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

[Knjaz136]

P.S. Just noticed previous post - I didn't see it while writing this one, and it differs a bit so I'll leave it here.

Original post:
First question - how was Asgard's it's XL Main Gun changed? Is it a buff, or a sidegrade? Haven't tried Vanilla Asgard, went straight into VRO.
We are talking about 800-900 million ship here after all, with a gun that's impossible to aim at a stationary gunboat 8km away (which means it's projectile speed doesn't bring much benefits in first place), in addition to slow turn rates and that XL gun being completely fixed. Tried on my own Jin. Imho, Asgard as a whole can use some tweaking to get the feel of a 900m investment flagship. Even if it means increasing it's default Build resource amount by 50%. (they are pretty low as it is).

More minor issue - what do you think about returning L Beam turrets to Terran arsenal? Specifically for player-flown ships. Starburst Shockwave Cannons are awesome, except they are unusable for Player due to massive splash and resulting friendly fire unless of OOS. Unless you have a fix/solution for that, ofc. Tried them, they are really good, but impossible to use with allies around. Ofc, I'd rather have SSCs that don't do friendly fire than L Beams, but we can't have first, afaik?

Upd: Just in case - in my game Asgard Heavy Slots (L Heavies, where PSPs are installed) have issues shooting at the front target. If it 's unfixable vanilla issue - maybe it's worth swapping front and rear set of L turrets? (aka, front - Heavies, rear - Standards). Not 100% sure in this issue, further testing required.

[Alkeena]

Edit: Okay, so I'm a fool - took me this long to realise that I could just replace VRO's .cat with the unpacked XML files and edit them directly, rather than trying to patch them afterwards... Is there any issue/downside with having the mod as unpacked XMLs versus the .cat?

If/when Shuulo releases an update you'll have to remember which files you touched and retain them. If Shuulo touched something in those files you won't get the benefit of whatever changes he made.

Generally it's much more sustainable to just write a very targeted diff patch so that you don't need to muck about with things any time there's an update. I think all told I've changed like 4 or 500 hundred values in my local copy of VRO with a diff mod. If I had to do that every time a new point release occurred I'd literally never get to play.

[Kinnison]

I may have missed something said earlier, but I'm puzzled by one aspect of my new CoH game. About half of the abandoned ships I've collected have no internal shield generators. As I have low rep with the majority of factions I can't send them to a race wharf/shipyard, but the Terran wharf can't supply the generators - and won't let me make any other modifications because a necessary component is missing.

Is this WAD, and/or is there a way to fix it?

[Cyres]

I may have missed something said earlier, but I'm puzzled by one aspect of my new CoH game. About half of the abandoned ships I've collected have no internal shield generators. As I have low rep with the majority of factions I can't send them to a race wharf/shipyard, but the Terran wharf can't supply the generators - and won't let me make any other modifications because a necessary component is missing.

Is this WAD, and/or is there a way to fix it?

I had the same problem. IIRC I solved this by applying a preset loadout, which applied the internal shield generator. Then you simply can revert the changes. It's a dirty workaround but it's working.

[Kinnison]

I had the same problem. IIRC I solved this by applying a preset loadout, which applied the internal shield generator. Then you simply can revert the changes. It's a dirty workaround but it's working.

Ah, thank you! As it happens since posting I've established decent relations with a couple of factions, but very useful to know for the future.

[Knjaz136]

How many freshly built Syns (Rotary - PSP loadout) do you need to take down a Shipyard OOS?

Out of my 30 Syns - half of them died before putting Shipyard to 98% health.
https://puu.sh/HuT1e/ceb76b2244.png

Edit: During the assault on Antigone memorial - in which they had no standing fleet whatsoever - I lost 80 out of 80 destroyers and, for now, 8 out of 16 Asgards, rest are barely alive, and Antigone Wharf is still alive. Shipyard went down before.
Is that normal?

Edit2: Antigone Wharf is invulnerable, never goes below 5% both in System and OOS. Vanilla problem?
https://puu.sh/HuXf4/2d6823391b.png

[EtherealZucchini]

How can I edit the damage of a weapon in VRO - specifically the Asgard's Mjolnir? I just built one and found it very underwhelming, so I'm looking to restore its Vanilla damage which seems to be about 10x higher.

I've tried creating a mod with VRO as a dependency to patch over (which loads as intended - I was able to restore the Katana's original speed), but I can't seem to affect the damage of the Mjolnir (or any other weapon). I extracted bullet_atf_xl_mjolnir_macro.xml, edited the values I wanted, and placed it in my mod folder under assets/fx/weaponFx/macros, mirroring its place in the VRO structure, but this seems to have no effect. I added <diff><replace sel="//macros"> (+closing tags) as well but still no effect.

I'm new to X4 modding so I've no idea what I'm doing wrong - particularly when the same approach worked for ships+engines! Can anybody help?

Edit: Okay, so I'm a fool - took me this long to realise that I could just replace VRO's .cat with the unpacked XML files and edit them directly, rather than trying to patch them afterwards... Is there any issue/downside with having the mod as unpacked XMLs versus the .cat?

I feel the same way and am interested in making my own patch to do the same thing, but I don't have any idea how to start. Can you give me any pointers?

[Shuulo]

Patch 3.0.6
- Improved small shield mk1-mk2-mk3 capacity by 5%-20%-35% accordingly, to be more aligned with shield costs. This should also make fighters a bit more sturdy.
- Increased damage of Asgard main gun by approx 30%
- Decreased AOE explosion range of Starburst from 1000 to 400 meters, should solve most friendly fire issues.
- Slightly decreased station damage OOS vs capital ships
- Slightly increased travel speed of terran large engines
- Fixed terran dumb fire turrets using guided missiles
- Fixed incorrect tags on Tau accelerator and Heavy Tau accelerator preventing from equipping them

[Scoob]

Hi Shuulo,

I noticed that the Split Elephant does not have the built-in shield by default. As a result of this, captured versions of this ship must be sent to a Shipyard or Equipment dock to have this shield added, before they can be repaired at a player Support Ship. If you try to order it to repair, you'll get the "Currently edited ship is missing mandatory upgrades" message.

Not a huge issue, though this makes these ships particularly weak, as they lack the shield regen the built-in shield generator offers.

I see you posted an update today, sorry I didn't spot this one beforehand so you could include it.

Scoob.

[Melraki]

Edit: Okay, so I'm a fool - took me this long to realise that I could just replace VRO's .cat with the unpacked XML files and edit them directly, rather than trying to patch them afterwards... Is there any issue/downside with having the mod as unpacked XMLs versus the .cat?

If/when Shuulo releases an update you'll have to remember which files you touched and retain them. If Shuulo touched something in those files you won't get the benefit of whatever changes he made.

Generally it's much more sustainable to just write a very targeted diff patch so that you don't need to muck about with things any time there's an update. I think all told I've changed like 4 or 500 hundred values in my local copy of VRO with a diff mod. If I had to do that every time a new point release occurred I'd literally never get to play.

Hi! How to make a patch that load after vro to apply modification over it?
I don't find how to change load order

[Shuulo]

Hi! How to make a patch that load after vro to apply modification over it?
I don't find how to change load order

its alphabetic

[Melraki]

Oh... I feel silly
And now I understand why there are mods beginning with zz

[sanctific]

Hi Shuulo!

A balance question - I've noticed how xenon cutting beam M turrets are inefficient against...anything at all.

I mean, 2 corvettes & 2 fighters attack a Xenon defense platform and it takes ages for a defense installation (!!!) to kill fighters whilst corvettes remain neraly intact vs a platform equipped by a few dozens of those beams...until an "I" arrived that is.

At first I thought that those beams are totally bugged out and deal no damage whatsoever (that is before I noticed attacking fighters HP), flown my Moreya closer to the station and got attacked by ~6 turrets. Yeah, they do damage but so insignificant that escaping 6 M turrets on a fighter with 1 S shield and not having that shield depleted...well, it doesn't sound normal.

Is it WAI and weakness of those turrets compensate for something else?

P.S: The very same "I" from the post above got later killed by 6 corvettes & 2 fighters (in OOS). I didn't think it would be even theoretically possible to do something like that since, c'mon, "I" is one tough, nasty SoB. I'm really confused by Xenon balancing in CoH-VRO

[Knjaz136]

Patch 3.0.6
- Improved small shield mk1-mk2-mk3 capacity by 5%-20%-35% accordingly, to be more aligned with shield costs. This should also make fighters a bit more sturdy.
- Increased damage of Asgard main gun by approx 30%
- Decreased AOE explosion range of Starburst from 1000 to 400 meters, should solve most friendly fire issues.
- Slightly decreased station damage OOS vs capital ships
- Slightly increased travel speed of terran large engines
- Fixed terran dumb fire turrets using guided missiles
- Fixed incorrect tags on Tau accelerator and Heavy Tau accelerator preventing from equipping them

Excellent changes!
Any update regarding Syn's shields? In vanilla it's a much slower Heavy Destroyer with heavier shields than Osaka, here it's still much slower VH Destroyer with shields weaker than Osaka's. Is it intentional?
https://puu.sh/HvpDo/48ce906977.png
https://puu.sh/HvpDb/62275ed848.png

[tiomer]

Hello, My friend 南风 and I like the VRO you made very much, but it does not have a Chinese language, so it is not very convenient for us to play the game. So my friend 南风 has created a simplified Chinese language file. Can the author add it to the VRO? I hope that more Chinese players can easily feel the charm of VRO .Thank you !

Publish page :https://tieba.baidu.com/p/7286730898

FIle url:https://pan.baidu.com/s/1xBWr_ZFCZ3_D4ypg-HHmig
Verification code ：rrqn

[Shuulo]

Excellent changes!
Any update regarding Syn's shields? In vanilla it's a much slower Heavy Destroyer with heavier shields than Osaka, here it's still much slower VH Destroyer with shields weaker than Osaka's. Is it intentional?
https://puu.sh/HvpDo/48ce906977.png
https://puu.sh/HvpDb/62275ed848.png

Yes, Osaka should have better shields, though ill increase Syn hull more for next update, it should be a bit more tanky on this side, the main difference however is almost triple damage output of the Osaka.

[Scoob]

Hi Shuulo,

Did you see my note about NPC Split Mammoths not having the built-in shield fitted? Perhaps it's not all of them, but certainly the one I captured in my game did not have this shield fitted. This meant that I could not order the ship to repair at my Support Ship, but had to send it to a Wharf to get this shield fitted first. Not a huge problem, sure, but I thought you'd like to know.

Scoob.

[Starman01]

Can I make a balance suggestion ?

I play your mod, together with faction enhancer and Universe+. This results into a xenon overkill (which I kinda like, I know it's not a balancing issue from your mod), i enjoy making war against the xenon instead of the other races.
But in the later game when the xenon have settled all the new outer rim sectors, they start rampaging and can only be held in check with heavy defense bases with at least a few cruise missile turrets.

However, the x4 economy for missiles is really awful, especially since there is no real supply hauling implemented in the game. I'm not sure how much you changed the missile ressource part at all, but I think that cruise missiles should be made from less ressources, at least 50 %.

In order to make a sustainable defense base which can hold 100 cruise missiles (since they fire them away really quickly) each defense must be designed as huge factory with at least 2 missile component factories, two solar plants and 1 smart chip, and it still is hardly making profit to keep the production running. Somehow this really destroys the function of a defense base. Another problem is that transport based on a defense base constantly get destroyed because the stupid manager system doesn't dock idle transport, but park them outside the station, which also adds difficulty to supply this factory.Transports get destroyed often, since to effectivly block out the xenon i need the defense to be close to the gate.

Not a problem in your mod, it's more a vanilla problem that missile defense bases are not really possible without a lot of manual micromanagemt. If you run +10 Bases the amount of missile components required explode, also because the station supply storage cannot be adjusted).

Anyway, just wanted to describe the problem (again mostly a vanilla problem), but maybe you might want to take a look at the missile requirements. I'm going to reduce it in my installation myself.

(Edit) would you please tell me in which file the ressource requirements for missiles are stored (the wraith missile). I can't find anything ressource related.

[Phiolin]

Split Engine SPL L All-Round Engine MK 1 is listed twice when buying blueprints from the Split NPCs. Possibly an oversight?

[Shuulo]

Split Engine SPL L All-Round Engine MK 1 is listed twice when buying blueprints from the Split NPCs. Possibly an oversight?

I do not touch wares of engines at all, this seems to be a vanilla bug

Hi Shuulo,

Did you see my note about NPC Split Mammoths not having the built-in shield fitted? Perhaps it's not all of them, but certainly the one I captured in my game did not have this shield fitted. This meant that I could not order the ship to repair at my Support Ship, but had to send it to a Wharf to get this shield fitted first. Not a huge problem, sure, but I thought you'd like to know.

Scoob.

ill take a look