[MOD] Foundation of Conquest and War V. 7.2

[reanor]

Hi, BlackRain!

Thank you for awesome mod. Before I try it though, I have a few questions. In the game's current state the war logic is broken because there are multiple scripts that devs intentionally excluded that make factions build defense stations in enemy sectors. Xenon and Kha'ak don't do it at all, since they don't have builder ships. They supposed to just make carnage in local faction space sectors and retreat back to their own. In the vanilla or even modded game, Xenon and Kha'ah not only quite weak, but also don't have enough lasting power/resources to continue their advance in local faction space. I read that you have drastically increased Xenon and Kha'ak abilities, shields, hulls, and their ship numbers, but this will only be a short lasting pleasure. Were you able to come up with something that would allow them, as well as hostile to each other factions to sustain their wars?

Because of several things left out purposefully by the developers, factions currently don't know how to really wage wars or most importantly - how to sustain their war effort. Because of that - the war effort missions don't work, especially the invasion part. You mentioned the vanilla war logic in a few posts, but it is currently broken due to the above problem. There is a short script that gives factions back the ability to build defense stations, but it creates other underlying issues. The factions currently don't know how to make fleets, they just create ships and randomly make them patrol. I see fleets only when I create a new game, but they all disappear after a certain time, most likely destroy each other during the short carnage of hostile factions. New fleets never appear, I see random capital ships or random Ms or some disorganized ship formation in sectors.

Another big issue - enemies or hostile factions get stuck on destroying build storage modules, which are currently indestructible. There is a mod to get around that, but it doesn't seem to be working all the way. So the biggest issues I see right now:

- Factions don't know how to make war and most importantly sustain their advancement. The wars just die out.
- All the factions don't know how to create fleets or replenish their numbers to sustain their military advancement.
- indestructible build storage, prevents hostile factions to continue their advancement from station to station and get stuck after they destroying first station.

In other words, everything that is related to war, is broken or not working and missing vanilla logic/scripts.

I am already aware of all of this. This mod does not touch faction logic though. It adds fleets which will attack their enemies and has nothing to do with the factionlogic so as long as the faction has resources and hasn't lost their shipyard, they will be able to attack just fine. The mod does several other things as well.

Thanks for replying BR. One concern, do the factions/Xenon/Kha'ak send fleets continually? Is it balanced to prevent creating a total distraction of the faction sectors and will opposing factions be able to defend themselves? Also, if I just plug in the FOCW mod into my current game where I have money, how long will it take for fleets to organize and start attacking?

[BlackRain]

Hi, BlackRain!

Thank you for awesome mod. Before I try it though, I have a few questions. In the game's current state the war logic is broken because there are multiple scripts that devs intentionally excluded that make factions build defense stations in enemy sectors. Xenon and Kha'ak don't do it at all, since they don't have builder ships. They supposed to just make carnage in local faction space sectors and retreat back to their own. In the vanilla or even modded game, Xenon and Kha'ah not only quite weak, but also don't have enough lasting power/resources to continue their advance in local faction space. I read that you have drastically increased Xenon and Kha'ak abilities, shields, hulls, and their ship numbers, but this will only be a short lasting pleasure. Were you able to come up with something that would allow them, as well as hostile to each other factions to sustain their wars?

Because of several things left out purposefully by the developers, factions currently don't know how to really wage wars or most importantly - how to sustain their war effort. Because of that - the war effort missions don't work, especially the invasion part. You mentioned the vanilla war logic in a few posts, but it is currently broken due to the above problem. There is a short script that gives factions back the ability to build defense stations, but it creates other underlying issues. The factions currently don't know how to make fleets, they just create ships and randomly make them patrol. I see fleets only when I create a new game, but they all disappear after a certain time, most likely destroy each other during the short carnage of hostile factions. New fleets never appear, I see random capital ships or random Ms or some disorganized ship formation in sectors.

Another big issue - enemies or hostile factions get stuck on destroying build storage modules, which are currently indestructible. There is a mod to get around that, but it doesn't seem to be working all the way. So the biggest issues I see right now:

- Factions don't know how to make war and most importantly sustain their advancement. The wars just die out.
- All the factions don't know how to create fleets or replenish their numbers to sustain their military advancement.
- indestructible build storage, prevents hostile factions to continue their advancement from station to station and get stuck after they destroying first station.

In other words, everything that is related to war, is broken or not working and missing vanilla logic/scripts.

I am already aware of all of this. This mod does not touch faction logic though. It adds fleets which will attack their enemies and has nothing to do with the factionlogic so as long as the faction has resources and hasn't lost their shipyard, they will be able to attack just fine. The mod does several other things as well.

Thanks for replying BR. One concern, do the factions/Xenon/Kha'ak send fleets continually? Is it balanced to prevent creating a total distraction of the faction sectors and will opposing factions be able to defend themselves? Also, if I just plug in the FOCW mod into my current game where I have money, how long will it take for fleets to organize and start attacking?

To be clear, I did not touch Khaak at all so no changes with them. As for every other faction, there will be increased fleets and ships (including those the factionlogic uses). As for the other fleets which aren't used by factionlogic, they will be built just like any other ship. Assuming the faction has enough resources, ships will get built. There are also fleets which will invade xenon territory and even player territory if the player makes enemies of factions. Balancing is a tricky thing so it is hard to say who will be stronger than others but even after a long playthrough, the factions are doing okay. The player needs to get involved in the economy though, otherwise there will eventually be some holes in it but it takes a while for that to happen and can be fixed with the player's involvement.

[reanor]

I am already aware of all of this. This mod does not touch faction logic though. It adds fleets which will attack their enemies and has nothing to do with the factionlogic so as long as the faction has resources and hasn't lost their shipyard, they will be able to attack just fine. The mod does several other things as well.

Thanks for replying BR. One concern, do the factions/Xenon/Kha'ak send fleets continually? Is it balanced to prevent creating a total distraction of the faction sectors and will opposing factions be able to defend themselves? Also, if I just plug in the FOCW mod into my current game where I have money, how long will it take for fleets to organize and start attacking?

To be clear, I did not touch Khaak at all so no changes with them. As for every other faction, there will be increased fleets and ships (including those the factionlogic uses). As for the other fleets which aren't used by factionlogic, they will be built just like any other ship. Assuming the faction has enough resources, ships will get built. There are also fleets which will invade xenon territory and even player territory if the player makes enemies of factions. Balancing is a tricky thing so it is hard to say who will be stronger than others but even after a long playthrough, the factions are doing okay. The player needs to get involved in the economy though, otherwise there will eventually be some holes in it but it takes a while for that to happen and can be fixed with the player's involvement.

Thank you for your answers BR, what about the last question: if I just plug in the FOCW mod into my current game where I have money, how long will it take for threats to develop? Does it depend on the time it takes for every ship in the fleet to be built, or will the fleets spawn and start attacking as soon as game is started? The economy has my influence for a while in this playthrough, so this part should be fine, unless your mod has to be active before this influence is developed. In that case, I'd have to start a new game, which I probably don't want to do again... bleh.

[BlackRain]

Thanks for replying BR. One concern, do the factions/Xenon/Kha'ak send fleets continually? Is it balanced to prevent creating a total distraction of the faction sectors and will opposing factions be able to defend themselves? Also, if I just plug in the FOCW mod into my current game where I have money, how long will it take for fleets to organize and start attacking?

To be clear, I did not touch Khaak at all so no changes with them. As for every other faction, there will be increased fleets and ships (including those the factionlogic uses). As for the other fleets which aren't used by factionlogic, they will be built just like any other ship. Assuming the faction has enough resources, ships will get built. There are also fleets which will invade xenon territory and even player territory if the player makes enemies of factions. Balancing is a tricky thing so it is hard to say who will be stronger than others but even after a long playthrough, the factions are doing okay. The player needs to get involved in the economy though, otherwise there will eventually be some holes in it but it takes a while for that to happen and can be fixed with the player's involvement.

Thank you for your answers BR, what about the last question: if I just plug in the FOCW mod into my current game where I have money, how long will it take for threats to develop? Does it depend on the time it takes for every ship in the fleet to be built, or will the fleets spawn and start attacking as soon as game is started? The economy has my influence for a while in this playthrough, so this part should be fine, unless your mod has to be active before this influence is developed. In that case, I'd have to start a new game, which I probably don't want to do again... bleh.

You don't need to start a new game but it will take a little bit for things to kick in and a lot of fleets wont start getting built until around 60 to 90 minutes of continuous play

[reanor]

To be clear, I did not touch Khaak at all so no changes with them. As for every other faction, there will be increased fleets and ships (including those the factionlogic uses). As for the other fleets which aren't used by factionlogic, they will be built just like any other ship. Assuming the faction has enough resources, ships will get built. There are also fleets which will invade xenon territory and even player territory if the player makes enemies of factions. Balancing is a tricky thing so it is hard to say who will be stronger than others but even after a long playthrough, the factions are doing okay. The player needs to get involved in the economy though, otherwise there will eventually be some holes in it but it takes a while for that to happen and can be fixed with the player's involvement.

Thank you for your answers BR, what about the last question: if I just plug in the FOCW mod into my current game where I have money, how long will it take for threats to develop? Does it depend on the time it takes for every ship in the fleet to be built, or will the fleets spawn and start attacking as soon as game is started? The economy has my influence for a while in this playthrough, so this part should be fine, unless your mod has to be active before this influence is developed. In that case, I'd have to start a new game, which I probably don't want to do again... bleh.

You don't need to start a new game but it will take a little bit for things to kick in and a lot of fleets wont start getting built until around 60 to 90 minutes of continuous play

Ok, thanks! I'll use SETA!

[Dreamtide]

Not that I don't approve, because it keeps the economy going, but I've noticed that now and then laser towers go rabid. For instance, today I noticed that an allied-faction (but not same faction) laser tower had gunned down every civilian vessel that had gotten in range (there was a big cloud of gray wrecks on map).
The other day, a couple laser towers had been blowing up every trade ship that came near the Paranid warf (which was awesome, I loved it, I scooped up all those supplies and made some $$$).
...but I just figured I'd point it out in case it's a problem.
I thhhhink? that since the factions' reps aren't locked, it could eventually grind down their faction reps and make them hostile towards each other?

[BlackRain]

Not that I don't approve, because it keeps the economy going, but I've noticed that now and then laser towers go rabid. For instance, today I noticed that an allied-faction (but not same faction) laser tower had gunned down every civilian vessel that had gotten in range (there was a big cloud of gray wrecks on map).
The other day, a couple laser towers had been blowing up every trade ship that came near the Paranid warf (which was awesome, I loved it, I scooped up all those supplies and made some $$$).
...but I just figured I'd point it out in case it's a problem.
I thhhhink? that since the factions' reps aren't locked, it could eventually grind down their faction reps and make them hostile towards each other?

This is not an issue with FOCW. I also never have seen this happen

[Dreamtide]

Not that I don't approve, because it keeps the economy going, but I've noticed that now and then laser towers go rabid. For instance, today I noticed that an allied-faction (but not same faction) laser tower had gunned down every civilian vessel that had gotten in range (there was a big cloud of gray wrecks on map).
The other day, a couple laser towers had been blowing up every trade ship that came near the Paranid warf (which was awesome, I loved it, I scooped up all those supplies and made some $$$).
...but I just figured I'd point it out in case it's a problem.
I thhhhink? that since the factions' reps aren't locked, it could eventually grind down their faction reps and make them hostile towards each other?

This is not an issue with FOCW. I also never have seen this happen

Right on, I won't stress it then unless it leads to factions "at war" with each other.

[Pichu0102]

Shield instant regen makes new to early game default Elite combat an impossible slog. You can't kill anything with your Elite, and any one on one S fighter dogfight early on has very little chance to kill you, leading to a very long trip to a nearby station due to travel mode being constantly halted by incoming fire that isn't enough to kill you. Maybe the shield regen rate should be lowered a bit for S shields to compensate for the instant regen?

[unit757]

Is there any way to stop AI from using the boost function? A trend I've noticed with the 1.6 beta at least is capital ships will completely drain their shields at the start of a fight, and keep trying to boost every time it starts to recharge.

[BlackRain]

Version 2.4 FOCW Alpha
1) Decrease in shield regen for all shields
2) Increase in damage for most weapons/turrets
3) Increase in Xenon ships in Xenon sectors
4) Increase in Teladi defense fleets/ships
5) Slight increase in Argon and Antigone defense fleets/ships
6) Slight increase in Paranid and HOP defense fleets/ships
7) New basket for only engine parts and smart chips with new trade ships for each faction focused on only these two resources
8 ) Increased how many engine parts and smart chips factories get built per faction
9) Capital ships won't boost (doesn't work with aggressive ai though)

[Dreamtide]

Version 2.4 FOCW Alpha
1) Decrease in shield regen for all shields
2) Increase in damage for most weapons/turrets
3) Increase in Xenon ships in Xenon sectors
4) Increase in Teladi defense fleets/ships
5) Slight increase in Argon and Antigone defense fleets/ships
6) Slight increase in Paranid and HOP defense fleets/ships
7) New basket for only engine parts and smart chips with new trade ships for each faction focused on only these two resources
8 ) Increased how many engine parts and smart chips factories get built per faction
9) Capital ships won't boost (doesn't work with aggressive ai though)

...might it be better to let the player supply those smart chips and engine parts with their own stations for profit?

[BlackRain]

Version 2.4 FOCW Alpha
1) Decrease in shield regen for all shields
2) Increase in damage for most weapons/turrets
3) Increase in Xenon ships in Xenon sectors
4) Increase in Teladi defense fleets/ships
5) Slight increase in Argon and Antigone defense fleets/ships
6) Slight increase in Paranid and HOP defense fleets/ships
7) New basket for only engine parts and smart chips with new trade ships for each faction focused on only these two resources
8 ) Increased how many engine parts and smart chips factories get built per faction
9) Capital ships won't boost (doesn't work with aggressive ai though)

...might it be better to let the player supply those smart chips and engine parts with their own stations for profit?

The demand is too high, we want the factions to be able to build whatever ships they need so they can continue to fight. Give me feedback on how it goes though.

[Bubonosaure]

Hey, just wondering if factions get assigned a new HQ when their original one gets destroyed ? Haven't been able to find the new Teladi HQ.

I like the shield changes though I do think shield OOS is the real problem. Ships barely damage each other right now. I would be careful when tweaking OOS, though, as it can get extremely frustrating really fast. I still have nightmares from your I MK3 Drone carrier. Not that you were at fault but the game seemed to think all drones were launched at the same time and since you're a cheeky ones, they were obviously missile drones. That usually meant instant death for whatever was in its path.

[BlackRain]

Hey, just wondering if factions get assigned a new HQ when their original one gets destroyed ? Haven't been able to find the new Teladi HQ.

I like the shield changes though I do think shield OOS is the real problem. Ships barely damage each other right now. I would be careful when tweaking OOS, though, as it can get extremely frustrating really fast. I still have nightmares from your I MK3 Drone carrier. Not that you were at fault but the game seemed to think all drones were launched at the same time and since you're a cheeky ones, they were obviously missile drones. That usually meant instant death for whatever was in its path.

Hi, there is no way to tweak oos combat that I know of anyway. As for shields, they should be better OOS now but they just don't handle shield regen delay at 0 well. As for Drones, I think you are confusing me with someone else since I never did anything to drones lol.

[Bubonosaure]

The I incident happened in X:Rebirth [The New Frontier] but I used it to illustrate how OOS can be sometimes terrifying. You didn't tweak the drones or OOS but X:Rebirth OOS calculations would assume drones would be launched and ready to fire in a pinch, which never hapenned when actually fighting it. This thing would litteraly down my Arawns in a seconds if I didn't pay attention and save often. That probably should have been my first point.

Also, I managed to track the new faction representatives. Those Xenon scums do pack a punch now. Ianamus Zura was infested with I and K, I had to bring dozens of destroyers and some carriers to take care of all that mess !

[Dreamtide]

Version 2.4 FOCW Alpha
1) Decrease in shield regen for all shields
2) Increase in damage for most weapons/turrets
3) Increase in Xenon ships in Xenon sectors
4) Increase in Teladi defense fleets/ships
5) Slight increase in Argon and Antigone defense fleets/ships
6) Slight increase in Paranid and HOP defense fleets/ships
7) New basket for only engine parts and smart chips with new trade ships for each faction focused on only these two resources
8 ) Increased how many engine parts and smart chips factories get built per faction
9) Capital ships won't boost (doesn't work with aggressive ai though)

...might it be better to let the player supply those smart chips and engine parts with their own stations for profit?

The demand is too high, we want the factions to be able to build whatever ships they need so they can continue to fight. Give me feedback on how it goes though.

Will do; did ALL factions get more of both stations? Which factions are the heaviest consumers?

[Dreamtide]

So I have a question about faction rep levels in the XML file itself.
I've noticed that if you make two factions "at war" (-1 rep), traffic screams to a halt at the jump gates.
So as I understand it, this project is making fleets that "go get in trouble with each other". How does that relate to the faction rep ratings in the XML file?
If I decided to play a "galaxy at war scenario", would the galaxy lock up since nobody would go through jump gates to attack each other?
I think it'd be fun to play a game where I'm basically saving the factions from embargo-isolation, and then watching them absolutely tar each other with battle fleets.
Is that even possible?

[Holzapfel]

Can we keep playing, with 1.6 being released? Or do we need to wait for an update?

[Requiemfang]

Can we keep playing, with 1.6 being released? Or do we need to wait for an update?

Was working pretty fine when I was playing beta 1.6... so I assume yeah it's okay.