[MOD] Expanded Ship Components

[Grakl]

I was a little surprised to see that there's not a whole lot of ship configuration outside of weapons. To remedy this I started a mod to expand the options for the ship components.

Currently the mod contains 5 lvls of upgraded reactors. I plan on expanding the mod to include new Engines, Radars, Drives...etc. Potentially some with differing bonuses / penalties. (ex: cheaper vs. powerful).

The technology to research the new "rare" reactors is tied to a MTTH event and the reactor's themselves are a rough +20% output. Ultimately I'm going to tie it to something a little more fluffy like an anomaly scan or a quest line. There's something intriguing about traveling the galaxy looking for lost technology. Hopefully this is a simple step towards that.

Thanks and good luck!

Steam Workshop

-- Completed
1) Reactors
2) Sensors

-- Up Next
1) Thrusters
2) Drives

-- Future
1) Improved fluff and events

Version: 1.0.1
- Added new Sensor event, research, and components.

Version: 1.0.0
- Added new Engine event, research, and components.

--

Edit: Oh dear Cthulhu, just noticed I named my mod different than I thought. It was 1 am when I finally got it shipped up to Steam ><. Well I feel sheepish.

 

[Ventessel]

Cool idea! I felt that the components were a little shallow as well.

 

[Grakl]

New version up on steam. I added an event and research to support the new upgraded sensors.

TIL, sensors have a hidden +accuracy in the files. Whether or not that applies to the ingame calculations...who knows. It doesn't appear to be listed anywhere in the stats (tooltip or summary).

 

[daz96050]

It doesn't show up, but as of right now, it's useless. after the first sensor, each additional adds "200%" accuracy, however, accuracy maxes out at 100, so changing values to add more than 2 would be pointless

 

[Grakl]

Ahh, thanks for the heads up. That's a bummer, seemed like a good opportunity to add a little more options / complexity to the builder. Oh well, hopefully it gets patched in...mayhaps to combat swarm evasion corvettes.

 

[DragonRB]

Possibly stupid question, if you don't mind... how did you edit the component icons? Photoshop refuses to open them cleanly with the nVidia plugins, and even if it did it won't save them due to their odd size (58x58). I must be missing something painfully obvious here.

 

[daz96050]

You can save them in photoshop as PNG images, then use Paint.net to resize them, then change them to a DDS image. That's how I do mine

 

[daz96050]

You can also open them using Paint.net, but editing is quite bothersome since you're essentially making a pixel photo

 

[Grakl]

Like Daz said, I also use Paint.NET to open the .DDS images and make my changes there. But I'm cheap and don't have a photoshop license.

 

[Ventessel]

GIMP works as well, you just need the .dds plugin

 

[TaliesinSkye]

I have some component suggestions and suggested modifiers to go along with them, although it's all very speculative. The core idea I'm working from is to add many more meaningful choices to the ship design process.


Sublight Engines
Small engine - Lower power consumption, lower speed, lower mineral cost.
Standard Engine
Large engine - More power consumption, higher speed, higher mineral cost.
Huge engine - Even more power consumption and even higher speed and mineral cost.
Armored Engine - Raise armor, raise mineral costs, slightly lower speed.
High Reliability Engine - Slightly lower speed, lower ship maintenance costs.

Reactors
Armored Reactor - More ship armor, lower ship speed, higher mineral cost.
Standard Reactor
Large Reactor - More power, lower ship HP.
High Reliability Reactor - Slightly lower power, lower maintenance costs.

Weapons
Armored variant - More ship armor, higher mineral cost, slightly lower ship sublight speed.
High Reliability variant - Slightly lower damage, lower ship maintenance cost.
Sniper variant - Longer range, higher accuracy, lower fire rate.
Point Defense variant - Replace point defense techs and modules with standard weapons repurposed as point defense for more variety. Faster fire rate, higher accuracy, shorter range, lower damage.
Fast Missile variant - Much shorter travel time to target for missile type weapons, lower damage. A way to make point defense somewhat less effective, since it doesn't appear to be possible to add HP to missiles themselves.
Swarm Missile variant - Another anti-point defense choice, improves missile fire rate and lowers damage.


Radars
Small Radar - Lower power cost, lower mineral cost, lower range, slightly higher ship speed.
Standard Radar
Large Radar - Higher power cost, higher mineral cost, higher range, slightly higher accuracy.
Huge Radar - Even higher power cost, even higher mineral cost, even greater range, more accuracy bonus, slightly slower ship speed.
Armored Radar - Higher ship armor, higher mineral cost, slightly slower ship sublight speed.
High Reliability Radar - Slightly lower range, lower ship maintenance cost.

FTL Drives
Small Drive - Lower power cost, lower mineral cost, longer windup and wind down times, for warp shorter range. Faster sublight speed.
Standard Drive
Large Drive - Higher power cost, higher power cost, shorter windup and wind down times, for warp longer range, slightly slower sublight speed, higher mineral cost.
Huge Drive - As large drive but more extreme.
Armored Drive - Higher ship armor, higher mineral cost, slightly slower sublight speed.
High Reliability Drive - Slightly longer windup and wind down times, lower ship maintenance costs.

 

[Grakl]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look to see what I can implement. I haven't read through the Engine or Drive files yet to see what's available but I'm planning on getting them next. The components I added so far are a blanket 20% improvement to their basic functionality. It will be nice to add some more variability and options.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Yeah, I think the key to creating good gameplay is creating interesting choices. That means lots of tradeoffs and choices that aren't always clearly better or worse than one other.