The mod has some great ideas. New custom factions are always a plus and the expanded loadout possibilities for ships are really cool, especially with how the AI handles them, but the overall feel of the mod makes it seem rough at best and low-effort at worst. The ships look really bad, there's no real challenge, no real endgame asides from an endless demolition derby, everything just feels random and completely chaotic, which is NOT a good thing. I'm aware this is an alpha test sort of release so I'm not really that bothered by the mod's balance, but it definitely needs a LOT more polishing and work for the next version.
This mod also faces competition from other mods which also increase the game's difficulty by making AI conflicts and wars more constant, as well as other mods which improve the AI in general, both of which work with a ton of other mods that further edit existing content or add content to the game (VRO, XR Ships, RoR, SWI, etc.). This mod has some really interesting ideas, but it needs to have a sense of direction, challenge and complexity to come even close to the other mods which do similar things. The idea of a mod is to change or add content to the game, not take from it. There's ways to modify the economy without making it brain-dead easy for the player (which, again, there's already mods that do exactly that by doing things like adding resources to stations which run below a certain threshold or remove them from stations which produce too much, etc.)
The only reason I'd recommend this mod is if someone wants a chaotic sandbox where you can build a massive army within a few hours and just watch your ships fight other ships endlessly, but I've yet to meet anyone who plays X4 just for that.
For this mod to really shine, it needs to stick to what it does right while correcting what it does wrong. Bring back the vanilla complexity of the economy while perhaps adding minor QoL changes to it to make it more fun and less annoying (I get that the idea of the mod is to cater to new players, but new players won't be new for long and doing that kills this mod's longevity as they're bound to get bored of it sooner rather than later), get rid of the S ships with M ship weapons completely because most of them look terrible with them anyway and instead rebalance all ships and equipment in the game to better suit the war-heavy galaxy while preserving the build diversity this mod offers (probably resize turrets if they're to be left on S ships or only add them to S ships that actually look good with them). The new lore and stuff is really cool but I personally don't think it has much reason to be a thing if it's just using the game's original assets anyway; it fits well in mods with custom-modeled ships and the like. This is just my personal opinion, though, so you do you and have fun with your work.
There's definitely a lot of potential here and some really interesting ideas, but with a scope this size, it'll take a lot of "smoothing out" to make this mod worth taking over the other amazing overhaul mods already released. (Either that or compatibility with them, which seems extremely unlikely at best). It is not my intention to imply your work has no value, as I'm sure it took a LOT of time and effort, but it is important to understand that whenever you create a mod, you're actively competing with other mods that either conflict with yours or edit similar things to what your mod also edits, which means that other players will be forced to choose either your mod or one of the others.
Also, an Alpha test is an initial test of a currently in-development software with the intention of having a control group detect and report bugs, errors and unintended behavior for the purpose of correcting them during said software's early development. Problems with things like game balance very well fall under this scope and should be taken into consideration for future releases, even this early into the mod's development. Saying you're "not worrying about balance at this point" looks pretty bad.
I'd recommend changing the mod's description from an alpha release to a concept test instead, as given your previous responses that is exactly what this release is meant to be: a test of concepts and planned features for the mod. Semantics, but it might help you get some proper feedback on the mod's concepts rather than just about its lack of balance.
Yeaaah i have to agree on that. Overall this is one giant mess of ideas that have been executed....not that well. The values on ships, engines, shields, weapons etc are rather random. M turrets deal barely any damage while S Pulselaser Mk2 has more firepower than M or even L main guns. Why does my carrier go at 800km/s and my fighter only at 2.5km/s? Essentially this feels like if it is a Randomizer mod and one has ticked every box for maximum randomness. No sense of balance, cohesion or direction. Sorry, but i think you might need to go back to the drawing board and work some more on the foundation and concept. Right now its just pure chaos.
First of all, thank You for your comment. Honestly I do appreciate, when people not liking mod, some parts or all, do a small list, or just ask questions and so on, this is really constructive.
1. It is my fault that I did not explain exactly what I mean by alpha version, I will update that part asap - but synonyms like experimental come to my mind
EDIT: No, I did not miss it. I quote from main mod page: " For some people game may lack balance - this version's aim is to push certain game aspects to extreme, so it can be smoothed in next release.?" This is description of my understanding of Alpha version.
2. Well, yes, as an alpha version it is very unbalanced, however
S Pulselaser Mk2 has more firepower than M or even L main guns.
S Pulse Mk2 deals 1,564Mw range: 1,4km projectile speed 9,111m/s L PAR deals ¬2,500 at 860m/s , L SHO ¬4000 at 12,600m/s speed, and L ARG deals only ¬800hull dmg, but also ¬8000 shield dmg, at projectile speed at projectile speed 3600m/s and range 18km
So not. Clearly S laser does not deal more damage than any L gun. Apart of damage there also 2 other VERY important factors: range and projectile speed. (And more, there is damage not shown in encyclopedia which is in vanilla caused by flak, it is AoE damage.
So yes, absolutely, TL is all, but balanced in current moment, it is a sketchbook. Random? I agree to disagree on that. But to see the balance you have to take into account all factors. For instance mentioned here S Pulse Laser sounds a true killer, but if you check that its range is 1,4km then everything is clear. You have to get through enemy defense first (and these weak M turrets, some of them have even 15km range projectiles) so the question is how strong is your ship. Assuming that this S laser is mounted on S fighter than, who knows if it will be even able to get close to deal that damage. And if yes, than how long it will be able to take damage from enemy, and deal damage.
Then, lets say PAR L compared to SHO L looks like a complete looser, but only on paper, because in reality, this gun is able to deploy a very high amount of projectiles in short time (then it needs long time to replenish heat), so it may be ideal for hit and run tactics while SHO L deals almost instant damage, also hull - goes through shields - and can counter almost any ship speed. So it good for steady fight, while L PAR is better for ambush. And so on.
Right now its just pure chaos.
YES. It is.
Honestly, I was rather curious what people will say that there is a M turret on fighter, at all, not that this is not balanced, or not, because I don't expect to deal with that kind of detail on alpha level. Or what about fact there there is a lot more ships, and that now they behave like hive? Or that their behavior on galaxy map, when they fly in formation looks like moving bio cells, just in another scale.
And really interesting that you have mentioned chaos, because of Gleick and ships' behavior on galaxy map.
Anyway, really appreciate your remarks, even harsh. Will certainly rethink your remarks and try to do smth with that. Thanks again.
Oh wow, that is a little wall of text. xD But yeah, sorry if i sounded a bit too harsh there. Anyway, i forgot to mention that i tend to include the economical aspect of things into how powerful they are, sooo my text was probably rather bad at explaining things. So i will say it like this and maybe it works better - There is no point in building capital ships with how powerful fighters are. For the same cost, fighters will just obliterate anything and capital ships and guns are just not economical effective. If 100 million crworth of fighters can defeat 500 million cr worth of capital ships, i am of course going to spam all the fighters i can. This is also a problem in vanilla and vro. As for the M level equipment on S ships.... it just looks silly. :P Anyway, you do you and have fun what you are doing. :3
As I said: I sincerely appreciate Your comment. I like exchange of opinions. I may discuss smth, agree/disagree, but I always say that all comments help.
That's said I already processed your arguments into next version:
1. general balance weapons/engines/shields/etc. will be separated from main mod so it can be turned off. It was also redone from scratch, still testing. 2. all credit/resource cost updated as well, again still testing
(there will be more additions, but out of this topic -> more stations)
One more thing:
If 100 million crworth of fighters can defeat 500 million cr worth of capital ships, i am of course going to spam all the fighters i can.
Very interesting point of view.
That gave me idea to cheat a couple of battles fighters vs BB [Ai vs AI] and see how they are doing.
Fighters in next ver will have cost increased accordingly.
My personal idea of play was to create restrain myself from spamming at all, and rather build small (helps fps) but very well equipped fleets and see what happens. But Your argument makes sense, so I will try to widen my perspective.
Could you specify it a bit? According to the description it is considered to be an alpha, so bugs are expected. But I'd like to know how it goes for you. What exactly is "the worst you've seen so far"?
9 comments
This mod also faces competition from other mods which also increase the game's difficulty by making AI conflicts and wars more constant, as well as other mods which improve the AI in general, both of which work with a ton of other mods that further edit existing content or add content to the game (VRO, XR Ships, RoR, SWI, etc.). This mod has some really interesting ideas, but it needs to have a sense of direction, challenge and complexity to come even close to the other mods which do similar things. The idea of a mod is to change or add content to the game, not take from it. There's ways to modify the economy without making it brain-dead easy for the player (which, again, there's already mods that do exactly that by doing things like adding resources to stations which run below a certain threshold or remove them from stations which produce too much, etc.)
The only reason I'd recommend this mod is if someone wants a chaotic sandbox where you can build a massive army within a few hours and just watch your ships fight other ships endlessly, but I've yet to meet anyone who plays X4 just for that.
For this mod to really shine, it needs to stick to what it does right while correcting what it does wrong. Bring back the vanilla complexity of the economy while perhaps adding minor QoL changes to it to make it more fun and less annoying (I get that the idea of the mod is to cater to new players, but new players won't be new for long and doing that kills this mod's longevity as they're bound to get bored of it sooner rather than later), get rid of the S ships with M ship weapons completely because most of them look terrible with them anyway and instead rebalance all ships and equipment in the game to better suit the war-heavy galaxy while preserving the build diversity this mod offers (probably resize turrets if they're to be left on S ships or only add them to S ships that actually look good with them). The new lore and stuff is really cool but I personally don't think it has much reason to be a thing if it's just using the game's original assets anyway; it fits well in mods with custom-modeled ships and the like. This is just my personal opinion, though, so you do you and have fun with your work.
There's definitely a lot of potential here and some really interesting ideas, but with a scope this size, it'll take a lot of "smoothing out" to make this mod worth taking over the other amazing overhaul mods already released. (Either that or compatibility with them, which seems extremely unlikely at best). It is not my intention to imply your work has no value, as I'm sure it took a LOT of time and effort, but it is important to understand that whenever you create a mod, you're actively competing with other mods that either conflict with yours or edit similar things to what your mod also edits, which means that other players will be forced to choose either your mod or one of the others.
Also, an Alpha test is an initial test of a currently in-development software with the intention of having a control group detect and report bugs, errors and unintended behavior for the purpose of correcting them during said software's early development. Problems with things like game balance very well fall under this scope and should be taken into consideration for future releases, even this early into the mod's development. Saying you're "not worrying about balance at this point" looks pretty bad.
I'd recommend changing the mod's description from an alpha release to a concept test instead, as given your previous responses that is exactly what this release is meant to be: a test of concepts and planned features for the mod. Semantics, but it might help you get some proper feedback on the mod's concepts rather than just about its lack of balance.
The values on ships, engines, shields, weapons etc are rather random. M turrets deal barely any damage while S Pulselaser Mk2 has more firepower than M or even L main guns.
Why does my carrier go at 800km/s and my fighter only at 2.5km/s?
Essentially this feels like if it is a Randomizer mod and one has ticked every box for maximum randomness.
No sense of balance, cohesion or direction.
Sorry, but i think you might need to go back to the drawing board and work some more on the foundation and concept.
Right now its just pure chaos.
Honestly I do appreciate, when people not liking mod, some parts or all, do a small list, or just ask questions and so on, this is really constructive.
1. It is my fault that I did not explain exactly what I mean by alpha version, I will update that part asap - but synonyms like experimental come to my mind
EDIT: No, I did not miss it. I quote from main mod page: " For some people game may lack balance - this version's aim is to push certain game aspects to extreme, so it can be smoothed in next release.?" This is description of my understanding of Alpha version.
2. Well, yes, as an alpha version it is very unbalanced, however
S Pulse Mk2 deals 1,564Mw range: 1,4km projectile speed 9,111m/s
L PAR deals ¬2,500 at 860m/s , L SHO ¬4000 at 12,600m/s speed, and L ARG deals only ¬800hull dmg, but also ¬8000 shield dmg, at projectile speed at projectile speed 3600m/s and range 18km
So not. Clearly S laser does not deal more damage than any L gun.
Apart of damage there also 2 other VERY important factors: range and projectile speed. (And more, there is damage not shown in encyclopedia which is in vanilla caused by flak, it is AoE damage.
So yes, absolutely, TL is all, but balanced in current moment, it is a sketchbook. Random? I agree to disagree on that.
But to see the balance you have to take into account all factors. For instance mentioned here S Pulse Laser sounds a true killer, but if you check that its range is 1,4km then everything is clear. You have to get through enemy defense first (and these weak M turrets, some of them have even 15km range projectiles) so the question is how strong is your ship. Assuming that this S laser is mounted on S fighter than, who knows if it will be even able to get close to deal that damage. And if yes, than how long it will be able to take damage from enemy, and deal damage.
Then, lets say PAR L compared to SHO L looks like a complete looser, but only on paper, because in reality, this gun is able to deploy a very high amount of projectiles in short time (then it needs long time to replenish heat), so it may be ideal for hit and run tactics while SHO L deals almost instant damage, also hull - goes through shields - and can counter almost any ship speed. So it good for steady fight, while L PAR is better for ambush. And so on.
YES. It is.
Honestly, I was rather curious what people will say that there is a M turret on fighter, at all, not that this is not balanced, or not, because I don't expect to deal with that kind of detail on alpha level. Or what about fact there there is a lot more ships, and that now they behave like hive? Or that their behavior on galaxy map, when they fly in formation looks like moving bio cells, just in another scale.
And really interesting that you have mentioned chaos, because of Gleick and ships' behavior on galaxy map.
Anyway, really appreciate your remarks, even harsh. Will certainly rethink your remarks and try to do smth with that. Thanks again.
Anyway, i forgot to mention that i tend to include the economical aspect of things into how powerful they are, sooo my text was probably rather bad at explaining things.
So i will say it like this and maybe it works better - There is no point in building capital ships with how powerful fighters are. For the same cost, fighters will just obliterate anything and capital ships and guns are just not economical effective. If 100 million crworth of fighters can defeat 500 million cr worth of capital ships, i am of course going to spam all the fighters i can.
This is also a problem in vanilla and vro.
As for the M level equipment on S ships.... it just looks silly. :P
Anyway, you do you and have fun what you are doing. :3
As I said: I sincerely appreciate Your comment. I like exchange of opinions. I may discuss smth, agree/disagree, but I always say that all comments help.
That's said I already processed your arguments into next version:
1. general balance weapons/engines/shields/etc. will be separated from main mod so it can be turned off. It was also redone from scratch, still testing.
2. all credit/resource cost updated as well, again still testing
(there will be more additions, but out of this topic -> more stations)
One more thing:
Very interesting point of view.
That gave me idea to cheat a couple of battles fighters vs BB [Ai vs AI] and see how they are doing.
Fighters in next ver will have cost increased accordingly.
My personal idea of play was to create restrain myself from spamming at all, and rather build small (helps fps) but very well equipped fleets and see what happens. But Your argument makes sense, so I will try to widen my perspective.
Thanks for your thoughts, and have a good time!
According to the description it is considered to be an alpha, so bugs are expected. But I'd like to know how it goes for you. What exactly is "the worst you've seen so far"?