questions about how certain mods work and some other suggestions and questions

[```skunk3```]

1. Absorption. It doesn't feel like this mod does all that much in practice. I dunno, maybe buff the plating from +3 to +5?

2. Barrier. This is already an indispensable mod but I feel like it could be slightly better. Instead of limiting damage to 25, maybe buff it to 20 so shields feel more robust?

3. Adaptive Armor / Channeling. It would be nice if there was some sort of visual cue letting me know that it is processing. As of now, I don't really feel much of a difference between having these mods and not having them. I would like to see their effects visually represented on screen more, and also offer more of a benefit. Also, the wording is kinda unclear. Does these grant hull damage resistance or total damage resistance? Also, they decay after 2 seconds. It would be nice if they lasted a bit longer.

4. How and what the effect of projectile size is tends to be very vague. Do larger projectiles by default deal increased damage? Do they by default have larger blasts?

5. Deadly Wake. Fairly useless IMO. It needs to either deal more damage, or have a wider/longer trail, or both. I personally haven't felt any sort of benefit from taking it and usually only snag it as a requirement for Warp Strike.

6. Dying Star. The self-damage is too high IMO. Even if using Firefly and taking mods to reduce self-damage, it's still so punishing.

7. Bravado / Evolutionary Niche. I feel like I know the answer to this, but to be clear, what *exactly* are body gear unique powers, and which ones of them get improved? For example, what if you have a ship ability that isn't measured by numbers? Are they improved as well? If you had Engineer as your ship and took Evolutionary Niche 10x, would that mean that your construct limits are doubled?

8. Is it possible to unlock Apex Machinery with Mines? If so, which mod(s) would need to be taken?

9. Does the electrical damage from Galvanic Outburst / Discharge get boosted from fire tree mods?

10. Homing Strike. Basically useless?

11. Maelstrom. How exactly does it work? I've noticed that sometimes it seems to do something, other times not. It also doesn't really keep projectiles from hitting you most of the time but rather it just swirls it around you and hits you later rather than immediately.

12. Minefield. Is there any point in taking this at all? It just seems bad all around.

13. Spontaneous Generation. Useless? The spawns die off so fast that it doesn't seem like there's any point. Also, it is recursive so what is the benefit of taking this multiple times? More drones? More HP?

14. Aegis. I feel like this needs to be buffed up so that it reaches full power a bit faster.

15. Apotheosis. It says that you no longer collide with enemies, targets, and most celestial hazards. What does "targets" mean, exactly? Also, -20% to hull and shields? Ooof. How about... 15%? It has pretty heavy investment requirements and hull and shields already seem weak enough in the game.

16. Celestial Surge. Does ANYONE use this? The self-damage is pretty extreme and makes me wonder if it is even worth it at all.

17. Defiance. Just needs a buff all around because unless you stack tons of them it basically does nothing.

18. Emergency Systems. Could last a little longer (like 1.5 seconds?) and also have a better audio-visual cue showing that it has kicked in and turned off. Also, the added thrust damage more often than not gets you into trouble.

19. Firing Array. Which weapons is this good for? Reading the text description of it, it seems far more bad than good and I struggle to understand when taking this would be beneficial.

20. Incendiary Strike. I am assuming that this is amped up by fire tree mods, yes? Also, how does it interact with darts? Does it just add a bit of extra damage to the first shot that lands on an enemy?

21. Leaf on the Wind. The text states: "The longer you avoid enemy and hazard damage, the more Leaf on the Wind benefits you, up to +50% global damage after 60 seconds." Now does this mean ANY damage, or does it mean hull damage? Because if taking any damage at all can knock you out of the bonus damage, it's nearly useless at higher levels when there's so much mass, unavoidable damage everywhere. Going 60 seconds in-game without taking damage isn't hard at lower levels but at higher levels... yeah, right.

22. Reflexive Shields. Needs buffed in general, both in terms of % of shield gained and also how much damage it does from contact.

23. Regression. What is the point of this, exactly? It seems terrible.

24. Ricochet. What is the point in taking this multiple times? Does it just bounce to and from more enemies? It seems to me that taking it more than maybe 3 times at most is just a bad idea.

25. Solar Heart. Just get rid of the self-damage or reduce it by 50-75%.

26. Streamline. Doesn't really need the -20% knockback resistance.

27. Twin Strike. I feel that the recovery speed penalties should be reduced from -7% to maybe -5%. It's also unclear how this affects many weapon types.

28. Efficiency. Does this work when you are charging a weapon? Because I know that if you are using the Spectre ship it will take you out of stealth if you attempt to charge a weapon.

29. Far Sight. Does it REALLY need a damage penalty? Come on.

30. Flash Shielding. The penalty to maximum shields (-40%) is way too high. This needs to be reduced by HALF.

31. Guidance. The -5% penalty to rate of fire should be removed IMO.

32. High explosive. The blast radius boost should be a little bit higher, so maybe +25% instead of +20%. Even +30%.

33. Omnishield. -85% to total hull? Jesus. What about -60%?

25. Payload. -12% rate of fire should be reduced.

26. Regeneration / Regenerative Shields should be rolled up into one mod. Also it should specify exactly what it does because as of now it's very vague.

27. Warpath. Needs a better sort of audio/visual indicator to know when it is working. As of now there's really no way of knowing exactly how it is benefiting you.



I also think that the mod select screen needs to be reworked so that when you hover over a mod it will show your stats and EXACTLY what will change (at least affected stats), with green or red indicators to show if something is going to become better or worse so players can make more informed decisions about what mods to pick.




23.

22.

[AncientSpark]

1) Absorption is widely considered one of the best defensive mods in the game and one of the primary reasons why pure Hull primary defenses are even viable (the other being Rapid Reconstruction). It's really easy to misunderstand that a huge portion of incoming damage comes from lots of small fire (since those are the bullets that tend to be hardest to dodge), which Absorption trivializes or outright negates. It doesn't need buffs.

2) Shield is more an issue of how do you handle your sustain. I wouldn't exactly be opposed to a Barrier buff, but it really doesn't target why Shield builds can or can't fail (successful shield builds usually find a method to solve their sustain issue that doesn't cripple the rest of their build and don't really rely on Barrier more than covering the occasional mistake).

3) Adaptive Armor does not say Hull resistance, therefore it is total damage resistance. You can use it in shield self-damaging builds, for example.

4) Projectile size does not affect damage unless the weapon specifically says so (Dart, for example). It also does not affect blast size inherently; blast size is a separate modifier, although a lot of stuff that affects projectile size also affects blast size as an additional modifier (Payload, for example).

5) Deadly Wake is meant as an accompaniment for firefly/hullbreaker/various Apotheosis builds. It isn't meant to do a lot of damage by itself, because it's only one mod and in a very desirable tree.

6) This is a sustain issue. Dying Star does not do that much damage in practice if you build for it. The common thinking is actually that Dying Star is inserted into a lot of other builds for additional damage; this is a signal that it's usually not that much of an issue to add it into other builds. Mostly, the sacrifice is maybe some Hypermetabolisms to reduce your Hull/Shield amounts, even in some of the worst cases, and that's usually a worthwhile sacrifice if you don't go too overboard on it (since Adrenal Systems is a thing).

For example, a Rapid Reconstruction build can achieve the required regeneration with just the Hull strength modifiers (and not including Channeling), which they should already be taking. And there's some more clever methods of achieving the sustain required, such as Sanctuary setups or Essence Sap usage or Masochism stacking.

7) Anything listed on your base ship's abilities that is not your ship's base hull and is not a penalty is considered your ship's unique powers. How this affects more unusual mods, though, is not something I know off the top of my head, sorry.

8) It's possible; you need Retribution.

9) Any burn/ignite damage is boosted by the burn tree.

10) Kind of. The main reason you might take Homing Strike is if you want more jhoming from Targeting/Convergence, but don't want to sink your weapon velocity *that* much; examples are Railgun or short-ranged weapons. You can also use it to trigger on-hit effects without caring much about the damage; the primary use of that is Corrosion.

11) The exact level of projectile movement is dependent on your shield effect power, in combination with recent damage. If you haven't taken much damage recently and don't have much shield effect power, it will only occasionally proc with small effect. It's possible to get it to trigger consistently and cover like 3/4th of the screen with the right build though (usually Rancor + Charged Shields).

12) Even if you aren't self-deploying mines, the +50% mine construct speed means the overall DPS is slightly higher taking it than ignoring it. This is less true if you already have construct speed though, so it's typically best for builds that are splashing mines into other chassis.

13) Yeah, SG is pretty bad.

14) Aegis is designed for builds that aren't moving a lot, mostly Spectre+Strafe. Unfortunately, it's a niche enough effect that it's hard to fit into other trees, so you end up taking it a lot for builds that aren't designed for it as prereq for other stuff, but in the builds that do use it properly, it's already pretty strong.

15) It means anything that would deal crash damage to you is ignored instead. This includes non-Black Hole hazards and any enemy that would touch you. It's actually a very strong effect and not really worth buffing for shield based builds; its main issue is more the prereqs are brutal since not every build wants Strafe.

16) It's a gimmick, but it can work. It's not great, I agree, but I don't think it's exactly designed to be that strong, more an entertaining idea for those who want to go off the beaten path.

17) Defiance used to be +1 plating and no other effects on release. It was one of the strongest wild mods in the game at that point.

18) It really can't. A properly built shieldbreaker build can be triggering shield self destruction every 2.5-3-ish seconds. Being invulnerable for that long and that consistently isn't good for the game.

19) This is a pretty non-intuitive mod because its interactions are pretty weird. It normally does not work with Singular Strike, but *will* work with Singular Strike Mines. It also works with auto-fire Salvo. That said, yeah, it's a pretty niche mod and the only reason why you might prefer it over Firing Array for normal builds is if you don't want to affect your weapon spread for whatever reason.

20) Yes to both.

21) Yes, any damage. It doesn't sound great until you realize that it's has no downsides, so it's kind of just free if you happen to pick up its prereqs for other reasons. Global damage is also pretty rare, so it's more valuable in builds that are hard to scale with other modifiers.

22) Sort of. RF is not intended to be taken on its own, it's meant to be taken as an accompaniment to shield-self damage builds, so it's not meant to do a lot of damage on its own, but as an accompaniment to other builds. Those builds did struggle a bit before this patch, but Infuse introduced in this patch has made those builds a fair bit more attractive, so I don't know if RF specifically needs buffs.

23) Because it gives a free level, it automatically recovers the point you spent on it (it's totally free). The point is to narrow your mod pool so you don't get certain mods that you will never pick up until later (for example, most builds don't want constructs, so seeing Regression + constructs means your mod pool will be narrowed to not see constructs).

24) Yes, it bounces to more and more enemies. It's true that taking it too many times is bad, but because it's an Ultra Rare Wild Mod, it's very difficult to see that many of them in a normal run anyway.

25) There are a lot of builds that work off self-damage using Solar Heart. The self-damage is important to making it a good mod and also meaning you don't just stack infinite of them. It's important to also note that base damage is *very* powerful and Solar Hearts stacks quadratically, so you can't get rid of the self-damage or else repeated SH would scale out of control.

26) This is why you take Apotheosis. If you're taking Streamline, it's assumed you're a Shield build, and they aren't going to be taking Force Armor. At that point, the -20% knockback resistance is to put pressure on you to go find a solution to crash damage. Once you find that solution, the knockback resistance penalty doesn't matter.

27) Anything that Volley effects will also be triggered by Twin Strike. I don't personally have a strong opinion on TS because the builds I play tend to not want TS for various reasons, but given the nature of ND being a very offense heavy game, this buff doesn't strike me as needed intuitively.

28) It does not work with charging, yes.

29) It may seem unbelievable, but there are ways to scale your AoE so hard that it can cover the entire screen. Far Sight represents stronger safety for those builds because it allows you to kill enemies from an even safer distance, so the +2% damage taken is meant as a counterbalance.

30) No, it's intended for shield breaker builds. The -40% shields is actually a benefit to those builds because it makes it easier to trigger your shield break through self-damage. Realistically, if you are a pure shield build, there is no reason for you to be in the shield CD tree besides maaaaybe the first mod if you don't want to use Sacntuary for whatever reason (or if you are using Discharge for something like Infuse).

31) *shrug*. Sure, but it's -5% attack speed, it doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. The -20% velocity is a far more compelling reason why you might not take it or not.

32) I'm not sure why this would be need to be buffed, as blast radius is one of the most important AoE modifiers in the game and High Explosive is extremely common to take in almost any build that relies on blast radius.

33) There's no point to its Hull getting buffed or not. If your shield gets broken under Omni Shield, you should be dead. That's the point; it changes your mechanics to entirely rely on the shield mechanics. In fact, hull getting buffed would be a stealth nerf to any build relying on Hull self damage + Gemini Protocol (Retribution or Outrage Module, specifically).

34) Payload represents a huge DPS increase relatively to a lot of other mods, and it's far easier to compensate for bad attack speed than it is for bad weapon damage (Barrage, mines, Siege Weaponry, etc.).

35) I could see fusing the two mods, since there aren't that many reasons to regenerate Hull in a shield-build, but it would make the early game awkward because your early defense often boils down to using shield CD and regenerating hull with shield CD before you find your real method of sustain down the line. Regenerative shields isn't very good early, it's only good once you've found either Essence Sap for hybrid defense or Omni Shield for pure shield.

Endnote: I think a lot of these balance qualms come from the idea that you are relying on your defenses too much. ND is a very offense-driven game. This doesn't mean defense is useless or that you should abandon your defenses for minimal gain. But the fact of the matter is that when enemies are scaling in density AND power AND type, you dying might not be an issue of the defensive modifiers being bad, it might be an issue that you aren't scaling offense fast enough, so the enemy density is overwhelming your defenses.