Rebalance Mod v1.03.1

Here's the fixed post for the moment, until I can fix the broken OP.

Rebalance Mod v1.03.1

The goal of this mod is to improve Sins of a Solar Empire's strategical diversity by improving the diversity of combat units, technologies and abilities, by improving the AI's use of special abilities and by balancing a few overpowered and underpowered abilities.


Download link:
http://files.filefront.com/Rebalance+Mod+v1031zip/;9836160;/fileinfo.html

Included mods:
BailKnights Graphical mod's particles.

New Ship Variants:
Each race now has two variants of Light Frigate and two variants of Long Range Frigate.
Light Frigate A: Medium armor, Anti-Heavy armor. (No change)
Light Frigate B: Medium armor, Anti-Light armor. (+25% damage, -20% range, +12.5% maximum speed)
Long Range Frigate A: Light armor, Anti-Medium armor. (No change)
Long Range Frigate B: Light armor, Anti-Very heavy armor. (-20% damage)
The names for the new frigate variants are:
TEC: Iridium Light Frigate & Ballista LRM Frigate.
Advent: Acolyte Vessel & Ascendant Vessel.
Vasari: Ravastra Hunter & Kanrak Aggressor.

Damage type vs. Armor type changes:
The performance of all standard damage type has been standardized; They all do 150% against their optimal armor type.
Capital type damage now does 150% damage to light and medium armor, 100% to everything else.
Orbital Defenses now do Capital damage.
Siege Frigates now do Anti-Very heavy armor.
Bombers now have very light armor.
Ship DPS has been adjusted to match the damage chart changes.

Damage chart:


Research changes:
Light Frigate (Anti-Light) & Phase Jump Disruptors:
When "Phase Jump Inhibitor" techs have been researched, the "Iridium", "Acolyte" & "Hunter" light frigates are upgraded with a short range Phase Jump Inhibitor.
Light Frigate (Anti-Heavy):
"Cobalt Prototype" has been added as Tier 3 tech; it's also been added as a prerequisite for "Sabotage Reactor".
"Disciple Vessel Design" has been added as Tier 2 tech; it's also been added as a prerequisite for "Steal Antimatter".
"Skirmisher Prototype" has been added as Tier 3 tech; it's also been added as a prerequisite for "Interference".
Long Range Frigate (Anti-Very Heavy):
"Ballista Prototype" has been added as a Tier 3 tech; it has "Javelis Prototype" as a prerequisite.
"Ascendant Design" has been added as a Tier 4 tech; it has "Illuminator Design" as a prerequisite.
"Aggressor Prototype" has been added as a Tier 3 tech; it has "Assailant Prototype" as a prerequisite.
Anti-Phase Missile technology:
"Anti-Phase Bots" has been added as a Tier 6 tech with "Demolition Bots" as a prerequisite; it allows Hoshiko Robotics Cruisers to reduce the shield bypass of nearby Phase Missiles by 20%.
"Micro-Repulsion" has been added as a Tier 6 tech with "Repulsion" as a prerequisite; it allows Iconus Guardians to reduce the shield bypass of nearby Phase Missiles by 20%.
Miscelaneous changes:
"Defense Vessel Design" has been moved to Tier 1.
"Timed Explosives" has been moved to Tier 5 and now has "Cluster Warheads" as a prerequisite.
"Sentinel Prototype" is no longer a prerequisite for "Charged Missiles".
Several techs have been shuffled around in the same tier to make space for the new techs and their connections.

Macromanagement imrovement: (Changes to reduce the need to micro, and to improve the AI)
The ability "Charged Missiles" is now a passive ability with 67% of the original damage, it no longer gives a range bonus or movement penalities.
The ability "Deploy Siege Turret" now has a much larger range.
Flak frigates no longer have weapons in the left, right & back arcs; those 3 arcs have been replaced by a passive ability "Anti-Strikecraft Turrets" that has the equivalent DPS as the 3 lost arcs, but can track strikecrafts in any arc. Flak Frigates are now stronger against fighters and much stronger against bombers.
Shield Regenerate, Repair Cloud, Vertigo, Malice, Animosity and Jam Weapons are now active auras (costs, durations and cooldowns haven't been removed) with large area of effects centered on the capital ship.
Energy Weapon Boost & Concentration Aura were switched. The Carrier now has the drone buff, and the PsiBattleship has the ship buff.
Illuminators (and Ascendants) now do 94% of their damage in the frontal arc, and 6% in their side arcs (for cosmetic reasons).

Balance changes:
Siege Frigates now do 50% more planetary bombardment DPS (pirate siege frigates didn't get the improvement).
Due to the damage type balance changes, Capital Ships have had a significant boost to their survivability.
The ability "Raze Planet" was replaced with a passive +25%/+50%/+100% planetary bombardment buff.
The ability "Suppression" will now also disables engines and regeneration (the tooltip clearly states that movement should be disabled).
The ability "Ruthlessness" will now suppress the natural regeneration of nearby enemies instead of doing 1.5 dps (effectively does the same thing, but it looks better and it's now clear that the ability can't stack).
The ability "Distortion Field" will now 'only' disables up to 5 frigates in a 500 unit radius (down from all frigates in a 2000 unit radius, yes, it was bar none the most overpowered ability in the game, more powerful than any Capital Ship Ultimate).
The ability "Defeat Shield" was changed to a -15% Shield Mitigation debuff (still an effective +37.5% damage (down from +56%), and up to +50% damage (down from +83%) against a fully teched Advent in it's culture).
"NME Warheads" now grants +15% damage over 3 levels, to be more in line with other ultimate weapon techs.

Strikecraft changes:
Carrier Cruisers and Orbital Hangars no longer have or need Anti-Matter to build strikecrafts.
Strikecraft effective DPS was improved by 20% overall, fighters and bombers do more damage to medium and heavy armor types, and bombers do effectively 20% less damage than before to Capital Ships.
TEC have the hardiest squads (504 & 689 total hull), the lowest damage (15.6 & 12.4 total dps) and the second best squad production time (84s & 120s).
Advent have the weakest squads (302 & 441 total hull), the highest damage (19.2 & 15.3 total dps), the best production time (72s & 105s), they are now even more vulnerable to area of effect abilities and now the remote-controlled Advent drones will decay 20 time faster (in ~5 seconds) when their host is destroyed.
Vasari have average hull (414 & 563 total hull) and damage (17.4 & 13.9 total dps), the worst production time (96s & 135s), have the best hull per strikecraft and they benefit from the best weapon technology (Phase Missiles).

Orbital changes:
Orbits have been enlarged by 10,000 units, the building zone area was only enlarged by 1,000 units.
Gauss Defense, Beam Defense & Missile Defense had their ranges doubled.
Phase Jump Inhibitors orbital structures will now slow any enemy ship jumping toward their gravity well.

Experience rewards:
The experience rewards for destroying ships has been adjusted so 7.5xp is rewarded on average per fleet point destroyed. (Previously several ships were giving alot more or less xp that the other ships of the same class. Ex.: TEC carrier = 80xp, advent & vasari carriers = 20xp)
Pirate ships experience rewards weren't modified.

Counter Tooltips:
The Counter Tooltips now displays the unit's armor type and optimal armor target.

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The Mod is currently in beta. If you get any crash, notice any broken or missing text, abilities that do not work like they should, please submit a bug report in this thread. Thanks you.

Suggestions on how to further improve the mod are welcome.

P.S.: Updated to try to fix the disappearing carriage returns.

This doesn't sound to bad. If there was online mod transferring through ICO i'd try it out.

Nice mod. For some reason, didn't realize you could add extra frigates and cruisers, (up to 9 total!). Always assumed it was hardcoded. That will be handy...

Thanks innociv & thecaptain_ps!

That's a really good idea innociv, adding an integrated mod downloader and manager to ICO would greatly improve the SoaSE community.

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Upcoming changes for the next version (v1.03.2):
1. Market changes
Seems like I forgot to migrate the market changes to the final v1.03.1.
The buy price will fluctuate between 4 and 6 credit per unit (vanilla is between 3 and 4).
The sell price can't be significantly increased without causing market exploits, this is why they dropped the sell price to 1/3 of the buy price.
Thus, if you need to sell minerals or crystals for credits, place those crystal and minerals on the market (that's the interface under the buy & sell buttons).

2. Damage change
The anti-light still suffers from being at the extremity of the spectrum thus doing extremely poor damage to most other units, so to counter balance that problem, I'll shift the damage ramping by one armor type.
Result:
Anti-Light damage = 150% vs light, 75% vs. medium, 75% vs. heavy, 50% vs. very heavy and 25% vs. capital.

3. Cielo changes
The Cielo Command Cruiser's "Embolden" ability will be changed to a passive AOE weapon cooldown buff.
Will switch both abilities so that "Designate Target" is the innate ability and "Embolden" will be the researched ability.
"Designate Target" will gain the added ability of crippling target's engine (capital ships will be immune).

4. Subverter changes
"Defeat Shields" will be changed to an active aura. (Anti-Micro change)

5. Overseer changes
"Reactive Nanite Armor" will be changed to an active aura that grants a +2 armor and small regeneration buff to all nearby ships, the aura will also grant a focused regeneration bonus to a single nearby ship (the focused regeneration bonus of several overseers will stack, but the aoe buffs won't stack).

WOW I can`t believe this. SERIOUSLY  
Stop hijacking my work please?

Wow I didnt see that. Here I was wishing I could use both mods together. But you sould really ask permission first.

I'm sorry BailKnight, I thought you allowed other modders to use your mod in their mods if they gave proper credits.
I'll remove your particle effects from the next version if you want to.

Quit with the.. OMG you're using my mod wihtout consent!!!

Your hard work is paying off with people including it in theirs and thus saying who it was created by.. "you". I can see if it was someone else taking the credit.

I am in no way blasting you bailknight, your mod is amazing but you need to chill.

Yes actually I`m agree with your opinion.
But it`s still hard to stand because I already declare no "particle only" merging for public release(for private and personal use I don`t care absolutly) and critically I didn`t get any PM about this one. Even Uzii want to recieve PM for his free-to-merge Sins Plus. That is basic manner isn`t it? At least other modders who want merging my mod sent me PM in advance and I have some plan to release TXT version and merging guide for those modders in near future.

Still I need to chill...Yes you are right. Thanks Rhylin.

And Phoebus The Greatest Sorry about hard expression But I hope you should understand why I`m so pissed (Pissed about this kind of problem almost 2 weeks). PM me if you still want merging my mod then I`ll put your name in my List.

Now I need to be stick my thread for my own progress....