What are good Enemy Faction Mods?

[Neonivek]

Personally I like to experience a lot of varied enemies in this game but finding good mods for this task is rather difficult.

I have Rimsenal (I like both the Ferals and Federation) and Medieval (Honestly I think I play this more for the Enemy Factions).

Yet I'd like a bit more.

My preference beyond being good, is that they not be more difficult than Mechanoids, and not rely on exploits (like Glittertech's Flame guns). A lot of mods want to be "special" and ramp up their difficulty to insane levels.

[SuperBritishQuokka]

Which did you already tried?

[Neonivek]

Outside what I said? (I am going to exclude factions that have no changes)

-The Starwars mod series, which has always caused problems and glitches, as well as being badly balanced... So I am thinking of getting rid of it.

-Harrowed Light but I haven't gotten more than their first waves to appear. They look awesome though.

-I tried and deleted the RimGate mods, mostly because the creator for SOME reason never put proper pricing on their gear.

-Glitter Tech which I highly dislike.

-I put in the USCM series, but outside a trade ship and a single attack I haven't got to use them. I'll probably get rid of the Aliens because their art is rather poor.

-Zinpaku Mod's Samurai enemy faction addon, but I haven't tested it.

-Tiberium Mod: Which I'll be getting rid of because it is too overbearing.

-Rim of Madness series: I kind of like this, but it is a BIT overbearing, they spawn extremely often, and has so many annoying elements. It is on the cusp of what I will tollerate.

What is Overbearing: When a mod sort of takes over the game. The best extreme example is the Zombie Apocalypse mod. Played the heck out of it, but eventually it worn out its welcome. Single bites infect you, zombies stay on the field endlessly, the waves are constant, you have to spend a ton of time making sure they don't get back up.
-It is a good mod, but my saying is: "If you don't love zombies, this mod will make you hate them"

[SuperBritishQuokka]

Well okay then I can't suggest one. I think the tyranids of the Astra Militarum (faction) mod was a decent challenge.. if you have the core mod. And if you don't like Tiberium mod I don't think you would like it too. Tyranids are so strong, you need the equipment of the core mod. Then it's a decent challenge imo, but I don't want to face them without x_X.
I guess the ctuhlhu is part of Rim of Madness. I think you played most of it what I used. Maybe try multiple raids to spice things up if you can't find a faction mod for you

[Neonivek]

The Tiberium mod was only an issue because slowly over time your entire map gets covered in tiberium, killing off the local population with there being no REAL way to fight against it.

[SuperBritishQuokka]

with the faction mod, you have a real way to fight it. using sonic emitters or how it is called and destroy the spreading tiberium. cover the main source and you're fine.

[Drackmore]

Neonivek původně napsal:

-Glitter Tech which I highly dislike.

What about Glittertech do you not like exactly? Personally I quite hate those annoying as hell commandos with the APB rifles that light you on fire but I find them to be quite an easy fight if you use shielded melee units to go up and poke them with a stick alternatively, shields plus a 155m cannon from Turret Collection deals with them quite nicely

Neonivek původně napsal:

-I put in the USCM series, but outside a trade ship and a single attack I haven't got to use them. I'll probably get rid of the Aliens because their art is rather poor.

Well, I don't know about the USCM mod but if you like the trade ship and attacks you could look in to getting Mining Co. mod. It adds a single bit of research and two buildings for getting access to an orbital dropship that offers two types of traders, a medbay, and a host of summonable attack ships (all at a cost of course). And a few random events as well.

Neonivek původně napsal:

-Rim of Madness series: I kind of like this, but it is a BIT overbearing, they spawn extremely often, and has so many annoying elements. It is on the cusp of what I will tollerate.

Really? I find them to be quite an easy thing to deal with and are a FAR funner encounter to deal with than a siege or some other crap (unless you meant something like a manhunter pack of Spider Queens cause ♥♥♥♥ that noise.). If they're attacking to often you can lower the rate of their attacks from the mod options menu. I know I set mine up from 30 to 90 days.

[Neonivek]

Ok I'll get into it

1st one, Why I dislike glittertech
-It takes far too long to really explore or take advantage of anything: To an extent I understand this, Glittertech is meant to be "Beyond the End game" content, yet everything is such a chore to make yourself that I resorted to just buying everything. Imagine if Components were 5 times worse and required 5 other just as time intensive mini-components to make.
-The content suffers from the "If it takes that much more work, of course it should be that much more powerful" mistake. Some of the things are FAR too powerful and unbalanced. Do you want to saturation bomb and area? Well now you can!
-The enemies provided are between "Waaay too powerful" and "you need to abuse the system". Yet the interesting part is that the soldiers are based on an exploit. Their guns create fire, which causes people to panic. Essentially if you install Glittertech you are against these guys! Not the mechanoids, not the tribes, not anyone else... you are specifically against Orion! Also I hope you don't have an ENTIRE encounter of nothing but the tanks!

2nd
-I own Mining Co. It is interesting.

3rd
-Let me run down a scenario: A Dark Young spawns on the map, you remember where it is, you kill it, now you need to deal with the initial insanity, ohh and the meat you can't just leave the meat laying out there, and now you need to ban the animals from where you store this meat. You will probably have 6 more Dark Young spawns, in a row.

That is just Dark Young. Some of it is fine, but as I said it is on the cusp of being too overbearing. I am not talking about "Fun" or how "Difficult" things are... let me put it this way.

Overbearing is how much a mod takes over your gameplay. The Zombie infestation mod, for example, requires you to pay attention for zombies at all times and completely rearrange how you play the game entirely for these infestations.

[SuperBritishQuokka]

you know, you can just cremated Dark Youngs and..... right at this moment Visitors left me Dark young meat-.-
Anyways. If you don't have the tech yet you can use the medieval times mod for a medieval cremetation, but I know what you means. funny enough Dark Young events occurs only rare. Don't know why. Rimworld is just strange past 7 year mark to me

[Surmene]

I find this one very enjoyable. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=732569232 A world can have the addition of two medieval factions to trade with and a warband faction similar to the pirate faction. Also the item content helps bridge the gap before you can start crafting guns.

[SuperBritishQuokka]

Oh I totally forget, that they add factions. But beware the piraten-medieval-faction likes to overwhelm you with numbers and shieldbelts

[Drackmore]

First, no, you're not dealing with Orion Corp. You're dealing with Commandos who are a faction unto themselves. Orion Corp are annoying but they use tanks not APB rifles and god help you when the commandos start using the APB Projector.

I find a great way to reduce the annoyances of glittertech is to use Project Rimfactory, Industrial Rollers, and Quantum Storage. Those three mods combined allows you to (after a good bit of research and a high enough crafting skill) to create a fairly great autocrafting setup that can deal with a fair bit of crafting (also does hauling and Quantum storage is amazing for sorting your storage room).

As for dealing with the Commandos themselves, honestly you should be able to deal with them fairly easily, before they spawn for the first time you should be advanced enough to have an cluster mortar or at the very least a decent enough killbox. If you're not against other mods then you could look in to Shield Generators. These massive energy hogs will drain your batteries like a fat guy through tacos but make dealing with anything short of a doomsday launcher a cinch (or an army of tribals with swords). The shield is great for stopping bullets and allowing you to fire back. Sadly it does not block explosions or fires so mechanoid with incendiary launchers are an issue and the minigun variants will drain your batteries in a heartbeat.

2nd-Glad you like Mining Co. Just curious but does the game lose tons of FPS when you place the landing pad? Mine does and I had to modify the mod to disable those lights to get it to run at a reasonable speed even on fresh worlds.

3rd- Incinerate the stuff, otherwise just blacklist it in your food storage pile. The stuff is listed under Raw Strange Meat, and the default meals cannot use the meat for Meals unless you manually tell it to make Strange Meals or Strange Kibble.

Personally, I find killing and disposing of Dark Youngs to easy my only issue is when they choose to hunt one of my people when they're surrounded by elk and I'm not given a warning till one of my people are half dead.

Otherwise they're easy to deal with and easy to clean, sure the sanity dip sorta hurts if you're teetering on the edge of a break and dealing with Star Vampires is nothing short of a pain in the ass (the -40 mood nuke doesn't help) but otherwise that insanity does help with a small boost to your work speed once you get past initial.

Otherwise you could look in to getting Arachnophobia. It adds a small handful of different spiders. It doesn't have raids and the worst event it adds is "Spiders" and that just lets you know a new group has entered the map. They can even be tamed or farmed for spider silk. Otherwise they work fairly similar to Dark youngs just without the sanity and mood debuff.

[Astasia]

@OP. I'm right there with you and agree with most of what you've said. Some of the "overbearing" factions can be fun at times, but dealing with them every single game can be tiring and they often don't mesh well with other mods you might be using. Sadly I think you've already found the best options. The Rimsenal factions are really well done and well balanced and fit in with almost every playthrough, and the Medieval factions do a decent job of creating something that's between the base game tribals and pirates. I don't know of any other faction mods that are as seemless or as interesting as those.

[Drackmore]

bearhiderug původně napsal:

Drackmore původně napsal:

2nd-Glad you like Mining Co. Just curious but does the game lose tons of FPS when you place the landing pad? Mine does and I had to modify the mod to disable those lights to get it to run at a reasonable speed even on fresh worlds..

Could you explain how you did that? I would appreciate an explanation like you would to an infant. Not sarcastic, simply that would be easier for me =D

Go to Steam Library /Steam Apps /Workshop /Content /Random Numbers (was 294100 for me) /More Random Numbers (was 1221668621 for me) /Defs /Thing Defs/

once there you will need to delete Building_LandingPadBeacon.xml and that should remove the flashing beacons.

Naturally, before making any changes I'd make a back up of the folder and what not.

Alternatively you can search for "Building_LandingPadBeacon.xml" and delete that.

This removes just the flashing lights of the landing pad and for me this saw, literally no joke, double fps gains allowing me to keep it turned on instead of toggling it on for when I needed it. Which you kinda need to keep it on so you can have the random events trigger.

bearhiderug původně napsal:

Drackmore původně napsal:

Otherwise you could look in to getting Arachnophobia. It adds a small handful of different spiders. It doesn't have raids and the worst event it adds is "Spiders" and that just lets you know a new group has entered the map. They can even be tamed or farmed for spider silk. Otherwise they work fairly similar to Dark youngs just without the sanity and mood debuff.

To be clear for others, that is a seperate mod then the on I listed.

Yes, Arachnophobia is its own mod however it is a part of the Rim of Madness series along with Vampires and werewolves which is why I felt like suggesting it since it was so similar to the Dark Youngs just not AS overbearing as them.

[Drackmore]

bearhiderug původně napsal:

Thankyou. I am going to be entering my fourth year soon. needless to say when ever i drop below 30 fps I try to "alleviate" some of it lol. It usualy starts with my barn animals. then wild animal/plants. then prisoners. So your file removal will save one of the afore mentioned =D for awhile lol

How many colonists do you use and what map size? I find that keeping seven or eight pawns on the smallest map size works quite well in keeping 30-ish fps at double speed in the later years. I also find that area restrictions also can negatively impact performance as well. As for keeping animals, honestly imo, I find that the only animals worth keeping is either a few pigs to haul crap or a boomalope or two for chemfuel but never to many animals. I've also heard that filth can also negatively impact performance but I do not know the validity of such claims.

[Astasia]

I find area restrictions generally improve performance rather than negatively impact it. It reduces the area a pawn scans for new jobs which can help a lot. Like if I have a lot of hauling animals and I'm not using them, I restrict them to the barn area, while they are in the barn the game runs a lot faster than when I unrestrict them and let them all out to haul.

It's possible if you have a large complex base and restrict a certain section it might force pawns to take a longer route around it which could reduce performance. It's more a pathfinding issue than an area issue though, and only works in areas with doors because otherwise pawns don't factor in areas when determining their path.

As for wires, I'm sure they have some impact, but I don't think it's ever going to be noticeable. The only buildable objects that really do anything noticeable to performance are lights and turrets. Sometimes heaters/coolers if they are working a really large area. The worst offender I have ever seen are LED strip lights, from several mods, using them all over a large base for walkways and such can drop frames in half.