Version 1.1- Further engines balancing, some additional experimental engines added. High RoF Particle Beams weapons added. Maximum targeting range significantly increased.
I have gone through and tweaked some of the engine balancing (moved some of the over-performing engines later in the level scaling, rebalanced maneuvering thrust some), and I have added in the higher rate of fire Particle Beams weapons (look for Oscillators). More significantly for future updates, I have finally figured out how to extend the maximum targeting range for all ships. Before, it was only possible to maintain detection of a target within 6km, unless the target was friendly or had a quest marker on it. Now all ships can detect each other as far as 20km. This is important because it not only makes it less likely for you to get lost chasing down an enemy, it also makes it possible for me to implement some of the longer range weapons that I've been working on. It's also given me more insight into how I might go about implementing a more fully featured stealth system, but there is much work to be done on that still.
In the mean time, if you have any concerns about the balancing of certain weapons or engines, please feel free to let me know! There are a lot of changes that interplay with each other so it is extremely difficult for me to account for everything. I also would like to include an experimental engine for every base game engine series, and I'm brainstorming ideas.
Beyond that, I am also developing three new weapon types: Artillery cannons, Micromissile Launchers, and Torpedos. Micromissiles are intended to be a "primary" weapon for the Projectile weapon skill. Lower damage than standard missiles, but high rate of fire and magazine capacity, they should be capable of the sustained dps you find on the other 3 weapon types, making full Missile builds more viable. Torpedos will be long range alpha strike weapons intended to be deployed from long distance, but will feature high weight, power cost, and less maneuverability as tradeoffs. Artillery cannons will be intended for long range use, featuring high alpha damage, very fast projectile speed, but extremely low rate of fire, which should enable you to engage dangerous targets at range without putting yourself too much at risk.
I am also doing a lot of investigation into ship detection and stealth. It's a bit too early to make make calls as to how that will work, but it may end up being more complicated than I hoped. Plus I'm still mulling over some design decisions I'll have to make about how starship stealth will work. In the meantime, you should check out Ship Cloaking Enabled for some active cloaking visuals on your stealth themed builds!
You are already well into my wish lists for this mod. Even with the imbalances in the earlier version, this became my favorite single mod for Starfield. I'd really like to see if seamless in-system flight as in Slower Than Light can merge with this. Maybe grav drives would allow faster sublight acceleration at lower power levels, and at high power levels would actually work for FTL? It seems like such an overlapping idea with what you're already doing.
This mod is carrying most of the weight of making ship combat actually fun for me, thank you for making it.
I think the biggest challenge is creating some kind of balance both between player vs. npcs and small high dps ships vs. large ships. As it stands the best ship is always going to be the smallest one with max weapons equipped, while increasing ship size has zero advantages. Larger ships need to be able to trade higher armor and higher weapon count for less agility and speed. Without CK, maybe there's a way to do this by somehow editing weapon stats? If somehow larger ships could spend less power for the same weapon, they could equip more of them without changing the 12 power limit. A weapon that normally costs 4 power could be 2 instead allowing double to be used. If we could buff the power on smaller ships maneuvering thrusters, then maybe it would be fairly balanced, with a smaller ship being able to 'dodge' while having a smaller # of weapons/armor/max shielding. The reactors really ought to be locked somehow by ship size but idk how that could be done. A small ship should not be able to use the same max level large reactor as a huge ship.
There's a lot that could be done with different weapon types to add deeper gameplay. Rail guns could have the highest range/projectile speed/armor pen but be dodge-able at range. The high ROF ballistic could be turned into PD missile defense weapons to counter those. Laser could be mitigated with radiators, armor, and range. Every weapon needs a counter so the fight can come down to player planning and skill instead of just stacking stats.
Oh, and we need to be able to replace npc ship with player built ones lol.
I really like your mod. Made ship combat so much more engaging. I'm wondering if you could decrease the horizontal turning of the ships, and increase the vertical turning (i.e. make a ship look up-down quicker, and left-right slower). That way, ship combat would require much more use of verticality to make turns, similar to jet combat. The way ship maneuverability functions now is much more similar to that of a car.
I wonder if it's also possible to implement the ship's HUD into the actual ship. Something simulating the ship's infotainment system as actually useful, and readable. Similarly to No Man's Sky, where all information you need is right there on the physical ship—not on the character's screen.
I really like your mod. Made ship combat so much more engaging. I'm wondering if you could decrease the horizontal turning of the ships, and increase the vertical turning (i.e. make a ship look up-down quicker, and left-right slower). That way, ship combat would require much more use of verticality to make turns, similar to jet combat. The way ship maneuverability functions now is much more similar to that of a car.
I wonder if it's also possible to implement the ship's HUD into the actual ship. Something simulating the ship's infotainment system as actually useful, and readable. Similarly to No Man's Sky, where all information you need is right there on the physical ship—not on the character's screen.
Does anyone know if this is compatible with the beta, or if we need to delete all modules from the mod before it’s out of beta? Sounds like DerreTech will need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Apogee has become a must-have for me, hope it still works.
Hmm, I'm not sure honestly. I think it has a good chance of being okay as all of the parts use already existing assets, but I'm not sure. I'm not really doing anything with Starfield at the moment, but if someone wants to try it and let me know if there are any issues that would be very helpful.
I had the same issue. Worked fine then then it did this. Uninstall, start back up, change ships, save, exit and reinstall. Fixed it for me. For whatever reason, your engine gets unattached.
Starborn ships turn and accelerate too quick with this (i think, I have a lot of mods on, some modify engines as well). So is there any way to make them be slower in turning and overall acceleration?
The speed and other stat changes do, but I haven't been able to get putting my new parts on ships to work properly yet. Right now I'm on a break from Starfield, and I'll come back around to this once the CK releases.
Nice, thx for reply. I hope CK opens everything up, being able to build and use my own ship should be the ultimate gameplay for me but oof, it's so bad. This mod already is a huge improvement.
Did anyone find a fix for the reverse speed if doing 180 with thrusters instead of normal turning? Or do most of you like that? I know it is not the most realistic, but enemy ships CAN turn 180 and and completely loose momentum, so we either make all ships to be able to handle these u turns without speed penalties or we make sure enemy ships can also not u turn without going in reverse for a while.
I love the speed increase and the new weapons but It's too easy. I slaughter ships 20 levels higher than me and they only manage to tickle me. Unless I have 4 bandits on me it's a breeze and even then my shield won't get lower than 80% because it's easy to shake them. Perhaps you can equip enemy ships with better weapons, engines etc...? They need to hit harder imo.
Absolutely aware of this, and the main issue I was having when trying to deal with it was that whenever I tried to edit NPC ships some things would stop working, weapons in particular. I fully intend to try and balance out NPC ships with my new changes, but at the moment I'm not certain how to do that, and I may not be able to do it until we get the Creation Kit.
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I have gone through and tweaked some of the engine balancing (moved some of the over-performing engines later in the level scaling, rebalanced maneuvering thrust some), and I have added in the higher rate of fire Particle Beams weapons (look for Oscillators). More significantly for future updates, I have finally figured out how to extend the maximum targeting range for all ships. Before, it was only possible to maintain detection of a target within 6km, unless the target was friendly or had a quest marker on it. Now all ships can detect each other as far as 20km. This is important because it not only makes it less likely for you to get lost chasing down an enemy, it also makes it possible for me to implement some of the longer range weapons that I've been working on. It's also given me more insight into how I might go about implementing a more fully featured stealth system, but there is much work to be done on that still.
In the mean time, if you have any concerns about the balancing of certain weapons or engines, please feel free to let me know! There are a lot of changes that interplay with each other so it is extremely difficult for me to account for everything. I also would like to include an experimental engine for every base game engine series, and I'm brainstorming ideas.
Beyond that, I am also developing three new weapon types: Artillery cannons, Micromissile Launchers, and Torpedos. Micromissiles are intended to be a "primary" weapon for the Projectile weapon skill. Lower damage than standard missiles, but high rate of fire and magazine capacity, they should be capable of the sustained dps you find on the other 3 weapon types, making full Missile builds more viable. Torpedos will be long range alpha strike weapons intended to be deployed from long distance, but will feature high weight, power cost, and less maneuverability as tradeoffs. Artillery cannons will be intended for long range use, featuring high alpha damage, very fast projectile speed, but extremely low rate of fire, which should enable you to engage dangerous targets at range without putting yourself too much at risk.
I am also doing a lot of investigation into ship detection and stealth. It's a bit too early to make make calls as to how that will work, but it may end up being more complicated than I hoped. Plus I'm still mulling over some design decisions I'll have to make about how starship stealth will work. In the meantime, you should check out Ship Cloaking Enabled for some active cloaking visuals on your stealth themed builds!
I hope you enjoy!
Kudos, and great work!
I think the biggest challenge is creating some kind of balance both between player vs. npcs and small high dps ships vs. large ships. As it stands the best ship is always going to be the smallest one with max weapons equipped, while increasing ship size has zero advantages. Larger ships need to be able to trade higher armor and higher weapon count for less agility and speed. Without CK, maybe there's a way to do this by somehow editing weapon stats? If somehow larger ships could spend less power for the same weapon, they could equip more of them without changing the 12 power limit. A weapon that normally costs 4 power could be 2 instead allowing double to be used. If we could buff the power on smaller ships maneuvering thrusters, then maybe it would be fairly balanced, with a smaller ship being able to 'dodge' while having a smaller # of weapons/armor/max shielding. The reactors really ought to be locked somehow by ship size but idk how that could be done. A small ship should not be able to use the same max level large reactor as a huge ship.
There's a lot that could be done with different weapon types to add deeper gameplay. Rail guns could have the highest range/projectile speed/armor pen but be dodge-able at range. The high ROF ballistic could be turned into PD missile defense weapons to counter those. Laser could be mitigated with radiators, armor, and range. Every weapon needs a counter so the fight can come down to player planning and skill instead of just stacking stats.
Oh, and we need to be able to replace npc ship with player built ones lol.
I wonder if it's also possible to implement the ship's HUD into the actual ship. Something simulating the ship's infotainment system as actually useful, and readable. Similarly to No Man's Sky, where all information you need is right there on the physical ship—not on the character's screen.
Thanks in advance, great mod.
I wonder if it's also possible to implement the ship's HUD into the actual ship. Something simulating the ship's infotainment system as actually useful, and readable. Similarly to No Man's Sky, where all information you need is right there on the physical ship—not on the character's screen.
Thanks in advance, great mod.
my SHIP wont fly !
its everytime 0 speed BUT your mod i can fly reverse .... whats going on ?
I know it is not the most realistic, but enemy ships CAN turn 180 and and completely loose momentum, so we either make all ships to be able to handle these u turns without speed penalties or we make sure enemy ships can also not u turn without going in reverse for a while.