[Mod] Pymod - Units Rebalance (v4) - November 2023 - v1.25 compatible (obsolete)

[Pymous]

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-------Pymod – Units Rebalance -------------
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Mod Version: 4 (01/11/2023)
Important note: Compatible with Open Beta version 1.25

Download link: https://ko-fi.com/s/c8dd401984

Hello guys,
I am glad to propose you a new gameplay balance mod for our favorite Shadow Empire game!
This mod was initially inspired by CNoNuke mod made by Catasteroid, who already tried to address major SE gameplay issues, and especially for balancing multiplayer (pbem) games.

The main objectives and purpose of this mod is trying to:

• Fix critical balancing issues, especially for multiplayer (pbem) games (the infamous Micro-nuke RPG…)
• Solve consistency problems between units stats and costs (Flaks having the same weight and cost than a 1 MT Fission Missile…)
• Add more strategic options to players (by unlocking for example Energy AT-guns)
• Improve multiplayer (pbem) experience with more balanced gameplay

Features:

I won’t write a complete list of all modifications but if you are curious here is a link to a spreadsheet with all the modifications : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Below is a summary of main changes:

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----Models design-----
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• AT guns:
---Unlocked Laser, Beam and Plasma guns options
• Motorbikes:
---Unlocked Combat Armors and Personal Shields generator options
• Jet Pack Infantry:
---Unlocked Battledress and Personal Shields generator options

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---------Armors--------
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• Infantry Combat Armours and Battledesses
---Added weight
---Added a small Energy usage to Battledress and heavy Battledress
---Added 1 Hi-tech requirement for Heavy Battledress
---Few others minors adjustments to metal costs and armor strength of Battledresses
• Vehicles Armors : Adjusted Formulas and production costs based on Model size
• Polymer Armour is now known as Composite Armour
---Reduced the Armour strength to Liquid Armour equivalent
---Added Metal cost
• Liquid Armour: Added Rare Metal cost

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---------Weapons------
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Many adjustments, the most important changes:

• Small arms, MG and Quad-MG: Adjusted consistency between models costs and performances
• Gauss and Charged Gauss Rifles: increased slightly their penetration power and strength to make them a viable alternative solutions to Laser rifles
• Laser, Beam and Plasma guns: many changes to their resources costs, penetration power, firepower and ammo usage in order to make them more balanced and less game breaking at mid-late game stage
---Laser guns: Added Metal cost
---Beam guns: Added Metal cost
---Plasma guns: Added Metal cost and Rare Metal costs
• RPGs:
---Replaced Micro-nuke RPG by Super Heavy RPG ( micro-nuke RPG was a major balance issue, reported many time by many players)
---Adjusted and rebalanced RPG for better scaling through the game
• Rockets, Missiles:
---Fixed heavier versions being less powerful than small ones (now same firepower per number of attack)
---Reduced slightly ammo usage for most of them
---Increased IP cost
• AA guns:
---Reduced metal cost
---Reduced IP cost
• Atomic weapons:
---Slightly increased Rad cost and metal cost for the biggest nukes
---Atomic launcher : increase range from 4 to 8Hex
---ICMB launcher :Reduced Range from 999 to 30 Hex (to offer a solution to counter those units with planes, until Vic add some missiles interception solutions ^^ )

Others:
---Added Power Banks technology requirement to Laser guns

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---------Engines------
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Many changes to Electric Engines in order to make them a potential alternative to Oil fuel engines
Modified Engines vs Models Matrix
More details in the Spreadsheet (link provided in the introduction)

• Electric Engines:
---Increased Engines Power (similar to Diesel, for easier comparison)
---Removed Machines cost

• Nuclear Engines:
---Increased IP cost

Others:
---Modified Engines vs Models Matrix
---Moved Electric Engine Tech to Basic Tech

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Changelogs
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v4 changelog :
- Updated to work with major updates since v1.21 (new tech, buildings,...)
- Electric engines should now be a viable alternative to Diesel engines
- Tweaked ammo consumption to fit major update (ammo factory)
- Decrease Walkers weapons firepower
- Removed 150mm armor access to Light Walkers
- Added Hi-tech cost to Walkers
- Reduced gauss firepower (new tech can make gauss better than laser, even with the nerf)
- Slightly reduced plasma penetration

v3 :
- Fixed Tech Tree since last beta introduced new buildings/tech for private farms and furnaces

v2 :
- Engines Rebalanced (check Matrix forum for complete information)
- Engines choice vs Models Matrix reworked (check Matrix forum for details)
- Electric Engine Technology moved to basic Tech (alternative to Oil Fuel)
- AT guns back to Foot type movement due to an hardcoded issue

v1 : Initial release

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What I would like to mod but isn’t available to modding:
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Some important mechanics are not moddable in current version. So this is a message to Vic: please unlock those modding stuff if you can please :p
---> I can’t modify the weapon type vs armour type matrix (page 327 of the manual)




---> I can’t modify the weapon type vs Soft/Hard Def/Att matrix (page 328) and the Attack scores modifiers per model type


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What is Planned for future or ongoing:
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• Adjustment to Engines, especially Electric Engines to make them an alternative to fuel engines
• Air units : a lot of work to do, it will take time...
• Assets rebalance mod (will be another mod, not in the same file)
• OOB mod : a lot of work, objective would be to simplify, unlocking at unit discovery, and adding missing OBB (will be another mod, not in the same file)

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Mod Installation and uninstallation:
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-Download and put the file (Pymod_Units.se1evlib) Archive in your Shadow Empire\shadowscenarios\ directory
* It should like something like this: C:\Matrix Games\Shadow Empire\shadowscenarios\
* Or like this if you use Steam: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Shadow Empire\shadowscenarios\
** An easy way to find where your game folder is: launch steam, right click on "Shadow Empire" in your game library > Choose "Properties" > "Local Folder" > "Explore"
*** This will directly open the game directory

-Active the mod ingame : On the main menu, click on "Modlib Picker" and select the mod you want to activate

**Uninstallation:
- Desactivate the mod in the "Modlib Picker" menu
- Or/and delete the Pymod_Units.se1evlib file in your Shadow Empire\shadowscenarios\ folder

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Others suggested gameplay mods :
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Compatibles mods:
- VAdjust (former Logistics Rebalance) mod by Voker57: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=377531

Not compatibles:
- Cnonuke by Catasteroid https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=375031

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Suggestions and feedback
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Don’t hesitate to discuss changes and post suggestions so I can continue to improve this mod. Please report also any bugs, I'll try to address them as soon as possible.

Thank you!

[Elver]

Something that feels like it would be a straightforward way to help balance Electric Engines would be to make Energy Storage serve a similar function to that of Fuel Efficiency. It's not a perfect analog, but better storage means better range, less frequent returning to recharge, and less weight.

Are you planning on adding energy weapons when you tinker with aircraft? In vanilla, their absence is one of the few things that makes Charged Gauss attractive, but with those being boosted it would be nice to see A2A lasers.

[Voker57]

Something that feels like it would be a straightforward way to help balance Electric Engines would be to make Energy Storage serve a similar function to that of Fuel Efficiency. It's not a perfect analog, but better storage means better range, less frequent returning to recharge, and less weight.

Are you planning on adding energy weapons when you tinker with aircraft? In vanilla, their absence is one of the few things that makes Charged Gauss attractive, but with those being boosted it would be nice to see A2A lasers.

Charged Gauss MGs on airplanes are inferior to missiles anyway

[Pymous]

Thanks for the comments guys:

- Energy AA guns: didn't thought about it, do you think it can add something to gameplay versus existing solutions? (maybe just to have an alternative using Energy?)

- Engines rebalance: For information here is the current situation (Vanilla) (table below) if it can helps for disucssion.



I still don't know what would be the best solution/ I am tempted to put the same engines weight and power to Diesel/Electric alternative, and only play with weight of Electric that I would increase a lot (to simulate Battery weight) -> this would lead to unpower engines for most designs, but this mean that you will be able to move at shorter distance / turn

The other solution would be to increase the energy usage compared to fuel usage, but this would probably break the balance (energy production required to field Electric Tanks), and won't be interesting gameplay wise, especially if I move this technology to lower tiers so players can have a choice based on their strategic situation.

I am also tempted to integrate "engine power" to the fuel consumption equation, but it would maybe just complicate the stuff for nothing really interesting.

- Energy storage Tech Optimization impact on Energy fuel usage :Yes it's a good idea, it's probably something I can add

[Elver]

Re: SAL/AAL weapons - the biggest advantage direct fire aircraft weapons have vs. missiles is that they're cheaper to produce. Missiles take machines, which are a mid-game bottleneck, and they can still act as a bottleneck when lasers roll out. There's also damage-matrix rock-paper-scissors considerations (although saying that kinda makes me want to see crew-served and/or vehicle-mounted gauss cannons). [Oh, and low-end missiles DO have worse A2A firepower once you're past the first rounds of combat. And always use a lot more ammo.]

Laser AA cannons is appealing b/c it could represent a lot less ammo consumption compared to flak - the "projectile" speed is fast enough that you're using precision fire rather than saturation, so it would make sense to not charge the same levels of energy that you do ammo for flak.

[Pymous]

Thanks for the comments, I have added a link which lead to the details of the mod content in the 1st post (the full list of changes, in different tabs). I will also use it to gather all ideas/comments and maybe use it so you can see what you can expect in the next update or changes I am planning to do or working on.

[Pymous]

New version out!

v2 :
- Engines Rebalanced (check Matrix forum for complete information)
- Engines choice vs Models Matrix reworked (check Matrix forum for details)
- Electric Engine Technology moved to basic Tech (alternative to Oil Fuel)
- AT guns back to Foot type movement due to an hardcoded issue

[Magirot]

Others:
---Added Power Banks technology requirement to Laser weapons

Seems to be the requirement only for Laser Guns (the heavy weapon tech), not Laser Rifles. Is it intentional?

[Pymous]

Hello guys,

The last Open Beta patch introducing new assets and techs to the game (private farms, furnaces) broke the mod Tech tree

This mini mod update (v3) fix it!

Thanks to Tikhun for the report!

Mod download page: https://ko-fi.com/s/c8dd401984

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@Magirot: Yes initially I supposed that "power banks" were for big energy storage so only "guns", but maybe I could add also this tech req for laser rifles if others players agree?

[Dampfnudel]

Does this mod disable cluster bombs?

[Magirot]

Best say here in the thread too that the mod is currently not compatible with the latest open beta (post-1.21i), the changes are quite substantial and Pymous said he wants to wait for it to settle down before seeing if there's need to update it for the new version in the first place.

The "disabling" of cluster bombs is a result of new techs getting added in 1.21i, which changes the row numbers of the table that handles technologies (Flex Tech Types in SE_Org), which means the mod replaces the wrong rows.

[Pymous]

Thanks Magirot for your participation,

I am happy to announce I have updated the mod to be compatible with the latest open beta version! (v1.21v)
Enjoy!

v4 changelog :
- Updated to work with major updates since v1.21 (new tech, buildings,...)
- Electric engines should now be a viable alternative to Diesel engines
- Tweaked ammo consumption to fit major update (ammo factory)
- Decrease Walkers weapons firepower
- Removed 150mm armor access to Light Walkers
- Added Hi-tech cost to Walkers
- Reduced gauss firepower (new tech can make gauss better than laser, even with the nerf)
- Slightly reduced plasma penetration

[Mechasaurian]

I've played a couple of games with this mod, and tbh I don't really like how it adds metal cost to so much stuff - particularly the polymer/composite armour. SE already has an issue with metal scarcity thanks to metal being required for darn near everything. Government buildings, factories, infantry, engines, big guns, civilian buildings - darn near everything.

In recent patches, metal often commands outrageously high prices on the markets. Meanwhile "rare" metals often just sit around in the bank doing nothing.

I'd prefer a version of this mod that runs with vanilla polymer armour at the very least.

[Comcikda]

1.26c update out now. Can you update your mod please? Laser rifle broken the tech tree...

[Impassive]

Hi Pymous,

Been using the mod for a while and love the rebalance, I have noticed since some of the new beta changes that combat armor has disappeared from my tech tree in recent games, this prevents me from getting the heavy armor as well. Unfortunately for me this has not impeded the AI who has the armor haha...

[Malorn0]

So I did a quick modification just to get this working on the latest beta. It was a problem with the armor renaming which caused the problems, and the electric engines existing in two places.

Lacking deep talent, I could only remove the rename and relocation, but that got all the stat changes working again without losing anything else.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dRj4xR ... sp=sharing

If anyone has any other advice on how to fix the original problem, I'd love to hear it.

[Tchey]

Hello,

Is it safe to play this mod with 1.26i version on Steam ?

Thanks

[newageofpower]

Hello,

Is it safe to play this mod with 1.26i version on Steam ?

Thanks

I miss Pymous.

[Pymous]

Yes sorry, had hard months since end 2023
But I am still alive
Maybe I'll update the mod but it won't be before few months,
but it looks like you are doing great job newageofpower with your own mod now ! So maybe no need to update anymore?