[MOD] Advanced Fleet Operations [WIP]

[Shadowclaimer]

Advanced Fleet Operations adds new ship classes to Stellaris and rebalances strike craft heavily.

Ship Classes
Interceptor (Small) - Higher evasion and faster than a Corvette, the Interceptor is great for hitting enemy installations and staying one step ahead of their defenders, as well as tying up enemy fleets for extended periods of time.
Assault Ship (Small) - Slower and tankier than a base Corvette, the Assault Ship has a damage bonus and rate of fire penalty and can only fit medium weapons. Toe to toe it can even handle Destroyers and larger ships.
Frigate (Medium) - Frigates are great escorts for larger ships. Armed to the teeth with hordes of small weapons and a built in rate of fire bonus, they're great for hunting down corvettes or interceptors.
Escort (Medium) Escorts are the smallest class that can carry a hangar bay and provide excellent support for larger fleets.
Fleet Carrier (Extra Large) - Slower and more armored than a Battleship, the Fleet Carrier has a myriad of hangars and other small weaponry to bring fleets of fighters and bombers to bear against your foes.

Future
There are over a dozen future classes I'd like to add to the mod as well as an entire overhaul of the Strike Craft tiers.

Compatibility
This mod should be compatible with everything as of 5/25's patch =D

Patches
Alpha 0.5 (5/26/2016)
-Added Assault Ships, a new, slower Small-sized ship with a focus on medium weapons.

Alpha 0.4 (5/26/2016)
-Added Technologies and restricted new ship classes to them.

Alpha 0.3 (5/25/2016)
-Complete file structure overhaul, we now use unique files.
-Ship Sizes are now their own files.
-Ship Components are now their own files.
-Ship Assets and Entities are now their own files.
-Localizations are now their own files.
-Strike Craft overrides are now their own file (and thus are overriden by other mods that are farther in the alphabet ala Beautiful Battles).
-Fixed a bug with Frigate Models in the Ship Designer.
-Fleet Carrier's core model is now the Colony Ship for each faction, giving them a bulky and unique look.
-Removed Fleet Carrier's aura capabilities.
-Strike Craft have been completely rebalanced. They engage farther, have shorter range, deploy faster and with more of them.

Compatible/Related Mods
More Edicts: Protocols and Doctrines by InfinityArts - Has extra content tailored for Advanced Fleet Operations.
New Ship Classes & More by CaptainX3 - Adds other ship classes that don't conflict with Advanced Fleet Operations.

Should work with any other mod you can think of even Beautiful Battles!

 

[Shadowclaimer]

Screenshots from the recent Fleet Carrier test, still swapping models over.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

Yay they're working, now to get their names working.

I took em for a test run, killed an Empire or two with them. Was quite fun.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

Posted the first test version, includes Fleet Carriers and Interceptors.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=686641980

 

[Reman]

I think you should also make a battle cruiser class. It would have the armor and speed of a cruiser but would be capable of mounting battle-ship grade weapons.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

Its on the potential list of ship classes I'd like to do once I'm done with this set =P

 

[Reman]

Ok cool. I always really loved the concept of space battle cruisers for some reason

 

[InfinityArts]

This sounds super cool. I already modify the vanilla ships into variants of similar design, will be nice to actually have different ships and not 3 types of destroyers to keep track of. Question though, does the weapon fire rate work at all for you? I've never seen it do anything in my games, even when I set a ship's innate weapon fire rate bonus to +700%, it takes just as long to kill something as the original, unmodified version.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

I haven't tested it honestly yet, its something I planned on trying so guess I'll find out.

Really hoping it is moddable, would really open up a lot of variations.

 

[sdrasmu12]

Any tips on how to mod the ship assets? I don't want to do anything crazy, I just want to add a few more guns to the default battleship. It bugs me like crazy that total weapon slots (adjusted for size) go 3,6,12,20 when it should be 3,6,12,24! I would love to just stick two more medium weapons on the battleship.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

Ship Components is where you wanna look. Just add a couple extra guns to each component for the slot you're wanting to add them to.

For what its worth there's a balance calculation for weapons. S = 1, M = 2, L = 4 points then Utility follow the same count, resulting in a total "value". I've got it filled out in my spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...pWV6bZWiONm4U0D-omNpyW3-U/edit#gid=1692943324

 

[InfinityArts]

Is 00_ship_sizes.txt the only ship sizes file we have access to? Can we create a different file, say modname_ship_sizes.txt, and only have the new ship templates in there, would that work? I mean, you're not editing any of the vanilla ships, you're just adding new ones.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

I believe I can simply make a new txt file and add them in there. Going to try it tomorrow, I want to try to override as few files as possible in the end for compatibility.

 

[G.Poison]

Aviation Cruiser
Just Idea

 

[Meraun]

is the AI using them as well?

 

[InfinityArts]

Hardest part will probably be getting them to work with existing modifiers, like ship build speed changes, costs, etc... Would the frigate receive the same bonuses as the destroyer, and how do we make that happen? How does the AI handle new ships? Blah, it's too early in the morning for me to nerd out to things like this...

Edit: so insomnia leads to some crazy things. I just wanted to do one last experiment and... yeah. I went into my mod and added "shipsize_Carrier_construction_speed_mult = 0.25" to one of my edicts. Loaded up the game, the edict had no localisation and read exactly that, but I turned it on and lo-and-behold, it reduced the build time for the Carrier from CaptainX3's by 20% (1- 1/1.25). So apparently you can just add your own shipsize_XXX_modifier_here variables.

I may be the most incompetent modder ever and everyone may have already figured that out, but I thought that was pretty neat.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

Aviation Cruiser
Just IdeaView attachment 179921

The Light Carrier is going to be a Carrier Cruiser with similar loadouts, though I'm not sure if its max will be 2 or 3 hangars.

is the AI using them as well?

I need to test this.

Hardest part will probably be getting them to work with existing modifiers, like ship build speed changes, costs, etc... Would the frigate receive the same bonuses as the destroyer, and how do we make that happen? How does the AI handle new ships? Blah, it's too early in the morning for me to nerd out to things like this...

Edit: so insomnia leads to some crazy things. I just wanted to do one last experiment and... yeah. I went into my mod and added "shipsize_Carrier_construction_speed_mult = 0.25" to one of my edicts. Loaded up the game, the edict had no localisation and read exactly that, but I turned it on and lo-and-behold, it reduced the build time for the Carrier from CaptainX3's by 20% (1- 1/1.25). So apparently you can just add your own shipsize_XXX_modifier_here variables.

I may be the most incompetent modder ever and everyone may have already figured that out, but I thought that was pretty neat.

That's really good to know actually, will have to mess around with this =D thank you!

 

[Dingo_12]

what about extra small ship classes/class? much like strike craft except independent from a ship, could be used for logistical purposes or a mass swarm with amazing evasion capabilities to overwhelm the enemy with sure numbers.

 

[Shadowclaimer]

I thought about that but at that size its probably better just to add strike craft honestly. I'd likely just make anything smaller than an Interceptor or Corvette grouped into the Small category.

 

[InfinityArts]

Added an edict for your fleet carriers and interceptors in my mod. It'll keep me motivated to update it as you update yours.

Cheers.