LooManckstrat's Overhaul Mod is a rather large rebalance mod that does things differently than other mods. It's a more combat focussed, less annoying X3 Albion Prelude, that reduces some tedious game elements. Ships will come with pre installed components, ranging from shields, to weapons, to important software. Players are now not forced to deal with the economy, unless they want to use different weapons for their ships. The name comes from my Reddit account, where I firstly released the mod. There are also many more features listed below.
The Features:
- Complete overhaul of all ships, missiles, shields and weapons. Apart from the visuals and names, there is not much left from vanilla.
A mod based loadout system that gets rid of the tedious equipment searching spree. Ships now have installed software, shields and standard weapons. Engine, Cargo and Rudder tunings are a thing of the past too. Ship performance is now at peak from the moment you acquire it.
Harder enemies due to the fact that there's no engine tunings and such. Ships will fly at top speed, and have full shields no matter what. Overtunings still work and have a greater effect, due to the base speed already beeing at maximum.
A bunch of new sectors, complete with a player sector cluster so you can yell "Get off my lawn!" while blasting stuff. The computer also speaks the names, as I used unused Sector names.
Every weapon and missile has a factory. You can build anything if you get access to those. No more RNG drop loot things to worry about. And yes, you can build Hammerhead missiles too.
HQ overhaul. Ships are built faster than Vanilla, and don't need so many different resources. Race specific recourses are now a thing.
Special HQ for stations. A special (currently too cheap) HQ let's you build basically every station in the game. It'll be easier to write a list of things you can't build, than the other way around.
Dozens of smaller bits that I either forgot about or aren't newsworthy, like some new Terran factories.
Future plans:
-Blueprint synchronisation script. Thanks to Egosoft, the script editor now can select another HQ to put blueprints in.
-Automatic shield initialisation. Currently, players have to load and unload a single shield to scripted/built ships, so the game engine would activate the pre installed ones. I'll try to change that in the future.
-Some other things I forgot again.
The Requirements:
-X3 Albion Prelude in the newest version. No other mods installed for maximum installation safety.
-A new savegame. This mod is not compatible with any other mod or Vanilla.
-The Square Galaxy Map from SunBlade. If you want to see the new sectors on the galaxy map, you need this mod. I use it myself and it's actually awesome. That's why I didn't bother to do such a thing for my mod. People should use it anyway, no matter what. It doesn't conflict with my mod at all.
The Installation:
-Download rar file.
-Extract rar file.
-Put content into addon folder of your game installation.
-Rename the mod.cat and mod.dat to the next highest number of your other cat/dat files.
It's the fake patch method. I normally prefer loose files, but this also works. German and English Text files included.
The mod currently counts as alpha, which means that I cannot guarantee that savegames will be compatible with newer versions. It all depends on the feedback of people. If the general balance is okay, future versions will be compatible. If there are specific things that needs changing, you may have to start a new game.
The Download:
Download Version 0.35 alpha
Credits and Important notes:
This mod currently contains one script written by Striker304. It was part of the ETNO Mod that ceased development years ago. Striker304 also left the community, so there is a lack of an official Permission. If that's a problem for the Moderators, then please inform me. I will provide a version without said script, even though it's somewhat important (but not crucial) for the mod.
As a note, the mod itself is pretty stable. If you can run X3AP vanilla quite well, you shouldn't have any problem with this mod either. There shouldn't be any huge bugs in the game, but I cannot give any guarantees.
I hope people check the mod out and give feedback. I already released the mod on Reddit some time ago, which means you can find me there too.
Known Issues:
-Pre installed equipment is indestructible. The game engine simply lacks a proper damage model, so you have to deal with indestructible shields, weapons and such. Some people may find that cheaty, but if you lost your shields and the hull gets damage, you're in for trouble anyway.
-Certain ships have a cockpit position issue. Mainly the Excalibur and the Paranid Perseus/Yaki Susanowa with the new ship model. It's only the cockpit/bridge position, the ships themselves work as they should in AI hands and only have the problem in player hands.
-Pre installed weapons can get unequipped in case you find/buy that specific weapon and sell/eject/transfer it. It's a game engine issue which I can't fix. So remember to put your guns back into the slots in case you trade with the regular versions of those.
-Currently, the HQ's (all of them) are quite OP and too damn cheap. Things are the way they are for debugging purposes.
-CODEA likes to unequip the pre installed weapons when fighters land, so you have to buy and use weapons the old way to prevent that. Apart from that, CODEA should run fine.
The following files were harmed in the process:
-Globals
-HQ
-TBullets
-TCockpits
-TDocks
-TFactories
-TLaser
-TMissiles
-TShields
-TShips
-TWareT
-WareLists
-WareTemplate
-x3_universe
-8100-L0XX textfile for Striker304's script.
-1234-L0XX textile for the Sectors.
-COMMAND_TYPE_STATION_32 for new script command.
All mods that change one or more of these files are not compatible. If you want to add ships to the mod, you can just add them in the TShips, as there are no new entries in it. The TWareT also doesn't have any added entries, so you can add things from other mods relatively easy too.
Feedback, suggestions and complaints welcome.