That's weird. Its working normally on mine. Try validating the install?



Anybody else has that problem?

This mod is definitely moving in the right direction. Increasing the number of combat rounds per phase is genius and solves many of the problems I was having a hard time getting around. The next thing is to fix up the battle cards.

I'm glad you like it!



Agreed about the battle cards. Currently what I'm thinking is to make all the standard cards have equal trade-offs, so you have to trade performance in some area to gain performance in another. I'm also going to make more of them un-counter-able or counter-able by a specific card. Here are the cards I've been thinking of having so far:



Retreat: (pretty standard) Possibly counter-able by interdiction module, which I have to think about how to add later.

Evasive maneuver: Turns off all weapons but greatly increase evade, so ships can get to short range and use short range weapons (you would still need flak since missiles are super accurate)

Run and gun: Slightly decreases accuracy; negates evade advantage of evasive maneuver

Overload Weapon: +damage, -accuracy

Careful Aim: -damage, +accuracy

Energize Weapon: +damage, -defense

Energize Defense: -damage, +defense

Blank: does nothing. For when you accidentally click a card when you don't want one



Might tweak/add depending how I like these cards. Note that I'm removing armor and repair since they promote invincible fleets.

I'm hoping that by making most of these cards uncounter-able picking cards become a matter of picking what strategy fits your fleet best instead of a random game of rock-paper-scissor.

re:Card trade-offs. Definitely. This is in line with what I had been postulating



Modifier match ups

+ weapon damage vs + defense

+ weapon accuracy vs + evasion





To restate with some counter suggestions

• Retreat: Retreat after X rounds, some offense/defense penalty
• Evasive maneuver: -accuracy, + evasion
• Run and Gun: +accuracy, -evasion (no longer redundant with Careful Aim, rename to "Full Advance" or "Charge"?)
• Overload Weapon: +damage, -accuracy/-defense
• Careful Aim: -damage/-evasion, +accuracy
• Energize Weapons: +damage, -defense/-evasion
• Energize Defenses: -damage, +defense/-evasion
• Standard Tactics: No modifiers
• Banzai: +damage, +accuracy, - defense, - evasion (Glass Cannon Destroyer Tactic, possibly an advanced technology tactic)
• Total defense: -damage, -accuracy, +defense, +evasion (Fighter/Bomber Carrier Fleet Tactic, possibly an advanced technology tactic)
  
  

For the advanced technology tactics, use the same cards, but decrease the penalty/increase the bonus.

Hahahaha, Banzai. I'll keep those ideas in mind.



Regarding evasive maneuver, my thought on that is it would be used by short/mid range ships only, which would normally do little damage at long range anyways. The reason I would decrease damage instead of accuracy to decrease the effective damage though is because the game has a hardcode min hit chance of 10%, so -accuracy does little if the weapon in question is already close to the limit when used at long range.



Right now, my plan is to finish rough weapon/defense balance then release update 2 with fighter/bomber re-balanced, and then battle cards and whatever is left at update 3. I'll post the card selection again with some solid numbers after update 2 is out. In the mean time, feel free throw around ideas!

One thing I've done to try to make the combat more tactically and strategically interesting was to phrase the battle cards + battle phases as representing distance and fleet maneuvers. You've done something similar by using the weapon accuracy modifiers across the battle phases. "Long" range weapons are just really accurate, doing less damage compared to their "shorter" range peers, but being accurate enough to hit at the longer ranges. You can also put the battle tactics cards into that relationship.



For example:

Evasive Maneuvers (+evasion, - accuracy) would be the equivalent of trying to maintain or increase the distance between you and your targets.

Likewise, Run and Gun/Advance/Charge (+accuracy, -evasion) would be the equivalent of trying to close the distance between you and your targets.



Evasive Maneuvers would also be good for LR Ships once they get into close range. They already have the massive accuracy bonus (relative to shorter range weapons) and so they can take advantage of that by reducing the ability of other ships to hit them.



With EvasionDisorientation out of the way, the 10% (and 90%) chance to hit caps have less impact on combat balance situation. However, running the math of the different sizes of ships at different ranges is important to make sure our intuitions actually pan out. Example, with large ships any cards with a -evasion penalty would essentially have no downsides, because they will likely be hit anyway.



I'm somewhat concerned that this will all lead to mono-composition fleets. Then again, we have that now. There is no benefit to mixing fleets of various weapon ranges. Perhaps this is a good thing though?

Hey there Antera,



first off gratz on this mod, you actually give the player more options to chose from which is always good. I like the possebilities to create "exotic" ship designs and still have success if you play your cards right.



Of course I was going for some carrier ships wondering why I never killed anything with it until I checked your notes haha



What I dont lilke about the mod is that the effects you see are not synched with whats actually happening. Attacks play through almost instantly regardless of the range type. Long range missiles swarm like melee range ones and also are visible 4 times but only deal damage once. Same goes for the other weapon types. You see attacks connecting with no visible effect then in between attacks ships explode. Is it possible to keep slow-moving visualy for long range weaponry? Maybe increase the rounds per salvo to stay on topic? Watching battles on manual is kinda confusing at the moment.

@thuvian, maybe I mis-named evasive maneuver but my intend for that card is actually to help short range ships close the distance. They're basically spending all the ships energy on thruster to evade enemy shots and close in the distance before unleashing. I'll think about whether to put in a different card like the evasive maneuver you're thinking of. I have a feeling that it would benefit long range fleets too much.



@Fritz, that is very strange bug you're experiencing because I did a lot tweaking to get the timing of the attacks to match the visual. Note though that what I matched up is the time at which the projectile arrives at the opponent and the time at which the damage is applied to the hp bar. Ship death takes a short time to occur after actual death (hp less than 0) due to the way ship death is animated, there's nothing I can do about that. But projectile arrival should match the time when the hp bar ticks down. In fact, this becomes very obvious when you use gattling laser cause the hp bar ticks down every 1/2 sec. If a weapon fired 4 times then it actually did do damage 4 times (possibly to a ship whose hp bar is not onscreen), the only exception is shotgun, which still animates at long range, but does no damage at long range (as explained in the in-game text). I checked animations for every weapon on my comp. Its possible there's difference between our comp/game settings. Can you post for me your game settings and maybe a save game so I can look to see if its a bug?

I have been working on this project for a while now, and most of the important elements are in place. But I am now at a point where I could use some feedback, particularly on the balance of things. So I've decided release this mod as a beta to see what people thinks. I can try to balance it on my own, but it will go that much faster with help. What I'll describe below is the intended behavior of the mod. Let me know if it is working as intended. Hectic Combat mod will take over all of the features of the Carrier Mod.





















Changes to the Game



Unlike my previous mod, there are so many changes that I won't list every single detail. Instead, here is a general description of what the mod changes:



[1] New Battle System



[LIST=1]

A new battle system based on a much finer time step has been implemented, allowing a much greater variety of weaponry, easier tuning of the balance, and a more intense battle sequence

There is still three phases, long range, medium range, short range; each phase last exactly 30 seconds; one round is exactly 1/2 second, thus the shortest interval between update of ship status is 1/2 second

There is no longer a distinction between weapons of different range during different combat phases; all weapons get -0.5 to accuracy at long range, and -0.25 to accuracy at medium range; thus a weapon of low accuracy will naturally be a short range weapon and vice versa

[/LIST]



[2] New Warfare Techtree



[LIST=1]

To accomodate various changes to the combat system as well as new additions made by Hectic Combat, a new warfare techtree is implemented; much of text has been replaced with many new icons added

The new techtree is arranged into 3 big branches: weapon, defense, and support; players can focus their research in specific lines of weapon, defense, or support modules; players can also switch between some neighboring lines but at extra research cost

The total cost of all technologies in the new warfare tree is higher than the old warfare tree so that players are encouraged to plan ahead and make meaningful choices when picking different branches, trying to research everything in each tech level will likely put you behind in the weapon tech race

Corresponding technology traits have been modified

[/LIST]



[3] Weapon Modules



[LIST=1]

Instead of 3 ranges for each of 3 ship weapons, there are now 9 different ship weapons (though still only 3 types of ship weapon damage)

There are now 6 tiers for each weapon, all faction start with all tier 1 weapons but no tier 1 defense and unlock subsequent weapons at tech level 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11

Weapon colors go as red/yellow -> green -> blue -> purple as the player advance in tier; this is to help player figure out at a glance what tier weapons are in play

Each weapon, except tier 1, require a strategic resource associated with its tier

[/LIST]

Due to way accuracy and timing is implemented in Hectic Combat, different weapons will naturally work better when used with different targetting priority and against different fleet composition; for example a high rate of fire weapon like gattling laser is a good fit with nosebreaker while a low rate of fire weapon like heavy missile is more suited for guillotine/spreadfire; a high accuracy weapon like piercing laser is good at hunting small ships while a shotgun does wonder against large ships; use the in-game text as a rough guide



[LIST=1]

Shotgun (kinetic SR) has poor accuracy and does no damage at long range but is devastating at short range

Rifle (kinetic MR) is a balanced kinetic weapon that works ok for most situations

Railgun (kinetic LR) is a highly accurate but low repetition rate weapon designed for long range sniping

Gattling (laser SR) has a large damage potential, particularly at short range but is not efficient at penetrating shields

Pulsed (laser MR) is a balanced laser weapon

Piercing (laser LR) is a high-accuracy laser weapon that can easily penetrate shields but has a low rate of fire

Rapid-Fire (missile SR) is designed to saturate opponent's flak using a large number of low-damage missiles

Torpedo (missile MR) is an un-interceptible fast missile that dissipates with distance; it is especially effective at short range and is more expensive than other weapons

Heavy (missile LR) is a high-damage slow-moving missile that is vulnerable to flak but has near perfect accuracy due to its advanced homing system

[/LIST]



[4] Defense Modules



[LIST=1]

There are now 6 tiers for defense modules, they are unlocked at tech level 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11

Each defense module, except tier 1, require a strategic resource that differs between defense types; for example, flak uses lower tech-level resources so that missiles are easier to counter

Hull weakness is set to 100 for all hulls; HP is used to balance the relative endurance of hulls

Kinetic defense relies on defense rating to reduce the damage of kinetic weapons (shotgun, rifle, railgun)

Laser defense relies on a combination of defense rating and absorption effect to protect against laser weapons (gattling, pulsed, piercing)

Missile defense relies mostly on missile interception, though still has some defense rating; missiles are generally very deadly if you do not have enough flak but is fairly easy to counter with flak; the exception being torpedoes, which has a dissipation weakness

[/LIST]



[5] Support Modules



[LIST=1]

Armor modules take up 10% of max weight and is greatly nerfed compared to v1.1.17 of the stock game

Tier 3 UE-specific armor module added back into the game, changed graphics of Tier 6 UE-specific armor module; both armor modules provide more HP than their conventional counterpart but cost more to build

Repair modules take up 15% of max weight

[/LIST]



[6] Strikecrafts (Fighter/Bomber)



[LIST=1]

The four tiers of fighter/bombers have been re-assigned to technology levels 2, 5, 8, and 11

Four empire improvements have been added to improve strikecraft regeneration

Fighter/bomber modules no longer take up special slots

Fighter has only one variant: battle

Bomber has two variant: anti-ship and anti-planet

Fighter/bomber modules takes a fixed 50 ton for all tech level; stats scaled appropriately

Fighter/bomber stats re-balanced to give a more logical progression.

Fighter/bomber have military power that reflects that space combat capabilities

Low-level fighters have damage malus when attacking ships, this is overcome as you go to higher level fighters

Fighters have accuracy bonus when attacking bombers

Fighter/Bomber attack 4 times per phase

Fighter/Bomber now reach the enemy in half a phase and can make 2 strikes against the opponent on the first phase if they did not flee

[/LIST]



[7] Point Defense (PD)



[LIST=1]

PD expanded to four tiers at technology levels 2, 5, 8, and 11

PD modules no longer take up special slots

PD module cost now scales with cost of other defenses

PD damage is now fixed and damage per phase greatly increased

PD modules have military power similar to comparable tech level defense modules

[/LIST]



[8] Hull



[LIST=1]

Hull weakness is set to 100 for all hulls

EvasionDisorientation is set to 0 for all hulls

CP3 carrier hull added for all factions; carrier gives bonus to fighter/bomber tonnage

Evade is set to 0.3 / 0.2 / 0.1 / 0 for CP 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 hulls; Evade is set to 0.1 for colonizer hull

Cost ramp increased for high CP hulls

[/LIST]



[9] Battle Cards



Original set of initially unlocked battle cards have been re-done, here are the new cards:

[LIST=1]

Retreat: Retreats at 30 rounds (1/2 of a phase), own ships will not attack

Energize Weapons: +20% weapon damage, -25% defense, -12.5% missile intercept accuracy, -12.5% laser absorption

Energize Defenses: +20% defense, +10% missile intercept accuracy, +10% laser absorption, -25% weapon damage

Standard Tactics: No bonus, no malus

Evasive Maneuver: +50% evade, -15% accuracy

Steady Advance: +12% accuracy, -65% evade

[/LIST]



Other battle cards (cards with unlock conditions):

[LIST=1]

Offensive Retreat: Retreats at 45 rounds (3/4 of a phase), basically you can attack but your hyperdrive take longer to charge

No change to hero cards yet

[/LIST]



[10] Known Issues as of v1.1.3.0



[LIST=1]

The dramatic reduction in time step size greatly increase the amount of data to process for auto-combat. It increases auto-combat time from 1 sec to 3 sec on my comp. Your mileage may vary.

[/LIST]



[11] To do



[LIST=1]

Change AI ship template to make more challenging ships

Change battle card to match Hectic Combat battle system

Add custom weapon description texts that should be more intuitive than the game-generated texts

Add back faction-specific weapons

[/LIST]





Installation Instructions



Mod files are attached to this post.



Install:

1) If not already existing, create a new folder called "Modding" in "My Documents\Endless Space\Disharmony\"

1a) If you don't know where "My Documents" is, navigate to "[DriveLetter]:\Users[AccountName]\My Documents\"

2) Unzip the zip file’s content to "My Documents\Endless Space\Disharmony\Modding", this should create a folder called "HecticCombat"



Running the mod:

1) Start the game, go to Mods on the title screen.

2) Select mod and load.



Starting the game with the mod loaded:

1) [Steamusers] Go to the "Game Library" in Steam

2) Right click Endless Space and select "Properties"

3) Click "Set Launch Options"

4) Type "+mod HecticCombat" without the quotation marks into the blank

5) Start the game



Uninstall:

1) Clear the "Set Launch Options" if you had them set

2) Navigate to the "Modding" folder

3) Delete the "HecticCombat" folder

v1.1.1.0 is out. Fighter/bomber/PD have been re-activated, extended, and re-balanced. That just leaves the combat cards...



was hoping the latest patch fixed game balancing, honestly can't say that it did. Regardless, this mod is almost done and should make combat better for most people.

well needed mod to fix a really bad combat system...



I found that missiles were a little too powerful now being able to land 1-2 times before a fleet can retreat, or on an offensive retreat (leading to almost untouchable missile fleets)



I tweaked retreat times to 18 rounds and upped missile flight times to LRM 22, Plasma 25 (a bit slower as I thought they were a little too good bypassing flak), SRM 19 (adjusted animation times, and upped damage slightly for all 3)

Still plenty of time to destroy scouts, but no longer wiping out chunks of fleets on the retreat

Also makes more reason to have a varied fleet - smaller faster weapons for harassing, larger weapons and missiles for prolonged combat



Great work so far, makes combat SOOOOOO much better, and it looks like watching an epic star wars battle now

I actually enjoy the combats again, even when I don't win them! Now that there's no silly 'hull weakness' there's actually a point to harassing larger fleets then retreating, instead of doing absolutely nothing to them and getting wiped out

Well done!

Hahaha, thanks for the comment. I love spamming gattling laser just for visual effects sometimes.



I keep in mind about the missiles. They are supposed to become a lot less effective if the opponent field flaks. (Which does mean that early on, ships without flak get crushed) I need to see how new battle cards affect the dynamics and go from there.



When you say Plasma 25, are you talking about mid range missile? ie torpedoes? Torpedoes are supposed to be un-interceptible by flak but does reduce damage at mid and long range.

It seems there may be a bug on your mod, I'm referring to this post:



/#/endless-space/forum/35-tech-support/thread/14960-nullreferenceexception-when-clicking-colonized-auriga-planet



Seems weird since the mod is just combat related but perhaps it has something to do with the technology tree, something missing from there that Auriga needs?

Thanks for the post! I found what I believe is the problem. The fix is simple but it will only affect new games because its an unlock that happens at the very start of the game. Basically Auriga added a new unlock for the new wonder which I needed to duplicate into Hectic Combat's starting tech file. Will post fixed version shortly.



You can also fix this by temporarily adding the endlesswonder09 unlock to any tech you have not researched yet and then research it but you should only do this if you're familiar with modding.

So after playing all the way through the tech tree and doing a lot of combat tests with the various weapons, I tweaked the following



Short Range Ballistic:

Problem - Too long to be effective, due to attrition getting into close range (even with defensive type cards) fleets with SRBal are not effective. Overall weakest weapon.

• removed all damage penalty at long range (Reason: 10% accuracy is quite a severe penalty already)
• shots and reload * 0.75 (Reason: weapon overkills targets even on spread-fire, weapon was too inefficient compared to alternatives MRB or LRB due to high burst and slow reload)
  
  

Short Range Beam:

Problem - Completely ineffective against anything but the weakest shields even in nosebreaker, completely wipes out fleet with no shields - overall ineffective

• increased damage by x1.25 at medium range, and x1.5 at short (Reason: heavy shields will still completely stop, but makes it a more truer short range weapon by increasing lethality as range is closed)
  
  

Medium Range Missile:

Problem - overall less effective than regular missiles (after adjusted fire rates from my previous post)

• increased damage by to 0.5x at long, and 0.75x at medium
  
  

Cards:

I realize you are looking at redoing cards anyway, but I tweaked the Offensive ballistic and Adaptive strategy down to 20% bonus damage as I felt they were enabling long range fleets to decimate other slower/closer ones



Overall Combat:

Problem - Short range rarely reached, when it is then typically large casualties already inflicted - short range weapons rarely see real combat time

• reduced overall combat damage by x0.7 multiplier at all ranges to all weapon classes to try and give short range weapons a fair go
  
  

Thoroughly enjoying your hard work on the mod!

I'm about to playtest my changes, but just thought it might give you some inspiration - not intended to tell you how to run your mod

I just deiced to play a straight Hissio game to test the mod because I wanted to see how fighter/bomber combat worked now (their ships get fighter bomber discount on tonnage), and because I wanted to get some achievements on steam. It overall seems very effective in combat. However, one thing I noticed is that when my tehc upgrades the lvl of bomber fighter on my ship does not. In other words I might have designed a ship with 2nd lvl fighters and research 3rd lvl and the modal does not upgrade in the design. Thus, I have to create an entirely new ship design each time I upgrade a component. I am guessing this might be something from the base game but any way to fix it?

@notu, thanks for the input, I think simpler way to make short range weapons more useful is to simply increase the ship's HP. That was one of the thing I didn't have time to figure out. Most likely the base HP is too low right now for the damage input. When you have 60 round per phase and a weapon like gattling laser, even an increase of 1 damage gets magnified by a lot due to the number of rounds it fires. To make balancing smooth it is necessary to raise the overall damage that all weapons are balanced against and therefore the average hp ships should have to soak that damage in order for the fight to reach melee. I didn't have time to run enough battles to figure out the hp to use.



Another note about the weapons, they are not meant to equally powerful, they are supposed to shine for certain situations and not others. For instance gattling laser is extremely powerful when used in large numbers (as in every ships in a 20 CP fleet is using only gattling laser as weapon), due to threshold mechanics of shield, it is inevitable that using less gattling laser means far less effectiveness. It was made this way to give gattling laser its unique characteristics. Even small increase in damage means big change in effective damage for this weapon. Also, part of the idea behind HC combat system is to use as few modifiers as possible. To set a weapon up as effective in short range versus long range, I relied on accuracy as much as possible.



Lastly, feel free to try out different ways to balance the game. Who knows, the dev might decide to use some of the tricks.



@Banzailizard, I just did a quick test with custom Hissho, I was able to upgrade the level of my fighter/bomber from 1 to 2 without issue. Did you have the necessary strat res? It could be a bug that I can't replicate on my machine.

Hey been playing with this mod as i hated the combat on this game as soon as i started playing it a bit, i updated to 1.1.2.0 and got this error at the end of a battle making the battle not end. Just posting it in case is related to something in the mod?? Altho only have 11 hours play time its the first error, so not sure.

It's a problem with the main game. The dev's are aware and are claiming to fix it in the next patch.

@Antera : regarding ship HP - I've found that 70% combat damage seems to be working well in tests so far (effectively 143% ship HP - for me it was less effort to add a few lines to Battle Descriptor than modify all the hulls)

It has opened up more combat options and allows more freedom of ship design



I get the weapons aren't equally powerful all the time, I was just tweaking the weapons I found the most lacking and in a game from start to finish.

LR ballistic fleets routinely wiped out larger fleets of any other weapon construction through the entire game. Rather than nerf LRB, I decided to buff the others

I ran combats with fleets of 5 battleships each packing 50 of 1 particular weapon (35 of missiles due to space increase) - 9 fleets in total, 1 for each weapon.

I then ran combats vs different opposing fleets at least once with each fleet (often more to try different cards or tactics) to judge their overall effectiveness.

Against an unshielded but deflector heavy fleet, laser weapons were more effective than ballistics, but not by a huge amount. Compared to the other end of the scale in a no-deflector, shield heavy combat, the lasers were not just reduced effectiveness but in many cases completely useless.

250 top tier gatling lasers on nosebreaker still struggled to kill anything but the weakest ships far below in tech levels if they had even moderate shielding.

Medium and long range ballistics were trumping everything simple because there is no way to stop 100% of their damage unlike the other two groups (apart from medium missiles)



As with the ship HP, I was simply using combat modifiers as a means of quickly testing changes to weapons without having to change each tech level of a weapon - the changes could certainly be migrated to a weapon update instead if I wasn't being lazy