Hi!
I would like to say Hello to everyone here on the forum.
My name is Karol Grodecki, and I'm rather known for modding very different game than X4, which is Mount and Blade Warband (rpg in medieval times). But... for last couple of months I've been working on a small X4 project, so...
This is - TURBO LANZER. A Total Overhaul - it changes a lot of game parameters - modPack - because instead one large mod, you get general Turbo Lanzer concept divided into small sub_mods, than can be easily turned on/off.
I have put a lot of effort to prepare as much info as I could, given time, and all details and download may be found here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/turbo-lanzer [EDIT: here's also link to LOGOS dedicated to Turbo Lanzer: https://www.moddb.com/mods/turbo-lanzer ... rbo-lanzer ]
TURBO LANZER is a Total Overhaul Modpack. There is one main mod, and lots of small sub_mods, player can freely choose, which ideas, solution, changes are interesting, and which not. According to my policy, Turbo Lanzer is open for everyone, ie you can do whatever you want with, you can copy whole, or part, use as it own, etc. You are naturally welcome to join, add, help or suggest - from text to graphic, I always enjoy cooperation.
WHAT IS TURBO LANZER?
Turbo Lanzer is absolutely not better, it is not about *tweak, like it 'should' be, it is not about being more proper or anything like that. It is different. It is rules breaking. It is highly experimental. And currently rather basic. I wanted to see what X4 engine can do, what will happen? What if small ships could carry M weapons? What if fastest ship instead of 300m/s could fly 1300m/s?
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(By the way, IDK if people check that, but actually 300m/s is mere 1080 km/h, that is incredibly slow! Humanity in XX century can do better flying airplanes, and what, am I supposed to believe that for some reason future super-advanced civilizations, have ships - SPACE ships - slower than XXth century airplanes? It is so much false to me, that I can't just walk over it say nothing).
Turbo Lanzer is everything, but canonical. TL has different factions, (but still same assets), different ship categories, different economy. It is also kind of 'unlocker' - for example it unlocks modules that were not possible to build, like trading stations. Player can buy blueprint for re-engineered Xenon and Khak ships, etc.
WHY DID I MAKE TURBO LANZER?
1. Illogical performance
My first gameplay. I am amazed, first days, learning all new stuff, reading tons of tutorials, hoping for enough money to build my first station. Many days later: with great effort, spending days on playing game, I finally build empire powerful enough to build ships in quantities, that will allow me conquest rest of galaxy. But, also at this point my game is barely managing hundreds of mining, and trading ships, which supply my mega-stations, my frame rate goes down a lot.
This is my first problem: it is self-destructive playing - my goal is build economy powerful enough to take down any modern pc and make game unplayable, or significantly less pleasant to play. Literally I am being punished for being a good leader.
I do love complexity of X4, but I like more fluent gameplay. And making Turbo Lanzer I decided to remake economy so it would need less buildings, less support ships.
Wider: I don't bother really, about frame rate, I am rather concerned about this 'illogical' - to me - concept, that by playing game I am going down spiral no matter I do, because eventually with X4 having no limits to player activity, I believe I could butcher any existing PC.
2. I have read a lot of posts here on forum, also on reddit and there was one comment that also - I think inspired Turbo Lanzer. Quote from memory, some X4 player commenting his many days struggle to build multi station empire:
Then someone replied with argument that X4 is more about chasing the rabbit, than catching it. I agree, that X4 Foundations is decisively more about chasing, than catching.All right, so I spent last month building everything, and I just smashed first faction within minutes, and I feel that I could declare war on everyone at once and still win but why, just to have few more green sectors?
And Turbo Lanzer is to invert that relation. Less chasing, more like actually catching. Less mouse clicking on galaxy map, more action. Less, economy, more strategy.
Transferring to a X4 language: whole part of economy, with all logistic chains of supply, is simplified (this is powered by sub_mod and is optional). Building small, basic ships is very easy, and requires only few products. Bigger ships = more products and resources needed. Player can early become independent, quite fast can afford own small fleet. Imagine a line: on left side there is X4 with all it's complexity, and on the right side there is Real Time Strategy genre, I would like to see X4 somewhere in the middle - when it comes to 'how advanced economy is in Turbo Lanzer?'.
HOW IMPOSSIBLE AND MAD / CRAZY IS THIS MOD?
It depends, there are some designs that may seem shocking, but if you give it a while, it will make perfect sense. Let me explain, using examples:
https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/5 ... shot_9.png
ON THE PICTURE: extreme version of Turbo Lanzer ship. It is small size fighter with 4 medium size guns. That is certainly overkill, no discussion there, and in next release, I think that no fighter will have more than 2 medium pods. But generally Turbo Lanzer allows some - special - ships to use oversized equipment, also engines. Yes, ships look weird, however they were tested in 1st person, field of view is sometimes limited (and good, this is the price you pay for better weapons), but it works.
Also, as it was mentioned, logistic chain for larger parts is more complex, so there is another challenge there. And actually - Turbo Lanzer - is a name for a pilot who flies these oversized monsters, btw.
Now let me present less extreme picture:
https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/5 ... _class.png
So this is... I don't remember its vanilla name, but it is Argonian trading ship size L. In Turbo Lanzer this ship's role has changed, and it is now a Space ship aka space submarine, codename SS. As you can see, it has many new turret pods, in front are visible multiple main weapons.
Important: all weapons instead being divided into worse mk1 and better mk2 were reworked. TURBO LANZER philosophy divides all weapons into two categories: short range, and long range. Long range - faster projectile, lower damage, short range - massive damage, slow projectile. Naturally, all weapons are very diversified even in the same size category, there are powerful lasers that have super short range of barely 500 meters, and long range beams up to 14 km long.
Similar idea was applied to ships stats - Explorator (former vanguard) - lighter, a lot more agile, with large missile storage, lower hull. and second version - in TL called Heavy Enforcer - slower, clumsy, (significant change in piloting, filling)
As - I hope - you can see yourself, Turbo Lanzer may look weird at first glance, but behind that there is quite sensible and fair logic.
Good news, that Turbo Lanzer is NOT as crazy as this:
https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/5 ... hot_28.png
Another goal of Turbo Lanzer is to add more life into the universe. To find sensible maximum ships amount, jobs, deploys, etc I had to experiment a lot, and this is what has happened. Originally, this was meant to be defending fleet for Argon Prime sector.
Currently TURBO LANZER each major faction has special, well armed fleet at crucial sectors (humans - Argon Prime for instance). So when player decides to attack, at the end there will be boss-fleet waiting for him as ultimate challenge. Also there are sub mods dedicated to each faction increasing their fleets, adding more life into universe (and polygons to count, so be careful with that).
As I mentioned factions, let me show last one picture, galaxy, still with vanilla sector names, but colors indicate new players are in game. Each faction, represented by humans, aliens or mutants has its very rich past (based on this: https://www.moddb.com/mods/paradigm-wor ... ustoms-etc), own motives, morality, etc.
https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/5 ... LAnzer.png
Anyway, thank You for your time. I hope you will enjoy - if you decide to give Turbo Lanzer a chance. Honestly, I hope even more, than you will play it and decide some things could be done better, and join and help in creation