[Mayhem 3] Renegades Add-Ons v1.8 - 13 February 2026

[Betelgeuse97]

1) Agreed. Right now the coalition system checks how many sectors an empire has.
Edit: how much BV should be checked for a coalition? Right now I am thinking of making it relative, like so:
1. Get the BV of the faction wanting a coalition (faction A) and the BV of that faction's enemy (faction B).
2. If faction B has 150% or more BV over faction A, then faction A will want a coalition.
2a. If faction B is the player, then it is subjected by difficulty. The thresholds would be: easy, 200%; normal, 150% (same as if faction B were NPC); hard, 100%; insane, 50% of faction A's BV.

2) Will check the support fighters behavior again, but right now they default to protecting their mothership unless the mothership is attacking a target, in which case the fighters will attack the same target as the mothership.
Edit: Support fighters indeed defend their mothership first, but if the mothership is already attacking a target, then they attack the same target. They check again 1 minute later to see if the mothership is still attacking that target. Basically, their default behavior is already set to protect the mothership.

3) Yup, will do the same. Phanon is meant to be the player's vassal. In this case, the amount of rep loss is the same as if the player had conquered a sector for himself.

Update:
- Implemented #1 and #3. Will be part of version 1.4.

1) The BV check for #1 would be perfect with one change: Make the faction B on faction A check just 120%. I find the 20% of BV is already enough to let the ai steamroll itself to minor status for 3 ingame days if they are playing dumb.

2) Motherships fighters attacking the same target as the homebase is apart of the problem, especially if they are in a mixed fleet of other Huge ships with you either having to assign them to attack fighters or stations which makes them suffer majority with the Counter-attack against the ai's Huge Ships. (Still need to brainstorm a viable solution still)

3) That will suffice, just any negative repercussions would help fix the problem.

I also got an addition suggestion: Reduce the requirements for a superpower Ai. Out of the 21 galaxies I've played I haven't seen them ONCE even when I favored the galaxy to their creation.

But Thank You for listening back to my feedback for this Add-on for a mod, of a mod, for a overhaul of Version 3 of another mod, for a total conversion of an expansion, to a game released in 2011. It means a lot

1. Yup, can do. Just making sure, Does that 20% apply when a faction wants a coalition against the player, i.e. player has 20% BV compared to that NPC faction?

2. Per Mayhem's philosophy, the AI and the player use the same scripts. As such, any problems or benefits that manifest for the player manifest also for the AI. I remember a long time ago that support ships used to attack anything else.

Will look into the superpower AI. The mod features factions taking up an identity like tyrant, global protector, etc. Was this stage ever reached?

[VoidSoul]

When I was working with Mordan on Renegades and I brought up ship and weapon rebalancing, he asked me not to touch weapons and ship stats unless I had a very compelling reason. This was because of the ripple effects across fleets, balancing, and race-vs-race matchups. I'm cautious about touching ship weaponry unless there's enough interest and the changes are small, isolated, and justified. It's easier to experiment with safe adjustments like projectile speed instead of full reworks. The main blocker is avoiding unintended effects, like how weapon compatibility changes affect multiple ships sharing the same cockpit entry.

Starting small, finding the best solution. Projectile speeds would do for starters. Main problem right now is heavy lasers are so fast and long range that they start to devastate swarms of fighters at range 15k (extreme example terran m2). While it is fine for M7 targets and bigger, it is not good for m6 and smaller.
My idea of bringing back maneuvering... well, if fighter is just standing still to be shot off, no changes in projectile speeds do anything. I did not know about code tie to stations =).

Dirt chip swarms of m5 to fight m3s look great.

[Betelgeuse97]

When I was working with Mordan on Renegades and I brought up ship and weapon rebalancing, he asked me not to touch weapons and ship stats unless I had a very compelling reason. This was because of the ripple effects across fleets, balancing, and race-vs-race matchups. I'm cautious about touching ship weaponry unless there's enough interest and the changes are small, isolated, and justified. It's easier to experiment with safe adjustments like projectile speed instead of full reworks. The main blocker is avoiding unintended effects, like how weapon compatibility changes affect multiple ships sharing the same cockpit entry.

Starting small, finding the best solution. Projectile speeds would do for starters. Main problem right now is heavy lasers are so fast and long range that they start to devastate swarms of fighters at range 15k (extreme example terran m2). While it is fine for M7 targets and bigger, it is not good for m6 and smaller.
My idea of bringing back maneuvering... well, if fighter is just standing still to be shot off, no changes in projectile speeds do anything. I did not know about code tie to stations =).

Dirt chip swarms of m5 to fight m3s look great.

I've tweaked the M5/TS weapons so that their projectile speeds are faster, save for MD which is already fast at 2500m/s. This will be put into next patch.

I got a response from Cycrow about tweaking station sizes. But doubling the station size just keeps the same problem there with TLs not carrying enough, so I'll simply double the TL cargo hold for the best of both worlds. That way it's still equivalent to 8-10 standard TSes.

As for the lasers, as stated before, there's a lot of variables to consider. With a few exceptions, one of the existing paradigms of Mayhem 3 is that the AI and player have access to the same scripts, ships, and game mechanics. One form of asymmetry currently in the game is that the AI fields just enough fighters in small numbers, nowhere near what the player can field. The AI makes up for this by fielding bigger ships, most notably capships. Capital weapons tend to have more spread against fighters. Another thing is that I don't want to upset the rock-paper-scissors aspect of class matchups. Right now fighters beat big ships (M6, M8), big ships counter M7s, M7s fill between M6 and M2, and M2s counter anything below it.

Because of that, reworking the capital lasers creates an imbalance:

• Nerf capital lasers on up/down/back turrets -> AI loses some of its only real anti-fighter tools. Player becomes much stronger in terms of fighter swarms.

• Reduce capital laser ROF -> AI fleets (that usually come with a lot of capital ships) become free food for player swarms.

In other words, any change meant to improve fighter survivability helps the player far more than the AI. Especially after hitting two roadblocks with attempting to change TCockpits, I'm reluctant to rebalance lasers without a deeper AI fleet-composition overhaul, which is outside the current scope.

I'm keeping your points in mind for future iterations but want to introduce changes or mechanics that preserve player-AI parity.

EDIT: Added clarification regarding this paradigm.

[Dex_Bot]

1. Yup, can do. Just making sure, Does that 20% apply when a faction wants a coalition against the player, i.e. player has 20% BV compared to that NPC faction?

2. Per Mayhem's philosophy, the AI and the player use the same scripts. As such, any problems or benefits that manifest for the player manifest also for the AI. I remember a long time ago that support ships used to attack anything else.

Will look into the superpower AI. The mod features factions taking up an identity like tyrant, global protector, etc. Was this stage ever reached?

Sorry for the confusion, I meant to put 120% BV. The original idea proposed works, just change the Ai on Ai check (And Ai on Player; Normal difficulty check to 120% BV.

Edit: how much BV should be checked for a coalition? Right now I am thinking of making it relative, like so:
1. Get the BV of the faction wanting a coalition (faction A) and the BV of that faction's enemy (faction B).
2. If faction B has 150% or more BV over faction A, then faction A will want a coalition.
2a. If faction B is the player, then it is subjected by difficulty. The thresholds would be: easy, 200%; normal, 150% (same as if faction B were NPC); hard, 100%; insane, 50% of faction A's BV.

In regards to the Superpower ai. No, the requirements are to specific with the Ai needing to be the strongest NPC faction, have a (not sure of the exact value?) BV ratio above everyone else, & not fear the OCV. The Ai usually just chooses a "Reckless" stance, at best, but usually a "Confident" stance.

I know it's referenced in ZH.Initialize.xml but not sure what exact script does the Ai stance check.

[Betelgeuse97]

1. Yup, can do. Just making sure, Does that 20% apply when a faction wants a coalition against the player, i.e. player has 20% BV compared to that NPC faction?

2. Per Mayhem's philosophy, the AI and the player use the same scripts. As such, any problems or benefits that manifest for the player manifest also for the AI. I remember a long time ago that support ships used to attack anything else.

Will look into the superpower AI. The mod features factions taking up an identity like tyrant, global protector, etc. Was this stage ever reached?

Sorry for the confusion, I meant to put 120% BV. The original idea proposed works, just change the Ai on Ai check (And Ai on Player; Normal difficulty check to 120% BV.

Edit: how much BV should be checked for a coalition? Right now I am thinking of making it relative, like so:
1. Get the BV of the faction wanting a coalition (faction A) and the BV of that faction's enemy (faction B).
2. If faction B has 150% or more BV over faction A, then faction A will want a coalition.
2a. If faction B is the player, then it is subjected by difficulty. The thresholds would be: easy, 200%; normal, 150% (same as if faction B were NPC); hard, 100%; insane, 50% of faction A's BV.

In regards to the Superpower ai. No, the requirements are to specific with the Ai needing to be the strongest NPC faction, have a (not sure of the exact value?) BV ratio above everyone else, & not fear the OCV. The Ai usually just chooses a "Reckless" stance, at best, but usually a "Confident" stance.

I know it's referenced in ZH.Initialize.xml but not sure what exact script does the Ai stance check.

ZH.Core updates the AI's stance once every 8 hours. Those are the requirements.

I added the tweaked percentages - 160% for easy, 120% for normal/against AI, 80% for hard, and 40% for insane.

Next up is doubling TL capacity.

[Betelgeuse97]

Ok, the current changes for 1.4 so far are in the spoiler below (unsure how to upload files to the forums). Please let me know what you guys think. If everything looks good, I'll release 1.4 within 24 hours from now.

Spoiler

Show

-----------------------------------------
ADDITIONS
-----------------------------------------
N/A

-----------------------------------------
CHANGES
-----------------------------------------

General
- Updated tips. Added infamy tips.
- Now displays a random set of tips every 4-8 hours (was 4.16 - 8.33 hours)

. ShowNewsTips.xml
. Mayhem.Monitor.News.xml

- Phanon capital ships now bail without being destroyed.
- Nomad flagship is now boardable and will no longer be destroyed upon successfully boarding it.

. !ship.signal.captured.xml

Infamy
- Updated all other pop-up messages to now display total infamy after gaining infamy.
- Updated favor descriptions.
- Infamy no longer decays or resets during OCV playthroughs.
- Boarding Nomad ships now gives the same amount of infamy as if they were destroyed.
- Boarding a ship now gives a fixed amount of infamy. Infamy amounts increased (decimal values are average amounts of infamy).
- M6/TM: 0.5 -> 1
- M7: 1 -> 2
- M1: 2.5 -> 3 (note: Nomad flagship gives 50 infamy instead)
- M2: 4.5 -> 5

. ZH.Sig.Captured.xml
. !ship.signal.killed.xml
. !station.signal.killed.xml
. Mayhem.Capture.pl.xml
. Mayhem.Favor.Add.xml
. Mayhem.Favor.GetInfo.xml
. Mayhem.Hacking.LaunchCounterattack.xml
. Mayhem.Task.Claimeable.xml (removed comment mentioning infamy gain)
. Menu.PC.Blackmarket.SM.xml
. ZH.Crisis.End.xml
. ZH.SyntheticDawnCompletion.xml
. ZH.CI.SelectTarget.xml
. ZH.Core.xml

Ship and Laser Rebalancing (community suggestion)
- Increased projectile speed of the following weapons:
- IRE: 1500m/s -> 2600m/s
- APC: 1500m/s -> 2500m/s
- PAC: 1500m/s -> 2200m/s
- Plasma Gun: 1500m/s -> 2000m/s
- All TL cargo bays have been doubled. Hercules gets an extra 20 cargo units (now 120,020) so that it can carry 1 more station.
- Most M5 costs decreased by 66%. Terran, Xenon, and OCV M5 costs decreased by 50% (these M5s carry bigger weapons).

. 12.cat/dat - TBullets.pck and TShips.pck
. TBullets.txt (put this in your ZMap folder)
. TShips.txt (put this in your ZMap folder)


Coalition checks and Faction Stance (community suggestion)
- A faction is now considered a superpower when it has at least 120% strength (down from 170%) compared to the average strength of all other factions.
- Changed offensive thresholds from more than 130% to at least 120%.
- NPC factions can now check relative battle value (BV) as well.
- If the BV is 120% or higher, then the victim can form a coalition against its enemy.
- If the enemy is the player, then the BV threshold is dependent on difficulty:
- Easy: 160%
- Normal: 120% (same as NPC)
- Hard: 80%
- Insane: 40%

. Mayhem.Coalition.Roll.xml
. ZH.Core.xml

Phanon Plot (community suggestion)
- If you're allied with Phanon, then any unknown sectors you gift for Phanon will now incur a reputation penalty.
- The penalty is the same as if you had conquered the sector yourself.
- Phanon sectors now count towards the total number of sectors you own for reputation penalty calculation, whenever you conquer a sector for yourself or for Phanon.
- +35% maintenance penalty no longer applies to Phanon ships after completing the main plot.

. Mayhem.Capture.pl.xml
. Mayhem.Conquer.xml
. 9973-L044.xml
. Mayhem.GetShipMaintenanceCost.xml
. ZH.plot.MaelstromShutdown.xml (updated comments)

Private Corp revamp
- Aran now repairs ships 4x faster.
- +35% maintenance penalty no longer applies to private corp. ships. However, just as before, they do not get any research bonuses.
- Updated Private Corp/Goner research category in research station GUI.

. Menu.SaturnComplexHub.Install.SM.xml
. Mayhem.GetShipMaintenanceCost.xml
. Mayhem.Task.CarrierRepair.xml

-----------------------------------------
FIXES
-----------------------------------------

- Fixed personality roll not randomizing between -99 to +100 (was previously randomizing between 0 to +100)

. ZH.Core.xml

- Fixed tips being given every ~4 hours rather than being given every 4-8 hours.

. Mayhem.Monitor.News.xml

- Fixed off-by-one error causing code fragments with fewer than 4 characters to be generated.

. Mayhem.GameCreator.RenegadeSetup.xml

- Fixed stations being populated before difficulty settings were picked.
- This is so that NPC outposts can get additional perks (pandora tuning and terraforming efficiency 4) that are exclusive to hard and insane difficulties.

. Mayhem.GameCreator.Populate.xml

[Hector0x]

Nice to see the mod-inception continue. Great job!

I kinda burned out on the X-series during the recreation of a Mayhem-like experience in X4. It was a big mistake to start modding when Egosoft was still actively developing themself.
Their last update bricked my stuff on multiple levels. DeadAir leaving was the final straw for me and i couldn't get myself to touch the X-series since then.

Anyway, i’m glad this exists and it really makes me want to go back.

Here are my thoughts:

The two superpower AIs were actually both intended to weaken that faction, not to empower them.
The idea was basically that the strongest faction will eventually get complacent and act stupid/ineffective (from a meta-gameplay perspective).
The protector AI will stop antagonizing the weaker Commonwealth factions and focus much more on containing the Xenon.
I don't remember all the details about the Tyrant AI, but i believe his inefficiency was supposed to come mostly from him sending very long range invasions to make his fleets waste time travelling around all the time, essentially turning him into a show-off who doesn't actually get a lot of conquests done. He chooses invasion targets differently. For example he likes to cut up factions into small pieces by targeting isolated sectors that connect two patches of territory from a faction so it gets split up.

My point is that reducing the power threshold for the superpower AI doesn't necessarily make the game more difficult. I see that it's necessary when it never actually appeared with the current 170% threshold (which i simply guestimated at the time)

But if the protector AI gets rolled instead of the Tyrant then that can actually make things way easier for the player. Only the Tyrant AI will make it harder. Only the Tyrant has extra anti-player CIs that can target sectors which are important for the player (concentrated industry, high ship specialization)
So my proposal would be that the higher difficulty levels should make the Tyrant AI more likely to be rolled than the Protector AI.


Laser and fighter rebalances are age old discussions. My take on them is this: whatever balancing philosophy you do, it will break apart as soon as you go OOS.
Tactical balancing would only ever work if Egosoft gave us code access so that we could add an OOS evasion stat for ships that gets countered by an OOS targeting stat on weapons.
And proper fighter vs. capship balance would require a universal armor % on ships which gives direct damage reduction that gets countered by an armor penetration % on the weapons.

Only if we had those two new things:
1) OOS evasion vs. OOS accuracy
2) armor DR on ships vs armor penetration on weapons
Only then could we do this right with fighters being unable to deal with capships but also capships not being able to deal with fighters.

Once i realized this i focussed all my balancing efforts only on the strategic side using the pop system. Yes, fighters are OP. So they should absolutely drain your pops more than capships do.
One of my last ideas that i never got to implement was to introduce some kind of passive pop upkeep system. Basically your existing ships (especially fighters) would reduce the maximum pop limit on all your outposts.
Any hard limit on the player’s ship count kinda goes against the philosophy of this game, but maybe this idea would be something for your insane mode.

And finally there was the ultimatum feature. The code already exists but it never seemed to work. At least i never saw it actually happen ingame or anyone posting about it.

Basically the AI would blackmail the player. Transfer that sector to us within the next hour or we declare war on you. If player accepted he would get a truce. Maybe you could attempt to fix this broken feature of mine because it sounds absolutely perfect for insane mode.

[Betelgeuse97]

Nice to see the mod-inception continue. Great job!

I kinda burned out on the X-series during the recreation of a Mayhem-like experience in X4. It was a big mistake to start modding when Egosoft was still actively developing themself.
Their last update bricked my stuff on multiple levels. DeadAir leaving was the final straw for me and i couldn't get myself to touch the X-series since then.

Anyway, i’m glad this exists and it really makes me want to go back.

Here are my thoughts:

The two superpower AIs were actually both intended to weaken that faction, not to empower them.
The idea was basically that the strongest faction will eventually get complacent and act stupid/ineffective (from a meta-gameplay perspective).
The protector AI will stop antagonizing the weaker Commonwealth factions and focus much more on containing the Xenon.
I don't remember all the details about the Tyrant AI, but i believe his inefficiency was supposed to come mostly from him sending very long range invasions to make his fleets waste time travelling around all the time, essentially turning him into a show-off who doesn't actually get a lot of conquests done. He chooses invasion targets differently. For example he likes to cut up factions into small pieces by targeting isolated sectors that connect two patches of territory from a faction so it gets split up.

My point is that reducing the power threshold for the superpower AI doesn't necessarily make the game more difficult. I see that it's necessary when it never actually appeared with the current 170% threshold (which i simply guestimated at the time)

But if the protector AI gets rolled instead of the Tyrant then that can actually make things way easier for the player. Only the Tyrant AI will make it harder. Only the Tyrant has extra anti-player CIs that can target sectors which are important for the player (concentrated industry, high ship specialization)
So my proposal would be that the higher difficulty levels should make the Tyrant AI more likely to be rolled than the Protector AI.


Laser and fighter rebalances are age old discussions. My take on them is this: whatever balancing philosophy you do, it will break apart as soon as you go OOS.
Tactical balancing would only ever work if Egosoft gave us code access so that we could add an OOS evasion stat for ships that gets countered by an OOS targeting stat on weapons.
And proper fighter vs. capship balance would require a universal armor % on ships which gives direct damage reduction that gets countered by an armor penetration % on the weapons.

Only if we had those two new things:
1) OOS evasion vs. OOS accuracy
2) armor DR on ships vs armor penetration on weapons
Only then could we do this right with fighters being unable to deal with capships but also capships not being able to deal with fighters.

Once i realized this i focussed all my balancing efforts only on the strategic side using the pop system. Yes, fighters are OP. So they should absolutely drain your pops more than capships do.
One of my last ideas that i never got to implement was to introduce some kind of passive pop upkeep system. Basically your existing ships (especially fighters) would reduce the maximum pop limit on all your outposts.
Any hard limit on the player’s ship count kinda goes against the philosophy of this game, but maybe this idea would be something for your insane mode.

And finally there was the ultimatum feature. The code already exists but it never seemed to work. At least i never saw it actually happen ingame or anyone posting about it.

Basically the AI would blackmail the player. Transfer that sector to us within the next hour or we declare war on you. If player accepted he would get a truce. Maybe you could attempt to fix this broken feature of mine because it sounds absolutely perfect for insane mode.

Glad to see you came in after all these years!

1. The higher difficulties already do this by making the tyrant stance more likely. Specifically, the existing code subtracts the personality roll by 30. I've increased it to 50 for insane and kept it at 30 for hard.

2. I increased the global maintenance cost by 50% on insane, and from Renegades, there's already a +35% maintenance penalty applied to foreign ships. This is somewhat a soft cap on ship limitations. I've also reduced the tax efficiency by 30% on insane and added scarcity to both bailed ships and freighters, making it harder for the player to set up early economy. For the hacking part on insane mode, I've added firewall software to 50% of regular freighters (company traders are already guaranteed to have firewall) so that not all of them can be hacked, again contributing to scarcity. Effectively, the player's economy is the soft cap as to how many ships the player can support.

3. Yeah, unfortunately, there's limited options with what weapons can do. Chassis, weapon, shield, and other buffs were added into X4, and those can't be modded here easily without upsetting some other variable.

4. I see why. The code doesn't return right after the ultimatum is set, so this ultimatum code executes but ends up going to war anyway. Should be fixed for 1.4.
4b. Also fixed truce timers not adding truce duration into actual truce timer. Giving a sector as a result of an ultimatum now gives a truce.

Edit: Added bolded items for 1.4.
Edit 2: 4b.
Edit 3: After playtesting the first 11 hours in-game, it was still too easy for the player to rack up tax income. As such, since 1.4.9, I reduced the tax income from 70% to 1/3 as much compared to other difficulties.

[Betelgeuse97]

1.4 is out!

[Hairless-Ape]

2) Motherships fighters attacking the same target as the homebase is apart of the problem, especially if they are in a mixed fleet of other Huge ships with you either having to assign them to attack fighters or stations which makes them suffer majority with the Counter-attack against the ai's Huge Ships. (Still need to brainstorm a viable solution still)

Carrier fighters in Renegades are meant to be an extension of the Carrier's power, but with some user interaction to mitigate some scenario's. This was always a primary goal from the beginning. On the downside, When sending a fleet against capital ships or massive fleets, the fighters arrive on target first and get quickly mopped up by the enemy "unless you do something". On the plus side, when sending a mob of fighters to attack a small fleet or lone capital, they are extremely effective in overwhelming the target. Prior to Renegades, fighters would simply swim around the fleet, sometimes engaging a very close target, or sometimes just stupidly docking up and being useless while it's own carrier dies. It was mind numbing.

To mitigate the problem with "fighters rushing to their death" against large fleets, I often manually control any carriers independent of fleet orders so that I can fine tune when they launch for just that one battle. You can also order the fleet to move to a spot that's close to the enemy before ordering it to attack, and that will keep the fighters in. It's a bit more micromanagement, but imo, a small price to pay for the ability to project a carrier's power in the other scenario's where you want to push them out and overwhelm a target.

Also, for those who don't care for this, I did add 2 switches in the cheat menu, outlined in the 4.0 Release Notes to change this behavior. You have to change the setting if you want them to behave this way:
One turns the automatic "support role" assignment of newly built fighters OFF for a fleet, and so new fighters are just added to the fleet without home-basing them to the fleet carrier.
The second option changes the engagement range of Fleet fighters (not support fighters assigned to a carrier) so that they engage at their own sensor range, and not the fleet leader's max sensor range.. and thus don't over-extend themselves.

So you have options.

[Betelgeuse97]

Happy new year, guys. I finished up as much as possible before the end of 2025. Latest version is 1.4.25.

Edit: Updated from 1.4.24 to 1.4.25 to fix potential softlock regarding police and delivery missions.

Edit 2: Happy new year! Add-Ons has been updated to 1.5. This version fixes a collision issue and changes how custom persistent objects tied to Jump Stations are initialized.

[Dex_Bot]

Also, for those who don't care for this, I did add 2 switches in the cheat menu, outlined in the 4.0 Release Notes to change this behavior. You have to change the setting if you want them to behave this way:
One turns the automatic "support role" assignment of newly built fighters OFF for a fleet, and so new fighters are just added to the fleet without home-basing them to the fleet carrier.
The second option changes the engagement range of Fleet fighters (not support fighters assigned to a carrier) so that they engage at their own sensor range, and not the fleet leader's max sensor range.. and thus don't over-extend themselves.

So you have options.

I completely forgot about the Fighter options in the cheat menu. Thank you for the reminder.

[Betelgeuse97]

Add-Ons has been updated to 1.5.4.

EDIT January 25: Updated to 1.5.5 to fix edge cases regarding bait missions and boarding ships.

EDIT January 28: Updated to 1.5.6 to fix OCV plot, Xenon boarding, forced undocking even without docking restrictions (variable 231 set to 1), and other fixes.

[Betelgeuse97]

Add-Ons has been updated to 1.6.

[VoidSoul]

It would be nice to make "one system change" part of insane difficulty optional, similar to starting funds and ascension choices. We already can engineer this in galaxy generator if we want it. I would love to suffer all other parts of "insane" but this one.
Miss an option to turn off faction in galaxy generator.

[Betelgeuse97]

It would be nice to make "one system change" part of insane difficulty optional, similar to starting funds and ascension choices. We already can engineer this in galaxy generator if we want it. I would love to suffer all other parts of "insane" but this one.
Miss an option to turn off faction in galaxy generator.

I understand the preference, but with how maintenance works going forward, the 1-sector challenge is no longer just a flavor choice. It’s a core part of the difficulty.

Adding a starting option to remove the 1-sector modifier would push insane closer to hard. Several insane modifiers (albeit toned down) are already present on hard difficulty. Without the 1-sector modifier, the early pressure that differentiates insane disappears.

Version 1.7 (upcoming) introduces the new supply system, which effectively soft-caps how many ships the player can support before incurring increased ship construction and maintenance costs. That system is balanced around early, unavoidable scarcity; allowing early multi-sector expansion would let players stabilize supply before pressure ramps, undermining the difficulty curve.

[VoidSoul]

Station Architect does not account for trade stations not occupying station slot. You cannot order 9 stations (+ outpost) in 10 slot system with a trade station, only 8 (+ outpost).

[Betelgeuse97]

Station Architect does not account for trade stations not occupying station slot. You cannot order 9 stations (+ outpost) in 10 slot system with a trade station, only 8 (+ outpost).

Thanks for the report. I'll look into this before 1.7 release.

[Betelgeuse97]

Station Architect does not account for trade stations not occupying station slot. You cannot order 9 stations (+ outpost) in 10 slot system with a trade station, only 8 (+ outpost).

Bug fix has been validated and put into 1.7 release.

Pirate bases and trade stations now properly refund their station slot. Now they will increase the max station support (similar to the "extra station support" perk) by 1. This effectively refunds their slot.

Unless there's additional bug reports, I will release 1.7 this weekend, ETA Saturday evening UTC time.

[VoidSoul]

Fleets with carriers and fighters that are "not homebased" at carriers in fleet do not dock fighters when moving to another system. This was broken, when renegade changes were made to how fighters behave with carriers.
When fighters are homebased at a carrier and do not follow fleet settings, they dock normaly, but when they are not homebesed at carrier and do follow fleet settings, fail to dock. Setting for old behaviour was added, but behaviour itself was broken .