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

[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.

[Shuulo]

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.

All of these are Vanilla issues with turrets, they are simply a bit more prominent with ROF and damage of modded weapons.

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

It works fine with FOCW if you wonder, no need to choose.

[Shuulo]

New Version
Version 1.3:
- slight rebalance of travel engines as they were superior in every aspect over all-round
- slight rebalance of M freighters, scouts and Paranid Destroyer speeds
- rebalance of L turret weapons - damage reduced a bit to make fights between L ships a bit longer, Heavy lance is not the ultimate killer now
- updated few effects for weapons
- Xenon L beam is now true beam, as xenons tend to stay on target more than other factions the "beam problem" is not that severe with them

-fix: Heavy Lance lifetime reduced by half to exclude situations were beam hits firing ship if ship itself moves fast.

[SpenzOT]

This mod adds much needed flavor to the combat. However, the weapons need encyclopedia entries to explain what role they all perform. I can't guess what their purpose is with names and stats alone. It just gets confusing, especially with the smaller weapons and their many variants. An example would be with the Cyclone. I wouldn't have guessed that it was a laser unless I used it. An encyclopedia entry, or a better name would be helpful.

Other than that, this mod is def in my essentials list.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

This mod adds much needed flavor to the combat. However, the weapons need encyclopedia entries to explain what role they all perform. I can't guess what their purpose is with names and stats alone. It just gets confusing, especially with the smaller weapons and their many variants. An example would be with the Cyclone. I wouldn't have guessed that it was a laser unless I used it. An encyclopedia entry, or a better name would be helpful.

Other than that, this mod is def in my essentials list.

+1 50 hours into game time with this mod, the item descs need to be updated when thing go beyond a tweak to a overhaul.

[Shuulo]

Version 1.4:
New: all weapons now have very brief in-flaff description.
New: Faction Battleships mod now integrated, you will be able to buy new battleships, Ai will use them as well to patrol sectors.

- made a small balance pass on all weapons, shotguns have more damage, ion wepaons have more shield damage, Xenon beam weapon has slight increase in damage output
- updated some impact graphic effects of small weapons and their sounds
- buffed M shields a bit
- some polishing and bug fixing

[Neloth23]

Amazing job!

The descriptions are exactly what was needed IMO.

Keep up the good work!

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Version 1.4:
New: all weapons now have very brief in-flaff description.
New: Faction Battleships mod now integrated, you will be able to buy new battleships, Ai will use them as well to patrol sectors.

- made a small balance pass on all weapons, shotguns have more damage, ion wepaons have more shield damage, Xenon beam weapon has slight increase in damage output
- updated some impact graphic effects of small weapons and their sounds
- buffed M shields a bit
- some polishing and bug fixing

Outstanding!

[rosssack]

so this wont work with focw mod

tried - works with FOCW, totally replaces all his balance changes, nothing should conflict.

hi nice it,s great to see different weapon types in game

[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.

All of these are Vanilla issues with turrets, they are simply a bit more prominent with ROF and damage of modded weapons.

I think it's probably a good thing overall tbh, fast, small targets should be able to evade turrets if they fly correctly, and as said they still wipe anything that isn't flying evasively. If they were any better at hitting things then fighters would be obsolete.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

v1.4 few things I have noticed so far -

• Some symbols are unable to be parsed by the engine -
  
  quotations appear as an invalid symbol and get replaced with a place holder symbol when reading from the encyclopedia.
• A few of the weapons/turrets are lacking descriptions so maybe you just did not get around to adding all of them this pass.
• 
  A number of texts read a little incorrect to me, are these a typo? I believe the intended word may have been "boasting"/"Boast" a number of these exist in the texts.