Looking for advice on mod balancing

[SpaceWeebCommando]

I am looking for advice from community members on ship statistics balancing, individual and cross-faction, for a mod I am working on.

I have been working on a mod for X4 that adds several L and XL ships to the game, that are intended to fill the power gap between destroyers and XL carriers and battleships. I have so far released several ships for the Terran factions and am currently in the process on working on introducing a larger number of similar ships for the ARG, ANT, PAR, HOP, ZYA and FRF. During my time working on the Terrans I have learned just how challenging the balancing of multiple ships can be, and so I am aware how potentially destabilizing it would be for people's (potentially very long running savegames) to unleash a broken roster of ships and give it to the AI and players. That's why I am looking for people in the community with experience and understanding of the X4 game, both in combat and economy terms, to help me shape the statistics of the new ships. I want my mod to be something any player can pick up without having to worry about introducing game-braking additions, and instead have something that goes well with and adds to the vanilla experience. I know and love the X universe but I hardly have the insight into the modding side of it, so I know it's best to ask for advice in this situation. Below are the methods I came up with so far to make sense and give a rough profile for statistics of each ship introduced by the mod. I based them on existing ship statistics and placing each class of ship on a linear power scale and adjusted according to personally done in-game testing and input from users who played the first version of the mod. Here are the results of my X4 ship modding journey so far:

Here is the system I am currently using in coming up with ship statistics:
1. All the ships should fit between a Behemoth Vanguard ARG destroyer and an Asgard TER battleships (both armed with the best possible shields and highest dps weapons)
2. The ships should be organized in power in following categories (from weakest to strongest): light cruiser, medium cruiser, heavy cruiser, battlecruiser.
3. The light cruiser class ship should be at least twice as strong as Behemoth Vanguard and the battlecuiser class should be slightly weaker than the battleship.
4. Ships belonging to each race should share a fitting boost to one aspect of their statistics (for variety)
5. Each ship should be useful by itself, and no ship should make all other ships seem pointless in the eyes of the player
6. The AI use of the ships should not create large imbalances in faction wars
7. Space is all around, the ship weapons must reasonably cover all directions
8. M Shields for subsystems should be minimum of 1:1/2:1 ratio to make ship combat effective in in-system engagements

With that in mind here are the statblocks I am currently using to calculate average values for individual ships:

-Light Cruiser- HP (125 000), Shields (4x L Shield Gen), Armament (2xMain Battery, 4-6 L Turrets, 12-16 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 130, Travel 4000), Steering (8, 6, 6 o/s), Crew (100), Avg. Price ( 8 mln)
-Medium Cruiser- HP (175 000), Shields (5x L Shield Gen), Armament (2xMain Battery, 6-8 L Turrets, 12-16 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 120, Travel 3800), Steering (7, 5, 5 o/s), Crew (150), Avg. Price ( 13 mln)
-Heavy Cruiser- HP (225 000), Shields (6x L Shield Gen), Armament (3xMain Battery, 8-10 L Turrets, 12-16 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 110, Travel 3600), Steering (6, 4, 4 o/s), Crew (200), Avg. Price ( 18 mln)
-Battlecruiser- HP (275 000), Shields (8x L Shield Gen), Armament (4xMain Battery, 12-14 L Turrets, 12-16 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 100, Travel 3300), Steering (5, 3, 3 o/s), Crew (250), Avg. Price ( 23 mln)

*Modified by race:
-Split- HP (+100%), Shields (-1 L Shield Gen), Armament (+2 Main Battery, -6 M Turrets) Speed (Combat +80, Travel -1500), Steering (-), Crew (+40), Avg. Price ( +50%)
-Argon- HP (-), Shields (-), Armament (+2 L Turrets, +Missile capable turrets) Speed (Combat +10, Travel +500), Steering (+1,+1,+1), Crew (-), Avg. Price ( -10%)
-Paranid- HP (+5 000), Shields (-), Armament (-4 M Turrets) Speed (Combat +30, Travel +700), Steering (-1,-1,-1), Crew (-), Avg. Price (-)
-Teladi- HP (-), Shields (+1 L Shield Gen), Armament (-) Speed (Combat +10, Travel +300), Steering (-), Crew (-), Avg. Price (-20%) +Extra Cargo
-TER- HP (-), Shields (-), Armament (No Main Battery, +50% L Turrets, M Turrets) Speed (-), Steering (-), Crew (-), Avg. Price (-)
-PIO- HP (-), Shields (-), Armament (1 Main Battery, +6 M Turrets) Speed (-), Steering (-), Crew (+50), Avg. Price (+10%)
-Boron- currently unknown, but probably extra water and science

*The carriers are treated individually:
-ARG Light Carrier- HP (100 000), Shields (3x L Shield Gen), Armament ( 5 L Turrets, 12 M Turrets/8 M and all L are Missle capable) Speed (Combat 170, Travel 4500), Steering (7, 5,5 o/s), Crew (120), Avg. Price ( 10 mln)
+12 (8+4) S Landing Pads, 6 S Launching Tubes, no M dock.
-ANT Drone Battle-Carrier- HP (250 000), Shields (6x L Shield Gen), Armament (2xMain Battery, 10 L Turrets, 16 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 90, Travel 3000), Steering (6, 4, 4 o/s), Crew (290), Avg. Price ( 30 mln)
+8 (4+2+2) S Landing Pads, 12 (4+8) S Launching Tubes, no M dock, 120 Drones Capacity.
-HOP Medium Combat Carrier- HP (150 000), Shields (4x L Shield Gen), Armament ( 6 L Turrets, 8 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 130, Travel 4500), Steering (6, 4, 4 o/s), Crew (150), Avg. Price ( 16 mln)
+6 (4+2) S Landing Pads, 6 (4+2) S Launching Tubes, 2 M docks.
-FRF Medium Carrier- HP (280 000), Shields (2x L Shield Gen), Armament (2xMain Battery 6 L Turrets, 12 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 200, Travel 2300), Steering (7, 5, 5 o/s), Crew (190), Avg. Price ( 25 mln)
+8 S Landing Pads, 7 (3+4) S Launching Tubes, 1 M dock.
-PIO Heavy Combat Carrier- HP (175 000), Shields (4x L Shield Gen), Armament (1xMain Battery, 10 L Turrets, 16 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 90, Travel 3000), Steering (5, 3, 3 o/s), Crew (200), Avg. Price ( 26 mln)
+8 S Landing Pads, 6 (2+2+2) S Launching Tubes, no M docks.
-PIO Fleet Carrier- HP (250 000), Shields (6x L Shield Gen), Armament (1xMain Battery, 14 L Turrets, 14 M Turrets) Speed (Combat 80, Travel 2500), Steering (4, 2, 2 o/s), Crew (300), Avg. Price ( 35 mln)
+8 S Landing Pads, 12 S Launching Tubes, 1 M dock.

Now with all that, I try to limit the amount of ships to around 6 per race, usually divided into 3 per sub-faction (in order not to overload the shipyard cargospace). I try to spread out the ship types so each race has one of each class of ship. For the Terrans I made an exception from this rule as they (at the time) had a limited number of other mods that created content for them. The current list of ships that are in need of balancing and are expected to release with the next mod version:
-ANT Medium Cruiser, ANT Heavy Cruiser, ANT Drone Battle-Carrier (Battlecruiser class equivalent), ARG Light Carrier (LC class equivalent), ARG Medium Cruiser,
-HOP Light Cruiser, HOP Medium Combat Carrier (MC class equivalent), HOP Battlecruiser, PAR Medium Cruiser, PAR Heavy Cruiser,
-ZYA Medium Cruiser, ZYA Heavy Cruiser, ZYA Battlecruiser, FRF Light Cruiser, FRF Medium Carrier (MC class equivalent)

A big challenge I have ahead of me is giving the ships for use by the AI and those ships influencing progress of faction wars. The Terrans were easy because they mostly fight with the Xenon, but it is different for the main factions. In the next update I need to release all of their ships together, so no faction is left without equal combat power. I find it to be a very challenging task. I have no idea about the internal workings of big-picture AI use of ships in wars, and ARG, ANT, HOP, PAR, and ZYA start at war with each other. How many fleets would be needed for the AI to use properly? Is one for defense and one for attacking enough? Player should be able to see the new ships flying around and trading punches in conflict zones so the mod content stays immersive. On the other hand I don't want to cause a wave of destruction that wipes 1/4 of the station production game-wide within the first 8 hours of a player running a new game. Assigning fleets to AI is definitively something I need advice on. For context, I have currently 3 ships for each faction in the works (ANT, ARG, PAR vs HOP vs ZYA +FRF) and at least one of each class should be flying somewhere, doing something.

Another thing I need advice on is Cargo Size. For the Terrans I assigned fairly small cargo space for each ship. But since then I realized: 1) There are players who use combat ships for trade/precious cargo storage/looting, 2)Carriers need proper storage due to the mystical inner mechanics that translate to the in-game repairing and resupplying of docked ships. Since I don't have much experience with those particular gameplay aspects I could use some pointers towards what is reasonable for ships of this size/price/function?


Finally, I want to say that balancing on paper is one thing and in-game effects are different things, and both are needed to reach final conclusions. That is why I was planning to release a testing version of the mod, with the new ships, in a private mod (not showing in the mod listings and accessible only through a link) on steam and invite people to help me test everything. This is expedient as I noticed that testing by myself took a lot of precious time and brought questionable results in the first part of my mod. Balancing was one of the three most noted issues by the mod users, so this time around I want to make pre-release testing properly.

I appreciate any input anyone has to contribute here. My hope is that when the project is complete there will be a pleasant and interesting extra content for every player in the community to enjoy, bug-free and not game-breaking. Thanks!

[kasan]

I like seeing some variation on capital ships with some traditionally non-capital classes (the L/M/H cruisers) elevated. That said, functionally a naval battlecruiser had the power and projection of a battleship, with just lighter armor (with one exception in WW2 that was pretty much a battleship in all but name). I like the idea of you putting launch tubes on the Terran carriers as it's a glaring oversight on the part of Egosoft. I do think the Terran military should have the main gun instead of the Pioneers, but depending on how you view the scientific might of the Pioneers vs the military might of the Terran Protectorate, I suppose you could cast the dice either way. You could always add an extra shield generator to the Pioneers and more guns to the Terrans. Anything you could do for the Teladi would be an improvement over them now.

As to your questions about AI use of ships; since you can set weights in the ship definitions, think of the military in terms of how an actual WW2 fleet (right around the time carriers came into wide spread use, before the abandonment of battleships) was set up and apply weights to your ships around that (and maybe lessen the weights of existing ships if you want to see yours used more often.) Alternatively if you want to see how two similiar fleets stack up, you can always cheat in the ships and see what happens; it'd make for some pretty amazing screenshots I'd wager.

If you're making these ships from scratch, one final thing to consider would be the actual design of the ships themselves. OOS it won't matter much, but the surface area of the ships matters IS. Existing ships by egosoft look neat, but it wasn't until Split Legacy that we actually got some ships that had proper profiles instead of just being giant waddling targets. An actual military would minimize the profile to avoid massed fire hitting them.