Feature Request Mod Component purchasing

[Doomsday2020]

Hi,

Ever since Ventures are deactivated I played but not as much as I used to. My first playthrough had full access to Ventures and I have a ton of components for Enhanced Mods. I have been playing without mods and I want to keep it that way. I know you can cheat the mods but I think it should be available.
After COH I started a Terran playthrough and while I like the state of the Universe more I miss the fact that I had multiple ships modded the way I wanted.

I have been thinking about this a while, why can't we have a way to purchase the components that are necessary for modding ships. Add another room that looks like the security station where you can buy mods on different screens or add them to the trader, unlimited quantity but 20 million each or even more. That safeguards it for end-game only and will make you think which ship to upgrade.

Just as a sample, in my other playthrough I modded Incarcatuas just for the Paranid story mission since hauling huge amounts of materials across the universe takes forever. This playthrough I wasn't able to do that and it almost doubled the time it took.

Would be great if you would consider giving access to the mods.

Thank you.

[GCU Grey Area]

Ship mods are available in a vanilla game. I get most of my high level mods from guild missions, while scavenger ships looting battlefields (collect wares/repeat orders) provide most of the low level mods & the occasional higher level one. This is my current inventory: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fm83uqabcwdy9 ... 1.jpg?dl=0. As can be seen I have no particular shortage of mods & these are just the leftovers I haven't yet found a use for. I have dozens of heavily modified ships. For example: this setup is typical for destroyers in my demolition fleets: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xyytx94vhz9nx ... 1.jpg?dl=0, of which I have 36 in total. Meanwhile every single L freighter & miner I own has, as standard kit, basic Polisher chassis & either Reaver or Nudger engine mods (choice of engine mod depends on how fast they are to start with). Entirely possible to install ship mods in a substantial number of ships without resorting to modding the game.

[Imperial Good]

I would like to see some way to make mod parts at a cost. For example by consuming a lot of commonwealth (or if you own Cradle of Humanity, Terran) wares. This can be combined with a system to automatically apply and upgrade (roll better) mods for ships in bulk.

[Doomsday2020]

Ship mods are available in a vanilla game. I get most of my high level mods from guild missions, while scavenger ships looting battlefields (collect wares/repeat orders) provide most of the low level mods & the occasional higher level one. This is my current inventory: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fm83uqabcwdy9 ... 1.jpg?dl=0. As can be seen I have no particular shortage of mods & these are just the leftovers I haven't yet found a use for. I have dozens of heavily modified ships. For example: this setup is typical for destroyers in my demolition fleets: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xyytx94vhz9nx ... 1.jpg?dl=0, of which I have 36 in total. Meanwhile every single L freighter & miner I own has, as standard kit, basic Polisher chassis & either Reaver or Nudger engine mods (choice of engine mod depends on how fast they are to start with). Entirely possible to install ship mods in a substantial number of ships without resorting to modding the game.

Out of Curiosity, maybe I just have bad RNG, the only Guild missions I didn't touch were Teladi and Split, I do get occasional exceptional Shield and Weapon components but I haven't seen a single reward for Nanoweave and Engine components.
Most of the time I focus on the war missions, is that the issue?
As Imperial Good mentioned, ideally I would like to see some way to target them directly and make them or buy them. Burning some cash or materials in the process.

[LameFox]

It might be nice if we could roll our low tier wares up and hammer them together into higher tier ones, then I might even use them. Or maybe if killing large ships had better rewards—combat loot has always been sorely disappointing for me in this game since in the new economic system you can't really loot gear other than missile ammo. I don't do a lot of missions especially since a lot of the time my goals in the plots create situations where fewer war missions are offered, and I much prefer war missions to economic ones.

There is at least now a source of intermediate upgrade loot thru BUC transporters but even camping their stations I don't see many of those, and am not sure what their limits are reward wise.

[GCU Grey Area]

Out of Curiosity, maybe I just have bad RNG, the only Guild missions I didn't touch were Teladi and Split, I do get occasional exceptional Shield and Weapon components but I haven't seen a single reward for Nanoweave and Engine components.
Most of the time I focus on the war missions, is that the issue?

Suspect so - the trade guilds (there's also ANT & PIO) can provide such things. Best source by far though for exceptional nanoweave is to setup an auto-scavenger outside the Duke's shipyard if you've gone that way in the Paranid plot. Results in a perpetual conflict between the Duke's forces & other Paranid factions. Some of those ships seem to be constructed almost entirely out of the stuff. Hence the disproportionate amount of it in the inventory screenshot in my previous response.

a lot of the time my goals in the plots create situations where fewer war missions are offered...

For me this is the biggest problem here. Dislike it that my choices in the plots can have such an impact on the availability of missions. Feel forced to only do particular plot endings because I very much like doing the missions & if I make the wrong choice in a plot I'll have substantially fewer of them available afterwards. Particularly the Paranid plot, the unification branch of which kills off multiple war guilds, but doesn't create anything new to replace them. Think ideally every time the plots make a significant change to the universe this should be reflected by the guilds - start a new war & all factions involved should get new war guilds, whereas if the universe becomes more peaceful at the end of a plot redundant war guilds should be replaced by trade guilds. More anti-Xenon guilds might also be good.

[Doomsday2020]

35 guild missions later (besides Teladi, Min and Hop) still no exceptional nano weave and no exceptional engine mod components, I got basic nano weave, advanced engine, exceptional shield and weapon. Took some missions with miner rewards in the hope the updates list might have more mods but nope. All missions that rewarded mod components for me were only giving above.
TEM is currently too starved to even create ships in my playthrough, first time I saw Min bully Hop too, the wharf got destroyed by Min with 3 phoenix and an aux, wasn't sure that was really happening, in my other play through Hop was everywhere.
I thought about a potentially easier way to implement this though. You could maybe just disable the check to not be able to select mods if you don't have the materials at faction ship yards and then increase the cost to 500k 2mil, 10mil+ to apply it for the different tiers.

[GCU Grey Area]

These are the sort of missions you might want to be looking out for.
Exceptional Nano:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1q6ooib7srz13 ... 1.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9aji06jj1dhr5 ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Exceptional Engine:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nrbc6vxe4r0ti ... 1.jpg?dl=0

[Doomsday2020]

I finally found one of them, maybe I had to clear out all the low tier ones first. Not sure about that. Got one from Antigone for exceptional ship nanoweave. I guess I will keep clearing up more to see if I get more. Haven't seen exceptional engine yet, might be the same issue. Currently doing one for a basic.
I had to do the exceptional twice but luckily I saved before starting it, lost access to all my property when I handed over the drill, I guess the game assumed I was Antigone or something, didn't happen the second time.

Maybe I should check TEL, but I haven't done any missions for them since x2 when 2 Phoenix accidentally destroyed my freshly capped K...

I still think there should be a way to expedite the process. There are 5 Asgard's and the Erlking waiting to get upgraded to snipe FAF rattlesnakes before killing my ships.

[GCU Grey Area]

I finally found one of them, maybe I had to clear out all the low tier ones first. Not sure about that. Got one from Antigone for exceptional ship nanoweave. I guess I will keep clearing up more to see if I get more. Haven't seen exceptional engine yet, might be the same issue. Currently doing one for a basic.

Don't feel the need to complete a mission just because you accepted it. As far as I can tell there's no penalty for aborting missions. If there are no guild missions offering something interesting I'll often accept one of them (doesn't matter which one), immediately abort it & move on. Next time I'm back in the region the mission list for that guild will likely have refreshed, hopefully with better rewards. If not, rince & repeat until something good does appear.