Notes: As stated in my somewhat length Description on the front page, the goal of this mod is to fix what appears to have been mistakes in the Ship Weapon Data in the vanilla game based on my assessment of what the existing data implies regarding the intent of the original game developers. Please do take the time to read the Description section as it also provides background information on how ship weapons operate, some of which is not obvious from the information available in-game.
I keep getting 'can't fire weapons manually', i think it's something to do with placement but the ship builder doesn't tell you what spot works or not. Can this mod fix that issue?
If I read your description correctly I think you made an error with your assumptions with purpose of Suppressor/EM ship weapons. The point of Suppressor /EM weapons is to disable systems without damaging the ship. Making them all do hull damage makes them all useless. The mistake Bethesda made is making SOME do hull/shield damage not the other way around.
I noticed that the amazing Starborn Not Toddborn mod makes two changes to The Starborn Guardian that you might also want to include:
1) It adds the particle weapon keyword to the Solar Flare Beam. 2) Adds the missile key word to the gravity torpedo.
This would help with scaling with perks for the player.
Both these changes would enable better scaling. I figured I'd run it by you for your thoughts before submitting it as a bug to SFCP. You are really knowledgeable on Starship weapons and might have a judgement call about scaling.
The mod is open-permissions and I suggest everyone install it, but if ParasiteX already came up with the solution to a bug might as well share it wide and credit :)
Is this compatible with APOGEE - Starship Combat Overhaul? And if not, would the APOGEE - Flight Mechanics and Engines version of the mod be compatible at least?
It should be compatible with one mod overwriting the other. Depending on how much APOGEE buffed ship weapons across the board, this might nerf them a little, or if APOGEE kept close to vanilla values, this should be loaded after to get the proper buffs.
Either way, it won't break anything.
Someone will have to look in xEdit.
I wouldn't be surprised if all major ship mods update soon to use these values as a baseline.
This mod would definitely be compatible without overwrites with anything that doesn't specifically edit the same ship weapons tweaked by this mod.
I would have to look at the mod to see what, specifically, it alters. But this mod is a simple set of overrides, so if this mod changes the same records as some other mod, then the last one loaded wins. Shouldn't be any compatibility issues, just a choice of which overrides one wants. The Google Sheet that I reference in the description has all the weapon data, derived damage metrics and details on each specific change, so one could look through that to decide how these overrides would potentially impact some other mod.
Here's a patch. Load it after APOGEE and ShipWeaponFixes. Load order of those two mods doesn't matter since the patch will override the conflicting records anyway. Untested because I don't use APOGEE but only tweaks like 5 records.
Patch link removed as there is now an official one.
Original Post:
I downloaded APOGEE weapons to check:
Load this before APOGEE. There are 5 weapon conflicts, and APOGEE gave them a TON of range in comparison to this mod.
Most of the values in this mod are not touched by APOGEE.
One weapon, the Tatsu 501 EM was buffed to 130 by this mod and only 124 by APOGEE, but I think everyone will survive that minor difference. :)
Edit: Oooh I forgot that those 5 weapons had totally different values added to them (like being counted as a turret.) This mod might actually buff them more than APOGEE since range isn't that important of a stat.
So turns out:
They are compatible. Only 5 records will conflict out of 20, and I'm not 100% sure which mod buffs them more. To patch this mod to be compatible with Apogee would require editing only 5 records to increase their range.
Thanks! But I also asked if APOGEE - Flight Mechanics and Engines version of the mod is also compatible? Because I have that version. Since it doesn’t touch weapons, I’m guessing it should?
Thanks! But I also asked if APOGEE - Flight Mechanics and Engines version of the mod is also compatible? Because I have that version. Since it doesn’t touch weapons, I’m guessing it should?
yea. weapons wont interfere with engines or flight mechanics. two separate sets of forms
Sorry for not being specific-- yes, the main version is equally compatible as the weapons-specific version since this mod only tweaks things affecting weapons.
I pulled down the ShipBuilderCategories.esm file, added it to my Plugins.txt file along with this mod and then pulled everything up in xEdit. I don't see any conflicts between the two. This mod changes a couple COBJ records and a bunch of WEAP records. The Ship Builder Categories mod doesn't touch any COBJ nor WEAP records. There does not appear to be any intersection between the two mods at all.
Okay, I think that issue comes from Ultimate Shipyard Building in not touching the Crimson Fleet.
Now, what about StarUI Ship Building? I don't know why, but in the ship upgrade menu, only Weapon Zero and Two can be upgraded, but not One, which has the Tatsu 501EM Suppressor. Usually a category in the upgrade menu would disappear if I have a module installed that its related modules (lower or higher version) is not only unavailable to the technicial, but also not unlocked yet. If the specific module is unlocked (along with its lower or higher version) but the technician doesn't have it, then it's just grayed out. The Tatsu 501EM Suppressor is an already unlocked module at the start of the game, and I have Ultimate Shipyard Building mod, so Weapon One should have been available.
UPDATE: Nevermind, I just disabled your mod to test it out, but Weapon One with the EM is still missing in the ship upgrade menu. Gonna have to play around with my plugin or ask the mod author of StarUI for help.
I created a patch mod for Ship Weapon Fixes and version 1.1 of APOGEE - Starship Combat Overhaul. It merges together the changes from the two mods for the three records where there are conflicting overrides. The patch can be found in the Optional Files section.
Please pay attention to the load order as it is critical to ensure that one ends up with the correct, final result for the merged changes:
when it comes to potential balancing oversights, there's also the Atlatl 290B Missile Launcher - it deals roughly 33% less damage than 280B but requires 10 power per *one* (meaning you can only ever install one of them) and requires max rank Starship Design no less.
Yeah, I should probably go back and look at the 290B. But in general missiles are just odd and since I couldn't get a clear handle on how they should be balanced I left them alone for the time being. Strange thing is there is a clear pattern that higher-class missile have higher volley damage and higher sustained DPS, but oddly enough *lower* burst DPS. This is due to the fact that the Class A missiles have much larger magazines than the Class C missiles. I think the designers thought that Class A missiles are smaller, and hence do less damage, but one can fit more of them into a magazine. I don't know how to balance the weapons when Class A does more burst damage, but lower volley damage and sustained DPS given the tactical nature of how missiles work (requires time to lock-on, lock-on can be broken via thrusters, but one cannot thrust often enough to evade all missiles, etc)
UPDATE: Spent some more time looking at this and it seems like a MAX_POWER of '6' makes much more sense in terms of how the 290B lines up against the other Atlatl weapons with respect to damage metrics and cost. Not to mention that no other weapon has a MAX_POWER that is not a divisor of '12'. I'm updating the mod shortly to change the 290B's MAX_POWER to '6'.
One other way that the Atlatl 290B is different than all other missile weapons is that it has a volley size of '2' - meaning that it fires two missiles each time that it is discharged. This gives it a much larger "one-punch" damage than would otherwise be expected.
I didn't actually know about the double volley caveat but keeping max power at 6 still seems much more sensible.
looking more at it, 290B is just all kinds of strange; it requires max rank Starship Design and yet becomes available very early at level 16 - other max rank missile launchers (and most other weapons AFAIK) are locked well into level 40 and beyond.
I'm curious why you decided to add shield/hull damage to all EM weapons as opposed to removing it for all of them. It was always odd to me that some of them did hull/shield damage in the first place considering the point of EM weapons across the board in Starfield is specifically to avoid dealing direct damage and instead disable systems much faster, otherwise there's no incentive to use them over just blasting out someones engines with a higher DPS weapon in targeting mode and boarding them that way.
In looking at the data associated with the EMP-80 and EMP-200 WEAP records, they are both the the only records that reference the "SWA_Ammo_Ballistic_GenericEM [AMMO:002184C0]" record. That record in turn is one of only two records that reference the "SWA_Projectile_Ballistic_CEM-14 "CEM-14 mine" [PROJ:00215ED5]" record, which explicitly carries the "EXPLOSION" keyword to indicate that the explosive damage should be added to the weapon damage (which is where the hull and shield numbers come from). The naming of the records and the fact that nothing else references the AMMO and PROJ records would seem to indicate that this was intentional.
Also, in terms of "lore", the EMP Suppressor weapons are all made by Ballistic Solutions, which may be part of the reason that they were designed differently than other EM weapons.
All that being said, I do agree that it seems odd, and if folks think that makes more sense I can switch things the other way.
@grizbane That's actually really interesting. I wish the weapons had more of a description vs. what currently exists in-game because they could easily explain things like this. "This series of weapons are EM-laced ballistic cannons that..." or something similar. The reason I asked was for both thematic reasons and also to maybe avoid another situation like Particle Beam weapons that are BiS because of their multiple damage types.
Not at all a criticism of your work; the mod is great!
It looks like the Scorch-P 60MW Pulse Laser has a magazine with 20 rounds and a recharge delay of 0.75 seconds - so it would appear to be correctly setup as a magazine weapon. In terms of naming conventions, Starfield seems to use "Pulse" for magazine-lasers, "Auto" for magazine particle and ballistic weapons and "Rapid" for magazine railguns (which are ballistic, but seem to have a different naming convention).
The Disrupter 3320 Neutron Turret is fixed in this mod - set the magazine and recharge delay to 0 as it seems that this was supposed to be a non-magazine weapon.
The Description novel that I wrote on the front page has a link to the spreadsheet with all the details if you want to double check the specific changes that I made to the vanilla game data: Starfield Mod: Ship Weapon Fixes
Almost all of this sounds like it should be in the community patch. (or rather in an actual Bethesda patch rofl)
Except maybe the part about Electron/Proton Beam Weapons ...that might go the other way where they are OP by mistake like with the Varuun weapons on ground... but i didn't look into the numbers at all so i'm gonna go with your judgement call on this.
you're probably right - Electron/Proton beams are supposed to be entry-level particle weapons compared to PBO/MeV ones judging by their price and rank requirements.
My two cents is that 99% of these changes will only ever affect NPC weapons, and I don't think there are very many people saying, Space combat is too hard! (I've been enjoying it a lot more since adding this)
Whereas the inverse was true for the particle beam change in SFCP. One weapon type was double-dipping to outscale anything else by far, and it happened to be a weapon enemies rarely use, and enemies don't have the perks buffing it.
I'd be fine with the Community Patch folk rolling these changes into that mod. I did want to get these changes, along with the somewhat lengthy justifications, rolled out to get feedback from the community which is why I pushed it this morning. Thanks for taking a look at it!
41 comments
As stated in my somewhat length Description on the front page, the goal of this mod is to fix what appears to have been mistakes in the Ship Weapon Data in the vanilla game based on my assessment of what the existing data implies regarding the intent of the original game developers. Please do take the time to read the Description section as it also provides background information on how ship weapons operate, some of which is not obvious from the information available in-game.
Version 1.1 of the Ship Weapon Fixes has been merged into the Starfield Community Patch v 0.0.6.
For those who use the APOGEE - Starship Battle Overhaul see the APOGEE - Starship Combat Overhaul - Patch in the Optional Files area that merge conflicting changes between this mod and the APOGEE mod.
For those who object to the notion of EM weapons inflicting hull/shield damage, see the EMP Suppressor Alt Patch in the Optional Files area.
I noticed that the amazing Starborn Not Toddborn mod makes two changes to The Starborn Guardian that you might also want to include:
1) It adds the particle weapon keyword to the Solar Flare Beam.
2) Adds the missile key word to the gravity torpedo.
This would help with scaling with perks for the player.
Both these changes would enable better scaling. I figured I'd run it by you for your thoughts before submitting it as a bug to SFCP. You are really knowledgeable on Starship weapons and might have a judgement call about scaling.
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/5615?tab=posts
The mod is open-permissions and I suggest everyone install it, but if ParasiteX already came up with the solution to a bug might as well share it wide and credit :)
I've merged all your current fixes into the Community Patch. I've credited you in the changelog and on the contributors page.
Thanks for the detailed mod description, it made it very easy to understand what you fixed and why!
Either way, it won't break anything.
Someone will have to look in xEdit.
I wouldn't be surprised if all major ship mods update soon to use these values as a baseline.
This mod would definitely be compatible without overwrites with anything that doesn't specifically edit the same ship weapons tweaked by this mod.
Here's a patch. Load it after APOGEE and ShipWeaponFixes. Load order of those two mods doesn't matter since the patch will override the conflicting records anyway. Untested because I don't use APOGEE but only tweaks like 5 records.
Patch link removed as there is now an official one.
Original Post:
I downloaded APOGEE weapons to check:
Load this before APOGEE. There are 5 weapon conflicts, and APOGEE gave them a TON of range in comparison to this mod.
Most of the values in this mod are not touched by APOGEE.
One weapon, the Tatsu 501 EM was buffed to 130 by this mod and only 124 by APOGEE, but I think everyone will survive that minor difference. :)
Edit: Oooh I forgot that those 5 weapons had totally different values added to them (like being counted as a turret.) This mod might actually buff them more than APOGEE since range isn't that important of a stat.
So turns out:
They are compatible. Only 5 records will conflict out of 20, and I'm not 100% sure which mod buffs them more. To patch this mod to be compatible with Apogee would require editing only 5 records to increase their range.
I wouldn't be surprised if all major ship mods update soon to use these values as a baseline
quite a few of these are in skill fixes they just havent been submitted to the community patch
and i hope no one uses this mod with scarfield
yea. weapons wont interfere with engines or flight mechanics. two separate sets of forms
The non-weapon version doesn't need a patch.
Makes it faster/easier to help people out like you are :D
Now, what about StarUI Ship Building? I don't know why, but in the ship upgrade menu, only Weapon Zero and Two can be upgraded, but not One, which has the Tatsu 501EM Suppressor. Usually a category in the upgrade menu would disappear if I have a module installed that its related modules (lower or higher version) is not only unavailable to the technicial, but also not unlocked yet. If the specific module is unlocked (along with its lower or higher version) but the technician doesn't have it, then it's just grayed out. The Tatsu 501EM Suppressor is an already unlocked module at the start of the game, and I have Ultimate Shipyard Building mod, so Weapon One should have been available.
UPDATE: Nevermind, I just disabled your mod to test it out, but Weapon One with the EM is still missing in the ship upgrade menu. Gonna have to play around with my plugin or ask the mod author of StarUI for help.
Please pay attention to the load order as it is critical to ensure that one ends up with the correct, final result for the merged changes:
1. APOGEE - Starship Combat Overhaul (version 1.1)
2. Ship Weapon Fixes
3. APOGEE - Starship Combat Overhaul - Patch
UPDATE: Spent some more time looking at this and it seems like a MAX_POWER of '6' makes much more sense in terms of how the 290B lines up against the other Atlatl weapons with respect to damage metrics and cost. Not to mention that no other weapon has a MAX_POWER that is not a divisor of '12'. I'm updating the mod shortly to change the 290B's MAX_POWER to '6'.
I didn't actually know about the double volley caveat but keeping max power at 6 still seems much more sensible.
looking more at it, 290B is just all kinds of strange; it requires max rank Starship Design and yet becomes available very early at level 16 - other max rank missile launchers (and most other weapons AFAIK) are locked well into level 40 and beyond.
Also, in terms of "lore", the EMP Suppressor weapons are all made by Ballistic Solutions, which may be part of the reason that they were designed differently than other EM weapons.
All that being said, I do agree that it seems odd, and if folks think that makes more sense I can switch things the other way.
These weapons will predominantly be used by NPCs against you, rather than by the player against NPCs.
The game feels much better with them buffed. Plenty of NPC ships were basically zero threats.
Perhaps that's why Bethesda has such random values. To ensure at least some ships with EM weapons weren't useless as opponents.
If im not mistaken this doesn't make any of these guns best in slot.
The game feels much better with them buffed. Plenty of NPC ships were basically zero threats.
the only vanilla ships which are a threat are in wave 4 and 5 of the simulator
Not at all a criticism of your work; the mod is great!
In fact, following along as you fixed things, I discovered more errors.
Scorch-P 60mw Pulse Laser - it should be Auto Weapon
Disruptor 3320 Neutron Turret - Incorrect firing rate
The Disrupter 3320 Neutron Turret is fixed in this mod - set the magazine and recharge delay to 0 as it seems that this was supposed to be a non-magazine weapon.
The Description novel that I wrote on the front page has a link to the spreadsheet with all the details if you want to double check the specific changes that I made to the vanilla game data: Starfield Mod: Ship Weapon Fixes
Except maybe the part about Electron/Proton Beam Weapons ...that might go the other way where they are OP by mistake like with the Varuun weapons on ground... but i didn't look into the numbers at all so i'm gonna go with your judgement call on this.
Whereas the inverse was true for the particle beam change in SFCP. One weapon type was double-dipping to outscale anything else by far, and it happened to be a weapon enemies rarely use, and enemies don't have the perks buffing it.