I love using this combined with the Shield Buff mod, now space combat is much more tactical, and laser weapons really have a big advantage against shields.
Thank you for making this mod, it fixes a lot of the issues with ship combat.
However, it seems to me that missiles are still not nearly as good as the other weapons. The projectile speed is so low, and their tracking and fire rate so terrible, there isn't much reason not to use particle weapons instead. e.g. A particle weapon will shoot 5 times and deal 28 damage, in the time it takes the missile weapon to shoot once and deal 100 damage, and is more likely to miss.
Any possibility you could rebalance them to shoot faster, have better tracking, or even more damage?
IMHO it would be a lot of fun if there was a range of missile weapon behaviors: From Shooting out a swarm of small damage missiles with good tracking at one end of the spectrum, while the other end missiles are more like slow moving torpedoes that should deal a lot more damage but shoot slowly and have poor tracking.
I can see your point... but I think one of the key features of the missiles is the lock-on.
As for me (and apparently you as well), I think that locks take awhile to acquire and a while to lose is a BAD thing, as it slows things down... but for players with less skill, the missile slow lock that is also slow to degrade on is a GOOD thing because it makes it obvious when you can shoot with a low chance of missing the shot (obviously an instant lock that sticks around for awhile would be the most powerful, but I think it makes sense that a lock that takes awhile to acquire also takes awhile to lose).
I think missiles might actually be the BEST weapons for those players that have major trouble with aiming...
That being said, I think you have a good point. Your sentiment is probably shared among many players with aiming skills that are at least average. I am unfortunately very busy looking for a new job right now, but I may look in to the missiles again at some point in the future.
One mod that I would be looking for is the ability to sell custom ships to a merchant, that merchant then sells them to GF, spacers, trackers, etc and there would be a chance to have to face that ship in the wild. once you get to level 60 actually way before that space combat gets too easy. Facing a ship with max engines and guns and better shields would be a challenge and fun.
I have no idea how to do that within the game... at least considering what I know about how ships are spawned. It seems like they are generally spawned from a leveled list, sort of like guns or other loot. In Skyrim, I know how to add an item to a list at run time - I used it on my new lands mod so that I could add books to the default lists without breaking mod compatibility and things like that (it's a common technique, but requires basic scripting). I don't know how to add a one off item that is created at game time to the list, though... IDK how they are really even stored.
I wanted to add some of my own custom ships to a mod so that people would be able to fight against them and capture them... There are a lot of x, y, z coordinates specifying where all the parts go and that would be a challenge without a GUI editor, but what really deterred me is that they all have a navmesh specified - seems that they aren't created at runtime for the original ships so that would be very difficult without the creation kit. That would be a tedious nightmare to do without a UI and I'd still probably make mistakes.
I still haven't given up on swapping the weapons on some vanilla ships before we get the creation kit, though... that wouldn't be as cool as facing a spacer in your old ship, but it would at least allow the enemies to have better firepower...
That is a really cool idea! Hehe. I really like it. Or perhaps people just see your ship and copy it without selling it! You make a ship, some of your enemies start getting them too regardless of the sale.
Haha. Guess we would have to watch out for people making lots of weak, bad ships that they don't use but the npcs would, but hey, if you are going to game the system like that anyway, well, such a mod would not appeal to them anyway. For those people we have a different mod: the You Win mod. You install it and you "win the game." Yay. It praises you a lot and all, and you do not even have to play the game to win. Hurray for them.
I really like the idea of players fighting against other player's ships! That would be absolutely awesome. One problem with mods and even the way we, the players, are good at combining mods as a working whole is that we inevitably become much more powerful than enemy npcs with random characteristics that are not designed to work together. Players are very bright about how they find creative ways to configure things. Would be awesome to play against that.
With just a few clicks of the keyboard, you can turn on god mode; it's not fun after about 20 minutes; you can add all the credits you like to instead of finding resources, guns, or armor and add them to your character. I aim to make my game a game that I will keep wanting to play. Skrim was/is that today? I think Starfield could be even better. I have added several mods to the combat, and I have to say last night, it took me 40 med packs and 2 hours to fight the 100 NPCs in a science tower. I had to find alternate routes and avoid being flanked or walking into an ambush. It was exhilarating. Setting very hard, The mods I used are as follows: AI accuracy increase, Double enemy numbers 5x, Enimy Friendly fire, legendary spawns, peak enemy AI, Tougher enemies (file 120-180 lvl) I have a newer pc and 40 series GPU that handled the chaos flawlessly not sure how it would perform on an older rig. But if you have the time highly recommend you will not be disappointed!
@Zedicus1 The enemy ships are generally a bit better with this weapons rebalance. They often have rather random loadouts rather than something truly optimized. Buffing the weakest weapon types helps to make up for their rather random weapon choices.
Unfortunately, none of the enemy NPCs have any of the perks in the tech tree that the player can get... They are essentially all weaker than the player for this reason. Adding perks to enemy NPCs doesn't necessarily work, either... so that isn't an option for most perks (or maybe all perks, I haven't tested them all). I was considering rebalancing the perks so that the player is weaker at first and then eventually gets as strong as the default values but this might be rather awkward in the UI and I'm not sure if I can get it to work right at rank 0 anyway...
I don't think this weapon is actually obtainable, as none of the Starborn Guardian ships (1-6) seem to use it.
IDK if there are any enemies that can use it... there might not be. I just wanted to keep the upgrades to Starborn weapons consistent in case it is actually used or in case it is used by a DLC, etc.
I originally came here to post before getting swallowed up by the cool ideas of Zedicus1 and AllensProject in a previous post (read that if you want to see a cool couple of ideas).
Anyway, what I wanted to point out is that everybody always talks about rebalancing weapons and armor and stuff but interestingly in a word play kind of way, almost nobody actually changes the weight of any of those things. I find that a little funny.
Another thing is that weight is one thing but bulkiness is another that does not really get looked at. In particular when people are supposedly toting tons of enemy guns and armor around, you have to think that even if the weight was accurate, it would just be way too awkward to carry it all. I can physically carry the weight of all my groceries, but dang, it is hard to actually carry it all at once even if I am strong enough.
I know, not relevant to ships really, but the idea of weight being something to balance just brought the idea to mind.
I wanted to keep the mass of the weapons the same for one critical reason - increases in mass can potentially make it so that a ship is too heavy to grav jump.
Aside from the limitations on minimum jump range (at around 15.003 ly or less, the game considers your build invalid) it might be annoying that your ship can no longer jump between your outpost and your favorite city once installing the mod.
If I make a mod in the future that is such an overhaul that players should start a new game anyways, I wouldn't be as afraid of overhauling mass.
This mod is intended to be installed mid playthrough... Potentially by people who were disappointed with lasers after building a ship with them and spending skill points on them. So there you have it... that's why I decided to avoid changing mass for this particular mod.
I hope you know that I was not terribly serious about "balancing" the actual mass of things. I just thought it funny that we so easily presume that we are definitely not talking about doing that these days. Then I started thinking about bulkiness v. weight. As I recall, in the old advanced dungeon and dragons publications (1980s versions) they acknowledged that encumbrance was about more than weight but also bulk.
Still, in a game with its gaming restrictions, real world accuracy just is not fun anyway. If the guns get too heavy to move around, then that is just not fun--strange that in space weight is such a limitation anyway, but what do I know about it?
15 comments
However, it seems to me that missiles are still not nearly as good as the other weapons. The projectile speed is so low, and their tracking and fire rate so terrible, there isn't much reason not to use particle weapons instead. e.g. A particle weapon will shoot 5 times and deal 28 damage, in the time it takes the missile weapon to shoot once and deal 100 damage, and is more likely to miss.
Any possibility you could rebalance them to shoot faster, have better tracking, or even more damage?
IMHO it would be a lot of fun if there was a range of missile weapon behaviors: From Shooting out a swarm of small damage missiles with good tracking at one end of the spectrum, while the other end missiles are more like slow moving torpedoes that should deal a lot more damage but shoot slowly and have poor tracking.
As for me (and apparently you as well), I think that locks take awhile to acquire and a while to lose is a BAD thing, as it slows things down... but for players with less skill, the missile slow lock that is also slow to degrade on is a GOOD thing because it makes it obvious when you can shoot with a low chance of missing the shot (obviously an instant lock that sticks around for awhile would be the most powerful, but I think it makes sense that a lock that takes awhile to acquire also takes awhile to lose).
I think missiles might actually be the BEST weapons for those players that have major trouble with aiming...
That being said, I think you have a good point. Your sentiment is probably shared among many players with aiming skills that are at least average. I am unfortunately very busy looking for a new job right now, but I may look in to the missiles again at some point in the future.
I have no idea how to do that within the game... at least considering what I know about how ships are spawned. It seems like they are generally spawned from a leveled list, sort of like guns or other loot. In Skyrim, I know how to add an item to a list at run time - I used it on my new lands mod so that I could add books to the default lists without breaking mod compatibility and things like that (it's a common technique, but requires basic scripting). I don't know how to add a one off item that is created at game time to the list, though... IDK how they are really even stored.
I wanted to add some of my own custom ships to a mod so that people would be able to fight against them and capture them... There are a lot of x, y, z coordinates specifying where all the parts go and that would be a challenge without a GUI editor, but what really deterred me is that they all have a navmesh specified - seems that they aren't created at runtime for the original ships so that would be very difficult without the creation kit. That would be a tedious nightmare to do without a UI and I'd still probably make mistakes.
I still haven't given up on swapping the weapons on some vanilla ships before we get the creation kit, though... that wouldn't be as cool as facing a spacer in your old ship, but it would at least allow the enemies to have better firepower...
Haha. Guess we would have to watch out for people making lots of weak, bad ships that they don't use but the npcs would, but hey, if you are going to game the system like that anyway, well, such a mod would not appeal to them anyway. For those people we have a different mod: the You Win mod. You install it and you "win the game." Yay. It praises you a lot and all, and you do not even have to play the game to win. Hurray for them.
Unfortunately, none of the enemy NPCs have any of the perks in the tech tree that the player can get... They are essentially all weaker than the player for this reason. Adding perks to enemy NPCs doesn't necessarily work, either... so that isn't an option for most perks (or maybe all perks, I haven't tested them all). I was considering rebalancing the perks so that the player is weaker at first and then eventually gets as strong as the default values but this might be rather awkward in the UI and I'm not sure if I can get it to work right at rank 0 anyway...
IDK if there are any enemies that can use it... there might not be. I just wanted to keep the upgrades to Starborn weapons consistent in case it is actually used or in case it is used by a DLC, etc.
Anyway, what I wanted to point out is that everybody always talks about rebalancing weapons and armor and stuff but interestingly in a word play kind of way, almost nobody actually changes the weight of any of those things. I find that a little funny.
Another thing is that weight is one thing but bulkiness is another that does not really get looked at. In particular when people are supposedly toting tons of enemy guns and armor around, you have to think that even if the weight was accurate, it would just be way too awkward to carry it all. I can physically carry the weight of all my groceries, but dang, it is hard to actually carry it all at once even if I am strong enough.
I know, not relevant to ships really, but the idea of weight being something to balance just brought the idea to mind.
Aside from the limitations on minimum jump range (at around 15.003 ly or less, the game considers your build invalid) it might be annoying that your ship can no longer jump between your outpost and your favorite city once installing the mod.
If I make a mod in the future that is such an overhaul that players should start a new game anyways, I wouldn't be as afraid of overhauling mass.
This mod is intended to be installed mid playthrough... Potentially by people who were disappointed with lasers after building a ship with them and spending skill points on them. So there you have it... that's why I decided to avoid changing mass for this particular mod.
Still, in a game with its gaming restrictions, real world accuracy just is not fun anyway. If the guns get too heavy to move around, then that is just not fun--strange that in space weight is such a limitation anyway, but what do I know about it?