- engoons.png (88.43 KiB) Viewed 2186 times
- engoons 2.png (60.12 KiB) Viewed 2164 times
Pre-release v1.
First pass in rebalancing Vectoring Engine class and Hybrid Engine component.
Objective- Make Vectoring Engines and Hybrid Engines actually worth taking.
Why?- Ships are currently unable to maneuver sufficiently in close combat scenarios. Most small ship designs have exclusively front facing weapon loadouts but cannot use them effectively at short ranges because they can not turn quickly enough to get on target. Almost all ships end up having the same turn rate, even up till late game. Adding an option for having a ship move a little slower but turn more quickly by trading a main engine for a Vectoring Engine will allow for more player choice.
How- Increase Vectoring Thrust on Vectoring Engines so they increase the turn rate of the ship a noticeable amount.
Obsolete post, check CustomizableModPack post instead.
__________
Additional Issue- The Hybrid Engine component lacks any real purpose in vanilla, other than being a cheaper alternative to the main engine line as far as research is concerned. It is much larger than normal engines and has no advantage at all- since the Vector Thrust number is tuned so low as to be worthless.
Correction- Increased Vector Thrust and added Countermeasure like normal Vectoring Engines.
Additional Gratuitous Modification- Greatly increased the Countermeasure bonus from all Vectoring Engines. Also added to Hybrid Engines at half that rate. Likely to be modified in subsequent versions.
Result- Player should be greatly incentivized to research a balance of normal engines and Vectoring Engines. Player will also be compelled to make the choice to research Hybrid Engine tree. Hybrid Engine tree is now an interesting choice- cheaper overall by a huge margin than researching through the main engine line, yet not as powerful as a main engine. Receives a decent amount of Vectoring Thrust and Countermeasures, but takes up more space. Costs less resources than endgame engine.
__________
Design Doctrine- Researching Vectoring Engines now gives you the ability to design ships that trade straight line speed for the ability to turn more quickly. Opening up many tactical and ship/fleet design options. Escorts with maximum speed from normal engines can now be armed with tractor beams to chase down enemy ships and hold them in place, while frigates can be loaded with powerful short ranged weapons and set to aggressive stance. This will allow them to successfully swarm enemy ships and get out of their weapon firing arcs, while bringing their own weapons to bear. Larger ships will have a chance to be more maneuverable at a cost in speed in order to deal with outflanking enemy ships more easily. Player now is making a conscious choice when NOT taking Vectoring Engines, sacrificing maneuverability for speed.
Future Plans-
Further tweak to vanilla components. Especially to make the new numbers more like in vanilla- less 'perfect'. Using 980 instead of 1000, for instance. Adding new endgame techs. As currently there is literally one choice at endgame for each category. Bonus techs for those who went through the effort of researching the entire Engine tree.
Modding other areas of the tech tree in similar ways.
__________
The file-
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BFHKi ... ance%20Mod
this replaces dw2/data/ComponentDefinitions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYqXMnr6fb4
Obsolete post, check CustomizableModPack post instead.
(since the github-link opens the mod-file in the browser, too, it shouldn't be very difficult to see the differences when you have the same zoom-factor in both windows and e.g. browse the file with page-up/-down 
)