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.
Using Apogee with the Fleet Commander mod is amazing, this is how vanilla Starfield should have done ship combat. Works well with the weapons from Matilija's Aerospace too.
Since others will notice this too. Yes it's a load order issue. IIRC you need to have apogee very low in your load order to ensure everything still plays nice.
Its more of a mod conflict outright then a load issue. i had the same problem after i updtaed to the latest patch. But after I spent a few days re-testing all my mods everything works with the new Starfield version. Now that Bethesda has added a similar system as many of our fave mods, we need to be mindful of what might conflict with the game itself depending on what Starfield version youre using.
Unfortunately I'm in a financial bind and don't have money to buy Shattered Space. I'll take a look if I can find the time and energy to do so, but real life is taking a lot out of me lately. Sorry.
I hate to hear that, seasons in life come and go so hang in there and keep on keeping on, it will come to pass. This is one of the biggest game impact mods I feel is out there, maybe if you posted your steam name someone could gift it to you if they had the extra cash and wanted to support?
Maybe. Truth be told I've been concentrating on more Skyrim stuff lately (partially because Starfield's 3D models are waaaay out of my league and I'm not good enough to compete with that yet), and that's been helping me keep my head on straight. I'm thinking about opening a Patreon - I would love to be able to justify spending more time working on mods, and having an audience that I could draw on for inspiration/ideas and such. And certainly in that case I would be willing to devote more time to working on Starfield stuff too - I have some WIP stuff for this mod that I never released. Won't fix my problems any time soon, but the job market situation right now is... bleak. I legitimately have no idea when things are going to improve and I'm running out of things to try.
Seconded. I’m holding off on playing the game again until the acceleration bug gets patched, would have to do a serious teardown of the flip-glitches in my main ship to replace the gatling weapons and get things working without it again.
Any plans to fix this? This mod currently breaks the story in at least one spot (quest The Old Neighborhood). I had to disable this mod to get through the quest, and I'd love to re-enable it but I'm worried I will encounter other issues.
I'm having an issue with refuelling my ship. After adding HE-3 compressed fuel or the Grav Drive batteries, either together or individually, both resources remain empty in the ship. The items are still used anyway, despite the ship not being fuelled or charged at all.
Does anyone have any advice or insight to this problem I'm having? I'm still trying to figure out if it's a conflict with another mod, but having no luck so far. After posting this comment, I intend to disable all of my mods except for APOGEE and its accompanying mods, and brute force my way to finding a conflict (if a mod conflict is even the case here, which I'm assuming it is).
EDIT: So, apparently I'm more intellectually challenged than I had originally assumed before making these comments. I got APOGEE and Starvival's features completely confused, and that's probably half, if not most of the reason why I was having such a hard time figuring stuff out.
I'll leave my comments here to confuse/entertain others.
Okay, I've just fixed it but I have no idea how the hell it worked.
Basically, I disabled all the mods I'm using and then re-enabled them (using MO2's left-hand pane) and that's somehow made the problem go away.
Other than it being a load order issue, I can't even hazard a guess as to what was causing my ship to never refuel.
EDIT: Now I've got a new problem which makes it so that all ships in the game, both player and NPCs, are stuck at 0m/s speed. I can seemingly move my ship backwards a little bit, but nothing can go forward.
I already know which mod conflicts and causes this issue (All In One Ship Upgrades ESM), so back to the brute force method.
I've narrowed it down to Starvival conflicting with APOGEE, or vice versa, so it looks like I'm not going to use Starvival for now. Tbh, the number of debuffs I got from the tutorial's pirate attack was enough to make me want to reconsider using it anyway.
I'll go with more intense space battles over excessively debilitating status effects.
I installed this mod about week ago and honestly fell that vanilla starfield needs something like this.
The spacefights become much more skill oriented with this mod. You cant simply push all way from your engines if you want chance to shoot. Also the speed makes it feel like its more intense fight.
I am now playing on basically maxed difficulty on spacefights and only now I feel that there is any point in trying different weapons or tactics. Fighting single against multiple ships is challenging but not impossible.
Not sure if its thing for this mod but just brainstorming further: - At times fights can be overwhelming. It would be nice if you could sent call for aid. This call could be received by any faction. So you could accidentally call friend of your enemy. Or enemy of your enemy that is hostile against you. - This is not in game feature so you would have to do some whacking: new weapon mines. Enemies or you could lay mines behind so the pursuer would get hit by them. There could be homing mines etc. Some faster or slower. - Enemies could attempt to disable your drive and try to board. - I am in sense bit sad that spacefights are bit monotone. I mean there is not fights against swarm of small ships or against really huge ships at least if there is they feel all the same. For example hugeship could have poor aim against small fast targets but hit hard against medium or large ships. - Morale and attempt to flee fights that oppose side is losing. - If you were fighting against like 5 ships and you killed the top dog rest 4 could hail you and negotiate for their life. This dialogue could be used to gain reputation for pirate factions etc.
I've installed this for the first time in 1.12.61 and it doesn't seem to be working (Vortex install). I don't have any other mods which makes ship/parts changes. Did the new update break this mod?
I just saw someone mention two days ago on a similar mod (Ship Combat Overhaul) that it stopped working as well after the update. Can't confirm but it seems fairly likely that the update broke both
154 comments
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.
Take as much time as you need and look after yourself.
Does anyone have any advice or insight to this problem I'm having? I'm still trying to figure out if it's a conflict with another mod, but having no luck so far. After posting this comment, I intend to disable all of my mods except for APOGEE and its accompanying mods, and brute force my way to finding a conflict (if a mod conflict is even the case here, which I'm assuming it is).
EDIT:
So, apparently I'm more intellectually challenged than I had originally assumed before making these comments. I got APOGEE and Starvival's features completely confused, and that's probably half, if not most of the reason why I was having such a hard time figuring stuff out.
I'll leave my comments here to confuse/entertain others.
Basically, I disabled all the mods I'm using and then re-enabled them (using MO2's left-hand pane) and that's somehow made the problem go away.
Other than it being a load order issue, I can't even hazard a guess as to what was causing my ship to never refuel.
EDIT:
Now I've got a new problem which makes it so that all ships in the game, both player and NPCs, are stuck at 0m/s speed. I can seemingly move my ship backwards a little bit, but nothing can go forward.
I already know which mod conflicts and causes this issue (All In One Ship Upgrades ESM), so back to the brute force method.
I'll go with more intense space battles over excessively debilitating status effects.
The spacefights become much more skill oriented with this mod. You cant simply push all way from your engines if you want chance to shoot. Also the speed makes it feel like its more intense fight.
I am now playing on basically maxed difficulty on spacefights and only now I feel that there is any point in trying different weapons or tactics. Fighting single against multiple ships is challenging but not impossible.
Not sure if its thing for this mod but just brainstorming further:
- At times fights can be overwhelming. It would be nice if you could sent call for aid. This call could be received by any faction. So you could accidentally call friend of your enemy. Or enemy of your enemy that is hostile against you.
- This is not in game feature so you would have to do some whacking: new weapon mines. Enemies or you could lay mines behind so the pursuer would get hit by them. There could be homing mines etc. Some faster or slower.
- Enemies could attempt to disable your drive and try to board.
- I am in sense bit sad that spacefights are bit monotone. I mean there is not fights against swarm of small ships or against really huge ships at least if there is they feel all the same. For example hugeship could have poor aim against small fast targets but hit hard against medium or large ships.
- Morale and attempt to flee fights that oppose side is losing.
- If you were fighting against like 5 ships and you killed the top dog rest 4 could hail you and negotiate for their life. This dialogue could be used to gain reputation for pirate factions etc.
Anyhow thanks for awesome mod. I enjoy it.