In vanilla the smallest damage hit makes shild stop regenerating for 10+ seconds, so basically if you have 100000 shield, and a scout hits you for 1 damage every 10 seconds, your shields will never regenerate. Also if you boost for 0.1 seconds, even if you barely drain the shield, it stops regenerating, it's cumbersome imho. X1, X2, X3 also had constantly regenerating shields.
Also i think that shields drain too fast, and combat ends too quickly if hits are landed on target. For S shield(M3 in X3), M shield(M6 in X3) and L shield(M7) i approximately doubled the shields, but i also increased for XL shield(M1/M2). I lowered shield regeneration to account for constant regen, however I lowered it less for M ships because they were a bit underpowored imho.
Each race has pretty different shield stats, pick the one that suits your playstyle !
Weapons:
Overall I increased the speed and range of weapons, i think it feels better now to start landing some hits, and I also felt that the combat before was too short ranged. I noticed that Mk1 weapons had half the damage of MK2 weapons on vanilla, and i noticed a huge missed opportunity, to give player choice of the same weapon type !
In average I tripled the speed of Mk1 weapons, gave them up to twice more damage, some have increased rate of fire. They are a great anti fighter weapon now !
I made all weapons pretty much as different as i could make them, for different roles. Mk1 are as strong as Mk2, but different, really, try them ! The player has finally a choice, laser, shard, plasma (got a big buff), bolt, beam, they are all good.
Turrets:
I got tired of turrets being underpowered after more attempts, and I want to make it right once and for all. Each M turret close to the damage of an equivalent M Weapon in my mod(which is greatly buffed vs vanilla in speed as well), and has half more range as well. Don't be fooled just by the damage per shot number alone, I increased rate of fire as well.
Repurposed L turrets to be big damage anti-frigats/capitals. They deal up to x2.5 damage and have 66% more range than their M counterparts, but have much slower projectiles and turn speed. Once Egosoft fixed their pasiveness they should own ! There are some cool combos, like having 15k range instant hit beam turrets ! Beams don't do too much damage but small fighters are gonna have a hard time !
Check images for some weapon and turret comparison vs vanilla.
However i don't want to go crazy with damage values and make turrets op and make anything other than a capital ship irrelevant. I like all ships to have a purpose and feel fun to fly and fight with.
Encyclopedia fix:
I am happy to say that i fixed the encyclopedia weapon damage. It is broken in vanilla, and most weapons including laser and bolt dps, heat, fire rate values have NOTHING to do with reality, check it yourself. I am not going to list exact weapon stats because you can check it yourself in encyclopedia, or in shipyard weapon selection for 100% accurate values !!! You can finally theory craft, there are weapons from 1.2km/s speed to 20k km/s !
The only error is Beam Mk2 that shows a much higher sustained dps than in reality.
Mk1 weapons have double the projectile speed of Mk2 weapons, but lower range and a little less damage.
Missiles:
I think that missiles were too good compared to their laser counterparts and made the battles end too quickly, also the player is the one abusing missiles, while the NPCs shoots a missile there and there. A 33% damage nerf seems just imho (-50% after a global damage nerf); plasma cannon (or L Laser) is now a viable alternative to damage large shields. Also fighters don't drop like flies from guided missiles. Where there is both a Mk1 and Mk2 variant to choose from, improved speed of Mk1 missiles by 25% to make them viable as they have lower damage.
Challenging Xenon and Khaak:
I watched how squadrons of Xenon got obliterated by the NPC or a single player frigate over and over again. No more ! Upon analyzing stat files I realized that Xenon inexplicably had worse ship and weapon stats than all other races, and it applied to all: K, P, M, N. Worse max speed, worse agility, low hull hp, mediocre shield slots, you name it. I made their ships and weapons be on par with the other races.
Xenon turrets got a huge boost in damage, luckily for us their AI is still in beta stage, they tend to miss a lot, haha. Khaak got a boost in weapon damage and range, annoying snipers they are.
Engines:
All L miners and traders are finally worth their price now ! Most have doubled max speed. The S miners and traders were underpowered too, they have about half more speed.
There are many adjustements, but to name some bigger ones: Scouts and the Argon Elite Interceptor got a big boost, they fill their roles nicely now. Buffed Teladi M frigate, Argon Minotaur & Nova, nerfed Argon Eclipse & Pulsar.
Due to feedback I tripled/doubled the amount ships can boost, the biggest improvement being on Travel engines. All teladi engies have ~7% faster travel speed.
The Xenon K destroyer was a sitting duck, its turn speed is many times faster now. P, M and N are also more agile than before, this brought their ship on par with the other races imho.
The AI boosted before battle with their capitals and got nice and ready with a spectacular empty shield. Removed ability to boost from L and XL ships, but reduced travel charge by 10 seconds to compensate.
Hulls:
I felt that Argon S ships were too weak compared to the other races, and also Vanguard ships had a bit of an advantage over the Sentinel ships because of their higher speed and manuevrability. Xenon ships were kind of squishy, with no other advantages to make up for it.
Buffed the hitpoints of most Argon Sentinel S ships by a third. Made Vanguard have around 60% more hp for S ships, +50% for M ships, and 30% more hp for L ships.
Most Paranid combat ships got a sizeable nerf to their hp(~ a third less).
Argon and Teladi carriers got 30% more hp.
Increased HP of engines and weapons by 50+%, x5 HP for M turrets, x3 for L Turrets.
Buffed hull hp of Xenon K, M, N by 50%, P hp by 125%.
Longer battles:
After all these buffs to weak aspects in weapons and turrets, I felt that combat got too quick, and I applied to everything that does damage a 25% nerf, however this does not change the balance, things like turrets are still many times better compared vs vanilla to a regular weapon, for example I increased damage and range of some L turrets around 400% compared to vanilla, haha, or more than doubled effectivenes of Mk1 weapons, and much faster projectiles speed resulting in higher dps.
No edits that would break a savegame:
I made my mod not mess around with changing any values that could cause issues especially if you remove the mod later. No weapon or turret adding or switching, no change in cargo or in the max capacity of carrying space of a ware. I will also update this mod if future patches change balance.
As of version 1.63 I am quite happy with the balance, regarding what can be fixed without altering game files. I would like to add more turrets to carriers, bring more weapon variety, change designs of some ships, like K having the worse turret coverage possible, but I am going to leave that to Egosoft.
Weapon quick info:
Plasma: huge damage, long range, but slow moving and low rate of fire, high heat drain
Bolt: average damage, average moving, good rate of fire, medium heat drain
Laser: its sustained damage is about the same as bolt, has very fast projectiles however it lacks burst damage and has short range, very low heat drain
Shard: above average damage, fast projectiles, good burst, but very short range and a bit spread out bullets.
Beam: high range, instant and continuous hit, but low damage.
These weapons changes affect Xenon and Khaak, their weapons were so weak in vanilla for some reason. Watch out for Khaak beams, they aren't just giving you a sunburn anymore !
Sustained Damage per second:
Ion > Plasma > Shard > Bolt > Laser > Beam
Projectile Speed:
Beam > Laser > Shard > Bolt > Plasma/Ion
Range:
Plasma/Beam > Bolt > Ion > Laser > Shard
Shields quick info: For the best in each class (mk2/mk3):
Argon - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship
2500 shield, 25 regen/ 8000 shield, 33 regen/50000 shield, 100 regen/100000 shield, 150 regen
Paranid - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship
1875 shield, 30 regen/ 6000 shield, 39.6 regen/ 37500 shield, 120 regen/ 75000 shield, 180 regen
Teladi - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship
3500 shield, 18.8 regen/ 11200 shield, 24.8 regen/ 70000 shield, 75 regen/ 140000 shield, 112.5 regen
Khaak and Xenon have same shields as Argon for now.
Keep in mind that because of the elimination of shield regen delay, faster/slower regeneration impacts how much you can boost significantly.
Updates:
v1.74 -10% Ion Weapons Heat buildup, +20% L engine hitpoints, +50% XL engine hp(without Xenon). Fixed an issue where Shard turrets dealt more damage than intended. -5% Teladi scouts speed. Added languages support to content.xml to work for other versions than English. Added a *.cat upload for Windows 7 users who can't use loose files.
v1.73 Plasma & Destroyer Weapons: +15% sustained damage, but -17% burst damage. Destroyer laser: -33% reduced rate of fire, +50% damage per shot. Xenon K: - 33% agility, Xenon P: -15% agility. Xenon M&L turrets: -11% damage. All M&L weapon turrets: +20% hitpoints. Argon and Teladi L Destroyers: +10% hitpoints.
v1.72 Halved agility of Xenon K, -16% agility to Xenon P, to make them look more natural. +25% Xenon M&L turret damage. +33% Xenon XL engine hitpoints, +20% M&L Xenon turret hp. Fixed Xenon S/M weapons having a bit shorter range than intented. -8% Bolt Mk1 heat buildup. -9% damage to laser M&L turrets. +20% Argon Elite speed, +10% Argon Callisto speed, -20% Teladi Guillemot agility, -10% Paranid Scout hitpoints.
v1.71: +20% to XL(carrier) shield and regen. +30% hitpoints Argon and Teladi carriers. +10% hp to Argon and Teladi destroyers, -10% hp to Paranid destroyer. +7% hp to Argon Cerberus, -15% hp to Paradid Gorgon. +10% hp to all M corvettes. +10% hitpoints to all S Combat ships, except: Argon Quasar +230% hp, Nova +20% hp, Elite + 25% hp, Teladi Buzzard +20% hp. +10% speed to Argon Elite & Discoverer, Teladi Guillemot, Paranid Theseus.
v1.70: +25% Laser M/L turret range & projectile speed, +35% Shard M/L turret range & speed, -17% Beam M/L turret damage. +7% to all Teladi engines travel speed. Destroyer Laser -50% fire rate, but +100% damage per shot. +33% Argon Minotaur speed, +15% Argon Nova & Callisto speed. +17% Teladi Osprey speed. -7% Paranid Gorgon speed. +10% speed & -35% hitpoints to Paranid Theseus. +30% Teladi Magpie & M Miners hitpoints. +7% Minotaur & Teladi Peregrine hp. -40% Paranid Nemesis hp. -30% hp, -50% agility to Antigone Pulsar. -40% Paranid Perseus hp.
v1.68: Turrets still are poor at aiming, +50% damage to all M and L turrets. Increased speed of scouts and S traders and miners by around 50%. Argon scout(2 weapons) got a 33% nerf in agility to compensate. Argon Interceptor got his agility doubled.
v1.66: Removed ability to boost from L and XL ships, it was of little value, and it ruined combat due to AI capitals starting battle with 0 shield. Decreased Travel charge time by 10 seconds to compensate. -17% Ion heat buildup. Those Xenons just keep getting plowed over, it is neverending ! +300% Xenon M turret damage and +50% range, +100% Xenon L turret dmg, but added a little spread(less accurate at distance). -17% Xenon P agility.
v1.65: Mk1 looked nice on paper but in practice the range was a little shortcoming. I made the weapons a bit more varied, and did adjusments. +20% Range to all Mk1 Weapons. Plasma Mk1 and Ion Mk1 double rate of fire, Laser Mk1 +20% rof, Laser Mk2 -40% rof, but damage per second is the same. -10% Plasma, Ion and Destroyer Laser damage. Added a smallish energy consumption to Ion. +20% Mk2 Beam Heat consumption. Increased Laser damage slightly, and heat consumption by 25%.
v1.64: Repurposed all L turrets to be anti-frigates, they have much lower turn rate speed than M turrets. Upped their damage by +12.5% to compensate. Decreased Xenon K turn speed as it looked a bit silly, however I increased the range of their L turrets by 50%. +6% Mk1 Shard damage.
v1.63: Huge boost in the speed of all L traders from 66% to 100%, but their agility is still as low, should be worth their price now. -25% Destroyer main gun projectile speed. Decreased cooldown when overheating from all weapons from 1.13s to 0.5s. +25% Mk2 Beam heat rate. +8% S Beam dmg. Doubled damage and hp of Xenon L turrets, +50% hp to XL Xenon engines. Decreased hull hp of Paranid M miners and transporters and Gorgon by 25%. Due to some complaints, made turrets look more natural, and lowered their swivel rate, -17% for M, and -33% for L, but they still swivel on a dime.
v1.61: +11% L turret damage. Fixed wrong L destroyer laser stats; it deals 250% of the damage of M plasma cannon mk2 and has 25% more range. Improved Xenon K agility to grandmaster level.
v1.60: Buffed damage of most M turrets by 50% compared to previous version. L turrets do even more damage, double of the M turrets. M turrets have more range, L have +66% range than M; L Beam and Plasma have 15k km, firing that instant hit beam at 15km is insane. Removed the annoying instant heatbar filling at the first fraction of a second when firing a beam weapon, -10% Beam weapon, -20% beam turret damage, -40% Khaak Damage. -25% Global Damage that applies to all weapons and missiles. +7% Paranid max shields, -7% Teladi max shields.
v1.56a: Nerfed plasma weapons damage by 10%. Gatling and laser turrets do 25% more damage. Decreased all turrets rate of fire (but same dps, more damage per shot). Further boosted turrets agility. Decreased L turrets hp from my previous buff, from x5 vanilla hp to x3. Doubled main weapon hull hp and engine hull hp. Integrated shields into the hull.
v1.54: Buffed the hitpoints of all Argon Sentinel S ships by 30%. Nerfed all Paranid and Teladi Vanguard S ships hp by 30%. Buffed all Sentinel M ships hp by 10%. Nerfed all Vanguard M ships by 10%. Buffed Sentinel L Destroyers hp by 5%, nerfed Vanguard L Destroyers hp by 5%. Buffed hull hp of Xenon K, M, N by 50% buffed P hp by 125%. Nerfed Argon Eclipse manuevrability, buffed Xenon M and N manuevrability. Nerfed all missiles damage by a third.
v1.51a: Doubled range of destroyer turrets until turets become viable. -5% Laser Mk1 damage. Increased the hull hitpoints of turrets and shields ~x5 times. Fixed an error in S Bolt Mk1 Damage.
v1.50: Overhauled each weapon in detail, fixed encyclopedia entries for weapons and turrets, now what you see is what you get. I made some Mk1 weapons a bit better, made Xenon K much more agile. Fixed L size Laser gun damage error from previous version.
v1.40: I dissected almost all weapons, analyzed all attributes, brainstormed how to make them all useful and balanced at the same time. Made Mk1 weapons anti fighter, Mk2 for against bigger ships, but these roles overlap too, because there is a big variety in weapon speed, so some Mk2 weapons are faster than Mk1. All weapon ranges, speeds, dps and other stats have been altered, finally you don't just pick the same weapon the whole time !
v1.30: I improved the Mk1 weapons significantly, making them on par with Mk2, but being quite different at the same time, giving choice to the player.Their projectile speed has been doubled, damage increased by a third, but decreased range by a third. Teladi M6 got a +5% boost in max speed.
v1.20: I doubled the projectile speed and range of all weapons, so combat is less frustrating to many hits not hitting, and i also like sniping from a distance. Framework was created, i may balance weapons individiually. Boosted the speed of Telady M6 (Frigate) by 25%. Weakened slightly Teladi shields regen, all shields should be on par now. Fixed several errors.
v1.15: I feel that teladi ships are too weak and paranid too strong. I changed teladi shields to be the best, and paranid worst, however since you can mix and match shields, you would pick only teladi shields for yourself. I boosted paranid shields and nerfed teladi ones, so there is choice for the player.
v1.10: due to feedback, i changed the regen rates, more like X3. I increased paranid regen rate, decreased telade regen rate. However i had to further decrease the shield max capacity of paranid, and increase the teladi ones, to balance it out.[/size][/size]