This mod is designed to be a lightweight yet immersive overhaul of ballistic and laser weapon characteristics - highlighting each weapon type's unique strengths and weaknesses.

It generally balances around the following elements:

• Ammunition - Damage is slightly equalized around caliber.
• Weapon Type  - Rifles and Pistols now have different damage and critical characteristics. Shotguns have some unique pros and cons.
• Fire Rate - Damage is strongly equalized between fire modes. Automatic weapons suffer heavy accuracy penalties.
• Damage Type - Laser weapons are now highly accurate with negligible recoil. However, they deal comparatively less damage (even less in full-auto.)
• Manufacturer - Weapons have varying characteristics according to make. For example, Laredo guns offer relatively higher critical damage.
  

The interplay between these should make combat, weapon selection, and modding more engaging and offer a greater range of playstyles throughout the game.

Deadly Effective and Suit Up comprise the remainder of the combat balancing in Spacefarer.
They are highly recommended. 

Ballistic Pistols and Rifles

Ostensibly you will be able to tell which of these GIFs is vanilla and which is from the mod.



Damage
Damage has been slightly equalized around caliber between pistols and rifles.
Damage differences between Semi-Auto, Full-Auto, Burst Fire, and Binary Trigger have been brought within 60-150% of base semi-auto damage.
In vanilla this ranged from 33% to 367% (the new normalization makes this second number closer to 220% in practice).

Weapon / Manufacturer Specific
Critical damage has been raised for Laredo weapons and pistols due to their lower base damage.
Critical damage has been lowered for Kore Kinetics weapons due to their high base damage.
Hard Target and Lawgiver damage has been slightly normalized as they share a unique sniper caliber. It is closer to HT's damage than Lawgiver's.
Beowulf overall damage has been slightly lowered.
Grendel overall damage has been significantly increased. Tech Barrel is extremely accurate in hip-fire.
Eon base damage has been slightly lowered. Burst Fire and Binary do equal damage to semi-auto.
Maelstrom, Drumbeat and Kraken automatic damage has been doubled. Semi-auto damage is unchanged.
AA99 automatic damage has been raised 50% with semi-auto damage slightly lowered.
Some barrel characteristics like Hard Target’s fluted or bull barrel have been modified for realism.
Drumbeat variants all use the Full-Auto aim model to compensate for the significantly increased damage (as it is the single largest % buff in the mod).

Keyword changes from Starfield Community Patch have been forwarded without dependency.

Recoil and Aim Model
The following apply to all automatic ballistic weapons except the Mag-Storm and Kodama.
Hip-Fire recoil has been significantly increased.
Weapon Cone of Fire has been increased. This can be counterbalanced by taking Suppression perks in Deadly Effective.
Per-Shot Recoil has been significantly increased.
Recoil Damping has been significantly decreased.
Tactical Stocks cause slightly poorer hip-fire and recoil characteristics.

Laser Weapons

Ostensibly you will be able to tell which of these GIFs is vanilla and which is from the mod.


Damage
Base damage has been decreased by 25%.
Full-Auto damage for Equinox has been raised from 24% of Semi-Auto to 65%.
Full-Auto damage for Solstice has been raised from 30% of Semi-Auto to 55%.

Recoil and Aim Model
Recoil has been functionally eliminated.
Spread has been moderately reduced. If using Deadly Effective, the Cone of Fire can be reduced to functionally zero.
Automatic vs. Semi-Automatic no longer affects recoil or accuracy.
Ignition Beams re-introduce a slight amount of recoil.

Shotguns

Breach damage slightly lowered.
Shotty and Breach now exhibit the same characteristics as other ballistic weapons when fully-automatic.
Slug Rounds now increase recoil instead of inexplicably decreasing it.

Particle Weapons

Currently not covered, I did not find vanilla characteristics objectionable. This may change as I playtest.



1.0 requires Real Time Form Patcher to function.

Future versions may include a fallback plugin that directly edits weapon and mod records.
0.8 will remain available indefinitely as well.



Compatible with anything that affects player skills, NPC levels, leveled lists, etc.
Mods that alter base weapon records are generally compatible with 1.0.

Generally incompatible with comprehensive rebalances like Weapon Balance Revised or Ascension.

Deadly Effective and Suit Up are recommended for the complete combat experience.
They comprise the Skills and Armor portions of the Spacefarer combat suite.

No More Tiers Remastered is fully compatible.



Most weapons get some changes. Generally speaking, the below will apply (before perks are taken into account).

• If you are using mostly laser weapons it will simply upgrade your arsenal. These performed very poorly in vanilla, especially at range.
• If you use mostly automatic ballistic weapons you will have to aim carefully and fire in short bursts, but you can deal far higher damage overall.
• If you use mostly semi-auto ballistic weapons you will find some calibers or weapons more or less effective.
• If you use Burst-Fire or Binary pistols or SMGs it will simply upgrade your arsenal. These are far more effective at point-blank range now. 
• Some niche weapon setups are going to be more or less effective, so experiment and have fun!
  

Note: Damage and accuracy values are now designed around Deadly Effective and Suit Up, which are recommended for the full experience.



Some changes may be controversial. If you are curious why a change was made, it is probably explained here:


Auto vs. Semi-Auto damage spread was retained for balance.
Put simply, you will still not fare well if you walk into a small room full of hostiles equipped with automatic weapons.
However, compared to using previous versions combined with ASARDE, stray bullets in long-range encounters each now pose less of a risk of sudden death.
DPS for automatic weapons is flatly higher than for Semi-Auto without skills taken into account.
I am open to adjusting the numbers and may do so as I playtest, so feel free to comment if you have feedback or opinions.



Thanks to Bethesda for Starfield and the Creation Kit.
Thanks to xEdit for allowing this mod to exist in advance of official tooling release.
Thanks to TommInfinite for Real Time Form Patcher.
Thanks to Cheesemongler for the original ASARDE. A similar method is used to implement balance changes in 1.0.

The Spacefarer Series is a modular, immersive Vanilla+ overhaul which aims to bring out the best of what Starfield already has to offer.

Combat
Deadly Effective - Overhauls numerous combat-related vanilla perks for playstyle diversity (and fun!)
Balanced Ballistics - Lightweight handling and damage adjustments for Ballistic and Laser weaponry.
Suit Up - Smart and compatible system to make spacesuit selection more impactful.
Space Economy
Cost of Spacing - Simulates a reactive and complex space economy by introducing costs to space travel.
Spacefaring Economy - Overhauls prices and rewards with heavy scaling to avoid hyperinflation.
Cost of Living - Implements Taxes and Registration Fees for Outposts.
Captain’s Choice - Rebalances ship classes and modules for more thoughtful shipbuilding and combat.
Survival
Real Fuel- A lightweight and immersive solution to Fuel and Exploration.
ROVERHAUL - Adds simple charging / fueling and management aspects to Vehicles.
Real O2 - Makes O2 a real consideration when exploring zero-atmosphere environments.
Peak Performance - A lightweight system to handle Hunger, Thirst, and Rest.
Immersion
Magic Boost Disabler - Disables the vanilla behavior of magically appearing Boost Packs.
First Person Messages [RTFP] - Converts game messages to first person.