Ok, so lots of discussion on piece mailing the mod. (v1.04)
I am not going to support more then 1 mod on here and I have zero desire to break my work up into mini mods as there are enough people already doing that on their own. I am sorry, but it is a huge time sink needing to swap between mods in the editor, loading 10's of thousands of shaders every swap of a mod is insanely time consuming.
I understand that this means it's an all or nothing mod, here is a solution you might find for your conflicts. simply overwrite this mod with another mods files if you wish their mod to be used over this one.
the way to do that is:
?when you open mod.json file with a txt editor you will see:
"displayName" : "SynergiesMOD", "version" : "1.0", "buildNumber" : 54, "description" : "Custom Conversion mod for Vanilla Mw5 including a lot of Balance changes and QOL upgrades.", "author" : "Salan", "authorURL" : "", "defaultLoadOrder" : 5, "gameVersion" : "1.1.0", "manifest" : [etc etc etc....
the "defaultloadorder" : 5,
is the order in which a mod is loaded, the higher the number the more it moves above other mods.
as of 1.06 I won't be changing much more QOL or Balance within the mod at this point, I've achieved everything my coop group wants within the mod. I will watch for adjustments that need to be made if balance is out of whack anywhere with any of the changes I have done, gladly leave feedback and I will read it.
I will continue to add new custom variants to the mod, my goal will be to add 1 to 3 for each and every mech currently in the game, as well as unlocking heroes for AI to use against players but not be viable for players to use unless they find the hero version.
Thanks
Please check the MAIN DETAILS PAGE for complete list on what the mod does, I will keep that updated with each file I upload here.
I didn't do any work for engine swapping, there are some big mods coming that have that functionality. I'll do what I can do be compatible with them tho.
Got a lot of thoughts on this that can be TL;DR'd as "Please break this up into sections even though it will probably never be broken up because of additional maintenance requirements"
Love: Removal of type restrictions for basically all equipment Engine DHS fix integration
Like: New variants Employment/salvage improvement integration
Indifferent: CGR-1A1 spawn frequency JJ changes
Dislike: Weapon slot size restriction removal (I can live with it in the absence of honest to god internal slot mechanics) Instant and cheap upgrades (while I get that losing upgrades due to cold storage is annoying, adding pixie dust to the MechTech's diet is not cool in my book)
Dealbreakers: PPC/Ballistic speed changes (utterly unnecessary for PPCs, makes crossmap AC/20 sniping even easier, so on and so forth) Multi-mission repair speed (Might as well remove all but 4 active mech slots since we've added pixie dusk to our MechTech's diet) Poor compatibility (Self-explanatory)
While I Agree with the poor compatibility there is ultimately nothing to be done for that, it could be said all mods in general are not compatible once they touch the same files, and more and more will be that way.
I am toying with the idea of breaking them up into smaller sections, but in all honesty it is 100% easier to maintain one big mod over tons of different ones. The editor is finicky as crap as it is, loading and reloading different mods is insanely time consuming. I'm not sold on either route yet, tbh.
My reasons for making a few things the way I did. The repair piece I've been watching very closely in our play through. I totally understand your perspective on it, although throughout all my experience in battletech TT/Story lore there were always battlefield repairs being done on outside skin of battlemechs to make them more prepared for the 'next' battle even if it was a day away. I've been trying to find a way to add a secondary repair option that would address this more functionally at the immersion level then 'repair for 0 days'. An option for old repair takes x days x money, and an option to repair % of the mech for higher % cost, but not a complete full repair. Of course the free days worth of repair does NOT count for internals, if you have any internal damage you can't instant repair it, and its adjusted to take longer. So again back to the field repairs of the skin... hence the decision to start there and work towards more options.
The PPC / Ballistics of this game are so out of the norm from any game I have ever played in this universe, sorry I won't buy their artificial control function of slowing the weapons down to howitzer lobbing levels which they never were. The PPC has damage drop off (unless I am wrong) so sniping beyond their actual range won't exactly help you. Although AC's yes, they can snipe a long distance for full damage, which they already could previously anyways, just had to be good at aiming it. It is easier now to achieve, yes, which is a side effect of making the ballistics feel more natural to how my group has always seen them.
The upgrade changes were only made cheaper for the high end ones above 500k. And the reason is you will spend 5million and 60 days upgrading a mech. Place that mech into the cold storage, and all upgrades disappear instantly and forever, only needing to be replaced back on them. Their double cost of 1+million for an upgrade and 30 to 40 days time to do said upgrade was ridiculous in relation to our inability to expand our dropship and how cold storage works. If upgrades stayed on the mech, I'd revert the upgrade changes instantly.
I'd also love to make the variations more available outside of this main mod, but again they require a lot of the other changes to work.
Slot changes, Equipment changes, DBH sink engine changes. I'll likely consider making a second mod with just those pieces in it, without the ballistic changes, and any of the other QOL things I've added to this.
I too hope you decide to break this up into multiple parts. There are some things you did here that are frankly awesome, things I didn't know I needed until I saw them. Just a +1 for interest in that venture!
I know I more or less didn't pay attention for a week, but a reply deserves an equally long rant reply.
In principle, I agree with some of your sentiments. High difficulty multi-mission contracts are unnecessarily dangerous unless you have high end chassis and weapons by simple virtue of repair duration meaning you probably have to make do with inferior assets on subsequent missions if you take too much damage to repair in the given timeframe (and this is rather easy to accomplish in high rep warzones). Likewise, having mech upgrades up and up disappear upon being placed in storage is just the kind of bad design that I expect from PIG.
In practice, I'm a good bit less agreeable due to hard breaks from both lore and the previous titles' gameplay standards. I know you cite lore for your reasoning for 0 day repairs, but "next day" readiness is basically limited to armor repairs unless the MechTech in question is a wiz, in which case some minor loadout changes and/or a small amount of internal damage would've been on the table. That said, the lore's got some consistency issues that mostly arise because the plot demands it. I can accept that and any interpretation that arises from it, but I'm still going to grumble. Personally, I'd be peachy keen on the middle ground of armor repair duration being reduced by ~80% of what they are in vanilla.
I'm actually more curmudgeonly regarding the cheap and instant upgrades, since basically all of those upgrades would typically takes months or years to accomplish - if the MechTech in question could accomplish them at all - prior to the Clan shenanigans. However, that ire is heavily mitigated by the fact that cold storage's handling of upgrades is - as previously stated - incredibly bad design most likely borne of incompetence. Even if that weren't the case, I'd still see no problem with spending time and C-Bills to dust off one of the dozens of mechs I've placed in storage, simply by virtue of the fact that I can plan ahead and don't put mechs in storage just to pull them out a week later. In the end, it's a feature I can say I'll live with, but it won't stop my grumbling entirely because this never would've happened back in my day.
Regarding PPC and Ballistic velocities: I'm not sure what games you are referring to. Vanilla PPC's are about in line with their closest equivalents in MWLL/MW4 and prior official titles had PPC's which were significantly harder to lead. Heck, erPPC's and high tier PPC's feel faster. MW2, in particular, suffered in this regard. 1km+/s is more than enough velocity to make tagging a target easy as sin in 99% of engagements. As it is, the PPC vs. LLas dynamic feels fine in vanilla, with PPC's frontloading damage onto a single component at greater range and frequency in exchange for a different skill requirement and being less effective against static targets. I personally miss the light splash damage PPC's had in MWLL, but that's neither here nor there.
Ballistics is a bit less easy to pin down, as their representation has changed the most across titles. In MW2, they were basically recolored laser bolts. In 3, they were almost as fast as gauss is in MW5, while in MW4 and MWLL they were a happy middle ground, with lighter AC ratings having higher velocities than heavier ratings so that they'd fit their AA/plinking roles. In all cases, however, there was no projectile drop and projectiles disappeared at their max range (perhaps its own subject for discussion).
I can understand the desire to make the base AC/20 speed to be a bit higher, but it's already dead easy to treat the AC/20 like it's Heavy Gauss pretty much the moment you get access to ballistic velocity upgrades. Or maybe that's just me. Honestly, it really is only the AC/20 that felt a bit off once I got used to the general feel of the ballistics, and - as one might guess from the previous sentence - that went away with higher tier AC/20's and velocity upgrades. What I can't understand is the desire to make anything lighter than an AC/20 have a higher velocity, since even AC/10's have a similar velocity and droprate to a modern large bore AT gun and are similarly easy to use at any range (any range that's possible in-game, that is). I guess there's no accounting for personal taste, so this is one of those things that having config access to would help, but I won't hold my breath for that.
With all of that said, I know full well that there's little to be done regarding compatibility issues since UE is famous for being a pain in the ass in that regard. If it wasn't for YAW/YAWC - or whatever weapon pack ends up being the gold standard in the future, because God knows PIG isn't going to add the majority of SLDF and tier 2 weapons - I'd go straight from "on the fence" to "might as well". Hell, I'd probably have already put in the effort myself to cobble together my own rather long list of desired features if I was willing to touch EGS with a ten foot pole just for UE editor, but I'm not. So, as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. I know full well from being on the other end of this sort of conversation that I can say whatever I want, but it's not going to change your vision or what you produce in the end. If I'm being honest, it would be nice if certain features were broken apart or configurable, but I know full well (and to my eternal dismay) how maintenance work multiplies once you start having multiple versions of something.
Added new AI Heavy Hero Variants: -Dragon FLAME-H -Dragon FANG-H -Dragon SDW-H *-Jagermech S2-H
Added new AI Medium Hero Variants: -Blackjack 3-H *-Blackjack 2-H
Heavy Rifles have had their cooldown time increased, decreasing shots per minute by 2.5 Light Rifles, and Medium Rifles have had their damage increased by 1.
This Mod crashes my game with "Fatal Error" no matter if I'm in Campaign or Career. In Campaign mode it doesn't crash 'til I'm allowed to travel between Star Systems. In Career it crashes as soon as I try to start the game from the Career Set-Up screen.
This happens whether it's an existing save or a fresh start. Am running 1.1.273. This also happens whether I'm running other mods or just on its own.
EDIT: Alright, ignore all that. Although it doesn't specify in your Description, the .json file states it's for "Vanilla" and I'm running the Heroes version. My Bad.
Update: So, I renamed the .pak to 'MW5Mercs-WindowsNoEditor1' and it now works sporadically.
The main point of "Fatal Error" is when I try to move from 'Conflict' space to Ordinary space or vice versa. I can flit from planet to planet in either area and can *sometimes* cross the border between the two with no problems. Other times, even approaching a planet on the border, let alone crossing it, will cause the "Fatal Error" ctd . . .
The only way round it in those circ's is to disable the Mod, cross to where I want to be and re-enable it. Then it works for a while . . .
This is happening to you with no other mods running at all?
What space areas are you running between? (or is it every single one?) I adjusted the missions to have 5 instead of 3, but didn't really change anything else in those areas. hmm
V1.6 mod balance changes and additions. (Please remember this is a conversion mod, it is intended to make the game balance slightly different. I want to give us more reason to use these outlier items while not making them the only, and best, choice.)
Chem Lasers -All chem lasers have had their ammoincreased by 30% per type. -All chem lasers have had theirdistance increased by 20%, in order to create the definitive difference vs non chem laser types.
Rifles -All Rifles have had their ammoincreased.Bringing them closer in line with the games other Ballistics, but still significantly less per ton. -All Rifles have had their velocitylowered to vanilla AC 20 levels, 400m a second. -All Rifles have had their range set to800m, similar to LRM/SRM consistency. (all shoot the same distance). -Heavy Rifles have had their statsadjusted to create a definitive difference in characteristics vs AC20/GAUSS/HEAVYRIFLE trifecta. -Medium Rifles have had their statsadjusted against AC10's. Weigh less, Do slightly more damage, Run hotter, Shoot slower, longer range, slower projectile. -Light Rifles have had their statsadjusted against AC5's. Weigh less, Do slightly more damage, Run hotter, Shoot slower, longer range, slower projectile.
Adjusted all Vanilla mechs effected byweight changes in EW equipment. -Battlemaster 1P -Cataphract OX -Quickdraw 4P -Raven 1X -Vulcan VL-2P
82 comments
I am not going to support more then 1 mod on here and I have zero desire to break my work up into mini mods as there are enough people already doing that on their own. I am sorry, but it is a huge time sink needing to swap between mods in the editor, loading 10's of thousands of shaders every swap of a mod is insanely time consuming.
I understand that this means it's an all or nothing mod, here is a solution you might find for your conflicts.
simply overwrite this mod with another mods files if you wish their mod to be used over this one.
the way to do that is:
as of 1.06 I won't be changing much more QOL or Balance within the mod at this point, I've achieved everything my coop group wants within the mod. I will watch for adjustments that need to be made if balance is out of whack anywhere with any of the changes I have done, gladly leave feedback and I will read it.
I will continue to add new custom variants to the mod, my goal will be to add 1 to 3 for each and every mech currently in the game, as well as unlocking heroes for AI to use against players but not be viable for players to use unless they find the hero version.
Thanks
Please check the MAIN DETAILS PAGE for complete list on what the mod does, I will keep that updated with each file I upload here.
Love:
Removal of type restrictions for basically all equipment
Engine DHS fix integration
Like:
New variants
Employment/salvage improvement integration
Indifferent:
CGR-1A1 spawn frequency
JJ changes
Dislike:
Weapon slot size restriction removal (I can live with it in the absence of honest to god internal slot mechanics)
Instant and cheap upgrades (while I get that losing upgrades due to cold storage is annoying, adding pixie dust to the MechTech's diet is not cool in my book)
Dealbreakers:
PPC/Ballistic speed changes (utterly unnecessary for PPCs, makes crossmap AC/20 sniping even easier, so on and so forth)
Multi-mission repair speed (Might as well remove all but 4 active mech slots since we've added pixie dusk to our MechTech's diet)
Poor compatibility (Self-explanatory)
While I Agree with the poor compatibility there is ultimately nothing to be done for that, it could be said all mods in general are not compatible once they touch the same files, and more and more will be that way.
I am toying with the idea of breaking them up into smaller sections, but in all honesty it is 100% easier to maintain one big mod over tons of different ones. The editor is finicky as crap as it is, loading and reloading different mods is insanely time consuming. I'm not sold on either route yet, tbh.
My reasons for making a few things the way I did.
The repair piece I've been watching very closely in our play through. I totally understand your perspective on it, although throughout all my experience in battletech TT/Story lore there were always battlefield repairs being done on outside skin of battlemechs to make them more prepared for the 'next' battle even if it was a day away. I've been trying to find a way to add a secondary repair option that would address this more functionally at the immersion level then 'repair for 0 days'. An option for old repair takes x days x money, and an option to repair % of the mech for higher % cost, but not a complete full repair. Of course the free days worth of repair does NOT count for internals, if you have any internal damage you can't instant repair it, and its adjusted to take longer. So again back to the field repairs of the skin... hence the decision to start there and work towards more options.
The PPC / Ballistics of this game are so out of the norm from any game I have ever played in this universe, sorry I won't buy their artificial control function of slowing the weapons down to howitzer lobbing levels which they never were. The PPC has damage drop off (unless I am wrong) so sniping beyond their actual range won't exactly help you. Although AC's yes, they can snipe a long distance for full damage, which they already could previously anyways, just had to be good at aiming it. It is easier now to achieve, yes, which is a side effect of making the ballistics feel more natural to how my group has always seen them.
The upgrade changes were only made cheaper for the high end ones above 500k. And the reason is you will spend 5million and 60 days upgrading a mech. Place that mech into the cold storage, and all upgrades disappear instantly and forever, only needing to be replaced back on them. Their double cost of 1+million for an upgrade and 30 to 40 days time to do said upgrade was ridiculous in relation to our inability to expand our dropship and how cold storage works. If upgrades stayed on the mech, I'd revert the upgrade changes instantly.
Slot changes, Equipment changes, DBH sink engine changes.
I'll likely consider making a second mod with just those pieces in it, without the ballistic changes, and any of the other QOL things I've added to this.
n equally long rantreply.In principle, I agree with some of your sentiments. High difficulty multi-mission contracts are unnecessarily dangerous unless you have high end chassis and weapons by simple virtue of repair duration meaning you probably have to make do with inferior assets on subsequent missions if you take too much damage to repair in the given timeframe (and this is rather easy to accomplish in high rep warzones). Likewise, having mech upgrades up and up disappear upon being placed in storage is just the kind of bad design that I expect from PIG.
In practice, I'm a good bit less agreeable due to hard breaks from both lore and the previous titles' gameplay standards. I know you cite lore for your reasoning for 0 day repairs, but "next day" readiness is basically limited to armor repairs unless the MechTech in question is a wiz, in which case some minor loadout changes and/or a small amount of internal damage would've been on the table. That said, the lore's got some consistency issues that mostly arise because the plot demands it. I can accept that and any interpretation that arises from it, but I'm still going to grumble. Personally, I'd be peachy keen on the middle ground of armor repair duration being reduced by ~80% of what they are in vanilla.
I'm actually more curmudgeonly regarding the cheap and instant upgrades, since basically all of those upgrades would typically takes months or years to accomplish - if the MechTech in question could accomplish them at all - prior to the Clan shenanigans. However, that ire is heavily mitigated by the fact that cold storage's handling of upgrades is - as previously stated - incredibly bad design most likely borne of incompetence. Even if that weren't the case, I'd still see no problem with spending time and C-Bills to dust off one of the dozens of mechs I've placed in storage, simply by virtue of the fact that I can plan ahead and don't put mechs in storage just to pull them out a week later. In the end, it's a feature I can say I'll live with, but it won't stop my grumbling entirely because this never would've happened back in my day.
Regarding PPC and Ballistic velocities: I'm not sure what games you are referring to. Vanilla PPC's are about in line with their closest equivalents in MWLL/MW4 and prior official titles had PPC's which were significantly harder to lead. Heck, erPPC's and high tier PPC's feel faster. MW2, in particular, suffered in this regard. 1km+/s is more than enough velocity to make tagging a target easy as sin in 99% of engagements. As it is, the PPC vs. LLas dynamic feels fine in vanilla, with PPC's frontloading damage onto a single component at greater range and frequency in exchange for a different skill requirement and being less effective against static targets. I personally miss the light splash damage PPC's had in MWLL, but that's neither here nor there.
Ballistics is a bit less easy to pin down, as their representation has changed the most across titles. In MW2, they were basically recolored laser bolts. In 3, they were almost as fast as gauss is in MW5, while in MW4 and MWLL they were a happy middle ground, with lighter AC ratings having higher velocities than heavier ratings so that they'd fit their AA/plinking roles. In all cases, however, there was no projectile drop and projectiles disappeared at their max range (perhaps its own subject for discussion).
I can understand the desire to make the base AC/20 speed to be a bit higher, but it's already dead easy to treat the AC/20 like it's Heavy Gauss pretty much the moment you get access to ballistic velocity upgrades. Or maybe that's just me. Honestly, it really is only the AC/20 that felt a bit off once I got used to the general feel of the ballistics, and - as one might guess from the previous sentence - that went away with higher tier AC/20's and velocity upgrades. What I can't understand is the desire to make anything lighter than an AC/20 have a higher velocity, since even AC/10's have a similar velocity and droprate to a modern large bore AT gun and are similarly easy to use at any range (any range that's possible in-game, that is). I guess there's no accounting for personal taste, so this is one of those things that having config access to would help, but I won't hold my breath for that.
With all of that said, I know full well that there's little to be done regarding compatibility issues since UE is famous for being a pain in the ass in that regard. If it wasn't for YAW/YAWC - or whatever weapon pack ends up being the gold standard in the future, because God knows PIG isn't going to add the majority of SLDF and tier 2 weapons - I'd go straight from "on the fence" to "might as well". Hell, I'd probably have already put in the effort myself to cobble together my own rather long list of desired features if I was willing to touch EGS with a ten foot pole just for UE editor, but I'm not. So, as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. I know full well from being on the other end of this sort of conversation that I can say whatever I want, but it's not going to change your vision or what you produce in the end. If I'm being honest, it would be nice if certain features were broken apart or configurable, but I know full well (and to my eternal dismay) how maintenance work multiplies once you start having multiple versions of something.
I will now begin working on missions, while still updating a few mechs here and there, and addressing any balance concerns that come up.
1.08
Fixed Cataphract IM2-H to correctly have Double heatsink value as per its designated double heat sinks.
Added new AI Light Hero Variants:
*-Flea LT-H
-Commando TDK-H
-Firestarter E-H
-Firestarter FS-H
-Jenner O-H
-Javelin HT-H
-Locust PB-H
-Panther KK-H
-Raven H2
-Spider A-H
-Urbanmech K9-H
-Wolfhound GR-H
Added new AI Heavy Hero Variants:
-Dragon FLAME-H
-Dragon FANG-H
-Dragon SDW-H
*-Jagermech S2-H
Added new AI Medium Hero Variants:
-Blackjack 3-H
*-Blackjack 2-H
Heavy Rifles have had their cooldown time increased, decreasing shots per minute by 2.5
Light Rifles, and Medium Rifles have had their damage increased by 1.
This happens whether it's an existing save or a fresh start. Am running 1.1.273.
This also happens whether I'm running other mods or just on its own.
EDIT: Alright, ignore all that. Although it doesn't specify in your Description, the .json file states it's for "Vanilla" and I'm running the Heroes version. My Bad.
we have never had this problem, and no one else has reported anything similar.
It sounds like something wrong on your end.
the current game version is 1.1.290 maybe thats the problem for you?
I'll have to cast about at my end and see what's what.
Thanks for the reply x
The main point of "Fatal Error" is when I try to move from 'Conflict' space to Ordinary space or vice versa.
I can flit from planet to planet in either area and can *sometimes* cross the border between the two with no problems.
Other times, even approaching a planet on the border, let alone crossing it, will cause the "Fatal Error" ctd . . .
The only way round it in those circ's is to disable the Mod, cross to where I want to be and re-enable it. Then it works for a while . . .
Most odd.
What space areas are you running between? (or is it every single one?)
I adjusted the missions to have 5 instead of 3, but didn't really change anything else in those areas.
hmm
here is patch 1.07's list.
Update 1.07
*Denotes customvariant.
Added New AI Medium Mech Heroes:
-Centurion YLW-H
-Cicida X5-H
-Crab FL-H
*-Crab FR-H
-Dervish FR-H
-Enforcer GH-H
-Griffin AR-H
-Griffin 1E-H
-Hunchback GI-H
-Kintaro GB-H
*-Kintaro ZT-H
-Pheonixhawk KK-H
*-Pheonixhawk JK-H
-Shadowhawk GD-H
-Trebuchet LG-H
-Vindicator 1SIB-H
-Vulcan BL-H
-Wolverine Q-H
Added New AI Assault Hero Variants:
*-King Crab HRF-H
-Annihilator 1G-H
Added new AI Heavy Hero Variants:
*-Warhammer CF-H
(Please remember this is a conversion mod, it is intended to make the game balance slightly different. I want to give us more reason to use these outlier items while not making them the only, and best, choice.)
Chem Lasers
-All chem lasers have had their ammoincreased by 30% per type.
-All chem lasers have had theirdistance increased by 20%, in order to create the definitive
difference vs non chem laser types.
Rifles
-All Rifles have had their ammoincreased.Bringing them closer in line with the games other
Ballistics, but still significantly less per ton.
-All Rifles have had their velocitylowered to vanilla AC 20 levels, 400m a second.
-All Rifles have had their range set to800m, similar to LRM/SRM consistency. (all shoot the same distance).
-Heavy Rifles have had their statsadjusted to create a definitive difference in characteristics vs
AC20/GAUSS/HEAVYRIFLE trifecta.
-Medium Rifles have had their statsadjusted against AC10's. Weigh less, Do slightly more damage, Run
hotter, Shoot slower, longer range, slower projectile.
-Light Rifles have had their statsadjusted against AC5's. Weigh less, Do slightly more damage, Run
hotter, Shoot slower, longer range, slower projectile.
Adjusted all Vanilla mechs effected byweight changes in EW equipment.
-Battlemaster 1P
-Cataphract OX
-Quickdraw 4P
-Raven 1X
-Vulcan VL-2P
Added Canon Variants:
-Spider 7M
-Marauder 5M
Added Heavy Hero Variants for AI use: (* custom variant)
-Catapult BB-H
-Catapult J-H
-Cataphract IM-H
*-Cataphract IM2-H
*-Champion 3N1-H
-Grasshopper MJ-H
-Jagermech FB-H
-Marauder BH2-H
-Orion YAJ-H
-Quickdraw IV4-H
-Rifleman DB-H
-Rifleman LK-H
-Rifleman DNA-H
-Thunderbolt SS-T-H
*-Thunderbolt T2-H
-Warhammer BW-H