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

[XTC0R]

Ok tested a bit with my Nemesis.

I have 4 autocannons and 2 beamer turrets.

autocannons vs Xenon M: No chance to hit it. Also they are heating up very quickly. But I like the sound.

My beamer turrets did not shot with "Attack my enemy order" only with "attack all". But they easily killed the Xenon M.

Will do further testing.

[XTC0R]

I think the autocannon deals to much damage and is firing too slow.

Usually a dog fight with a Xenon P is a bit of a small challenge if the AI has a good day. But now the P is just instant dead when flying directly to my Nemesis. The 4 autocannons just need 1-2 bursts to kill it.

Maybe less damage but a higher frequency? The name autocannon for me suggest some rapid fire.

[Shuulo]

I think the autocannon deals to much damage and is firing too slow.

Usually a dog fight with a Xenon P is a bit of a small challenge if the AI has a good day. But now the P is just instant dead when flying directly to my Nemesis. The 4 autocannons just need 1-2 bursts to kill it.

Maybe less damage but a higher frequency? The name autocannon for me suggest some rapid fire.

Reapers are really meant to fight cap ships, that's why you are not able to fight smaller ships with them effectively and that's why they are powerful.
But it just happens that P is big and a bit weak. I will consider making reapers a tiny bit weaker and P a bit more robust

[captainradish]

There is a weapon that sounds almost exactly like water running through a PVC pipe. I'm curious which one it is.

Also, I think it may do you good to write a guide for what the weapons are intended for.

[Tomonor]

This mod is a testament to what vanilla X4 is missing. Partly, of course. But it gives us hope that X4 can be modified to be on par with the previous titles.
Keep up the good work.

[Shuulo]

1.2 (all changes are save compatible/FOCW compatible)
- All weapon names were updated
- changes to prices of destroyers and carriers - they cost more as they are more beefy and harder to take down by a fleet of smaller ships.
- slightly improved Destroyers handling, as this was a bit overdone, especially for Teladies
- light increase in dps of Blaster, chain gun, CIWS and Scatter turret. Slight decrease in dps of Reaper Cannon. Increase slightly HP of Xenon P
- slightly changed loadout rules to force some weapons to appear more on top NPC fleets, as in vanilla they used only beams as this was top of the line gun.
- updated graphics of Blaster and Burst cannon to red.

[Shuulo]

FireFx mod added as recommended

[rosssack]

Patch notes
1.2 (all changes are save compatible/FOCW compatible)
- All weapon names were updated
- changes to prices of destroyers and carriers - they cost more as they are more beefy and harder to take down by a fleet of smaller ships.
- slightly improved Destroyers handling, as this was a bit overdone, especially for Teladies
- light increase in dps of Blaster, chain gun, CIWS and Scatter turret. Slight decrease in dps of Reaper Cannon. Increase slightly HP of Xenon P
- slightly changed loadout rules to force some weapons to appear more on top NPC fleets, as in vanilla they used only beams as this was top of the line gun.
- updated graphics of Blaster and Burst cannon to red.

1.1
- rebalanced engine HP
- a bit decrease in M and L turrets damage as they were OP
- all M turrests are now integrated and cannot be destroyed, this is to counter vanilla bug that leads to destruction of all turrets in OOS making capital ships useless and die to fighters easily in OOS. Engines, Shields and L weapons can still be destroyed.
- changed some impact effects of plasma and pulse guns

1.0.2 - removed debug script to spawn fleets on new game start
1.0.1 - fixes to ship dock capacities of L and XL ships

1.1 all m turrets now cannot be destroyed will this still allow boarding ????

[Buzz2005]

can you maybe make a separate little mod to make M turrets integrated?
you dont have a loose files mod so I cant edit it out

[Shuulo]

1.1 all m turrets now cannot be destroyed will this still allow boarding ????

It will be more difficult but possible. From my perspective boarding was too easy and without rep loss basically a cheat.
Now you have to take risks, take few boarding crafts with you, have some distraction fighters for target to shoot at and you will be just fine.
Also, as destroyers and carriers are more expensive they are quite lucrutive targets now.

Edit: Though if it will be toooo impossible, please test and let me know, I will thinkl to revert this back again. But still, this was changed to make capitals viable at all, as in OOS combat they loose all turrets in first seconds of combat and they are pretty much just floating hull, so yeah, this change is quite important as you understand.

[Shuulo]

Mod is now on STEAM

[Général Grievous]

Mod is now on STEAM

nice, thanks!

[XTC0R]

Mod is now on STEAM

Did you buy an other copy on steam to be able to publish your mod or did you found an other solution?

[Shuulo]

Mod is now on STEAM

Did you buy an other copy on steam to be able to publish your mod or did you found an other solution?

Just bought one. So I now have two collectors edition
Anyway, GOG version is bad with betas, I cannot launch a game in beta some times as GOG breaker install directory if I use mods in parallel.

[Chris0132]

Started a new game with this and had a peek into company regard.

Xenon sent a bunch of Ks through the gate and a huge pile of fighters, utterly obliterated the gate guard in about 2 minutes, and then went after the nearest station. The station fought back and managed to shoot some of them big blue beams at the Ks to knock a couple out but took a lot of damage itself in the process.

Fights seem hilariously lethal, but the extended ranges and sounds and variety of weapons definitely makes them a lot more cinematic and cool to look at. I don't know if I'd want to actually get involved in one, but they're definitely better than my usual experience of watching a K wiggle around out of range of a station. The extended ranges work really well and the guns have cool sounds and really distinct effects which I like.

https://i.imgur.com/GJGjjsD.jpg

Definitely think this style of weapon variety is how the game should work. Much more compelling than the base game's offerings.

[Shuulo]

Started a new game with this and had a peek into company regard.

Hi, thanks for the feedback, I will make L best a little less powerful as they are quite good atm at any distance. So fights should not end in minutes if Heavy Lance's are used by large ships.

[Chris0132]

I don't know that it's just the heavy lances, they are a terror for sure especially when you run into a defence platform full of them. Loaded it into an existing save and the argon defence platform in hatikvah's choice was doing an incredible job blockading the xenon gate. Not really sure how you'd attack that though I think it's more an issue with how many guns you can slap on a station than anything and there's nothing stopping you from making them all heavy lances.

I guess the heavy lance might be more suited to a hypothetical XL turret slot but they work quite well on destroyers with their limited L size turret slots. Really just all the weapons are quite lethal. possibly in part to the increased range letting ships bring their guns to bear much more effectively than they can in vanilla X4, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, after all destroyers in X3 could really wreck each other once they got into fights so it's not out of character for the series.

If I were to suggest any change it might actually be removing some of the L slots from station defence modules and replacing them with M slots. Actually if you swapped the M and L slots on most of them that'd probably sort it. Stations with a few L turrets and a lot of M ones are actually quite well balanced, they can put up a good fight but they take a lot of hits in the process. I like your balancing of L turrets as being truly heavy weapons, but with that balance it might be appropriate to limit how many you can slap on a defence module.

The station in the screenshot had a couple of heavy lances but most of the fighting happened with what I think were the cyclone beam turrets? The rapid fire laser beams. They whittled down the fighter swarm over the course of about 10 minutes while the heavy lances knocked out the Ks. A pretty good fight I think, all considered, the station lost some modules and the teladi eventually sent a fighter response squad to resecure the sector. If the whole game could carry on like that it'd be very cool.

If I had one other suggestion it might be that it'd be nice if the encyclopedia could have descriptions for the weapons giving a hint at what they do? Not sure if they can be added but it's a bit hard to guess what does what at the moment.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Going to test this out over FOCW for a while
Mainly because I prefer weapons this way.

[Hornet108]

so one thing im noticing is that turrets are having a hard time hitting things again - in fact, the AI accuracy in general seems to be way down

[Chris0132]

I'm not sure if that's tracking speed affecting that, and because the new beams aren't really beams.

They do struggle to hit small targets yes, and sometimes the heavy weapons fire before they're actually aimed at the thing they're trying to shoot at, but yeah the very fast weapons seem to be a little bit behind on leading targets.

That might be desirable though given how lethal the weapons are. If anything sits still or comes at you head on it gets shredded.