Is the empire expanded mod reasonably balanced?

[prodigalmaster]

I usually stick to vanilla but am tempted to try out a mod or two. I feel like content mods, almost by nature, usually make the game far easier despite efforts to balance. That, and I don't really enjoy items or mechanics bloat that doesn't add too much to the experience.

Will the empire expanded mod make my game too much of a breeze? Also, are there any other vanilla-ish mods that add worthwhile enhancements without turning the game into easy mode?

[Balsover]

A few basic ones I like, that don't change too much.

Removes Tainted Clothes:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2006356192

Pick Up And Haul (will pick up multiple items before going to storage):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1279012058

Wall Light:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423699208


There are also quite a few that just add more hair styles, giving a more unique look to characters.

[The Blind One]

Vanilla Expanded used to be quite unbalanced in the past but they have made great strides in trying to tone down their mods and bringing them into line with vanilla in recent times and in my opinion even tend to be more balanced than the DLC that Tynan puts out. There's always bloat with Expanded but that's what you sign up for.

As for balance, you can go absolutely cheese the gene mechanics of biotech or the ideoligion system of ideology to make the game trivial in a lot of ways that are absolutely broken af.

I'd honestly say, just give Vanilla Expanded Empires a shot. It's obviously going to twist some of the vanilla balance but if you're interested in the playthrough potential of the Empires expanded, it's well worth it imho. You're not going to get an experience like it playing vanilla royalty and the expanded royalty mechanics will throw you new quests and new goals that will keep you entertained and challenged throughout your playthrough.

[Veylox]

You mean the vanilla faction expanded one ? It's fine for the most part, considering most of the strong parts of the mod are hidden behind the royalty quest, which is obnoxious and expensive (meaning you only get to see the good stuff if you shoot yourself in the foot anyway). I'd say the one noticeably strong item in it is the aperitif, because you get it in batches really early on and it completely negates mechanics that deal with digestive issues. Gut disease ? Drink an aperitif. Food poisoning ? Drink an aperitif. It's just a magical "get instantly healed" item that is too easy to obtain for how strong it is.

If you're down the VFE royalty rabbit hole, I definitely recommend VFE Deserters while you're at it, the quests in there are really good and challenging, and generally more interesting than the royalty mechanics.

These two won't make your game "easy mode" by themselves but do remember that although lots of mods like to call themselves "vanilla expanded", almost any item added to the game makes it at least slightly easier in some way, and vanilla expanded loves to add tons of stuff. For example vanilla mortars are the worst piece of useless junk I've ever seen in a game, and VFE Deserters makes them somewhat useable with the new shells. That alone could change how you approach fights entirely

[prodigalmaster]

Thanks, I'll try some some of these. VFE deserters and VFE royalty do sound fun.

Also, it's definitely true that vanilla has a fair share of exploits. I don't really mind those that only become possible in mid to late game, or are gated behind a lot of development. A decent storyteller on max difficulty still makes a playthrough challenging enough for me.

Stuff like the vanilla ideoligion research speed boost I refuse to even touch, though. No idea why it's even an option to begin with, let alone a free and ungated one, it's so OP I wouldn't even use it for roleplay purposes.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by prodigalmaster:

Stuff like the vanilla ideoligion research speed boost I refuse to even touch, though. No idea why it's even an option to begin with, let alone a free and ungated one, it's so OP I wouldn't even use it for roleplay purposes.

It's literally a cheat built into the ideology DLC. It would've made 'some' sense if it was gated behind transhumanism and human primacy or something but its a freebie (I think they honestly intended to gate it behind a proper meme but nobody complained about it being free enough so they never fixed it). There's absolutely no reason you would not pick it logically speaking that is ... if you were a filthy min maxer.

[Ishivas]

For a different perspective, I mostly play vanilla with cosmetic mods. I tried VE mods in the past, but I found that they tend to be unbalanced, buggy and add a lot of bloat. So proceed with caution.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Ishivas:

For a different perspective, I mostly play vanilla with cosmetic mods. I tried VE mods in the past, but I found that they tend to be unbalanced, buggy and add a lot of bloat. So proceed with caution.

They rebalanced a lot of their mods in the 1.4 update sweep. I can honestly say that they are quite balanced at the moment. Many of the broken elements have been nerfed way down. Vanilla Psycasters Expanded had a power nerf of I'm not kidding about 400% to 1200% depending on the path, which I think shows not only how OP that module was but also in how dedicated they were to nerf it into a balanced state. I haven't found many if any bugs either but it highly depends on the module you are running ofc.

[Veylox]

I don't know when vanilla psycasts expanded was nerfed exactly but it's safe to say it was one of the most unbalanced mods of the VE series a few months back. Some powers are just strong enough to make your entire game plan revolve around them. It's still more reasonable than stuff like Rimworld of magic, but the possibilities it gives the player will always make this mod a game changer compared to vanilla

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Veylox:

I don't know when vanilla psycasts expanded was nerfed exactly but it's safe to say it was one of the most unbalanced mods of the VE series a few months back. Some powers are just strong enough to make your entire game plan revolve around them. It's still more reasonable than stuff like Rimworld of magic, but the possibilities it gives the player will always make this mod a game changer compared to vanilla

Ofc, however one must realize the royalty DLC itself is quite OP as well. Some of the basegame psycasts could quickly turn enemy raids into whiffs by basically incapacitating them.

Blinding Pulse, level 2 psycast basically halves an enemy raid's accuracy of hitting you.

Beckon, level 3 psycast, instantly call a vulnerable or dangerous enemy towards you which they cannot resist. (use it on rocket or doomsday boys for example)

Vertigo Pulse, level 3 psycast causes raiders to uncontrollably vomit and become useless for periods during the raid further debilitating them.

Berserk and Berserk Pulse, level 5-6 psycast allows you to cause a single or a group of enemies to go mad and attack their own allies, Incredibly powerful.

There are a few other psycasts that can be incredibly useful but for the sake of brevity I've kept them out of this list.

Vanilla Expanded has done a great job in the recent rework to try and remain within these same balance lines roughly. Many paths are weaker or merely situationally better.

[Leosky]

The problems with Vanillia Expanded mod is the added economy of energy of each one. The worst in the line is Psycast expanded, its... full of overpowered psycasts and if you add weapons expanded, its stupid easy and uninteresting. The most balanced ones are the factions because they mostly add layers of difficulty without adding too much next of it.

If you want to play Vanilla expanded serie mod, just avoid armors, weapons, furnitures (sad cause it add variety) and above everything psycasts. Ancient add some way too op structures saddly. Power generation related things are a bit too strong for too few effort (chemfuel and advanced power). And try to avoid custom genelines at the start, somes races mod add genes that can allow you to make too strong pawn at start.

When i talk of economy of energy, i talk about furniture making you rest faster, research faster, gather easily and repair thing that make craft durable. That spare a lot of time in your colony so you remove lots of the effort needed to achieve things.

(sorry for my bad english)

[MadArtillery]

Honestly stick with Rimsenal stuff for more balanced things, (except their factions ugh). If anything they tend to aim a bit safe with on the lower end of stats. Heard so many bad things about Vanilla expanded bloat and balance and just looking at most of their mods the list of added things is too long for me to ever want to put them in. Could really do with splitting many of them up into chunks.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Leosky:

If you want to play Vanilla expanded serie mod, just avoid armors, weapons, furnitures (sad cause it add variety) and above everything psycasts.

Have you actually played with the expanded mod series since their rebalance sweep?

They honestly did a terrific job and cracked down hard on anything OP since their rebalance patches. I don't think it is fair anymore to discard most of these mods as unbalanced, especially if you haven't used them since their rebalance. Bloat? Definitely but it's expansive which is what the series is going for but I wouldn't call it unbalanced anymore.

And try to avoid custom genelines at the start, somes races mod add genes that can allow you to make too strong pawn at start.

The base game allows you to ignore gene restrictions and openly experiment with archite genes. Nothing of the biotech DLC is really balanced either in the hands of a player.

[prodigalmaster]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

The base game allows you to ignore gene restrictions and openly experiment with archite genes. Nothing of the biotech DLC is really balanced either in the hands of a player.

Avoiding gene restrictions is a voluntary opt-out left to the player, though, wouldn't really say it invalidates attempts at balancing in the first place. Just leaves the option to make something completely broken for fun, and that's fine.

Lower difficulty levels serve a similar purpose.

[Veylox]

The basegame allows you to remove raids entirely too, that's not the same thing as saying it's balanced around it. Playing with custom genes is like having the faster research thing in ideology, it's not "base game logic" it's just "here have a cheat that's easier to enable"

[MadArtillery]

If you remove restrictions sure but genes in general they actually did a pretty good job on balance wise. It's hard to make an ideology that isn't just cheats to make the game easier without a lot of active effort but you always pay a price for starting genes. Ideology almost completely lacks any checks and balances and entire memes are even pointless because they don't even actually do anything base precepts don't. Truly a half assed lazy system and the worst part of the ideology dlc, and yes I unironically believe the ideology system is the worst part of the dlc. The two really aren't comparable at all because they actually put effort to do things like balance cost vs reward for genes.

But if I recall from our last conversation about genes you just don't even use genes for anything at all so not sure why you always have such strong opinions about them.