[MOD] Variety and Rebalance Overhaul (VRO) 4.x

[sanctific]

Not sure if anyone already commented on this but Xenon are much, much, MUCH weaker in OOS calc since CoH VRO update compared to what they used to be in pre-CoH VRO.

May you please have a look at xenon OOS battle calculation values? Yeah, i know that most of the stuff is hard-coded yet still, difference in Xenon power is so noticeable that I'm ready to enable Xenon Apocalypse in FOCW and manually edit those jobs to x2...kidding tho, that isn't the wisest idea for countless reasons. Still, something is very wrong with Xenons OOS combat (well, wrong compared to what it used to be anyhow).

Just yesterday I updated OOS calc to be closer to IS, especially for stations. I noticed also Xenon K destroyed faction destroyers just fine. Did you try new version?

Thanks for prompt feedback, Shuulo!

Yeah, I'm running 3.0.5 version of VRO now (thanks for the great mod!!).

Well, I'll give two examples which I've seen recently and which are more or less objective (in terms of not so many variables being present).

1. Example one - 3 Ps & 4 Ms were killing 1 Cerberus (I mean it, Cerberus was all alone there vs Xenon) for nearly 7 minutes (not SETA-ed). Two Ms were killed, 1 P lost its shields and 50% of hull. Thats OOS, IS - Cerberus would be dead in 30 sec with Xenon not breaking a sweat.
2. Example two - 1 P & 3-4 fighters M/N fought vs ~6-7 ARG Novas & Quasars, not a single ARG ship was lost.

In pre-CoH VRO - both of the above scenarios would be won by Xenon IS & OOS, nowadays - IS only (Xenon are still crazy if faced IS). No conflicting mods are installed on my side (VRO, XR ship pack+XRS/VRO patch & minor QoL mods mostly from VRO wiki recommendations).

[Max Bain]

1. Example one - 3 Ps & 4 Ms were killing 1 Cerberus (I mean it, Cerberus was all alone there vs Xenon) for nearly 7 minutes (not SETA-ed). Two Ms were killed, 1 P lost its shields and 50% of hull. Thats OOS, IS - Cerberus would be dead in 30 sec with Xenon not breaking a sweat.
2. Example two - 1 P & 3-4 fighters M/N fought vs ~6-7 ARG Novas & Quasars, not a single ARG ship was lost.

In pre-CoH VRO - both of the above scenarios would be won by Xenon IS & OOS, nowadays - IS only (Xenon are still crazy if faced IS). No conflicting mods are installed on my side (VRO, XR ship pack+XRS/VRO patch & minor QoL mods mostly from VRO wiki recommendations).

Are you sure about your statement, that in sector these fights would end completely different? Because at least from my Pre 4.0 experience, Ps and all Xenon fighters were pretty weak in sector (and OOS). 6-7 Novas and Quasars would have won against a P and 3-4 xenon fighters (would have been a long fight still). For me the result sounds not that far away from in sector results. This is all from my memories so I might be wrong, but my ecperience seems to be different than yours.

[sanctific]

1. Example one - 3 Ps & 4 Ms were killing 1 Cerberus (I mean it, Cerberus was all alone there vs Xenon) for nearly 7 minutes (not SETA-ed). Two Ms were killed, 1 P lost its shields and 50% of hull. Thats OOS, IS - Cerberus would be dead in 30 sec with Xenon not breaking a sweat.
2. Example two - 1 P & 3-4 fighters M/N fought vs ~6-7 ARG Novas & Quasars, not a single ARG ship was lost.

In pre-CoH VRO - both of the above scenarios would be won by Xenon IS & OOS, nowadays - IS only (Xenon are still crazy if faced IS). No conflicting mods are installed on my side (VRO, XR ship pack+XRS/VRO patch & minor QoL mods mostly from VRO wiki recommendations).

Are you sure about your statement, that in sector these fights would end completely different? Because at least from my Pre 4.0 experience, Ps and all Xenon fighters were pretty weak in sector (and OOS). 6-7 Novas and Quasars would have won against a P and 3-4 xenon fighters (would have been a long fight still). For me the result sounds not that far away from in sector results. This is all from my memories so I might be wrong, but my ecperience seems to be different than yours.

In example 1 - yeah, Xenon would win IS in no time, even fighters shields wouldn't go below 50%.

In example 2 - ARG group won with no losses whatsoever in OOS. Yeah, in IS ARG would most likely still win but with 60-70% of their group destroyed. In OOS they raped Xenon, no ARG fighter was even remotely close to being destroyed.

[Max Bain]

I just spotted a balance issue with the shields in VRO, especially with MK2 and MK3 versions.
Since you added internal shield generators for free to all ships, the normal shield generators are not very well balanced in relation to their costs.

For example the Kukri has an internal shield generator with 3000 shield.
An MK1 has 2125 extra shields and a bit of regenration for an extra cost of just 2954 credits.
An Mk2 has 2600 extra shields for 25749 extra credits.
An MK3 has 2950 exztra shields for an additional 134000 credits.

So to sum it up:
for 2954 credits you get +70% extra shield. In absolute values its 5125.
for 134000 credits you get an extra +100% extra shield. In absolute values its 5950.

The Kukri itself cost 108000 credits. So you would get 2 Kukris with each 3000 shields instead of one with the MK3. Or you could spend 6k extra to get 5000 shields on each one.

That sounds a bit a no brainer to me because of the free internal shield generators.

I mean the prices are maybe ok, but MK2 and MK3 should be significantly better, so you would notice an effect (even with an internal shield generator) for your money.

[Shuulo]

I just spotted a balance issue with the shields in VRO, especially with MK2 and MK3 versions.
Since you added internal shield generators for free to all ships, the normal shield generators are not very well balanced in relation to their costs.

For example the Kukri has an internal shield generator with 3000 shield.
An MK1 has 2125 extra shields and a bit of regenration for an extra cost of just 2954 credits.
An Mk2 has 2600 extra shields for 25749 extra credits.
An MK3 has 2950 exztra shields for an additional 134000 credits.

So to sum it up:
for 2954 credits you get +70% extra shield. In absolute values its 5125.
for 134000 credits you get an extra +100% extra shield. In absolute values its 5950.

The Kukri itself cost 108000 credits. So you would get 2 Kukris with each 3000 shields instead of one with the MK3. Or you could spend 6k extra to get 5000 shields on each one.

That sounds a bit a no brainer to me because of the free internal shield generators.

I mean the prices are maybe ok, but MK2 and MK3 should be significantly better, so you would notice an effect (even with an internal shield generator) for your money.

yeah, i may improve those, thanks for feedback

[Sam97531]

Yeah they could be more bang for your money, but then maybe lower the cost? I dont think TTK (time to kill) is a problem so we wouldnt want dogfights to take even longer would we? just a thought

[mr.WHO]

Could someone make a YouTube video that persents all VRO weapons?

I've seen several VRO combat video, but none that present various weapons.

[Kerber23]

Greetings! Love the mod! Thank you for your work!

I picked up a fleet assembly mission as shown https://imgur.com/a/Zre6Rzg. This requires the Tokyo to be equipped with a "TER L Heavy Electro Magnetic Plasma Cannon" however I am not showing the Tokyo having any large turrets or gun hardpoints. Is this an issue with this mod or another one. Sorry if it has been posted I did my best searching forums, but it isn't my strong suit.

[Shuulo]

Greetings! Love the mod! Thank you for your work!

I picked up a fleet assembly mission as shown https://imgur.com/a/Zre6Rzg. This requires the Tokyo to be equipped with a "TER L Heavy Electro Magnetic Plasma Cannon" however I am not showing the Tokyo having any large turrets or gun hardpoints. Is this an issue with this mod or another one. Sorry if it has been posted I did my best searching forums, but it isn't my strong suit.

thats vanilla game issue, was reported already, guess should be fixed in next game patch or something

[Knjaz136]

Do Terrans keep "technological superiority" for their unique weapons (the ones that can only be installed on Terran ships), like those "Proton" guns? In vanilla they are a bit better than any possible analogues from other factions, especially L class ones.

From posts above I understood that Terran shield superiority and different Engine mechanics are already present.

P.S. In case anybody can elaborate, what happens if I don't start a new game? I'm talking about those internal shields. Since my ships don't have them after loading up the mod, I have to refit my ships at wharfs/shipyards, all of them, correct?
P.P.S. How come Syn Heavy Destroyer has worse shields than Osaka?

[Shuulo]

Do Terrans keep "technological superiority" for their unique weapons (the ones that can only be installed on Terran ships), like those "Proton" guns? In vanilla they are a bit better than any possible analogues from other factions, especially L class ones.

From posts above I understood that Terran shield superiority and different Engine mechanics are already present.

P.S. In case anybody can elaborate, what happens if I don't start a new game? I'm talking about those internal shields. Since my ships don't have them after loading up the mod, I have to refit my ships at wharfs/shipyards, all of them, correct?
P.P.S. How come Syn Heavy Destroyer has worse shields than Osaka?

heavy S and M weapons cane be mounted only by TER fighters and they are more powerful. Also Point Singularity Cannon is for terran ships only as well.

All npc ships will lack weapons and shields if used on old save.

[Knjaz136]

Turrets do not react to incoming missiles/torpedos, which makes Xenon missile spam rather unbearable.
https://puu.sh/HsQXj/4bdd4627ea.png
https://puu.sh/HsQXw/8122fe02dc.png

Anybody else has/had this problem?

[Alkeena]

Turrets do not react to incoming missiles/torpedos, which makes Xenon missile spam rather unbearable.
https://puu.sh/HsQXj/4bdd4627ea.png
https://puu.sh/HsQXw/8122fe02dc.png

Anybody else has/had this problem?

This is a vanilla problem. The missiledefence script is broken (and to my knowledge not accessible to modders). Devs are working on a fix. I have a personal mod that causes attack fighters to also shoot missiles, but tbh it doesn't do a very good job of it....

see here

[Max Bain]

Terran Medium Engines:

Allround and Travel Engines have the exact same max speed (on all MK levels). Only travel drives have higher travel speeds which makes it a no brainer to buy the travel engines in all cases (they cost just a little more and have slighly lower boost speeds).

I suggest to increase allround engines max speed a bit (ok then they are very clos to the combat engines, but maybe buffing them a bit on that part also would help too).

Also I just noticed that argon freighters have twice the travel speed as terran freighters with around the same capacities which makes them far less usefull. This is ok, but not for the same price. I would always buy argon freighters this way.

[Duke Flipside]

How can I edit the damage of a weapon in VRO - specifically the Asgard's Mjolnir? I just built one and found it very underwhelming, so I'm looking to restore its Vanilla damage which seems to be about 10x higher.

I've tried creating a mod with VRO as a dependency to patch over (which loads as intended - I was able to restore the Katana's original speed), but I can't seem to affect the damage of the Mjolnir (or any other weapon). I extracted bullet_atf_xl_mjolnir_macro.xml, edited the values I wanted, and placed it in my mod folder under assets/fx/weaponFx/macros, mirroring its place in the VRO structure, but this seems to have no effect. I added <diff><replace sel="//macros"> (+closing tags) as well but still no effect.

I'm new to X4 modding so I've no idea what I'm doing wrong - particularly when the same approach worked for ships+engines! Can anybody help?

Edit: Okay, so I'm a fool - took me this long to realise that I could just replace VRO's .cat with the unpacked XML files and edit them directly, rather than trying to patch them afterwards... Is there any issue/downside with having the mod as unpacked XMLs versus the .cat?

[Knjaz136]

P.S. Just noticed previous post - I didn't see it while writing this one, and it differs a bit so I'll leave it here.

Original post:
First question - how was Asgard's it's XL Main Gun changed? Is it a buff, or a sidegrade? Haven't tried Vanilla Asgard, went straight into VRO.
We are talking about 800-900 million ship here after all, with a gun that's impossible to aim at a stationary gunboat 8km away (which means it's projectile speed doesn't bring much benefits in first place), in addition to slow turn rates and that XL gun being completely fixed. Tried on my own Jin. Imho, Asgard as a whole can use some tweaking to get the feel of a 900m investment flagship. Even if it means increasing it's default Build resource amount by 50%. (they are pretty low as it is).

More minor issue - what do you think about returning L Beam turrets to Terran arsenal? Specifically for player-flown ships. Starburst Shockwave Cannons are awesome, except they are unusable for Player due to massive splash and resulting friendly fire unless of OOS. Unless you have a fix/solution for that, ofc. Tried them, they are really good, but impossible to use with allies around. Ofc, I'd rather have SSCs that don't do friendly fire than L Beams, but we can't have first, afaik?

Upd: Just in case - in my game Asgard Heavy Slots (L Heavies, where PSPs are installed) have issues shooting at the front target. If it 's unfixable vanilla issue - maybe it's worth swapping front and rear set of L turrets? (aka, front - Heavies, rear - Standards). Not 100% sure in this issue, further testing required.

[Alkeena]

Edit: Okay, so I'm a fool - took me this long to realise that I could just replace VRO's .cat with the unpacked XML files and edit them directly, rather than trying to patch them afterwards... Is there any issue/downside with having the mod as unpacked XMLs versus the .cat?

If/when Shuulo releases an update you'll have to remember which files you touched and retain them. If Shuulo touched something in those files you won't get the benefit of whatever changes he made.

Generally it's much more sustainable to just write a very targeted diff patch so that you don't need to muck about with things any time there's an update. I think all told I've changed like 4 or 500 hundred values in my local copy of VRO with a diff mod. If I had to do that every time a new point release occurred I'd literally never get to play.

[Kinnison]

I may have missed something said earlier, but I'm puzzled by one aspect of my new CoH game. About half of the abandoned ships I've collected have no internal shield generators. As I have low rep with the majority of factions I can't send them to a race wharf/shipyard, but the Terran wharf can't supply the generators - and won't let me make any other modifications because a necessary component is missing.

Is this WAD, and/or is there a way to fix it?

[Cyres]

I may have missed something said earlier, but I'm puzzled by one aspect of my new CoH game. About half of the abandoned ships I've collected have no internal shield generators. As I have low rep with the majority of factions I can't send them to a race wharf/shipyard, but the Terran wharf can't supply the generators - and won't let me make any other modifications because a necessary component is missing.

Is this WAD, and/or is there a way to fix it?

I had the same problem. IIRC I solved this by applying a preset loadout, which applied the internal shield generator. Then you simply can revert the changes. It's a dirty workaround but it's working.

[Kinnison]

I had the same problem. IIRC I solved this by applying a preset loadout, which applied the internal shield generator. Then you simply can revert the changes. It's a dirty workaround but it's working.

Ah, thank you! As it happens since posting I've established decent relations with a couple of factions, but very useful to know for the future.