spara wrote: ↑Fri Jan 30, 2015 8:51 amThe oxp is in need of serious upgrading, bugfixing and tweaking. I can make a graphical update by integrating GalNavy additions/facelift into it. Then there are some bugfixes floating around that need to be put in. And finally the oxp needs to be upgraded to 1.80/1.81 standards. I can help here, if nobody else volunteers.
A bigger question are the balance issues. These are from both my own observations and from the forum.
- SecCom stations. These are stationed close to the main station and have very profitable radioactive markets. After achieving discounts, the equipment shop is exploitable.
- Patrols. These make the game a lot safer for clean pilots and more dangerous to others. They also change the feel of the game to an imposed martial law. It feels like being in the middle of the last book of Oolite saga.
I understands that these are up to your vision and that needs to be respected. However, since this is a very popular oxp amongst Jamesons, I have a couple of suggestions.
- Tone down the market so that it's still worth to visit, but it's not worth to do milk runs between the main station and SecCom station.
- Equipment discounts need to be restricted somehow. Maybe they are available only after accomplishing a mission or something. Sort of access to the military shipyard to fix your ship after duty or something.
- Some like SecCom, some don't. Some like Patrols, some don't. All love missions. I suggest making the OXP modular in a following manner:
1. The base oxp. Just add missions. You get the first one from a wandering behemoth and after that you can access the missions from selected main stations.
2. SecComs addon. Move the missions to SecComs.
3. Patrols addon. Add Patrols.
1+2+3. = the original experience.
The equipment menu could be locked out unless you're registered as a Galactic Navy reserve member and/or with "enough" missions to justify the military working on your ship.
Doing Galactic Navy missions tends to be very hard on a ship...
...Maybe repair 1 damaged item for free and/or for 1 Galactic Navy Bond sometimes?
I can adjust the market easily enough.
In my personal mod of Galactic Navy v5.4.3 OXP...
I reduced the max discount from 25% discount to 10% discount.
I drastically reduced the number of Gal. Navy bases per Gal. Chart on my mod of it from 14 to 5, roughly spread out so not much overlap in coverage areas.
I call it "Massive Base Closures due to budget cuts!"
I also moved the in-system bases from near-ish the planet to 30% of the distance to the sun.
The ships at the base are increased or decreased due to a couple conditions...as well as being random.
I added a 2nd station called "Navy Storage Depot" (along with slightly more ships) at the main base in a particular Galaxy Chart, which is a repurposed Rock Hermit. Its equipment menu is limited to tech level 1 and 2 and charges 1.5x the main station...with no discounts! It is also limited on what it will buy and profit per item tends to be rather low...except for radioactives, which is about 1.5x the main station price. I didn't recognize how much of a problem this was...because I seldom have very many to sell there.
I've already reduced the price differences for other items closer to that of the main station.
I removed the Witchpoint guards, removed the patrolling Navy ships, and removed the patrolling Behemoth. (There is too few of them for this!)
I drastically reduced the odds of random Gal. Navy ships spawning both in a system and in interstellar space...typically to 1% chance or less.
The chance and number of Thargoids encountered in interstellar space increases slowly as you get more kills.
You'll need at least 150 kills before there's even a fraction-of-a-percent of more Thargoids in interstellar space.
And by 22,000 kills that increases to 5% chance.
Odds of a Thargoid Cruiser or Battleship type is also very low.
Originally, there were 5 checks to add 3 Thargoids and 1 Navy Frigate, each with 26% chance!
I removed any instances of Navy Frigates spawning, as they don't fit in my Oolite universe very well, being too big to dock with any station besides the Superhub station.
...Behemoths don't fit in most stations as well but they're special due to being very rare.
Instead of Navy Frigates, I replaced them with fully upgraded Boa 2 Light Cruisers, with stats set very close to what a player could have.
I planned but have yet to convert the escorts from Navy Vipers to Navy Sidewinders, which make more sense as other Sidewinders are considered "ex-Navy" ships.
I drastically reduced the number of ships in SYSTEM_INVASION, SYSTEM_INVASION2 (which I added), FLEET_INTERCEPT, and POLICE_ACTION ...but ONLY if you're just starting out and fewer kills.
This means fewer Thargoids, especially of Cruiser and Battleship types, ...but also fewer Navy ships to assist you.
SYSTEM_INVASION2 is a slightly smaller-scale Thargoid invasion where Galactic Navy ships aren't available and there's only reservists ships.
More importantly, the ugliest fights (FLEET_INTERCEPT and SYSTEM_INVASION2) become considerably more common as you get more kills.
Relative difficulty is hard to measure, since Galactic Navy was created when NPC ships were notoriously inaccurate with their lasers.
Overall, Galactic Navy ships are very seldom seen unless you're a reservist doing active missions...and sometimes not even then! (only other reservists show up for the fights)
Likewise, Thargoids are not drastically more common in interstellar space...you'll rarely see more than 4 total Thargoids unless you stick around long enough for the core Vanilla game to spawn more Thargoids.