Master of Orion

Master of Orion

Tactical Mod 3.7
vaaish  [developer] May 20, 2022 @ 8:09pm
Dev Changes for 3.5
Starting a new thread for changes in TM3.5. I'll be looking at a few more blueprints and might start a more robust shift to increase missile usage.

3.5
Adjust production costs for weapons to slow down construction and upgrade a bit.
Adjusted CP availabitity from all sources to reduce fleet sizes late game.
Adjusted AI awareness to get stations up faster for CP.
increased roll frequency for revolts to be less quick
Increase pirate spawn delays so they aren't quite as much of a problem early game
Reduced hp and space for Amoeba, Dragon, and Guardian to make these more viable targets mid game.
Reduced HP for most defenses to balance out offense/defense scores a bit.
Moved outposts and advanced outposts to center of map to make this a different tactical problem.
Adjusted race personality fleet balance for a bit more variety.
Increased fighter hull 4 -> 6 hp to help with survivalbility issues
Fixed Mrrshan Frigate weapon progression issue resulting in no mounted weapons
Adjusted Mrrshan frigate for stronger start loadout
Adjusted Elerian frigate for stronger start loadout
Adjusted Human Frigate for better weapons loadout early game
Halved Antaran Defense Fleet so it was a viable late game objective.
Adjusted Orion Guardian loadout due to reduced torp frigate spam threat.
Removed Teleporter and added Structural analyzer
Increased Frigate CP 4 -> 5
Adjusted beam/cannon weapon falloff to diferentiate weapons more between short/long range weapons.
reduced accuracy at range for cannons by 10%.
reduced accuracy at range for Mass Driver and Gauss to 50%
Disruptor damage increased 30 -> 35
Dark Energy damage increased 40 -> 50
Particle Beam damage decreased 60 -> 30
Particle Beam range loss decreased 0.25 -> 0.2
Death Ray damage reduced 85 -> 70
Changed Augmented Engines evaluate use logic for reliable activation.
Changed augmented engines cooldown 10s -> 45s
ECM increased Missile avoidance 55 -> 60
Cloaking Device missile avoidance increased 60 -> 65
Multiwave ECM missile avoidance increased 70 -> 80
Wide area ECM missile avoidance increasd 90 -> 100
Increased PD accuracy 1.25 -> 1.3
Increased scanner beacon area 30 -> 75
Decreased missile damage to 3.3 values due to beam falloff changes:
Decreased Nuke damage 20 -> 18
Decreased Merculite damage 23 -> 21
Decreased Pulson damage 26 -> 24
Decreased Zeon damage 29 -> 27
Decreased Quantum damage 32 -> 30
Decreased torpedo damage, damage output was much too high
Decreased Proton damage 45 -> 20
Decreased Antimatter damage 55 -> 30
Decreased Plasma damage 65 -> 40
Decreased Quantum damage 80 -> 50
Decreased torpedo speed and acceleration slightly to make small ships harder to hit
Last edited by vaaish; Jul 22, 2023 @ 8:51pm
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Showing 1-11 of 11 comments
vaaish  [developer] Jun 3, 2022 @ 4:48pm 
For anyone following, I'm very seriously looking into nebula hazards for 3.5. The AI is pretty poor at managing these giving the player a pretty sizable advantage. It's also pretty easy to avoid them most of the time in combat making Hard Shields less useful.

I'm looking into shifting the numbers of nebula hazards present so that if a nebula is present the entire battlefield will be affected.
vaaish  [developer] Sep 19, 2022 @ 7:55pm 
Added a few updates and tweaks for 3.5. Working on increased production costs for weapons to hopefully make selection affect production speed in a useful way.
Blacksoul Oct 25, 2022 @ 6:28pm 
The nebula hazard thing is interesting. I guess it's one of those things that if it helps level the playing field with the AI then it's worth giving it a try and seeing how it plays out. Would certainly make hard shields a much more valuable tech for battles in that environment.
vaaish  [developer] Feb 25, 2023 @ 5:59pm 
For anyone still following this, a lot of changes coming due to a major shift in how beam/cannon weapons fall off to add more visible impact. This has led to a bit deeper impact with rollback of the missile tweaks from 3.4 because of the relative power drop of cannons and beams from falloff.

I've also done a pass with torpedoes to reign in some of the crazy firepower these were providing which let you hit far above your weight.

Last of all, I've touched on a couple of areas I've been reticent to touch since it's a gray area between tactical impact and a more broad rebalance mod like 5x. The first of these are to boost the labor costs for the production of weapons, particularly with missiles, drones, and torpedoes. This serves to make these ships take a bit longer to produce which helps to limit missile spam and prevent guardian rushes. The second area is a minor tweak of CP generation to reduce the overall totals as the game progresses. I'd talked with Spud about them a long time back but 5x concluded development before it was implemented. Combined with the 3.4 CP cost increase, this should help reduce the overall size of fleets and make scanner range a worthwhile choice.

I think that 3.5 is pretty close to release at this point which leads me to thoughts for 3.6:

I've come to the conclusion that tactical battles are more interesting and fun when you have fewer ships present and fewer weapons on these ships. Fewer weapons makes it a little easier to design your ships as you don't have to add 40 weapons and modify them and it helps to equalize the battle odds a bit more effectively because it's harder to overwhelm an enemy with an alpha strike. Fewer ships and squadrons improves battles because you can better focus on giving those ships orders and managing their firepower while keeping the battefield more readable. To that end, I'm seriously thinking about doubling the space requirements for weapons across the board and reducing HP/Shields to adjust for the reduced firepower for 3.6. If you're curious about testing or have thoughts on the direction, please let me know!
Sandos Mar 7, 2023 @ 9:32am 
Hey man, like what you are doing here. Just wanted to notify you that there is a bug in the current build in the ShipModuleModTypes yaml, row 55 you have added a comment added after the mirvDistance. That stops the mirv modifier to apply in-game, as well as the next two modifiers (heavy armor and eccm). I was in tweaking some stuff to my own liking and stumbled on it.
Anyway, thanks for the mod man I really enjoy it!
vaaish  [developer] Mar 7, 2023 @ 1:29pm 
Thanks, I checked the files and it 's working in 3.5. That line shouldn't be causing the modifier to be disabled though.
esperanza2020 Mar 16, 2023 @ 12:16pm 
3.6 ?
vaaish  [developer] Mar 16, 2023 @ 12:22pm 
3.5 isn't out yet, we can talk about 3.6 when I get 3.5 out 😁
Yonglebang Apr 24, 2023 @ 5:54pm 
I think Mass Driver could use a slight armour penetration nerf. Right up until Hard Shields I am finding it difficult to design beam ships to outperform a pure auto-fire Mass Driver loadout, even with Plasma Beam available to take out enemy shields and then rip up the hull with Graviton Cannon (even more so when factoring in cost).

I like the idea of doubling weapon size to streamline ship design. It could make things tricky in the early game (pre-Battle Pods) only being able to fit a single nuke on a frigate though. I imagine it could impact the missile/PD meta somewhat, but it would also differentiate destroyers more than just being double-size frigates if the space limitations on frigates effectively restrict them to a single weapon type before Battle Pods.
vaaish  [developer] Apr 24, 2023 @ 6:37pm 
Messing with weapon sizes is likely to be 3.6. I did a dirty test and it's definitely going to be more involved to check all the blueprints.
vaaish  [developer] Jun 17, 2023 @ 3:34pm 
I think that 3.5 is ready to go. I'm holding off release until UCP 6.4 comes out.

EDIT: updated first post with final changelog.
Last edited by vaaish; Jul 22, 2023 @ 8:51pm
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