Would you be interested in something like this?
0 voters
Since the other rebalanced mod has been abandon, I figure someone else has to do it.
This will not be a minor patch and fix, this will be a complete rework of every single modules and hulls from scratch.
So how many people will be interested in this?
Well, it seems to be interesting ^^
But, can you be more specific about what changes you are going to make? ^^
Yes, it’s regrettable that the total-conversion Balance Mod from last winter stalled and failed. While there’s a substantial mass of player-facing content that is “only a little bit broken,” there is also an overlapping set of things that are seriously warped, ineffective, or thoroughly broken indeed. That covers not just some weapons but also certain modules and hulls.
Before I ramped-up my efforts on the Classic Dreadnoughts mod, I had been pondering multiple re-balance efforts (some of them drastic) to make Alliance and Empire more playable in comparison to Rebel and Federation. It bothers me that two of the “Core Four” races shipping with the game are so lackluster. Perhaps I should dust off some of that content while awaiting word of your wider effort’s details.
As I mentioned earlier, this is not going to be a patch and fix. Efforts will be made to
The only thing I am retaining are the graphics. Everything else will be redesign from the ground up.
Most excelent. I am most in favor of #1,2&3
With #4 i do not paticually mind the speed - but still if you can still achive a balance when changing engine thrusts it would be awesome (not to mention open up the scope of varing the races - ie rebels feel the need for speed)
Completly agreed with Darkstar.
(but for me the spams are fun :P)
Spamming is pretty un-fun; nerfing it is a comendable goal. I like a game where spamming might be possible, but isn’t needed to guarantee victory. It is boring as hell.
Trash any redundant and useless equipment. For example: we have a highly effective cruiser Guidance Scrambler for killing seeking weapons. But we also have three different cruiser Point Defense guns and two different PD Scanners for them, and all of those five modules together are far behind the GS in terms of performance or even relevance.
I’ve long disliked that. Other veterans (long gone, alas) also used to blast that lameness, too.
I formerly intended some major mod changes to help all races become much more distinctive, but in 2010 real life had a depressing talent for getting in my way. It’s a pity, because I had done considerably more than merely “plan things out” for substantial changes to the game. Those mods weren’t as total as the solutions you seem to be moving towards, but they definitely would have helped GSB’s status quo.
How curious. I never felt that GSB was too slow. To me, playing this game at 4X speed already feels generously speedy.
My apologies; I hadn’t fully understood your original post. I see you’re actually speaking of creating a complete “reboot” of GSB, somewhat like the 2009 reboot of the Star Trek movie franchise. So you’re contemplating a totally new game, inspired only a little by GSB’s official content but with the same graphical appearance as GSB.
Concerning the development path of this very far-reaching project:
Do you intend to solicit meaningful input from other players, or do you intend this to be a solo adventure? While two players were apparently the prime movers behind coding and steering the previous unfinished Balance Mod, they stated that theirs was also a community effort. You haven’t yet stated if you’re handling this mod on an open multilateral basis or a closed unilateral basis.
Well I intend to have a beta out solo first, things can go from there.
There’s no real basis to ground anything yet given nobody yet know what and how much I will change things. I might make everything do thousands of damage and ships have millions of HP just because I like big numbers. I might remove armor tanking by giving beam weapons massive amount of armor penetration, which allows me to give armor huge armor strength so they won’t be useless even if they don’t provide immunity.
As for the slowness, well you notice that when you play SAC enough, when 2 0.05 speed fleets attempts to move across the screen, equipped with armor tank, MWM, and scramblers. One match at 4x can last half a hour.
Will you be using the other mod as a starting point? Even if the changes themselves don’t fit in with your vision, there was a lot of discussion regarding the relative strengths of different modules and the effects of changing their attributes. It could be useful for you (if only to get an idea of what people are annoyed by).
Nope, since I will be changing everything. A lot of those stuff only make sense because half the modules are not being change, and we are trying to put a bandage on top of it.
See the goal for me is not to balance with the existing game. I want this to be a completely different experience, and that many of the conventional strategies (armor tanking, MWM scrambler wars, super slow cruisers, etc) will no longer work. This requires me to throw everything conventional out the window and start from scratch. Some of these ideas I came up with myself, while others are modified version of existing solutions (which unfortunately I forgot the source).
So take armor for example, currently armor without resist is useless, and with resist it’s godly, but It doesn’t have to be that way. I can add a lot of armor strength so it doesn’t suck without resist, and by contrast give beams a ridiculously high armor penetration (say 500), so they can always punch through armors.
So say I want frigate to be able to play a support role with cruisers. We all know that putting them in formation makes their speed useless, so I can implement a high resistant/very heavy shield for them. It just so happen that we have a useless Turbo shield right now for this task. They will have nice shield resist so as to not be annihilated by everything in 2 seconds, but using that shield stop them from being uber fast. This allows them to not suck in support but not make their rush any better.
How to stop sub 0.1 cruisers from dominating the game? Implement a super powerful weapon with 0.1 tracking. As long as your ship is moving faster than 0.1 you won’t have to worry about it, but any slower and you might just get destroyed. Yes it will also mean less formations and tanking since “keep moving” will be much more important. Mixing ship might stop being so bad.
How to make bigger ships better? Implement 0 stack penalty or minor positive stack modules. Since I no longer have to worry about armor tanks, I don’t have to worry about that 73+ armor nonsense being too powerful. I can even give ship high armor bonus if I want, making large ships MORE immune to fighters instead of the other way around.
How to make one race more distinct from another? 2 ways
How to make one cruiser hull less of a substitute from another? By making huge variation in their size, number of modules, and bonuses. Right now large hulls are useless because of how armor works, and they don’t even come with more slots. Once armor gets fixed I can give big ship more module slots to make them good.
Scrambler will be completely removed. In contrast missile will have a much lower firing rate but deals a lot more damage. Yes point defense can therefore take up the role of anti missiles. The whole “1 missile per launcher” limit will essentially be eliminated since they will fire at much lower rate. I can also give them much more range without making them suck. This also means I can make mid range/close range missiles not suck because I can make them overload point defense without worrying about 1 missile limit or missile stop hitting from being too fast.
Long range will now be REALLY long range, by that I mean whole screen long range. By contrast, engines will be cheaper. This allows for “rush and artillery” tactics instead of simply rushing or spamming long range. Long range guns will have significantly less HP than close range guns. So long range will work more as damage support rather than spam. This also eliminates “lures” because they will be hit and killed no-matter how far away they are. Of course, long range guns will also has a high minimum range to make the current" counter rush" strategy unappealing. It’s much better to have rush fleet drive forward so your long range can still fire while your short range ship takes the hit.
Fighters will be cheaper, more HP, but slower, with the max of 3 speed. This means more guns will hit them, but they will also be more disposable. I want them to play primary as low cost support, not spam and kill everything that isn’t armed to kill them. Not dying in one hit also makes supply bay usable, which will be very significantly buffed.
To implement mid size fighters (convettes), engines will be made such that they have high thrust but high weight. The goal is that speed will begin at 2 and expect to drop to 1.5 when fully loaded. This allows me to make unique modules for them without worrying that putting conventional fighter weapons makes it go warp speed.
Because everything is converted to such an extend, it means I can and will implement new modules, or take out existing ones. This mod will not be compatible with the old missions so unfortunately it means I have to remake them all as well.
More ideas to come.
There is one thing about GSB that bugs me the most and can not be fixed without redoing the game code itself. The ability for a ship to get damaged if something gets between its shield and hull. I Do like the thinking you have here and I myself have some really loooong ranges weapons in my eve-online mod that I have been working on, but they have one of the WORST tracking ever. But they do upwards of 2000 damage in the case of the Citidel torpedo. Yes yes I know that is a HUGE number but there tracking is only 0.1 or less, and some can hit up to 2400 in the case of the Dual 1000 mm Railguns. And Due to the fighters ability to dive under the shield bubbles as with frigates it puts the Caldari at a mega huge disadvantage as they are based on shields.
I do look forward to this rebalanced mod and wonder if this is going to include the Restricted Vanilla Modules mod also?
This is precisely why I want to make armor strength not suck but armor resist not overpowered. Bigger ships will have better fighter defense.
Now I can make it Restricted Vanilla Modules, though I am not sure. I mean, given everything will pretty much be thrown out the window other mods will need some serious rebalancing if they want to benchmark onto this. And I am not sure how many modders are willing to balance to this instead of the standard game.
[-cynical laughter-] There’s a long list of things that fit that description!
Short of an actual “GSB 2”, it’s never going to happen; just put it out of your mind. 
That is indeed a most interesting question, as it strikes directly at the heart of the matter.
If a lot of modders sign-on to rebalancing their personal creations to match whatever new benchmarks are in your mod, then you know how much confidence the community places in your vision. The poll aside, there’s always the chance that their active participation with it might be due to hasty “me too!” emotions instead of a rational choice, though. Perhaps having a few other “heavy hitters” mod-wise on your side is preferable to a landslide of public acclaim? I truly don’t know.
If people are noticeably reluctant to join forces with this bold new proposal, well, that’s an answer, too.
I don’t think there’s any solid way to reliably predict in advance which of those two directions it’s going to lean.