X4: Foundations - Shield and Weapon Overhaul. Strong turrets. Balanced ships v.1.7.4 - Game mod - Download

Shield and Weapon Overhaul. Strong turrets. Balanced ships. Is a mod for X4: Foundations, created by AngEviL.

Description (in author’s own words):

Shields regenerate immediately, balanced their power. Made all weapons viable and different at the same time, Mk1 are on par with Mk2. Mk1 are great against those pesky fast ships. Improved turret range, damage and responsiveness by a lot. Nerfed missiles. Boosted L/S traders and miners, scouts speed. Balanced ships speed, hulls. Buffed Xenon.

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Changelogs

Shields:

In vanilla the smallest damage hit makes shild stop regenerating for 10+ seconds, so basically if you have 100000 shield, and a scout hits you for 1 damage every 10 seconds, your shields will never regenerate. Also if you boost for 0.1 seconds, even if you barely drain the shield, it stops regenerating, it's cumbersome imho. X1, X2, X3 also had constantly regenerating shields.

Also i think that shields drain too fast, and combat ends too quickly if hits are landed on target. For S shield(M3 in X3), M shield(M6 in X3) and L shield(M7) i approximately doubled the shields, but i also increased for XL shield(M1/M2). I lowered shield regeneration to account for constant regen, however I lowered it less for M ships because they were a bit underpowored imho.

Each race has pretty different shield stats, pick the one that suits your playstyle !

Weapons:

Overall I increased the speed and range of weapons, i think it feels better now to start landing some hits, and I also felt that the combat before was too short ranged. I noticed that Mk1 weapons had half the damage of MK2 weapons on vanilla, and i noticed a huge missed opportunity, to give player choice of the same weapon type !

In average I tripled the speed of Mk1 weapons, gave them up to twice more damage, some have increased rate of fire. They are a great anti fighter weapon now !

I made all weapons pretty much as different as i could make them, for different roles. Mk1 are as strong as Mk2, but different, really, try them ! The player has finally a choice, laser, shard, plasma (got a big buff), bolt, beam, they are all good.

Turrets:

I got tired of turrets being underpowered after more attempts, and I want to make it right once and for all. Each M turret close to the damage of an equivalent M Weapon in my mod(which is greatly buffed vs vanilla in speed as well), and has half more range as well. Don't be fooled just by the damage per shot number alone, I increased rate of fire as well.

Repurposed L turrets to be big damage anti-frigats/capitals. They deal up to x2.5 damage and have 66% more range than their M counterparts, but have much slower projectiles and turn speed. Once Egosoft fixed their pasiveness they should own ! There are some cool combos, like having 15k range instant hit beam turrets ! Beams don't do too much damage but small fighters are gonna have a hard time !

Check images for some weapon and turret comparison vs vanilla.

However i don't want to go crazy with damage values and make turrets op and make anything other than a capital ship irrelevant. I like all ships to have a purpose and feel fun to fly and fight with.

Encyclopedia fix:

I am happy to say that i fixed the encyclopedia weapon damage. It is broken in vanilla, and most weapons including laser and bolt dps, heat, fire rate values have NOTHING to do with reality, check it yourself. I am not going to list exact weapon stats because you can check it yourself in encyclopedia, or in shipyard weapon selection for 100% accurate values !!! You can finally theory craft, there are weapons from 1.2km/s speed to 20k km/s !

The only error is Beam Mk2 that shows a much higher sustained dps than in reality.

Mk1 weapons have double the projectile speed of Mk2 weapons, but half range and a little less damage.

Missiles:

I think that missiles were too good compared to their laser counterparts and made the battles end too quickly, also the player is the one abusing missiles, while the NPCs shoots a missile there and there. A 33% damage nerf seems just imho (-50% after a global damage nerf); plasma cannon (or L Laser) is now a viable alternative to damage large shields. Also fighters don't drop like flies from guided missiles. Where there is both a Mk1 and Mk2 variant to choose from, improved speed of Mk1 missiles by 25% to make them viable as they have lower damage.

Challenging Xenon and Khaak:

I watched how squadrons of Xenon got obliterated by the NPC or a single player frigate over and over again. No more ! Upon analyzing stat files I realized that Xenon inexplicably had worse ship and weapon stats than all other races, and it applied to all: K, P, M, N. Worse max speed, worse agility, low hull hp, mediocre shield slots, you name it. I made their ships and weapons be on par with the other races.

Xenon turrets got a huge boost in damage, luckily for us their AI is still in beta stage, they tend to miss a lot, haha. Khaak got a boost in weapon damage and range, annoying snipers they are.

Engines:

All L miners and traders are finally worth their price now ! Most have doubled max speed. The S miners and traders were underpowered too, they have about half more speed.

There are many adjustements, but to name some bigger ones: Scouts and the Argon Elite Interceptor got a big boost, they fill their roles nicely now. Buffed Teladi M frigate, Argon Minotaur & Nova, nerfed Argon Eclipse & Pulsar.

Due to feedback I tripled/doubled the amount ships can boost, the biggest improvement being on Travel engines. All teladi engies have ~7% faster travel speed.

The Xenon K destroyer was a sitting duck, its turn speed is many times faster now. P, M and N are also more agile than before, this brought their ship on par with the other races imho.

The AI boosted before battle with their capitals and got nice and ready with a spectacular empty shield. Removed ability to boost from L and XL ships, but reduced travel charge by 10 seconds to compensate.

Hulls:

I felt that Argon S ships were too weak compared to the other races, and also Vanguard ships had a bit of an advantage over the Sentinel ships because of their higher speed and manuevrability. Xenon ships were kind of squishy, with no other advantages to make up for it.

Buffed the hitpoints of most Argon Sentinel S ships by a third. Made Vanguard have around 60% more hp for S ships, +50% for M ships, and 30% more hp for L ships.

Most Paranid combat ships got a sizeable nerf to their hp(~ a third less).

Argon and Teladi carriers got 30% more hp.

Increased HP of engines and weapons by 50+%, x5 HP for M turrets, x3 for L Turrets.

Buffed hull hp of Xenon K, M, N by 50%, P hp by 125%.

Longer battles:

After all these buffs to weak aspects in weapons and turrets, I felt that combat got too quick, and I applied to everything that does damage a 25% nerf, however this does not change the balance, things like turrets are still many times better compared vs vanilla to a regular weapon, for example I increased damage and range of some L turrets around 400% compared to vanilla, haha, or more than doubled effectivenes of Mk1 weapons, and much faster projectiles speed resulting in higher dps.

No edits that would break a savegame:

I made my mod not mess around with changing any values that could cause issues especially if you remove the mod later. No weapon or turret adding or switching, no change in cargo or in the max capacity of carrying space of a ware. I will also update this mod if future patches change balance.

As of version 1.63 I am quite happy with the balance, regarding what can be fixed without altering game files. I would like to add more turrets to carriers, bring more weapon variety, change designs of some ships, like K having the worse turret coverage possible, but I am going to leave that to Egosoft.

Weapon quick info:

Plasma: huge damage, long range, but slow moving and low rate of fire, high heat drain

Bolt: average damage, average moving, good rate of fire, medium heat drain

Laser: its sustained damage is about the same as bolt, has very fast projectiles however it lacks burst damage and has short range, very low heat drain

Shard: above average damage, fast projectiles, good burst, but very short range and a bit spread out bullets.

Beam: high range, instant and continuous hit, but low damage.

These weapons changes affect Xenon and Khaak, their weapons were so weak in vanilla for some reason. Watch out for Khaak beams, they aren't just giving you a sunburn anymore !

Sustained Damage per second:

Ion > Plasma > Shard > Bolt > Laser > Beam

Projectile Speed:

Beam > Laser > Shard > Bolt > Plasma/Ion

Range:

Plasma/Beam > Bolt > Ion > Laser > Shard

Shields quick info: For the best in each class (mk2/mk3):

Argon - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship

2500 shield, 25 regen/ 8000 shield, 33 regen/50000 shield, 100 regen/100000 shield, 150 regen

Paranid - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship

1875 shield, 30 regen/ 6000 shield, 39.6 regen/ 37500 shield, 120 regen/ 75000 shield, 180 regen

Teladi - S ship/M ship/L ship/XL ship

3500 shield, 18.8 regen/ 11200 shield, 24.8 regen/ 70000 shield, 75 regen/ 140000 shield, 112.5 regen

Khaak and Xenon have same shields as Argon for now.

Keep in mind that because of the elimination of shield regen delay, faster/slower regeneration impacts how much you can boost significantly.

Instructions:

Extract and put the mod folder into „….\steamapps\common\X4 Foundations\extensions”. Then launch the game and make sure the mod is activated in extransions menu.

• Last update: Friday, January 4, 2019
• Genre: Simulation
• File size: 188.8 KB