[Mayhem 3.14d] Rebalance Mod 1.0 - Stronger Factions

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Hector0x
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[Mayhem 3.14d] Rebalance Mod 1.0 - Stronger Factions

Post by Hector0x » Thu, 21. Jan 21, 18:16

Mayhem 3: viewtopic.php?f=94&t=381503

incompatible with Mayhem 3.15
complete reboot currently under construction!
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:star: Summary:
  • powerful NPC empires, more war activity
  • less dominant midgame Xenon
  • dynamic Yaki & Pirate strength
  • less different battle outcomes OOS vs. In-sector
  • tougher capships
  • ship upkeep easier to manage but less trivial in lategame
  • Quality of Life improvements

Changelog:
viewtopic.php?p=5004703#p5004703

Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FY5MH4 ... sp=sharing

Installation:
  • Extract the archive into your game folder, override everything.
  • Go to the "addon" folder and rename the "M3Rebalance.cat/.dat" so that they get the highest number of all your catalogs (fake patch method).
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  • Optional: update your catalog info list textfile to keep track of any installed submods.
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  • New game required.
  • Medium galaxy size recommended. Large galaxies can have very fast levelling difficult NPC empires. Small galaxies might get too high pirate density.

Spoilers are just supposed to shrink this huge wall of text :-)


How is this different? - general tips for your first playthrough:
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  • Early-game (getting basic shipyard infrastructure and about 5 owned sectors with factories):
    • this part should feel almost the same, even a bit easier. You got time and like before NPCs still leave enough free neutral sectors for you to kickstart your empire.
    • all ships have the most important equipment preinstalled. Video Googles help you locate pirate bases. Transporter Device makes looting very convenient.
    • Civilian ships like freighters and miners don't require any upkeep. Get as many as you like.
    • there are 2 special lasers which are not used by the AI. High Energy Plasma Thrower + Ion Disruptor deal very good damage. The high cost makes it generally not worth to put them on fleet ships. But in your personal fighter they can give you an edge during early game combat missions and dogfights. They are compatible with almost all M3 fighters.
  • Mid-game (when you can constantly replace military ships to wage small wars but only against weak targets):
    • this should be more difficult. Especially if you want to play it safe. Grinding will not get you as far as in base Mayhem 3.
    • peaceful buildup followed by steamrolling everyone is less viable than before. That's arguably the biggest and most interesting change compared to base Mayhem 3.
    • NPCs got buffed with improved weapon loadouts and more efficient production while you got less exploits to beat them at this stage. You just can't kill their most powerful fleets yet. In the base mod this was often possible at this point. I bet i could tone down some of your most favourite exploits and cheesy tactics. Ship value should be more in line with actual combat strength. Getting overwhelming firepower very cheap should be much more rare. And even once you got powerful capships it is much more difficult to achieve perfect victories without any damage or losses.
    • maintenance is now a real soft limit on your maximum fleet strength. A major change of this mod is that you loose the ability to make ship upkeep entirely free during your military buildup. It was very effective to keep your ships docked at a drydock outpost and not pay anything. Then you could absolutely overwhelm the NPCs quickly with your overpowered fleet. Docking the ships once you were finished would instantly get rid of any upkeep cost. But now the drydock perk will only provide a 50% discount on ship upkeep. If you build your fleets too large you can go bankrupt without having an instant remedy. You might want to recycle ships if you think you won't need them for the time being (for example after you've completed the Xenon Hunting quest). Docking your military at drydocks from time to time is still a good idea because it will slowly undo the cost increase which occurs during the time your military ships are flying in space.
    • your odds to gain more territory might sometimes seem very bad, but you are supposed to take more risks than before. Its almost pointless to hope that just waiting in SETA will eventually give you enough firepower to beat every faction in an all out war. It's very likely that you won't be able to pay the upkeep for very large fleets yet, even if you are willing to SETA forward until you got the construction resources which are required to build all those ships.
    • capships fill their role as slow but significant fleet centerpieces much better than before. Now they usually represent obstacles which are difficult to take out unless you also have capships or at least M6 with certain good anti-hull lasers. If you only have small ships and still want to destroy a capship which has full health you should expect to loose more ships than in the base mod. Fighters and Corvettes usually don't deal hull damage quick enough before too many ships start dying. Now this is also true during in-sector combat, because capship lasers don't push fighters out of their own weapons range anymore.
    • you likely won't have any powerful tactical options yet, so it becomes much more about your strategy. Choose strong allies and weak targets! Playing as the lone wolf without any allies might've become extremely difficult.
    • but you should also be able to find more opportunities in the universe than in base Mayhem 3. Be patient, search for an opening and then strike boldly! Some examples:
      • weak empires should generally survive longer. You should have more targets to choose from instead of just 2 very powerful empires which could already beat all the others. Attack when a faction is about to loose major fleets on a different front.
      • the Yaki can sometimes become easy prey after they get debuffed by their new internal politics system.
      • NPC empires might get crippled from resource starvation after having too many pirate spawns focussed in one location for too long
      • the Xenon should not snowball out of control as quickly. But these sectors are still very easy to conquer once their fleets have moved on. You only need to destroy a single station, often without any defenders.
      • many capships all around the gameworld will remain permanently damaged and some can be destroyed easily, even if you only got a small fleet. This can yield reputation, bounties, favor points, or valuable loot
    • once you run out of 'easy' sectors to expand any further it gets important that you do not fear to attack a faction which still seems to be much stronger than you. Don't wait to match their military strength before attacking. The AI won't concentrate their fleets as effectively as the player so equal strength isn't required. During this mid-game stage it's also not really possible because your ships are often much more expensive and take longer to build than the AI's. You can't outproduce them 1:1 unless they are already much smaller than you.
    • think twice about declaring any permanent wars !!! In the base mod the NPCs weren't that much of a threat so this has always been very tempting, because it gives you extra outpost perks. I know you all want more perks. But now, if it all goes wrong and the enemy hits you hard, you cannot go back to peace with them! Being greedy with the perks has the potential to end your playthrough.
    • the ability to sign a truce is a huge joker against major NPC empires. You should not gamble this ability away too early. In Mayhem 3 its not uncommon to have your reputation swing up and down tens of thousands of rep points. The enemy of today can definitely be the ally of tomorrow. But a permanent war will be final. Consider to keep your options alive until a bit later into the game. Most perks are not as necessary as they might seem.
    • How to get a Truce:
      • a truce resets your relation back to neutral, it doesn't matter how much the faction already hates you
      • truces don't time out! They do between two NPC factions, but never for the player
      • they can be signed immediately after you loose 1 sector to an NPC empire
      • it doesn't matter if you just stole 3 sectors from them! After you loose only 1 sector you can go back to peace. Which means that you just won 2 sectors in this war.
    • with Mayhem 3's slow ship travel system you can often conquer a few sectors and then make peace with their owner before he can hit you back with major invasions. NPC fleets often take hours to travel to a different frontline.
    • repairing relations by killing Xenons, pirates or their enemies is also very much possible
    • Summed up the mid-game is all about scooping up the remaining easy neutral sectors, then expanding further by identifying a weakness, waging limited wars to exploit it and then trying to peace out in time because you can't wipe the entire faction out yet.
  • Late-game (when you are one of the most powerful factions in the galaxy)
    • should be slightly more difficult
    • the new minimum maintenance will always lurk in the background and foil any obscene arms race on your end. You can still get dozens of battleships and hundreds of fighters, but having the Tax perk on many outposts seems almost mandatory for that.
    • attrition is now a natural part of the game. Small ships die, big ships take damage. You will not get 6 Ocelots and then 'be done'. Get familiar with the Auto-Repair and Reinforce fleet features!
    • think about the timing when you want to send your capships to get repaired. For the main battlefleets which are mostly supervised by you personally i don't recommend to leave auto-repairs always activated. Pulling capships with only little damage away from the frontline might reduce your firepower unnecessarily. But very damaged ships can also become very slow and going home could take even longer. Its your call. Do you want to play it safe or get your invasions done?
    • capships are generally more cost-effective than before (both in resources and upkeep). The costs didn't change but actual strength in combat is much higher. Not only did they get a larger health pool than before. They also got a larger HULL health pool, which is essentially a significant damage reduction against small ships. Those can usually exclusively use small lasers. In the base mod those small lasers dealt very good damage, considering how cheap they are. But only against shields, not against hull. So now it's a whole different ballpark. Swarming tactics are generally less effective.
    • spending resources on small ships might still sometimes be better because they can reach the frontlines faster and also get repaired or replaced faster than capships. Up to M6 size can also get repaired "on the fly" inside their carriers. It all depends on your current needs. During actual battles capships will now usually be the best choice. But this comes at the price of slower invasions and the risk of getting trapped behind enemy lines. The speed difference between capships and small ships is greater than ever because of the more frequent hull damage on capships. Damaged they will be much slower. A fighter or corvette fleet may loose some units, but the fleet remains highly mobile and able to initiate battles or disengage. Being able to dictate if, when and where a battle happens is more difficult to do with capships. So they might not be best for every type of playstyle.


:star:Features:


Economy:
  • Ore/Silicon require 8 times less cargospace !!!
  • significant bottleneck in the NPC economy closed
  • faster ship production
  • NPCs generally have more resources for missle production and will often carry more than before
Reason:
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Ore gets consumed during Quantum Tube production. In all my playthroughs most factions suffered from a serious Quantum Tube shortage. This is a ship crafting component and has huge impact on the overall activity in the universe. Factions without resources become weak, cannot fight the Xenons, etc.

Now let this sink in:
Shipping the amount of Ore which is needed for 1 min of constant production in a Quantum Tubes factory used up more than 6 times more cargospace than the resources which are needed for 1 min of production in a Hull Part factory.

On top of that the mining stations are also farther away from the jumpgates. And with Mayhem's trade-lock system there can only be 1 ship incoming at any time.

So we had multiple slowdown effects. Only low amounts of resources could be carried by only 1 ship at a time, over very long distances. The consumption in Quantum tube factories is higher than average and Quantum Tubes also need an additional refinement step (it's the most complex crafting component in the game).
Summed up this caused chronic shortages.

Since the NPCs cannot adapt by assigning more ships to certain factories, every ship component supply for their outposts must work kind of balanced on it's own. Making Ore less bulky was the easiest solution. I know it doesn't make much sense that raw minerals are supposed to take up less space than a more refined product. But it helps the ecnomy greatly. Personally i just imagine that the truckers strap entire Ore rocks on the side of their ships and don't actually put them in the freight bay ;-)


NPC Production Booster - "Revanchism":

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  • loosing a sector gives all of the faction's remaining outposts a cumulative and permanent discount on ship building (cost and time)
  • stacks up to 25 times at which they build ships twice as fast for half the resources compared to usual
Reason:
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Factions with "real" ship construction economy often sucked really hard once they lost even just a few important fleets. The sad reality is that the AI will always loose many more ships than the average player does. Especially a lot of freighters, which they will happily and consistently send through dangerous sectors and which have to be rebuilt afterwards. This eats resources and clogs up their production queues. Military replacements get delayed. In base Mayhem 3 NPC outposts could already build everything 50% cheaper and faster than a new player outpost, but in my opinion it wasn't enough to make the AI competitive. Once they started loosing they always became very weak.

I didn't like that. The 5 main NPC empires are interesting. Unlike Xenon they can do cool moves with their fleets, like scouting, retreating, reinforcing and being aware if they can win or not. You got coalition wars, an actually simulated ship construction which takes time and resources. The Xenon only respawn simple minded fleets on a timer and eventually rush and supress the NPC empires. I don't want early game Xenons stealing the show too much. In my mind they are supposed to be more like a "creep" faction. Think Warhammer 3 treasure guards.

So i came up with a new production catchup mechanic to ease up this total economic crippling which usually occurs as soon as the odds start to turn only slightly against any given NPC empire.

The whole system is an abstraction for populations becoming more desperate and willing to accept more hardships in order to survive and reconquer what they lost. Imagine that they'll produce less consumer goods and more military stuff. People work overtime to buy war bonds. There is more propaganda, confiscations for the 'greater good', less wellfare, more saboteurs getting snitched, rationed food, etc. Their entire military benefits passively.
If a faction started with only few sectors they are used to being weak and getting bullied. They can't loose many sectors so the bonus cannot be very high for them.

How it worked before:
  • in default Mayhem 3 all outposts can level up "production specialization" which gives the station a direct building cost and time discount
  • player outposts always start at 0% and can level up to 50% (half cost and time)
  • NPC outposts always start maxed out at 50%. So technically they were already cheating.
Now they cheat a little more, but this new cheat has to develop itself naturally during your game and will mostly only apply when it's actually needed.

Details:
  • any sector loss adds +1% production specialization on all remaining outposts
  • 75% spec is the maximum. A fully levelled NPC outpost has 1/2 ship building cost and construction time compared to a fresh NPC outpost and 1/4 compared to a fresh player outpost

Effects on gameplay:
  • a loosing faction will dynamically develop very powerful production centers in their remaining peaceful core sectors. Those can replace ships faster and with fewer resources.
  • if the NPC empire turns the tide and grows again the bonus degrades naturally because only their hinterland will remain levelled up. All new constructed outposts always start fresh at 50% spec bonus. NPCs will never consider this bonus to decide where to build ships
  • this mechanic helps faction wars to stay balanced for longer and not tip over too soon. The player has more time to build his empire and take part to influence the outcomes.
  • complete destruction of a faction with many starting sectors could be difficult. Large factions will eventually have many high level outposts and could be tough to wipe out. Choose your initial allies and permanent wars wisely!!! To destroy such a beefed up NPC empire you might even need to progress the story and hope that the OCV "doomsday waves" can ice them for you.
  • over the long run overall NPC production specializations will likely go up in your playthrough. This is intended to make all main factions more competitive against a growing Terraformer threat and, of course, against you
  • frontline areas where many outposts are frequently destroyed and rebuilt will level up very slowly or not at all because their progress gets "reset" too often
Example:
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  • Paranid own 23 sectors at gamestart
  • they loose 1 sector to Teladi > all remaining 22 Paranid outposts permanently level up +1%, new production specialization level is 51%
  • Paranid loose 8 more sectors to Xenon > 14 of their outposts now at 59% bonus
  • then they conquer 1 sector from the player > this new outpost starts with the base 50% bonus again and all their other 14 outposts are still at 59%
  • they loose 12 more sectors to the Xenon > 2 outposts they held since gamestart now have +71% bonus. The 1 outpost they conquered from the player later into the game has +62%
  • now they manage to rebound because of some coalition war and they conquer 10 additional sectors from Boron > no changes to the 3 current outposts, all 10 freshly conquered outposts start at 50% base bonus
  • anti-Boron-coalition eventually ends and afterwards the Paranid loose 6 sectors to the Teladi again > their 2 oldest outposts are now maxed out at 75% bonus (half ship cost compared to gamestart). The outpost they conquered from the player is at 68%. All 4 remaining (youngest) outposts they conquered from Boron are at 56% spec


Yaki / Pirates:

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Internal Politics:
  • Yaki and Pirates are both part of an unstable criminal megafaction. Yaki represent organized crime, Pirates stand for chaotic plundering
  • all criminals go through random phases of internal Unity or Chaos
  • during phases of Unity most pirates will start to vanish from the galaxy. They secretly work together to boost Yaki fleet production efficiency to 90% production specialization.
  • during Chaos phases the global pirate activity quickly intensifies while Yaki fleet production efficiency drops to 30%.
  • when switching to a new phase of Unity or Chaos the effects are often delayed. Currently existing surplus pirates do not magically disappear. Currently ongoing Yaki fleet production projects will get finished with the efficiency rating that the construction has been started with.
  • so it is possible that you get strong Yaki fleets and many pirates at the same time. But one of the two factions will have serious trouble to replace ships if they were killed in this given moment.
  • small chance for a balanced phase which works mostly like base Mayhem 3 but Yaki outposts get 60% production specialization (10% more than other NPCs)
  • should the Yaki ever own at least 15% of the entire galaxy all upcoming phases will be balanced (they loose their chaotic tribal nature and become a more stable faction)
General Changes:
  • Yakis always want to build full size battlegroups, even when they own very few sectors
  • Yaki battlegroups want to get 1 extra M2 and 1 extra M7 (they don't have M2+ battleships)
  • Yaki sector claims last 50% longer (they often attack distant sectors which requires more travel time)
Tips:
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  • the Yaki and/or Pirates are generally stronger, but how this new system affects them exactly will be unpredictable. For example they can get very powerful if they start united with multiple strong Yaki phases. Their special 'deep strike' battlegroups will spread new Yaki sectors very far. Later these can act as new spawn locations for pirates who can literally flood into new areas once the Yaki fall into chaos and the pirates take control again.
  • you won't know which phase is currently active. But the pirate population can be a hint. If you suddenly see a lot less pirates overall you can bet that the Yakis are currently 'recruiting' them and likely building up big battlefleets.
  • the phases are very long. After 16-20h the next one gets randomly chosen. But there doesn't need to be any change. It is unlikely, but possible that you only get Unity phases or only Chaos phases
  • during a Unity phase Yaki still have to pay for new ships, but it's really cheap and quick. Probably a bad time to attack them!
  • sudden heavy global pirate activity can be an indicator that the Yaki have fallen into chaos. They could still have strong fleets but they will be struggling to replace losses. Could be a good opportunity to decimate them or take out Yaki sectors. But you won't know for sure how much time you got left until the phase might swing around and they start building ships quickly again. Could be hours, could also be days :-)
  • you will always start out friendly with the Yakis when they first appear and they won't invade you. But they can spread new pirate spawn points right next to you and other NPC empires will not completely wipe the Yaki out for you.
  • the global pirate limit does not scale up with more Yaki sectors. The pirates will mostly just spread out over a larger area. They won't exterminate the galaxy.
  • even in a balanced phase Yaki outposts will produce more efficient than fresh outposts from other factions (since they have so many enemies they had to become crafty and resourceful). But Yakis lack a strong national identity and quickly loose any efficiency levelup from the new 'revanchism' mechanic (gets reset when the next phase triggers). A large Yaki empire will be less efficient than a large NPC empire with a fanatic population in many fully levelled up outposts.

Hacking QoL:
  • rootkit range increased to 15km (just outside weapons range of hostile capships)
  • small UI helpers to display hacking related info
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    • magenta colored dot: the ship is part of your botnet (backdoor active)
    • default dot: you already scanned the ports of this ship
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Preinstalled Equipment:
  • Transporter Device.
    • Carriers teleport incoming ships directly into the docking bays. (reduces micromanagement and OOS/in-sector differences)
    • short range teleport to any of your ships (quite important to prevent 'Game Over' in Mayhem 3 fleet battles)
    • ships can always exchange freight in space
  • Video Enhancement Goggles. (you can always zoom in)

Maintenance:
  • TS and TP ships don't cost maintenance anymore.
    • You will no longer suffer high running costs if you don't replace civilian ships like Miners or Agents.
    • this was a lot of tedious work which wasn't very challenging or fun
    • script 'Mayhem.GetShipMaintenanceCost.xml'
  • maintenance increase over time is much easier to manage!
  • Ship Restoration on Drydocks:
    • Degraded ships will slowly get restored to lower maintenance factors again (reduces running cost)
      Image
    • this is an alternative to equipping old ships with maintenance kits or recycling/rebuilding them
    • Restoration will be faster on very degraded ships and slower if the ship is only slightly degraded.
    • now it's much easier to keep overall maintenance factors closer to the base cost of new ships (you likely won't need to pay 500% or higher anymore)
    • Drydocks can only restore down to 133% minimum cost level.
    • Details: each maintenance cycle 3% of all accumulated maintenance factor above the base 100% gets removed.
    • for example: a ship with maintenance factor of 300% will get 6% factor reduction per restoration cycle. A ship with 160% will only get 1% restored.
    • script 'Mayhem.Monitor.Maintenance.xml'
  • Drydock Perk nerfed hard
    • Docked ships only get 50% cost reduction. They are no longer free.
    • this change could drastically increase difficulty for players who like to build up peacefully for a very long time and then "steamroll" enemy factions with overpowered fleets.
    • this new soft limit on your maximum fleet size makes cash management during mid-/lategame more relevant
    • every military ship will now have a running cost which Drydocks cannot disable anymore, only reduce!
    • Advanced Engineering perk stacks with 50% reduction from drydocks
    • script 'Mayhem.GetShipMaintenanceCost.xml'


Ship Balance:

Strong Capship Hulls:
  • M2/M1/M7/TL hulls are super tough and hard to kill
  • but due to lower shield strength they can quickly receive permanent hull damage
    Image
Reason:
In Mayhem 3 huge shields cause hidden balancing issues. Recharging them is free, so many large M2 never received any hull damage. The same ships could exist for ingame weeks and kill thousands of enemies. The other faction constantly replaced those small ships until all their resources were drained. Especially the player could use this to exploit the hell out of smaller NPC squadrons. Once you had a couple really big capships no NPC fleet could damage you anymore. NPCs just can't combine their firepower as well. They often send multiple smaller waves while the player can concentrate all his ships in one powerful strike.

Details:
  • 1GJ and 2GJ shields are now 750MJ/1GJ
  • all ships using those two shields got 200% of all lost shield hitpoints added to their hull hitpoints
  • overall most capships have ~20-30% more total health than before
  • but their biggest health increase comes from low hull damage on most small lasers. To kill those new capships you need good anti-hull damage.
  • Stations did not get any hull compensation. They are simply easier to destroy
Faster repairs:
  • originally a fixed amount of 10k hull/min
  • now there is an additional 0,2%/min repair bonus which is based on the ship's max hull
  • small ships still get repaired almost at the same rate. It's very quick just from the base Mayhem 3 repair amount
  • but big ships now repair up to 3 times faster
  • Terraforming bonus only increases the fixed 10k repair rate
Effects on gameplay:
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  • capships tank damage much better, especially against small ships because they usually deal very poor hull damage
  • any battle involving capships lasts longer
  • smaller NPC squadrons (Rearguards, Task Forces) have a realistic chance to permanently damage larger fleets like Battlegroups
  • loosing shields is no longer a death sentence. You don't need to freak out upon receiving hull damage. Capships got more time to maneuver or flee.
  • over the course of many hours or even days most NPC capitals will get significantly weaker as they are damaged and worn down. This is clearly visible to the player. The AI doesn't repair ships and will only rebuild new ones. The new improved economy and NPC production buffs make this viable.
  • Xenon and Khaak capitals are much more likely to die after some time. Xenon invasions also get slowed down a lot once the lead ship is damaged.
  • player capitals also get weaker after major battles and have to return home and get repaired (in Mayhem 3 this is free)
  • EMPs are less effective because they drain much less of a capship's total health pool.

Loadouts - Summary:
  • NPC empires generally stop using underpowered weapons. Especially M3 and M7 deal more damageImage
  • more unique faction specific bullet colors. Less random rainbow color mix, except Pirates and Yaki
  • unfair advantages for certain factions fixed by nerfing overpowered ship designs (mostly certain M6 like the Tempestine and M7 like the Aquionix)
  • important nerfs concern all fighters and large Xenon capitals
  • no knockback effects on laser impact > small ships don't get pushed out of weapons range. This is a huge nerf for in-sector fighter spam and it massively increases capship accuracy (in base Mayhem 3 certain rapid fire capship lasers could only hit like 10% of their shots !!!)

Loadout Details:
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  • all TS and TP can only mount the 3 weakest lasers (including the "military" TS versions). They are not supposed to be able to defend themselves against pirates.
  • Weapon energy gets drained much slower overall. NPC's were affected but don't understand proper laser energy management so this was only an exploit for the player. Energy never mattered during out of sector battles. Now it mostly doesn't matter during in-sector battles too.
  • custom bullet hitboxes. Fighter bullets slightly bigger for more precision during dogfights, capital bullets slightly smaller because of the much higher accuracy (no knockback)
  • Fighter weapons:
    • be prepared that NPC empires don't use any tier 1 crap guns like IRE or PAC on their M3 fighters anymore. Xenon are unaffected and will continue to randomly use the underpowered APC like before
    • player fighter swarm tactics are unlikely to deal tons of damage
      • M3 laser shield damage nerfed by 20% (on top of all other damage adjustments). This goes in tandem with a 20% M3 shield capacity nerf. Fighter swarms have much less punch, but fighter vs. fighter battles should not be affected at all.
    • M3 laser cost reduced by 20%
    • Most factions use 1 signature M3 fighter laser. This is mostly to add visual variety between factions
    • Some laser stats have been adjusted to make this viable.
    • M3 Weapon compatibility has been adjusted accordingly.
    • The player has at least 1 additional high powered alternative which is not used by the AI (High Energy Plasma Thrower/Ion Disruptor). Usually these high powered lasers are not very cost efficient. But some players like to hit a bit harder with their personal ships.
    • buffed Plasma Gun and refurbished it from a redundant weak M4 terran laser to become the new standart M3 Boron laser.
    • slightly nerfed Plasma Burst Generator and enabled it to become the Split standart M3 laser (script Mayhem.Template.Lasers.xml)
    • disabled M3 lasers for all M4. Terran/Xenon ships unaffected. Also all fighter turrets unaffected.
    • disabled M4 lasers for all M3 main gun batteries. Terran/Xenon ships unaffected.
    • bullet speed of some very slow lasers increased slightly. Dogfights are a bit harder because enemy bullets are bigger and more difficult to evade at short range (but you can always emergency teleport away to any other ship)
  • Medium Ships:
    • M6 with a lower price and a higher amount of guns are generally forced to use weaker lasers (example: Argon Sirokos/Split Tempestine with 12 front guns)
    • M6 with a higher price and a lower amount of guns are generally allowed to use stronger lasers
    • if a M6 has only very few gun slots it is forced to use powerful lasers (example: Argon Phantom with just 4 front guns)
    • Phased Array Laser Cannon is no longer usable by Split M6 (much too powerful, OOS exploit)
    • removed both racial flak guns from Argon and Teladi TM (too powerful)
    • oddities like the "basic" Dragon M6 sometimes using better weapons than the "heavy" Dragon version have been removed.
    • bullet speed of corvette guns got increased slightly for more accuracy. All 3 original flak lasers got their speed increased too.
  • M7 Frigates:
    • the player can no longer install oversized destroyer level capital lasers in commonwealth M7
    • main batteries can no longer mount weak corvette guns
    • gun selection is almost fixed, but some turrets are slightly variable
    • can only mount (light) capital weapons on their main guns/front turrets. Note that Mayhem 3 improves in-sector combat AI for frigates with main batteries and they generally work much better than in LU
    • range buff for M7 main guns. Frigates can stay away from destroyers a bit further. During my testing this slightly increased in-sector survivability.
    • main guns are mostly racial specific (script 'Mayhem.GetLaser.Race.xml')
    • NPC's got the permission to install capital class guns on M7 to make this work (script 'Mayhem.Templates.Lasers.xml')
    • up/down/rear turrets can generally only mount corvette lasers. I balanced their overall turret strength with the power of the main guns/front/side turrets in mind and tried to keep a roughly comparable OOS damage output between all factions.
  • M1 Carriers
    • the player can no longer install oversized destroyer level capital lasers in commonwealth M1
    • M1 use a more powerful laser loadout than M7, but will be a bit weaker than M2
    • M1 loadouts are mostly fixed for each faction with a few exceptions
  • M2 Destroyers
    • high randomness which faction gets the best M2 lasers for each individual Mayhem 3 playthrough
    • disabled risk to get weak guns for factions which have less than average gun count on their M2
    • added Photon Artillery Array to all M2 turrets (Split were the only users before).
    • removed the slightly weaker 'new' M7 main guns from M2 turrets. No crap guns are allowed.
  • Terran ships
    • Terran ships are generally unaffected from all changes which restrict or nerf commonwealth ships (no 'fixed' loadouts with just 1 laser option).
    • this makes them the perfect choice if you want more freedom and experimentation in this new system. You can still put oversized guns on their M6 if you like. They have much more flexible loadout options.
    • some even have increased laser options. Unlocked Ion Shard Railgun and Concussion Impulse Generator for all terran M6 main gun slots + forward turrets
  • Terraformers
    • Xenon M2 turrets can not mount the Point Singularity Projector (heaviest Terran Laser) anymore. This weapon was extremely overpowered OOS but had an abysmal in-sector battle performance for most ships without appropriate energy reserves (in-sector they shot themselves "dry" very fast). Only the player can use this gun on Terran ships.

    Fighter Shields:
    • 25MJ fighter shield capacity reduced by 20%. The 25MJ shield is now effectively a 20 MJ shield
    • reduced price of all fighter shields.
      • 25MJ shield got discounted by ~20%
      • 5MJ shield got a slightly higher discount
      • price of 1MJ shield got halved
    • volume of 5MJ and 25MJ fighter shield reduced to 1. Increases available cargospace (some fighters were unable to carry a full set of basic weapons)

    TLs:
    • TL cargosize +50%. This has multiple benefits.
      • Building stations gets easier.
      • Moving stockpiles and reorganizing logistics gets easier.
      • TL's become better fleet supply ships
      • they can loot more stuff at once.
      • carry more energy for the mobile EMP
    • low tier weapons only. But TLs also benefit a lot from the capship tankyness increase.
Last edited by Hector0x on Fri, 25. Mar 22, 18:43, edited 30 times in total.

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Post by Hector0x » Thu, 21. Jan 21, 18:17

M3R 1.0 [Mayhem 3.14d] 08/24/2021
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FY5MH4 ... sp=sharing

Changelog Version 1.0:
  • capship hull rework
  • dynamic NPC boosters: "Revanchism" for main nations and "Unity System" for criminals
  • now also using rates of fire + sounds + bullet effects similar to Mayhem 3.13
  • added 5km fleet follower scanning range option
  • removed a problematic 12 hourly coalition check from base Mayhem 3
  • encyclopedia updates and ingame descriptions (hacking finally explained a bit)
  • hacking QoL
  • less bulky ore, Quantum tube supply fix
  • all laser knockback effects removed
Spoiler
Show
  • 0.8b [Mayhem 3.12b] 03/14/2021
    • fixed wrong maximum storage capacity on outposts
    • removed faster strafe speed with fighters
  • 0.8 [Mayhem 3.12b] 03/14/2021
  • 0.7 [Mayhem 3.11] 03/07/2021
    • maintenance discount from advanced engineering perk stacks with discount from drydocks
  • 0.6 [Mayhem 3.10c] 03/02/2021
    • Mayhem 3.10 updated a textfile
  • 0.5 [Mayhem 3.9b] 02/24/2021
    updating existing savegames from 0.4 [Mayhem 3.8g] requires that you run 'Mayhem.Init.Templates.xml' from the ingame script editor (see under installation)!
    still no update script to handle this automatically, sorry.
    • less energy drain with many corvette lasers (about 10-20%)
    • Argon Skiron main guns weaker
    • Split Panther front and side turrets stronger
    • HEPT/Ion Disruptor have even more cost and damage. (wealthy player can feel like a hot shot fighter pilot)
  • 0.4 [Mayhem 3.8f] 02/04/2021
    • updated for Mayhem 3.8f
  • 0.3 [Mayhem 3.8d] 02/03/2021
    • new weapon lore descriptions which are fitting to the Rebalance
    • fixed wrong laser tags. Pulsed Beam Emitter is now Paranid race. Phased Array Laser Cannon is now capital laser class.
    • unlocked Plasma Gun and Ion Disruptor for all Terran M3
  • 0.2 [Mayhem 3.8] 02/01/2021
    updating existing savegames from 0.1 [Mayhem 3.7] requires that you run 'Mayhem.Init.Templates.xml' from the ingame script editor (see under installation)!
    • rebuilt the mod catalog from fresh Mayhem 3.8 files
    • removed the missle rebalance and M8/M7M changes
    • removed 'Copilots!'
    • removed lower OOS damage
    • toned down most ship stat changes, updated main mod descriptions
    • updated laser stats to fit with my mod's concept (new sheet with original laser stats and changes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... p=sharing)
    • M3 fighter nerf is still present, but removed nerfs for M4/M5 and their equipment (Mayhem 3.8 makes M4 ships expensive enough to prevent spamming exploits)
    • inter-faction balance: slight updates to weapon loadouts based on a few new insights and the new racialized squadron compositions of version 3.8
    • changed some Argon, Boron and Split M7 main guns
    • Pirates and Yaki armament feels even more mixed and irregular compared to the more standardized main empires
      • unlocked many additional commonwealth lasers for pirate M7 and M6 main guns
      • unlocked all commonwealth M3 guns for all pirate M3.
    • unlocked all commonwealth M3 guns for all commonwealth 'Prototype' M3 variants and for very unique ships like 'Starburst' or 'Albion Pride' (NPC empires don't use these ships)
    • unlocked High Energy Plasma Thrower for all Terran M3
    • higher price for HEPT and Ion Disruptor. Both lasers offer optional high damage for M3 playerships. It's very expensive and definitely not efficient to use these 2 lasers in large fleets. Commonwealth also avoids them.
  • 0.1 initial release [Mayhem 3.7b] 01/21/2021
Last edited by Hector0x on Tue, 24. Aug 21, 17:52, edited 19 times in total.

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Re: [Mayhem 3] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by XenonArchitect7 » Thu, 21. Jan 21, 20:13

Wow, you've been busy! Amazing work!

A lot of these changes look really good, especially your drydock changes. Funny, I had previously made a few of these changes already for personal use (video enhancement goggles, some other QOLs). The huge nerf to shield recharge sounds like it might result in some undesired behavior in very long fights due to the retreat mechanic. Also I think your idea is really great about forcing and streamlining chaff usage, this means a missile outpost is no longer an optional luxury, it is now a core part of the player empire.

You do realize that with this enormous amount of changes and edited files, you're going to have to meticulously go through each file after a main update from Joubarbe and re-apply your changes on top of his updated files. You don't want a situation where someone is using this mod and it is overriding an updated file from a future Mayhem version and thus reverting it. I suggest that you specify which version of Mayhem that this was made for for each release you do, it will be good to keep track of compatibility.

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Re: [Mayhem 3] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by Joubarbe » Thu, 21. Jan 21, 20:15

I read it all! do I unlock an achievement? :)

Congrats anyway, great thorough work, as always.

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Re: [Mayhem 3.7c] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by Hector0x » Fri, 22. Jan 21, 14:47

Thanks guys! Yeah, i will keep it up to date.

It looks like X3 has to do for many more years to come so i won't be leaving any time soon. :roll:

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Re: [Mayhem 3.7c] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by djmidex » Sat, 23. Jan 21, 08:20

wow! cant wait to test this. Great work!

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Re: [Mayhem 3.7d] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by hephasttus » Wed, 27. Jan 21, 20:10

Cool rebalance, thanks for publishing this.

I love the majority of it.

I only have a few concerns to keep in mind in the future
-The balance of AI ships vs player ships, since players have more freedom to equip their ships with powerful lasers and the AI does not.
-The tuning of the revamped missile mechanics will need to be kept watched. Since missiles are cheaper now and chaff is less effective, it makes them stronger in the players hands, and lategame the player will have all of his ships loaded with missiles but not every AI will have missiles.
-Terrans seem like they did not get the balancing that the other nations got, are they more powerful than the others now?
-M7M 150km range might lag the game after loads of missiles are fired? If the target is destroyed, there will also be a lot of inbound missiles still that will lose their targeting, maybe all M7M missiles should relock to a new target to prevent this?

+I love the fighter nerfs, I've always felt big ships don't have a place in the universe. I would not mind seeing big ships shields slightly buffed, to make the climactic large ship duels last longer. That is just an idea though.
+I love the OCV nerfs, I always hate them in my game because they are not fun to play against, they're purposely unnecessarily strong. I would like to see their equipment to be on par with the commonwealth ships, but have bigger waves to compensate or something. Keep the nerfs to them coming. I enjoy when there are more factions to compete with, but the OCV are just annoying.
+Thank you for nerfing chaff (CCDS)
+Love the new default equipment, especially the transporter. I wish AI carriers were more deadly in the game, and perhaps carried more fighters.
+I like the production nerf to spamming ships. Shipyards always felt like there was no reason to not continuously produce ships on a loop, only being inhibited by resources which are not an issue by mid game. I would like to see more done in the future in regards to slowing ship production, and making population more relevant to the game (I typically ignore it.) Maybe maintenance prices could be increased? I still feel like once I unlock a higher tier ship (M7 for example) I have no reason not to spam 50 more M7's.
+Love the OOS revamp. I hate getting a message that something is being attacked, for it to die by the time I find it on the map. This is especially difficult with the jumpdrive changes.

In regards to population, I think it would be cool if bigger ships required more population to build. Like M7's take 20 people, M1 take 30, M2 take 40? something like that. idk.


Good work, keep it up :)

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Re: [Mayhem 3.7d] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by Hector0x » Thu, 28. Jan 21, 10:10

Thanks for your feedback. I'm currently slowly testing under real game conditions and will change stuff if it feels too easy/strong, etc.

About your concerns:
+the player is generally also more restricted in many weapon choices. There should be less differences between player ships and AI ships, but of course player is still more flexible
+if missles prove to be too strong i can easily make them more expensive. They might indeed be a bit too cheap right now.
+Terrans don't exist as a faction. Their ships can only be unlocked by the player and only if he owns certain sectors. They aren't more powerful per se, but can use a wide array of different guns.
+M7M. I'm aware of potential performance problems from long range missles. But it should be under control. The amount of missle turrets is 6-8 times lower and those missles fly faster. For each M7M there can only be roughly 10-15 in flight at any given point in time. If it's still too heavy i will reduce missle turrets further and increase M7M missle damage instead.
+more durable capships. Yeah maybe. But I'd rather increase hull than shields. Ships slowly dying from hull damage keeps the economy going. Big shields are bad for the economy because ships never die.
I also want to keep ship stat changes limited in case Joubarbe does something with them. It's easier for me to stick mostly to weapon stat adjustments.
+carrier dockingbay changes might already be in the works from Joubarbe
+population: agreed that it wasn't very relevant before. I still need to see how my "Copilots" affect the game. Don't want to overdo it. You should already see hefty population drain. Especially when looping fighters on a fully levelled up outpost. It should always stop somewhere around 50% max people though. Natural population growth will kick in very heavy below 50%. I might change that. If you'd only get max growth below 25% max people that would also make population more relevant. Spamming cheap fighters would eventually take 4 times longer (now its only 2 times).
+I'm not planning to increase pop cost for bigger ships. They already take very long to produce. I want capships to be expensive but light on population and fighters the other way around.
+i have thought about artificial fleet limits like maintenance increases but decided against them. It restricts player freedom too much. I will likely keep my changes centered around production speed. Population is a very good balancing handle for that.
+lower OOS damage is truly great. You're missing a lot less action in the gameworld and its much easier to keep your ships alive. Retreating wasn't really possible before.


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Re: [Mayhem 3.7d] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by Hector0x » Thu, 28. Jan 21, 17:42

No worries. But i have to see if there is even anything left that i need to update. :D Will definitely disable my missle stuff and see how yours works.

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Re: [Mayhem 3.7d] Rebalance Mod 0.1

Post by hephasttus » Thu, 28. Jan 21, 20:08

I like that some of your changes made it into the base mod, very cool work from both of you, excited to see what you guys continue to come up with.

I hope mayhem 3.9 adopts some of your laser balances to the AI and consolidates some of the unnecessary loadout options like you did. :)

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8b] Rebalance Mod 0.2

Post by temetvince » Tue, 2. Feb 21, 19:26

Hello! On the first iteration of the mod, if I recall correctly we were supposed to edit a file to extend the amount of time the AI would try to capture a sector since the stations had more health. The instructions also said that this would need to be redone every time Mayhem 3 had an update, as the Mayhem update would overwrite the file. I'm not seeing those instructions anymore for the 0.2 version of the mod. Are they still relevant?

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8b] Rebalance Mod 0.2

Post by Hector0x » Tue, 2. Feb 21, 19:56

temetvince wrote:
Tue, 2. Feb 21, 19:26
Hello! On the first iteration of the mod, if I recall correctly we were supposed to edit a file to extend the amount of time the AI would try to capture a sector since the stations had more health. The instructions also said that this would need to be redone every time Mayhem 3 had an update, as the Mayhem update would overwrite the file. I'm not seeing those instructions anymore for the 0.2 version of the mod. Are they still relevant?
They are not relevant anymore since Mayhem version 3.8.

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8b] Rebalance Mod 0.2

Post by hephasttus » Tue, 2. Feb 21, 21:08

When my fleet consisting of a carrier-leader and several fighters engages enemies, the fighters continously teleport in and out of my carrier mid-battle. I think every time they acquire a new target. Is there a way around this?

edit

save https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TX2JUT ... sp=sharing
galaxy https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
Last edited by hephasttus on Tue, 2. Feb 21, 22:17, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8b] Rebalance Mod 0.2

Post by Joubarbe » Tue, 2. Feb 21, 21:32

hephasttus wrote:
Tue, 2. Feb 21, 21:08
When my fleet consisting of a carrier-leader and several fighters engages enemies, the fighters continously teleport in and out of my carrier mid-battle. I think every time they acquire a new target. Is there a way around this?
For any bug report, please use the official thread. (savegame + galaxy blah blah)

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8b] Rebalance Mod 0.2

Post by hephasttus » Tue, 2. Feb 21, 22:16

Joubarbe wrote:
Tue, 2. Feb 21, 21:32
hephasttus wrote:
Tue, 2. Feb 21, 21:08
When my fleet consisting of a carrier-leader and several fighters engages enemies, the fighters continously teleport in and out of my carrier mid-battle. I think every time they acquire a new target. Is there a way around this?
For any bug report, please use the official thread. (savegame + galaxy blah blah)
I think its a symptom of the player having teleporter equipment on his carriers by default via this rebalance mod, but I posted it over on the main thread as well.

Edit : fixed :)
Last edited by hephasttus on Wed, 3. Feb 21, 19:37, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8b] Rebalance Mod 0.2

Post by Hector0x » Wed, 3. Feb 21, 07:55

i don't think this is related to this mod's Transporter Device. I observed such behavior in the main mod before. That's the main reason why i added the Transporter. So that fighters no longer take the scenic route to dock with their carrier while the fighting is still hot.

But thanks for the proper bug report + save. It seems to happen very inconsistent and is hard to nail down. Maybe Joubarbe can do something.

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8f] Rebalance Mod 0.4

Post by hephasttus » Fri, 5. Feb 21, 04:45

Hey boss, could you take a look at the Argon Skiron? I have 3 weapon choices for it (cluster flak, MAML, and concussion impulse generator) and all three drain its laser energy extremely quickly. It has the largest amount of guns of any Argon M6 and the second lowest laser energy, this combined with the relatively large weapon choices, it drains very fast.
Maybe it needs more laser energy, or it needs gamma ray cannons.

Thanks in advance! love the rebalance.

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8f] Rebalance Mod 0.4

Post by Hector0x » Fri, 5. Feb 21, 14:58

Good catch. I'll add the Skiron to my list.

To be honest i didn't really do much in terms of global energy cost rebalance yet. I'm certain that i don't want laser energy to be a deciding factor in most ship vs. ship battles. It messes up the in-sector vs. OOS equal outcomes goal. There might be significant energy cost reductions coming in the future. Most likely paired with a global damage reduction to prevent that damage output gets too high.

But one step at a time. I need to stay in touch with actual gameplay situations to be able to make reasonable decisions. And the next Mayhem patch will also come for sure :D

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Re: [Mayhem 3.8f] Rebalance Mod 0.4

Post by hephasttus » Fri, 5. Feb 21, 18:30

Hector0x wrote:
Fri, 5. Feb 21, 14:58
There might be significant energy cost reductions coming in the future. Most likely paired with a global damage reduction to prevent that damage output gets too high.
Honestly that would be pretty cool, and I think might be necessary to keep things functioning, because there are at least a few other ships I've noticed that quickly run out of laser energy as well. Since you have loadouts unique to ships, laser energy consumption isn't that important anymore, because the restrictions on what you can equip is good enough at balancing things.

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