[Mod] New mod, 'after the fall' - And I need your help :)

[Quirkz]

Hey all.

I've just finished work on a 'the galaxy is burning' mod for X4, for experienced players who want the game to start off a little bit rougher.

Faction have been pushed back to the edges of the universe, and are hiding, scattered, each in a single system or two.

That is, until you arrive....

The mod is feature complete, but I need some help testing it. I'm mostly concerned about balance. Did I make it too hard, or too easy?

Mod can be downloaded from here, and installed to your Documents/egosoft/X4/extensions folder (like all mods.).

https://github.com/franko-franicevich/X ... 0.9.0-beta

Info on the mod, and what it changes/does is here:

https://github.com/franko-franicevich/X ... /ReadMe.md

I'd appreciate your feedback and help here!

[rudi_pioneer]

I’ve been tinkering with jobs file to make something like this - can’t wait to try it out!!! Thank you for making this

[rudi_pioneer]

Looking at todo.md and thinking about proposed changes (and I could be minority here), i’d prefer if mod would modify start conditions (stations, fleets) and resources for start areas, but that’s it. Maybe game start with player PHQ in specific place?
But stuff like compensating for TER solar power, and so on, I’d prefer galaxy as it is, even if that makes it more of a challenge. Maybe have 2 builds: one with minimal changes, and one with way more tweaks.
Btw, you can definitely have outer boron sectors be xenon occupied and still have gate opening quest work - I did it with my (unfinished) mod it was fun avoiding xenon while doing those quests.

[rudi_pioneer]

Notes after playing for 4 hours (tl:dr; works great!):

- very compatible with tons of mods i have (sector extra highways, extra gates, etc)
- quest buildings are present (hall of judgment, for split, and prison from 18 billion) - they are indestructible, but that's ok, since quests shouldn't be blocked
- claimable ships are lots of fun to find!
- atf_wreckfield_xenon_battle_30km is added to avarice DLC region. since those regions are xenon free, what is this change about?

[rudi_pioneer]

Still no issues, Terran quests handle changes pretty well. Needed to get Terran rep to +20 to be able to do some dialogue in earth/moon, but that’s definitely doable since there’s TER station in pioneer space

[rudi_pioneer]

On (in game) day 4 now.

I love how sectors feel more populated (since everyone is constrained to 2), and even ZYA is holding ground (but barely, all their stations report outages).

Currently was supporting PIO and TER, and eventually they reclaimed Sol (was fun too, PIO got everything south of asteroid belt!)

Had to pause cur quest because woodworm station was sieged by xenon (which at some point pauses, since it's indestructible). Was able to do HAT quest, all Terran, avarice one.

Currently debating if to unlock boron and support them, or ZYA. ZYA will be tricky since lots of xenon space between safer systems.

[rudi_pioneer]

Boron issue: it seems that boron won’t be able to take over provinces from core sectors because of sanctuary of darkness in the middle. Interestingly SoD doesn’t have faction logic turned off, but it does disable non DLC, so i’ve created quick mod that disables that. Let’s see if it does anything.

[Quirkz]

Looking at todo.md and thinking about proposed changes (and I could be minority here), i’d prefer if mod would modify start conditions (stations, fleets) and resources for start areas, but that’s it. Maybe game start with player PHQ in specific place?
But stuff like compensating for TER solar power, and so on, I’d prefer galaxy as it is, even if that makes it more of a challenge.

Hey Rudi! Sorry for not responding, I don't check these forums that much.
Can you explain a bit more about what you mean here?
(As I don't compensate for TER solar power, I just assigned starting locations to make sure that they could still get decent solar from existing sectors)

[Quirkz]

Notes after playing for 4 hours (tl:dr; works great!):

- very compatible with tons of mods i have (sector extra highways, extra gates, etc)
- quest buildings are present (hall of judgment, for split, and prison from 18 billion) - they are indestructible, but that's ok, since quests shouldn't be blocked
- claimable ships are lots of fun to find!
- atf_wreckfield_xenon_battle_30km is added to avarice DLC region. since those regions are xenon free, what is this change about?

Thanks!
Quest buildings: In the interests of compatibility, I decided to leave them as is for the reasons you mentioned. It feels a bit weird that they're there, but on the other hand I wanted to keep things simple.

atf_wreckfield_xenon_battle_30km : This is a holdover from when I reduced the avarice sector sizes, and they lost scrap resources. They have it back now in the current release, so I should really remove this.

[Quirkz]

Boron issue: it seems that boron won’t be able to take over provinces from core sectors because of sanctuary of darkness in the middle. Interestingly SoD doesn’t have faction logic turned off, but it does disable non DLC, so i’ve created quick mod that disables that. Let’s see if it does anything.

Ah, thanks.

I wonder if I should just give them one sector on the other side of sactuary. I liked the idea of them hiding behind, but this is a problem I need to fix.
hmmm. How did your mod work out to resolve this?
Thoughts on how to resolve easily? The fallback is to just give them a sector across the other side.

Also: How has your long term economy gone? I've found the factions collapse and you need to nurse them back to health - Pirates are too dangerous due to density, and traders insist on doing suicide runs across Xenon territory. It's been fun helping them slowly recover, but if I hadn't given myself a solid starting position, the game would have been unwinnable (which I don't like.)

I've made some changes that should help with this, and will publish a new release soon, but curious to hear your experience and thoughts.

(And the changes won't really help existing games.)

[rudi_pioneer]

Let me know if it better if I reply on reddit or GitHub! I'm the fellow who was really inspired and impressed by your F# script published on GitHub, and ended up making https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 3211623683. Anywho, time to return the favor with stuff i've learned:

Add this in god.xml so faction can have all stations in 2 sectors:

Code: Select all

        <!-- Increase limits so we can get all stations in 2 sectors -->
        <replace sel="/god/stations/defaults/modules/@production">25</replace>
        <replace sel="/god/stations/defaults/quota/@zone">7</replace>
        <replace sel="/god/stations/defaults/quota/@sector">60</replace>

Free Families never expand, so they should ideally have old sectors as-is.

I had to do manual entries for spl_hullparts_landmark and shipyard_split_warforge_01 stations.

I didn't adjust quotas to keep original station numbers, so i've ended up brute forcing removal of economy, security, and ware requirement for stations in god.xml, for example

Code: Select all

<remove sel="//god/products/product[@id='arg_dlc_split_energycells']/location/region[@ware]" />

and sunlight was required to be 0.3 minimum (make sure that each faction has at least one decent sunlight start sector otherwise they stagnate, decent being 100% or more)

For boron expansion, i used this for setup_boron_dlc.xml - haven't tested yet

Code: Select all

<diff>
	<replace sel="//mdscript/cues/cue[@name='BoronFaction_States']/actions/set_space_faction_logic_allowed[@space='$WatchfulGazeSector']/@allow">true</replace>
	<replace sel="//mdscript/cues/cue[@name='BoronFaction_States']/actions/set_space_faction_logic_allowed[@space='$SoDSector']/@allow">true</replace>
</diff>

I also used shuffle jobs mod & enable faction logic mods.

In my case, xenon only start in emperor's pride, so no idea what to do there yet.