Late post, the mod is currently on update 0.32

Reworked curiosity strategic weapons and defenses as Late Era versions of early strategics, with new icons and turret models according to level:

• Era 4 Titanium and Hyperium modules
• Era 5 Adamantian and Antimatter modules

(Credit to Railgun for the idea)

Antimatter weapons effect replaced with +5% crit chance

Only one engine of any type per combat ship can be equipped. (Excludes: Arks, colonizers, the Argosy, exploration and Hero ships)

Set EMP and boarding defense to 20% flat, not scaled by ship size

Applied new effects to EMP defense modules:

• Shield Hardeners: 10% shield capacity
• Turret Recovery: 10% cooldown reduction

Restored enhancer modules, set to one per ship

Improved targeting modules

• AM Lenser to 15 target chance
• Adamantian Jammer to 15 target penalty

Reworked approach to damage creep:

• CP unlocks now provide % HP empire wide

Blast Effect Battery:

• Base damage increased to 500 (deals 250 vs. medium and large)
• Adjusted offensive military power modifier for better feedback

I'm playing this mod for the first time as stock Cravers (but I've been playing your Politics Rework mod for a while -- very nice!).  I researched Xenobiology, which opened up science era 2, and gave me Titanium engines, but I found that titanium engines don't require titanium...  Is that intentional?

Edit: I've been trying to poinpoint the cause of this issue, and noticed that this happens for me on vanilla as well, even with other stock empires.  Titanium engines do not require the titanium resource to build anymore.  I validated the game files through steam, and even without any mods I still don't need titanium for titanium engines.  Does anyone else have this issue?

The Titanium engine has never required Titanium if I recall correctly, the name is confusing for sure 

This is to serve as the discussion thread for my Combat Balance Mod: any and all feedback playing with the mod is welcome, and along with any ideas for new changes. The scope of this mod is mostly concerned with altering module interactions, but it has and can expand to other areas.

The aim of the mod is to hotfix balance combat ahead of the developers based on the latest metas. If all goes well, there should be no single meta approach that is better than all others and all weapons, compositions and tactics should be viable. Balance is a constant work in progress so I do not anticipate it will ever be perfect, but I am confident that it can be a step up from the live game. A coincidental side effect of improved balance is that the AI performs better resulting in more competitive single player matches.

The live mod is currently: Version 0.4

This is compatible with Supremacy DLC as of Aug 3

Highlights:

Tactics

Redistributed all curiosity based battle tactics to the tech tree, found in new play decks starting from Era 2. There were thirteen tactics hidden behind curiosities, of which you'd be lucky to see two or three per game. Some of these are highly consequential tactics like Hopeless, Unlucky Arms and Fewer the Proud that can dramatically alter a player's fortunes compared to those without - but based only on RNG from how many curiosities you can search.

They are now spread across the Military Development tree, and in doing this I've reassigned some of the existing ones so that you should have versatile tactics available throughout.

Military Stage CP Unlocks

Moved CP unlocks to Military stages. They were mandatory techs to research, and if you got caught without one of them or you are able to catch an opponent - particularly this is a viable strategy vs. AI - without them, you gain an outsized advantage. There was also a sharp jump up from 10 CP to over 20 when unlocking the CP per hull type, this is alleviated by having the scaling CP per hull type be the first one you unlock, so the gain is more gradual.

This also appears to have had a positive effect on AI fleet assembly and performance.

These also provide 25% additional HP on ships per unlock, for a total of 100% additional health. This helps deal with the damage creep as the games on, and ensures that battles can still last the full three phases, without having to reduce damage output.

Shields Rework

• Energy weapons now only deal 50% of their full damage vs. shields.
• Projectile weapons still deal their full damage vs. shields 
• All shields now carry a Reload Per Phase value of 33% their total capacity
• Quadrinix shields no longer have a Reload higher than their capacity

This change works by reducing the base damage dealt of all weapons vs. shields to 50%, then adding 50% back for projectile weapons so that they continue to deal 100% damage vs shields, while energy weapons now only deal 50% of their damage to shields. This results in shields being more effective vs. energy weapons, one of the main issues in the current live combat, while not affecting their efficacy vs projectiles. By adding a reload to all shields, they continue to be useful after the first phase of the battle. Combined, these changes result in increased effective capacity.

Swarm Missiles Sync

• Reduced cooldown of swarm missiles so they sync up with non-swarm
• Accordingly, halved their damage output

Currently, swarm missiles have around twice the cooldown of regular missiles and they take much longer to fire, so at best they only actually sync up once every other volley. This means that they cover missiles unreliably and do not fulfil their purpose. 

By tweaking their timers, they should now sync with every volley and make missiles a more competitive choice.

Latest Changes

Blast Effect Battery

• Integrated G2G Balance Mod Modifiers
• Set base damage to 500 to match new CP HP unlocks (250 vs. medium/large ships)
• Adjusted offensive military power modifier for better feedback

EMP Weapons & Defenses

• Integrated G2G Balance Mod cooldown increase
• Applied new effects to EMP defense modules:
  • Shield Hardeners: 10% shield capacity
  • Turret Recovery: 10% cooldown reduction

Squadrons:

• Increased fighters damage
• Increased squadron speed by a factor of 50%
• Set Flak Evasion on squadrons to base 50%

Full notes:

Critical Hit Rework

• Critical hits only bypass 50% of defenses

In the vanilla game, critical hits are set to bypass all projectile and energy defenses. While this may seem neat at first, it is much too easy to stack crit and results in power creep for weapons that defenses cannot keep up with - especially since there is no counter to it except a single tactic card. I had a revelation about this which resulted in the discovery that critical hits is what in part contributes to battles being over so quickly, since while offensive capability scales (and with critical chance), defenses were not scaling because crits negated them.

I have halved the bypass provided by crits, so that you still have the option to stack crit if you are up against your hard counter, but you won't go straight to HP always. This way, battles should last longer throughout the game and you can always counter an opponent.

Encounter

• Reworked morale bonus to provide +20% accuracy per additional active flotilla

Weapon Modules

Kinetics:

• Changed optimal ranges to 10/50/100

Beams:

• Reduced base crit to 0

Lasers:

• Reduced base crit to 0

Boarding Pods

• Increased the Boarding Pod Engagement duration to last a full phase (40 seconds)
• Reduced Manpower DPS so that they deal the same total damage over the new duration
• Altered GUI to reflect the total damage dealt per Pod rather than DPS
• Boarding Pods now only launch once per phase
• Increased the Manpower cost of Boarding Pods to reflect their DPS capability

Boarding Pods as of the DLC release are overtuned and are capable of capturing entire enemy fleets within the first salvo. They also, somewhat inexplicably, seem to have a limitless supply per ship and a short 10 second cooldown. As their engagement takes only 5 seconds also, there is very little chance for the target of a boarding pod to defend itself or retaliate by firing on the attacking fleet - all you can do is stack a lot of flak and pray.

These changes retain the effectivity of boarding pods, but in order to actually capture enemy fleets now you must survive at least one phase. This in turn should discourage over-stacking of pods and require you to diversify your set up.

Core Cracker

• Halved construction cost
• Added 500 Siege/turn (Will scale up when slotted)

Defense Modules

Shields:

• Impregnable Shielding is now less impregnable
• Hyperium shields effect reduced to -10% critical hit damage

Support Modules

Engine Modules:

• Only one engine of any type per combat ship can be equipped. (Excludes: Arks, colonizers, the Argosy, exploration and Hero ships)

Fleet Modules:

• Only one flotilla repair module can be equipped per ship (Unique-equipped)
• Reduced Singularity Repair bots to 7.5/7.5% repair
• Reduced Orichalcix repair bots to 10/10%
• Field accelerators are now unique-equipped
• AM Field Accelerator is now unlocked by Graviton Shielding instead of a curiosity
• Flotilla shields are now unique-equipped
• Flotilla shields have increased capacity and energy defense to match their Era

Defensive Modules:

• Reduced ship-only repair bots to 5/10 and 10/15% per
• Improved Shield Reload modules to restore approx 50% of their same-Era shield

Utility Modules:

• Added new Adamantian A2S Slugs that deal 30 siege/turn available via Universal Aerodynamics
• Improved targeting modules
  • AM Lenser to 15 target chance
  • Adamantian Jammer to 15 target penalty

Ground Battles

• Reduced slightly Infantry/Armour specialised damage (Feedback desirable)

Heroes

• Counselor's Prescient Guide swapped with Overseer's Selective Systems
• Omokar Industrial Operations (Lumeris skill) effect increased to +10/20% Shield capacity/Fleet Health on Fleet

0.12 Update

• Moved all remaining curiosity white weapons and defenses to Military Era unlock