If you see -rec(number x) in version, it means recompile (using x version of MBINCompiler) to maintain version support of the game, has no changelogs to the script or introducing any new changes. -Bugfix said as it is, a bugfix for current version of the game. Before you complaint, always make sure your mod is up to date, even with bugfixes. My mods "always" targets latest experimental branch (latest version of MBINcompiler), so keep that in mind and keep updating your game.

1800PETMEDS also contributes slightly, mainly about balancing inputs (that make Ship Spawns). Because 1800PETMEDS can't handle the scripting, the script are purely ChristianWidjaya's work and will keep updated as ChristianWidjaya's other mods. Feedbacks by LittleEvo.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Balancing is DONE in CruiseMode variant with BalancedShips and all this mod's Addon installed. NOT going to take any request/feedback to "balance" the non-CruiseMode variant, and if you install or merge anything (including mods) that that conflict with this mod or tampers: SpaceShip Speed, Spaceship Spawning, Ship Weapon Damages (any of it, NPC or yours, even if it doesn't touch any of these files), Ship's Upgrade Stacks (Yes! including overloading tech!), AI timers (combat), Shield Regeneration, Damage Received (includes asteroids and ground!), or even class balancing (changes Balanced Ships) will not count into consideration of balancing (and probably feedback) and never will!. Again the mod are made as is, if you feel it need improvement and wanna give feedbacks / suggestions, it has to be that "vanilla cruisemode" state, and BalancedShips installed.

Well, have you ever noticed that No Man's Sky space combat is too easy? You are regenerating after 5 second at intense speed, their weapons are too weak to be compared to your triple S upgraded guns S class ship, they die after few seconds of laser... etc. Most mods in No Man's Sky just intended as cheat that even make these easier. The difficulty mods didn't make the cut: instead of making dogfights interesting they spawn more and then spin in circles to re-engage you.

So then, after all these "mess" I decided to design Player, NPC spaceships behavior and their AI flags, to represent "balanced" experience on your fully upgraded S class ship, where taking pirates now requires more effort (at least you need backup from your combat frigate or from your squadron) to be able to win, and when you really appreciate your combat frigate friendly fighters and sentinel police patrol to help deal with the pirates.

EDIT: Heavily Reworked after outlaws update. Few features were dumped due to incompatibility, and new balancing is brought here as well as it changes less files (less conflicts), check the changes.

This also nerf your shield regeneration, in vanilla you are regenerating after 4 seconds not taking with 6 multiplier, now it's regenerating after 10 seconds not taking damage with 5 multiplier (5% per second). It seems small change, but with NPC AI has been reworked, you will having hard time to break for regen. You gonna learn how to distract your enemy and slowly regain shield overtime or kill NPCs faster to recharge your shield (this mod automatically grapple and take the loot for you, including the shield repair).

Outlaw Update: Their HP and Shield amount has been tweaked, at least they are tougher than vanilla, but regens their shield as player would do (instead of instantly like vanilla). This make the combat somewhat more similar to ED, and somewhat par with GOF2.

Here goes the math (Don't read this if you don't want to know the logic behind this, but definitely read this before you complain about the combat being too hard):

EDIT: As Waypoint update, calculations provided below become the same for Maxed B class fighter ship. And such, all the details that used S class ship in the beginning become B class now. I would love to double these, but I don't think you guys going to love it, so here we go.

Player has the default of 500 HP and 200 shield, without any upgrades or bonuses. As player can't get HP bonuses, I reflected NPC to have the same properties, with 1:100 ratio, I put 50k at their hull and 0 in upgrades (opposed to 6500+14000 in vanilla). Since I do balancing with BalancedShips in mind, and assuming pirates gets B class ship with damage and shield boost, with assumption that it rolls perfectly (100-100), then, I calculated player damage with 3 S class upgrades in a +100% ship, using phasebeam (as AI uses phasebeam and photon cannon). Player does approximately 3092 damage (depend on the upgrade roll) per tick, one tick is per two seconds so it averages in 1546 ish, so with 1:100 ratio, it should be 15,46. Coincidentally, vanilla listed this as 15 , so I decided to use vanilla values. (previous build before 1.4.5 uses 25, so this is considered a big nerf). What make it differ, you wonder? Hmm, the AI in vanilla disengage the shot after 3 seconds to "reposition", however, in here, it's 60 seconds, so it keeps drilling you until you able to break off or 60 seconds has elapsed, which will die if you let them keep firing. For shield, I go out with 200, the save editor's value for standard shield, but since max upgrade in vanilla exceed 100% and BalancedShips buffs the B class threshold to 100%, I decided to put the extra 100% to the health = 200 (20k). This way, maxed B class fighter/solar ship from BalancedShips has exactly the same shield capacity with total of AI's health and shield. Ok, shield and health strength has been set, now about shield regen. As I do 10 seconds delay at 5% regen rate for player, I do the same with AI. If they stopped getting hit for 10 seconds, they start to regen at 5%, results in 20 seconds to get full shield. With this calculation, it means that a shield supposed to break in 500/15 seconds, which results at 32 seconds if you only uses phasebeam and keep drilling them, or vice versa. With that, then they should also break each other shield at 32 seconds, which means they deal 1500 damage per tick each seconds. For their photon cannons, I think that photons supposed to be dealing more damage as they don't have 100% perfect accuracy like phasebeam does, so I put 3000 damage per punch to each other (damage is approximately like one per three shot hits if it were phasebeam).They will also try to line up and shoot at the same time now. Known issue: The game has parameter that lets AI picks the laser instead of photons after certain threshold. By allowing AI to use it from the go, AI will always pick laser instead of photon cannons. Big guns from frigates and freighters deal way more devastating damage than it's smaller ship counterpart. For freighter, they have way bigger guns and projectile so I thought they should deal at least 5 times of damage, so all the calculation that I put there is timed by 5.

TL:DR for above: NPC are rebalanced so it mimics player using BalancedShips mod and it copies perfectly a Maxed B class fighter phasebeam build. They will keep engaging shot until you able to make them break off or in 60 seconds, and they deal devastating damage to each other. Freighter deals 5 times harder than ships. NPC can kill each other, as well as freighters. They aren't cosmetic now. If you think that your fight is hard, you should consider getting A class or even S classes ship and upgrade them.

Edit: As per 11 Dec 2023, newer version are based on ED styled combat, reducing the damage and increased HP of AI five folds, as well as reducing player regeneration to one per tick (one fifth). This results in more prolonged combat like Elite Dangerous. Will break public nexus pirate hunts if played with other players and are not recommended to use unless all party members uses the same game build and mod version.

Right now since 1.3.7 NPC will keep shooting (trading shot) until you dealt 10K damage or more so they bail and "reposition". They will "reposition" as default, but they will use boost to get distance for 3-5 seconds, and they are almost just as fast as player's boost then will rotate 180 quickly (but within the normal limits to give fairness, approx 3 seconds) to do another strafe run. While they still pretty much limited, they are much smarter now (player-like) compared to vanilla.

I allowed AI's phase beam to be used on 100% hp. Fun fact: AI were disallowed to use phase beam until their health is 50%.
I allowed them to use it at full health, so they keep using it for some reason. Well, a side effect bound to get created with limitation of the engine...

Heavily buff player's Rocket Launcher damage to a certain degree to make it worthwhile to use.

Buffs impact damage, ground and surfaces for example are 150 damage per hit
Asteroids depends on their size. They give substantial damage when you ram them. Don't try to mine it the old way by bashing them, use your phase beam!
Small: 4>50
Medium: 15>100
Big: 40>150

Pirate are traveling in squadrons (restored)
Well, not only you which can travel in squadrons, pirates too, especially on missions. Before outlaws, this was implemented in the mod, it got removed for one day because of structural problem, but it's back now. Pirates travel in squadrons of 4. I didn't bump their counts, except on nexus mission (8,12,16 per waves respectably) or when they demand ransoms. They uses the similar logic to your squadron, so recruit some wingman on your squadron, and/or bring your combat frigate, otherwise, you have to 1v4 or even worse. For the nexus, that's a group mission of 4, so I balance this with that in mind. I tested it myself: 3 Health icon loss, two of four S class wingmen died (but can be recalled again), and combat freighter backup fighters of 4 (squad) are toast. But it was challenging and fair I think? Check the screenshot to see how is their formation.

Extra: Auto grab loot from far away.
Well, this mod also grab loots from 1000 units away, thank me later.

Cruise Mode (optional, separate branch, HEAVILY recommended)
Raise regular max speed cap, however the max speed are disabled when you getting close to stations, big ships or pirate intervene. The thrust still vanilla, just max speed uncapping. Removed speed decay/autobrake/falloff on cruise (space non combat) so you can just hold thrust/boost till it reach max speed, then leave your spaceship and do something else (bath, dinner). In space, it won't get speed reduction, unless you turned, brake, or hitting asteroid/surface or getting close to slowdown points in the process. I call this "cruise mode". New update of this mod heavily nerf boost max speed so it's more balanced with the normal speed. Made myself. Also make lowest speed variable to lowest, many hover mods is using this and this further disables the lowest speed force so you have no problem with landing. This doesn't change hover mechanic, only lowest speed limit so it should introduce 0 side effects.

Disables avoidance mechanic (Auto avoid) on starships (Cruise Mode), so you need to dodge (asteroids, debris, and such) manually instead of holding boost.

This CruiseMode part of script is included in the LUA scripts, so if the only thing you want is CruiseMode, you can go compile it for personal use. Do it Yourself (DIY) for this script, it shouldn't get changed (only on rare occasion where I do update on cruisemode) and I wouldn't release it for separate branch (as for not maintaining support) and neither of you "allowed" to republish it. "For Personal Use Only"

AlienTech (now integrated into both of the options):
Basically Gumsk's GTech part that allow technologies such as missile launcher to be installed into bioship. Only the ones that aren't duplicate (no pulse engine, etc). Perfect to be paired with Balanced Ships

Included a Separate GameplayGlobal Addon Pack that changes these things:
Freighter consistent 5 warp spawns, no need to save scum to get freighter battles again, just warp 5 more times, no cooldown.
Removes money penalty on death (just 5k I know but... you gotta blasted often anyway).

These all just in case you don't have any other mods modifying gameplayglobals with, since lot of features got dropped with more game features coming in, it started to get deprecated real quick and with other people make better mods by day, I decided to drop solaraddon and soon gameplay globals (if features are implemented in game). Most other people also make this file more interesting, so I leave it as addon.

Recommended mods to pair this with:
Balanced Ships (ChristianWidjaya,1800PETMEDS): balanced ships classes and ship quality (And balancing only done in cruisemode branch and this mod installed). The AIs become somewhat comparable to Maxed B class fighter ship with phase beam build if you either get new ship/upgrade your old ship with this on.
Realistic Market (ChristianWidjaya): balances market and fix market crashing.
No Ship Speed Effect (Lo2K)
No Space Dust and Plasma (Lo2K)
Clear Ship Space Map (Lo2K)
Better Warps (Lo2K): Changes loading warp screen
No Pirates and No Random Sentinels : for those who wishes to avoid the combat (for now)

Special thanks to Gumsk that helped me to learn Lua AMUMSS, otherwise it would take few days to reupload each update. Also to let me integrate a part of his GTech, especially for the alienparts on normal ships.

Changes, and doesn't compatible with mods that alters:
Main file:
GCSPACESHIPGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN (Shield regeneration, Cruising speed, Brake force)
GCVEHICLEGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN (fix avoidance on exocraft, including nautilon, cruisemode only)
\METADATA\PROJECTILES\PROJECTILETABLE.MBIN (Their damage againsts each other)
\METADATA\SIMULATION\SCENE\EXPERIENCESPAWNTABLE.MBIN (Makes enemy uses squadron format)
\METADATA\SIMULATION\SPACE\AISPACESHIPATTACKDATATABLE.MBIN (Their Hp, logic, targeting system, weapon type and properties)
\METADATA\REALITY\TABLES\DAMAGETABLE.MBIN (Adjust damage that you receive)
\METADATA\REALITY\TABLES\NMS_REALITY_GCTECHNOLOGYTABLE.MBIN (tweaks rocket launcher damage and cooldown, also gumsk's alientech)

Addons (They are the same file as their name, duh):
Gameplay-addon:
GCGAMEPLAYGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN (freighter consistent 5 warp spawns, pirate and flyby spawns, removes money penalty on death)

Recommendation: Use the cruise-mode (AlienTech if you wish to merge with Gumsk's Technology on alien ships), only use vanilla when you hate the new cruise-mode.

This affect only your experience, where someone in your group aren't using this won't take effect, but it's really not recommended to use this mod when playing with other users as it will change out the combat system. Imagine that your teammate thought that the combat is over and he killed all of the AIs, while you are still fighting them.

Note to people that uses GCVEHICLEGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN mods and wish to use both of this cruisemode and other mods:
please merge this change (splits vehicle and starship avoidance system):
change this line from
<Property name="UnderwaterAvoidance" value="GcSpaceshipAvoidanceData.xml">

To

<Property name="UnderwaterAvoidance" value="GcVehicleAvoidanceData.xml">

AMUMSS script:
{["MBIN_FILE_SOURCE"] = "GCVEHICLEGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN",
["EXML_CHANGE_TABLE"] = {
{ --fix water avoidance issue
["VALUE_CHANGE_TABLE"] = {
{"UnderwaterAvoidance","GcVehicleAvoidanceData.xml"}}},
}},
You can include this change in any of your mods I don't mind.

If you have conflicting mods, use my LUA script by AMUMSS and merge the LUA yourself.