[WIP] Energy Techtree Rebalanced

[Foma]

@ Osito

I can see being able to balance early game hyperspace fuel efficiency with increasing size and output of the reactors. There are problems arising though when you're trying to build military ships in the earlier stages of the game, where every point of size counts, as it means more weapons or extra systems. The more I think about it, the more I get the impression that a complete redesign of every travel aspect would probably be best (fuel cells, reactors, drives, sizes, energy usage etc.).

I just designed a constructor on tier 1. I was able to get 27 fuel cells into the design, without violating the 35% minimum cargo space rule. That equaled 11,18 sectors on tier 1. I'm actually trying to come up with a way of balancing that. I don't actually know if I can tweak the maximum size of construction ships somewhere. If it's not possible, then there is no noncrazy way to fix that problem.

Edit: Construction Size was tier 2. Edited the numbers to match tier 1.

[Tanaka]

Thank you for modding this has always bugged me as well look forward to testing it!

[Tanaka]

Hmm did you remove the Bakuras Highspeed Shipyards? I no longer see this in the construction techs?

[hewwo]

How about... reducing the amount of fuel in fuel cells, and then reducing the amount of energy/second used by weapons to make sure you can still fight a decent war for more than 10 seconds.

[Foma]

@ Tanaka

Actually, as I was playtesting yesterday, I encountered the same problem. I'll fix it asap and reupload.

@ hewwo

Actually, that would probably be the most straight forward method. That would be a lot of work though, going through all the weapons. Plus, I would start tinkering with the other two techtrees and balance, which I did not want to do.

I think I might give your suggestion a try.

[Foma]

This one should have the bakuras shipyard fixed for Universe-Extended Users:

xup.to/dl,30172080/ERT_extended.zip/

I had to use another filehoster, since the other one was bugging out.

Edit: Btw, thank you very much for testing!!! you can just overwrite these two files in your customization\distant worlds Extended\ directory and continue with the old save.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Foma

@ Tanaka

Actually, as I was playtesting yesterday, I encountered the same problem. I'll fix it asap and reupload.

@ hewwo

Actually, that would probably be the most straight forward method. That would be a lot of work though, going through all the weapons. Plus, I would start tinkering with the other two techtrees and balance, which I did not want to do.

I think I might give your suggestion a try.

I took a quick look at simultaneously increasing fuel cell size and reducing its capacity, which is probably better than just reducing capacity. It seemed to work pretty well at restricting range. I could fairly easily reduce even constructors down to a max range of about 2.5 light years with the basix Gerax hyperdrive.

Hewwo is right that the weapons energy consumption would need to be looked at too, because they do drain the fuel very quickly.

I suspect sub-light thrusters would need to be looked at as well. Personally I would introduce a fuel scoop tech that makes sub-light travel virtually fuel free. I think it would improve gameplay if you don't have to worry about refuelling ships that are just patrolling a home planet.

Anyway, I hope it's going well.

[hewwo]

Yay:) I guess doing the weapon energy use is not that complicated: just divide every number by the same ratio as you divided the original fuel cell capacity with.

[Solarius Scorch]

ORIGINAL: hewwo

Yay:) I guess doing the weapon energy use is not that complicated: just divide every number by the same ratio as you divided the original fuel cell capacity with.

I don't think it's too complicated either. It looks like a one hour job to me, which is next to nothing in the realm of modding.

I'm such a slave driver, aren't I?

[Foma]

@ Osito

That's brilliant. I will tinker with that. That fuel scoop tech should become available really late into the game I feel. The thing is, the later it gets researched, the less uses it has. I'll see into it.

@ hewwo

Will try exactly that.

@ Solarius Scorch

Everything looks like a small job when you're only changing values ^^. Actually, this is my first modding attempt of any kind.

[Tanaka]

So in my first game using this mod with the Gerax Hyperdrive and a fuel cell I can move 1 sector with an additional sector with each fuel cell. So most of my ships have 4-5 fuel cells which means I can already move about 1/3 of the galaxy with the first Gerax Hyperdrive. 5 sectors out of 15.

So unless Im not remembering correctly this mod seems to increase the range of ships over the original game? Is something not working?

I would love for this mod to at least reduce this range by 3/4 so that I could only move 1 sector per 4-5 fuel cells to allow for technology growth. Or something like that [:'(]

[Osito]

I wonder if you're thinking about the warp bubble generator, Tanaka. I'm pretty sure you can build ships to traverse most of the entire 15x15 galaxy once you have Gerax in vanilla DW:U.

Osito

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Osito

I wonder if you're thinking about the warp bubble generator, Tanaka. I'm pretty sure you can build ships to traverse most of the entire 15x15 galaxy once you have Gerax in vanilla DW:U.

Osito

Yeah I must be remembering wrong.

If so then I still think this mod needs to be halved again if you can still cross 1/3 of the map with just the first drive and 5 fuel cells. [:)]

Would it be possible to just increase the size of fuel cells so you could not put so many on ships as an easy way to do it? But I guess thats where adjusting the weapons to that comes in...

[Osito]

Yes, you can reduce range quite substantially from a combination of reducing the fuel capacity of fuel cells and simultaneously increasing size. I personally think it's best to do both, to avoid additional fuel cells being used to compensate (thereby avoiding the extra resource cost). It does have quite a big effect on weapons, however, which can almost empty the fuel in a single battle.

[Locarnus]

Hello Foma,

I only saw your mod yesterday and this rebalance looks very impressive.

Unfortunately the research.txt is one big file, not seperated by tech trees or even tech lines.
Which makes joining research mods very hard work.

This is a shame, since I really like your ideas. I m working on a research mod myself, which extends the tech tree.
In terms of speed rebalance I ve only touched the gerax hyperdrive and warp bubble generator so far.
Maybe we could work together on the research.txt to combine our ideas.

My steam account is "relnu", please message me if you are interested.

[hewwo]

Once a new version comes out with adjusted weapons energy use, I am definitely going to use this mod! Seems like a huge improvement.

[Tanaka]

Any updates?

[Zygon]

Has this mod died?

Having fast engines so early in the game is one of the very few things I don't like about DW.

[Serenitis]

Might be worth comparing what has been done previously. [:)]

[Aeson]

ORIGINAL: Serenitis

Might be worth comparing what has been done previously. [:)]

Interestingly enough, Serentis, this particular mod predates the one you linked, at least judging by the date of posting (5/25/2014 as opposed to 6/10/2014), and is referenced in the second reply to the thread you linked.

ORIGINAL: Zygon

Has this mod died?

Given that your post is the first in over a year in this particular thread, I would say that yes, there is a good chance that this mod has died. I know that Osito's Research Unleashed and mordachi's Unleashed Extended incorporate some reductions in early-game hyperdrive speeds, though they also come with other changes; you might consider checking those out as more recently updated mods which do some of this.