Rebalanced Ships Mod - download available

This mod attempts to make capital ships more interesting. While in the original game capital ships are fairly mediocre, and relatively easily destroyed, in this mod capital ships are completely rebalanced to be true centerpieces of you fleet. But that is not all, basically every ship has been adjusted to better fit this new concept, in addition to slight visual changes.


v.1.0
Capital Ship changes:
- All capital ships have been greatly improved. They have more health, shields, and do more damage.
- All capital ships have been increased in price and build-time, to compensate.
- All capital ship abilities have been scaled.
- Capital ships have been made more unique. Battleships are stronger/more survivable in direct combat then other capital ships, but cost slightly more. Many capitals carry strikecraft.
- Carriers carry alot of strikcraft and now truly are carriers.

- Massive change to the Vasari Jarrasul Mothership. Its is the most expensive ship, being over twice as expensive as other capitals. For that, it is the most survivable ship in the game, and will need serious opposition in order to be taken down. However, although its weapons outclass anything but a Battleship, the damage has not scaled well with its cost, making it slightly undergunned. However, the biggest boon is its Drain Planet ability which has been significantly changed, and can now erradicate all but the most heavily fortified planets.
However, since it is not possible to remove it from the option to build it for free as your first capital, players should not build it as their free choice. The ship has been given 4 times as much fleet upkeep to prevent the AI from creating it as their first ship.

Strikecraft changes:
- All bombers and fighters changed to do more damage
- Bombers do extra damage to Capital ships. Bombers will be the best way of crippling enemy Capitals.
- All fighters and bombers have greatly reduced health.

Cruiser changes:
- All heavy cruisers have been rebalanced to be the bridge between capital ships and frigates/other cruisers. A pack of them can do more damage then most capital ships, making them very capable as Capital hunters. This includes pirate heavy cruisers.
- Increased health, shields and damage
- Increased cost
- Carriers carry more strikecraft.

Misc. changes:
- All shields regenerate significantly faster, depending on shipclass.
- All frigates and cruisers do slightly more damage.
- All defense platforms are now more effective against capitals, damage and range increased.
- All scouts now auto-explore when build.
- Hangars spawn more strikecraft.
- Many weapon effects changed, from the effect of certain main weapons looking more impressing, to faster firing battery weapons.
- Phase Jump Inhibitors now affect the entire gravity zone.
- Debris from destroyed ships and structures now stays on the map for an extended duration.


I have tested it numerous times, and found no bugs. Should you by any chance stumble upon one, please make a post here so I can fix it.

In additon, I've playtested it numerous times but obviously cannot remove every imbalance there might be. Should you find anything you feel really ruins the mod then please post it here. Note however that I made several changes not directly notable. Certain ships may seem to have too much firepower, but are balanced by having reduced range for example, while others seem undergunned but are compensated with greater speed or more strikecraft.


Download link:

Edit: File is corrupt. I'll uload a new one as soon as possible.
Edit2: Solved!

New download link:

http://www.savefile.com/files/1396621

Note: should you get a strange error with the Black Market, resulting in selling stuff costing you -214314235327 credits, while buying stuff is free, then make sure to turn the "activate this mod on startup" button to off.

8,658 views 10 replies
Reply #1 Top
Looks great ill give a try right away, been testing Born of a Galactic Empire 0.21 and Sins Enhancement Mod v1.52, so i'll see how this one holds up to the two others :)

keep up the work.

Golgotham
Reply #2 Top
how do you make the a with 2 dots over it? lol hate megaupload as they want you to enter funky codes to download off there site :(
Reply #3 Top
I found that somehow the mod had been corrupted (probably when zipping it), it will probably give you an error if you try to run it in the game. I'm updating the download link, it should work fine in a moment. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Mod instructions: Unrar the folder, then place it within your Sins of a Solar Empire mods folder (Vista users go: username> appData> Local > Ironclad Games > Sins of a Solar Empire > Mods )

how do you make the a with 2 dots over it? lol hate megaupload as they want you to enter funky codes to download off there site
End of quote



I'll add another download link for you :)
Reply #4 Top
Right, its working now :)
Reply #5 Top
As far as the free capital ship, there is a global flag (IsFirstCapitalShipFree, I think) in one of the entity files. I want to say it's in gameplay.constants, but it might be in the galaxy scenarioDef file too. Doesn't let you specify which ships are free and which aren't, but you can set it to FALSE and then adjust starting credits accordingly to compensate.

Just an idea, not sure if you knew/considered it already :)
Reply #6 Top
Ah good to know, I'll look into it. Thanks.
Reply #7 Top
how do you install the mod? Paste it over the original GameInfo folder?
Reply #8 Top
No no, you put it in the Mods folder in your user path :)

Vista:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\

XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\

If you don't see these, make sure you turned on "view hidden" ;) Then you launch the game, clicky single player > mods and enable it from there!
Reply #9 Top
so thats where all the screen shots kept going! into application data under Local settings!
Reply #10 Top
so thats where all the screen shots kept going! into application data under Local settings!
End of quote


Which is perhaps the craziest place to stick user modifiable and retrievable content. It's better than putting it in the Game directory, but why on earth put it in a hidden folder?! I keep hoping that somewhere along the way they add a little logic to allow those to be redirected to a much saner place.