[MOD] Twinge's Balance Mod (Current Version: 6.3.1) (Old)

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featherwings
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Re: [MOD][WIP][New Release] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.4 Beta)

Postby featherwings » Tue May 14, 2013 10:07 pm

One final thought about teleporter balance: if you do lower the number of crewmembers you randomly find, that's an additional cost to using the teleporter. Especially for the non-boarding oriented ships; teleporter is a bit lacking without mantis/rock crewmembers and if you have to buy even one that puts the price at 120 (non-adjusted) / 130 (adjusted).

Also means you better be dang good at boarding because if you lose a pair there goes your strategy. Instead of lowering the reward considerably, just hike up the risk a bit?
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Twinge
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Re: [MOD][WIP][New Release] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5 Beta)

Postby Twinge » Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:06 am

Balance Mod has been updated to version 0.5.0. Full changelist from 0.4.0 can be found here: http://www.it-is-law.com/ftl-balance/in ... 8&oldid=24

Mod files: GMM File, Raw Data File

Summary of notable changes:
* DA-SR 12 starts with System Casing and 1 more power (and 1 less in Sensors)
* Bulwark gets a couple extra missiles
* Nisos now has a heavier focus on the Artillery Beam, and isn't quite as clearly worse than The Osprey
* The Stormwalker gets a couple extra missiles and a better Medbay location
* Engine costs increased at lower levels, further reduces at higher levels
* Shield buffers cheaper, shield bubbles cost similar
* Missile Weapons have their prices reduces across the board (Hermes power req. back up to 3)
* Racial augment sell prices reduces to encourage their use
* Globally reduced the odds of free crew from events a little bit
* Reduced the average reward from killing enemy crew some
* Further reduced the odds of losing crew to giant alien spiders or quarantine
* The Automated Assault ship class will no longer appear in sector 1
* The Rock Assault you fight to unlock the Rock Cruiser is now more resistant to fire damage, so it will die to fire much less often
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Twinge
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Re: [MOD] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby Twinge » Wed Jun 26, 2013 3:56 am

Version 0.5.3 posted: GMM File, Raw Data File

* Auto-Scouts that don't have shields past sector 2 now have System Casing. (Some Auto-Scouts in later sectors may have both Shields and System Casing.)
* Fixed the visuals on several ships so there aren't doors going through systems.
* Further reduced income from killing the enemy crew slightly.
* Made rescuing the Madman actually worth considering (and added a special rare outcome to that event).
* Increased the volume of the low health warning sound.
* Fixed 3 events that were not randomizing properly.
* Reduced the price for Heavy Laser 2.
* Further reduced the price for Advanced FTL Navigation.
* Misc. other tweaks.
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JTF
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Re: [MOD][Updated] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby JTF » Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:00 pm

Hey, Twinge.

I ran this through an XML validator, The python parse checker in GMM and there seems to be a lot of code to be fixed, is it okay to run nontheless?
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Twinge
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Re: [MOD][Updated] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby Twinge » Sun Jun 30, 2013 8:52 am

JTF wrote:Hey, Twinge.

I ran this through an XML validator, The python parse checker in GMM and there seems to be a lot of code to be fixed, is it okay to run nontheless?


I've been running it fine without problems (I use the raw data version, but I know people that have run the GMM version without issues as well. Definitely let me know if you actually encounter any issues, though.

As far as XML errors - there's quite a lot of them in the base game and I actually fix some of them in the mod :P Surely plenty I haven't fixed and possibly some I've added, though.
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JTF
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Re: [MOD][Updated] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby JTF » Sun Jun 30, 2013 2:38 pm

Twinge wrote:
JTF wrote:Hey, Twinge.

I ran this through an XML validator, The python parse checker in GMM and there seems to be a lot of code to be fixed, is it okay to run nontheless?


I've been running it fine without problems (I use the raw data version, but I know people that have run the GMM version without issues as well. Definitely let me know if you actually encounter any issues, though.

As far as XML errors - there's quite a lot of them in the base game and I actually fix some of them in the mod :P Surely plenty I haven't fixed and possibly some I've added, though.


Aye I thought that would be the case. Looked at the game code the other day and thought "What the hell, there are so many erros!", that's the price they pay not having more people to optimise the code, I guess.

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Re: [MOD][Updated] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby Spock » Wed Jul 17, 2013 5:35 pm

Hi Twinge,

From my limited playthroughs of this game I noticed some more things that need tweaking imho:

Burst lasers are by far the best laser in the game. Because mostly every opponent's best defense are shields, I prefer having 3 shots at 1 damage each to having 2 shots at 2 damage each. I tried other strategies but always came back to burst lasers+shield disabling weapon (Missile/Bomb/Ion). To keep the Burst Laser ships' early game I'd suggest tweaking them to power=number of shots and adding weapon system power.
Burst Laser Mk I: 2 Power, 2 Shots
Burst Laser Mk II: 3 Power, 3 Shots (add one to weapon systems for Kestryl and Osprey)
Burst Laser Mk III: 4 Power, 4 Shots

Aside from not having found defense drones, opponents equipped with burst lasers (or bombs, or multiple ion weapons) are the most dangerous imho.

I'd generally suggest reducing the cool down for heavier weapons. Weapon slots never were a limiting factor for me, weapon system power was. It's easy enough to find/buy multiple weapons and the smaller ones have much better DPS, fire faster (and thus first) and cost much less scrap to get the system power for. The shield disadvantage can be minimized by volley control.

Is this mod compatible with FTL captains edition?
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Twinge
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Re: [MOD][Updated] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby Twinge » Wed Jul 17, 2013 8:18 pm

I think I'd rather keep the Burst Laser II powerful - it's fine (and even good) if the weapons aren't perfectly line with each other as long as everything can be useful. As you may have seen my current approach was to increase the BL2's cooldown slightly and increase the cost making it less of an auto-buy when found at stores. And BL3 is a little weak currently if anything - definitely wouldn't want to drop their power requirement without massively dropping the cooldown too.

As for weapon slots - this is reasonably true for the ships that have 4 weapon slots, but they are a solidly limiting factor for weapons with only 3 weapon slots. For example, Burst Laser III starts looking better on The Nesasio than it does on the Kestrel.

I've reduced the cooldown for most missiles slightly. I suppose the main other things to consider dropping the cooldown on would be the Burst Laser III and the Glaive Beam; I'm currently uncertain how good of an idea this is. BL3 is obviously MUCH worse than two BL2s for example, but still halfway decent. I could try dropping a second on each.

I'm trying to avoid buffing weaponry too much across the board, because the intent is not to make the game easier overall. There is still some potential tweaking that can be done though; just a matter of figuring out the best way to go about it.


As for mod compatibility: not really, no. The Balance Mod is currently not very compatible with other mods, except for pure graphical updates (such as HD Backgrounds). I could change the files to increase compatibility somewhat, but I'm not certain I see good reason to; most other mods (such as the one you mentioned) tend to add a ton of new overpowered weaponry for the player to use which defeats the purpose of using the Balance Mod anyway.

Additionally, it's so extensive and changes so many files that there would likely be conflicts anyway even if I did set things up for compatibility. (Basically, it's a fair bit of work for what I see as little gain; if people can convince me otherwise I could reconsider.) That said, if you want to try it, make sure you set the Balance Mod to load first.
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slowriderxcorps
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Re: [MOD][Updated] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby slowriderxcorps » Thu Jul 18, 2013 7:30 am

In terms of making this thing compatible with anything else, the two things to do would be to either make sure it is installed first before anything else, or to turn every file inside the mod to a .xml.append so that the Mod Manager bolts on all the little alterations instead of outright hardwiring the entire infrastructure. While not so important in this day and age, another fringe benefit of running append files with only the altered events and such in them is that you end up shrinking down the overall mass of the mod into something a little more manageable (as well as easier for others to track down exactly what has been changed. I, personally, would love to find out all of those little things that were fiddled with in the quests and utilise them in some way).
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Twinge
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Re: [MOD][Updated] Twinge's Balance Mod (v0.5.3 Beta)

Postby Twinge » Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:48 pm

This biggest issue there is that I really don't have a good way to manage and maintain that set up - I make small changes on about a daily basis and trying to manage it all in a bunch of append files would be a ton of extra work.

Here's probably the two most important files compared:
Blueprints: http://diffchecker.com/h6vt5c56
Events: http://diffchecker.com/ou7x5ova

As you can see, there's literally hundreds of changes in only these two files.
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