[Mod + discussion] Battle rebalance

[P_aul]

First things first - Hello!

I'm new to Paradox forums but I have a bit of experience with mods... although I awlays did them for my own use. Either way, in this sub only today I've seen 3 threads modding weapons and balancing warfare in Stellaris. As I was thinking about it for couple of days, I decided to chime in.

I've done my own set of moddifications to weapons and other parts. They are completely untested (I only had time to play for a few hours) and if anyone would like to help with that I'd be grateful. I've never uploaded anything to workshop so here's the zip file: https://www.sendspace.com/file/c5ycmt

The list of changes, with my reasoning for them:

Spoiler

Goals:
1. Nerf Corvettes (xD)
2. Make middle-sized ships useful
3. Force meaningful choices when designing ships
4. Expose strengths and weaknesses of each choice in line with vanilla

What I meant to do was not to remake the balance completely but rather emphasize both strenghts and wekanesses of any choice to make them meaningful and interesting. One of the things that iritaded me from day 1 was 0 difference between MS and SSS corvettes. Actually, with evasion being so strong, SSS are probably better (more shots = more chances to hit) but it doesn't provide any clear choice for the player what should he do in certain situation.

The changes:
1. De-clutter
- Firerate halved, range doubled
As everyone and their mom, I've started of with doubling the cooldowns and ranges to make battles look better

2. Large weapon slots buffs
- Substantial buff to damage and range of all L slot weapons
This aligns with goal 2, ships that can carry L weapons should feel powerful. The range difference is generally enough to get 1-2 shots before smaller enemies could respond and with a bit of luck this should be enough to thin out the corvette hordes...

3. Special effects scaling
- All weapons with armor pen, shield pen and shield dmg now scale with size
Ex. S laser have 25% pen, M 50%, L 75%.
- Power cost increased for most M and L weapons
This is again about choices. You want 50% armor pen on your lasers? You will need to forgo one deflector to power it up.

4. Energy weapons
- Lasers are now long range, consistent damage, penetrate armor
- Plasma is mid-short range, high damage, high armor pen, with slightly lower fire rate
- Lasers and Plasma deal reduced damage to shields
- Disruptors deal less damage in generall but MUCH more to shields
Energy weapons are the best choice in vanilla. With my moddifications they probably still will be the best late game weapon but this was intended, as in most SF this is what the most advanced civs use.

5. Kinetic weapons
- Basically reworked
- All have high fire rate with low base damage and big variance in damage dealt
- Mass drivers are mid-range, Autocannos short
- All kinetic weapons now deal bonus damage to shields
Kinetick weapons were obviously the weakest choice. No guaranteed hits and high damage of missiles, no bonus effects and consistent damage of energy weapons. This modifications aim to give them clean identity as shield breaking device with added bonus of more chances to hit due to extreme fire rate (compared to other weapons)

6. Missile weapons
- All ignore shields at least partially
- Mostly unchanged
I like the idea of missiles being strong early game option and becoming worse as point-defense is more widespread (btw. do autocannons double as point defense? I've read it somewhere but didn't really notice it in game... never even researched them either so there's that). They can still be good against fleets with strong shields and lack of PD.

7. Other components
- Thrusters evasion down
I actually like the idea of corvette being very mobile and potentially dangerous to to large ships, so I'm not taking away that identity. Evasion stacking is huge problem on the other hand so something had to go.
- Shields power costs up, regen up
This is yet another jab at choices and indirect buff to armor (I hope) as well as further nerf to energy weapons vs shields.
- L power generators buffed significantly
This is to compensate for power increases in other places. It doesn't help corvettes or destroyers but should make Cruisers and Battleships stronger by virtue of actually having enough power to keep large weapons and shields going.

My true goal with this post is more than just share my ideas. As there are many people tackling the problem I would like to invite you all to brainstorming, modding and testing to create one mod to rule them all (until Paradox gives us their balance patch at least ) Anyone interested?

Bonus questions:
- How do you make a mod workshop-compatible?
- How do you change behaviour of fighters/bombers to make them actually fight? I've seen it mentioned in other threads but I'm not sure what to change

 

[Gyrvendal]

Hi,

I really like your changes, and they actually resemble a lot of what I did for myself...
Three things that I think would be cool additions :
- making kinetic weapons have the largest DPS by a large margin while having neither shield nor armor penetration. This way they will be good against shields but also against ships with low/no armor.
- Reducing ship combat speed in ship_sizes to make the long range phase of engagements longer.
-No weapon should have 100% armor penetration (say 75% is the max) so that armor is never completely useless.

Also in order to change the behaviour or fighters and bombers you should change the "return to carrier range" in strike craft behaviours from 15 to say 150. Don't know the exact name since I am at work. 150 works pretty well in my opinion. Note that fleets will only engage when they reach weapon range (and that is at max 70 for largest weapons) so the strike craft will never actually strike at 150 range, however if you set it lower they tend to return to the carrier all the time.

 

[sdrasmu12]

- making kinetic weapons have the largest DPS by a large margin while having neither shield nor armor penetration. This way they will be good against shields but also against ships with low/no armor.

The problem with this is that then they edge out missiles as counters for ships with high evasion.

 

[LordAnubis]

- How do you change behaviour of fighters/bombers to make them actually fight? I've seen it mentioned in other threads but I'm not sure what to change

In the ship_behaviors folder is a file for strike craft. Not sure exactly what to change to make them more effective, but the preferred_attack_range might be a good place to start to get them actually fighting, the base of 4.0 seems low. Also distance_to_fleet_penalty might also need to be messed with if you start messing with the attack range.

And for making a workshop compatible mod, the launcher actually has a nice little thing under the mod tab that lets you create a mod, you type in the stuff it asks for and it'll create the directory and .mod file for you, the launcher also handles uploading it to workshop when you are done.

 

[P_aul]

Hi,
- making kinetic weapons have the largest DPS by a large margin while having neither shield nor armor penetration. This way they will be good against shields but also against ships with low/no armor.
- Reducing ship combat speed in ship_sizes to make the long range phase of engagements longer.
-No weapon should have 100% armor penetration (say 75% is the max) so that armor is never completely useless.

ad 1. Thought about it, but I agree with:

The problem with this is that then they edge out missiles as counters for ships with high evasion.

ad 2. Definitely worth trying
ad 3. Good point, atm in my mod only large plasma has 100% but I might go with something like 50-66-75% for S-M-L

 

[SwordOfJustice]

I'm really enjoying these changes. Is it OK if I incorporate them into my own mod later?

 

[P_aul]

Sure thing, I hereby give you my permission While playing with the mod I've managed to balance it way more, here's the steam version:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=697

I am also considering upping damage values across the board to make the battles faster, I'll try it in the next couple of days and if it works out better update the mod again

 

[SwordOfJustice]

Yeah, I subscribed on Steam and saw that you'd done more work compared to the version listed in this thread. There's a lot I like about this mod, including the fact that weapons gained from monsters are more unique and useful. I also like the changes to weapon sizes.

So far, the balance seems good, but I'll have to play it more and maybe even do some console testing to confirm that.

I'm making my own mod. So far, I've done ground combat changes. I'll roll in your mod for the space combat. I always wanted the weapons and defensive systems to be characterful, unique and to offer different choices for the player. I really like how you've made the weapon lines very different from each other.

 

[SwordOfJustice]

The mod is now missing from Steam. Could you upload it again, please?

 

[SwordOfJustice]

Sorry I found the mod on Steam. Maybe I accidentally unsubscribed or something.

 

[P_aul]

No, it's my fault, I had some problems figuring out how to upload and update it corectly and ended up with... 3-4 versions of the mod. Must've deleted the wrong one, not that I had many subs to begin with ^^'

 

[SwordOfJustice]

I just had the most magnificent battle I've had in Stellaris so far, thanks to your mod! It was glorious to watch at slow speed. Really like a battle from Babylon 5.

The various weapons operate very differently. I absolutely love it.

I notice that point defense is less effective in one way due to the ships spreading out, but it's very good to see some missiles get through. PD is still very effective and now there is a dynamic where you might want inbuilt PD on each ship class, rather than relying on other ships which might be too far away.

 

[P_aul]

Cool, glad you liked it. I also much prefer playing with my mod to vanilla version I've made so many smaller and larger changes that at some point some things became emergent, like less effective PD because ships spread out more and can't protect each other that well...

What I wish for (and have no idea how to mod myself, not even sure if it's possible) is giving ships "roles", as in a simple screen that would let you group your armada into different categories, kinda like CK2 lets you designate which part of your army is main force, which is wings etc. Instead I would like to be able to designate some ships as defenders, who stick to your largest units and protect them, riders/bombers that try to get to most dangerous enemies and eliminate them, skirmishers who try to target simmilarly sized ships etc. Unfortunetly I'm not proficient enough with modding to even know where to start with such a big change...

 

[Silverfish42]

I've been playing with a lot of combat balance myself, if anyone wants to have a look. In addition to the weapons themselves, I've increased tweaked armor and shields somewhat, and am attempting to give strike craft evasion, though I'm not sure if it's working or not.

This is mostly for myself, but I'd welcome feedback. You can tell I've increased weapon damage kind of across the board, as I feel like fights just take too damned long, but there's a lot of other balancing factors. I'm still trying to settle on which role I want each weapon type to have, and avoid a rock, paper, scissors system. Haven't really touched power use or mineral cost yet, though I did somewhat increase most reactor outputs.

 

[SwordOfJustice]

@Silverfish42
I like longer fights actually but I will test your changes when I get time though. Thanks for sharing your changes.

@P_aul
I'm reaching the end game in my playthrough using the mod and Disruptor weapons need a boost. They're just not attractive enough with such low raw Damage Per Day, despite the shield damage boost.

I'd suggest that each model have a consistent boost to shield damage across the different weapon sizes for each tier of the technology. So for the first Disruptor tech, you could have say 100% bonus damage vs shields, level two would be 150%, etc. The larger mounts can have extra range and damage to make the larger weapon size worthwhile. To make them balanced, they should have a medium damage output, comparable to some other weapons but not the most damaging or they'd be OP.

Something that brings down shields would be most useful at longer ranges I suppose. I was thinking the Disruptor could have something like a very high damage and decent range but very slow recycle time with a high boost to Shield damage. So you design a mixed weapon fleet so that ships with disruptors will be firing first to lower enemy shields then the other ships get in range with high DPD weapons.

Like I said, I want to make my own mod and I've started on it, so I can play with numbers in that. But it doesn't hurt to share the ideas. I have lots of ideas!

Anyway, I believe it is possible to mod ship behaviour using components. I've read it in at least one other mod. I'll try modding it when I get time.

 

[SwordOfJustice]

Actually, maybe disruptors do enough damage in the mod as is. I probably need to try out some different configurations using them. I notice they have longer range than plasma throwers.

 

[Silverfish42]

Actually, maybe disruptors do enough damage in the mod as is. I probably need to try out some different configurations using them. I notice they have longer range than plasma throwers.

I've been fiddling quite a bit seeking a balance I'm happy with. Here's the most up-to-date one. The big thing I'm still trying to figure out is ship behavior, so that they reach some kind of optimal firing range and begin their orbit there instead of continuing to advance.

Edit: and I still haven't done any power use/cost balancing.