that it existed and my previous release was like 5 years ago so it got scrubbed from the current list, it is placed there now though.
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