I guess this is a difference of artistic opinion, but I'm thinking lasers really do need to look like lasers. If there was an add-on to remove changes to laser graphics (and other beam-style weapons if they've been changed too), that'd be a good thing IMO. Plus points if the add-on allowed for graphics changed by other mods earlier in the load order.

Anyway, I unsubbed after my first battle because of this. It's a pity, because I think Stellaris really needs an all-in-one balanced super-mod like this at the moment and I really liked many of the other aspects.

@HalfFeralHuman

thank you very much for your feedback. while i can understand that you may prefer more long laser beams instead of laser cannons please consider that this mod makes all projectiles and weapon graphics visible. vanilla hides a lot. imagine a huge space battle with basic long laser beam weapons like in vanilla stellaris for red laser etc. with my adjustment that makes all graphics visible. it would look like a total mess. your screen would be full of long laser beams. you would not be able to see very much. even with time travel effect.

with ACG you will still have some long laser beams, but they will be more special and impressive when you see them and won't be used by every ship in your fleet

regarding your suggestion, that this mod should become compatible with other mods that change weapon graphics => that's close to impossible because:

a) i reworked graphics not only to fit my personal taste but also reworked them for
b) better performance in game
c) immersive scaling
d) consistency
e) and they are directly connected to weapon components, which are completely reworked/rebalanced as well.

on the other hand: what is possible, is that i am open-minded for suggestions regarding new components/weapons and i could work on them and add them to the mod if i think they could meet my requirements after i worked on them (immersiveness, consistency, balance, performance, ..)

i hope for your understanding :)

PS: standard laser weapons are not named "lasers" anymore but "laser cannons" - just to make this change more visible from the beginning as well :)

Hey Ajey,

In keeping with what your thoughts and also the rework you did for Strike Craft, I do have a suggestion.

What if there were more versions of Strike Craft to pick from? Instead of only having just two types, Fighters and Strike Craft (bomber) as options, maybe add more?

I've seen some mods that add IMO too many types. So I would say how about a total of just 4. Or maybe where we only have just the two we have now, but through research we can have other types of load outs for them.

Fighters: Lasers, ballistic, plasma etc etc
Bombers: Rockets, torpedoes, Heavy versions etc etc

Or if different types of crafts altogether.
Fighters, Bombers, Heavy Fighters, Gun boats. etc etc (these were just off top of my head for examples.)

What's your option on this?

Thanks.

@Mr. Flibble

well i would like to answer your question by going through my core pillars:

1. regarding graphics
=> it would certainly look cool to have different kind of strike craft and would enhance the game but on the other hand it's difficult to get new good looking graphical animations used by strike craft if you want to optimize those graphics in order to let them work within the limits of the engine of stellaris after you make all graphical effects visible like i did with ACG (it took me a huge amount of time to test and rework the current animations until i reached the current state)

2. regarding performance
=> it would need quite some work to add new graphically optimized animations for those new types but it would be possible

3. regarding new content
=> creating those new types i.e. writing the code for it is no big deal but i think there might be a problem with AI using them reasonably and the AI adjustments one can make to stellaris are very limited due to the coding of AI.

You have to know that AI in stellaris is based on "weights". Those weights are static most of the time even if you add some modifiers i.e. AI will either choose one or another type but they rarely change their decision once they made it.

That's giving human players a huge advantage. By "only" having two types of strike craft (fighters and bombers) with upgradeable tech tiers, i am avoiding those issues because human players and AI players are both forced into using both.

4. regarding balance
=> if i added more strike craft component possibilities it would be a tough job to make them versatile but still balanced (it's not impossible but it's a tough job if you want to do it right imo)

so my biggest concerns are:
a) i highly doubt i can make the AI use those other strike craft options as well as human players, which would result in a human player advantage and therefore imbalance of the game
b) it's a really tough job that require a lot of time for testing if i wanted to create those new graphical animations the right way (i.e. adjusting for performance and graphical aesthetics)

hence:
since this is no easy task that can be done within a short amount of time (if you want to do it right), i would rather want to postpone a final decision on this. i appreciate your suggestion and frankly i often had thoughts about that as well before. but i did not find a solution for those mentioned issues yet that would make me think "yea.. nice that could work out well, so let's start working on it"

If i find a reasonable solution for my concerns in the future i might add new types though but for now i think i will have a lot to do with other things like updating the mod for federations update and making compatibility patches etc. :)

In current version, battle speed still feels too slow and make range superiority (e.g. Kinetic artillery with Cautious Admiral) a bit too powerful.


I think nerf a little bit of everything, instead huge nerf on speed only, can make things better and more balanced.

e.g.
ship_speed_reduction = 0.5
ship_fire_rate_mult = -0.1
ship_weapon_damage = -0.1
ship_accuracy_mult = -0.05
ship_tracking_add = -5
ship_hull_mult = 0.2
ship_shield_mult = 0.1
ship_armor_mult = 0.1
(speed_reduction is in-battle only and other things are persistent, just like ASB but avoid any significant amount: ASB uses ship_fire_rate_mult = -0.7 and ship_hull, shield, and armor +200%)


In addition, Crystal Targeting Matrix seems still seriously unbalanced.

Crystal Targeting Matrix T1 seems too weak, and using Auxiliary Fire-Control instead is always better.

Auxiliary Fire-Control: Power use 10, alloy cost 9, chance to hit +5
Crystal Targeting Matrix T1: Power use 20, alloy cost 18, chance to hit +1, Tracking +2

T2 is better but not seems to be able to justify the cost.
Maybe burf lower lvl of them like make all of Crystal Targeting Matrix to have chance to hit +5, or make lower lvl much cheaper would be better balanced.

On the other side, Crystal Targeting Matrix T5 seems too powerful that makes evasion literally useless.

How about ship_tracking debuff aura to every ship and some techs to enhance its effectiveness? I think it will make Crystal Targeting Matrix T5 more balanced without nerfing it directly, and such system itself can be a realistic, interesting implementation of stealth and counter-stealth war (so regards the tracking debuff aura and enhance techs as progress of stealth tech, and Crystal Targeting Matrix as counter-stealth tech)

@Droiyan7 (Yi, JoonHo)

thank you for your suggestions. Please note that ASB is a complete different mod. I modified each individual ship component and rebalanced them. That's quite different to just increasing a few values broadly for all ships and therefore you can't simply compare ASB adjustments to ACG adjustments. You need to be careful here.

Ship fire rate was already reworked for ACG by increasing cooldowns of weapons. This was done for several reasons and with several goals (balance, immersiveness, performance, ...). I tested this a long time and to be honest i think i am happy with the current result. therefore i would not change the fire rate/cooldowns broadly (but i am open-minded to reworking some weapon components if that's helping to increase balance even more)

Ship speed reduction was changed recently (from -90% to -85%) to adress this unbalance. You are right long range weapons and strike craft are more powerful with ACG than vanilla.
=> On the other hand i think long range weapons like strike craft were not even useful in vanilla and long ranged weapons in vanilla only made sense in certain situations. stupid strategies like mass corvette spam are dominant strategies in vanilla. i do not like that.

I think ACG is much more immersive and more fun. now it really makes sense to invest in bigger ships with long range technologies. they are powerful like they should be in my opinion. Having said that, i also decreased some long ranged weapons to have a "lower" long range to compensate and balance because you are right long ranged weapons are really strong with ACG. Of course i could further change the speed but it's a difficult choice also because of other aspects of the game like the cinematic experience or performance. If i go down further than - 85% battles will look and feel a lot different and performance will also take a hit.

I think i would not decrease it to -50% since that would not be balanced anymore in combination with my other already included adjustments and it would also decrease the quality of cinematic battles. But i am honestly thinking about further improving balance here and this is a work in progress. maybe i find some other ways to improve balance here even more :)

regarding your suggestion about decreasing weapon damage broadly and increasing hull, shield and armors => i am reluctant to doing that for several reason. there would also be negative effects on balance. only in some situation there would be an improvement for balance. apart from that i already adjusted and reworked all stats of each component (including reworking damage, hull, shields, armor etc.).

Also battles would last longer and they are already lasting long, it could cause performance issues because of the limitation of the stellaris engine in combination with my "making all graphical effects" visible feature. F.e. i made stress tests in stellaris and the result is: the longer the battles take with the feature all graphical effects visible => the more likely the game becomes to crash => so i need to be careful here. I think i kinda reached an optimum state regarding length of battles and visible effects with ACG, a small step in the wrong direction is enough to make the game crash during huge battles with ACG.

regarding accuracy and tracking that's something that i am open-minded about changing incl. individual component stats like crystal matrix. Why do you feel ships need a broad accuracy and tracking change anyway though? what's your argument for that - help me understand it better please :)

i am open-minded to change crystal targeting matrix. in general i am very open-minded to changing individual component stats rather than making broad changes. do you have exact suggestions about each value T1-T5 for crystal targeting matrix (cost, buff modifier etc.)?

i think your tracking aura and stealth war is an interesting idea but the execution could be problematic with an aura and it would need to be balanced and adjusted for performance etc. hence i think working with an event would be more reasonable than giving each ship an aura component. but on the other hand i think i would even prefer to change individual weapon component stats if i wanted to add such a modifier => tracking is included in weapon stats of ship weapon components and i think i would prefer to further improve and rebalance those weapons instead of adding broad modifiers => also because i think some weapons might not even need such a change.

overall i am super happy and thankful for your suggestions even though it might seem that i am arguing against some of your suggestions. my main issue with "broad" changes is that i used a long time and much testing (for balance, performance, immersiveness, ...) to achieve the current experience that ACG creates and i know how easy some small broad changes can cause new issues. therefore i am more willing to change individual components and improve balance that way instead of making such huge broad changes. i hope that makes sense :)

Thanks for kind and detailed answer. I understand why you made such argument.

Originally posted by Ajey:

do you have exact suggestions about each value T1-T5 for crystal targeting matrix (cost, buff modifier etc.)?

I think the simplest way is just making all of T1-T5 for crystal targeting matrix to have chance to hit +5 without changing any other value.

By looking T1 and T2 against Auxiliary Fire-Control, that will make sense.

Auxiliary Fire-Control: Power use 10, alloy cost 9, chance to hit +5
Crystal Targeting Matrix T1: Power use 20, alloy cost 18, chance to hit +1 → 5, Tracking +2
Crystal Targeting Matrix T2: Power use 40, alloy cost 27, chance to hit +2 → 5, Tracking +4


One other way is that making it cheaper to make their cost-effect ratio similar to Auxiliary Fire-Control

Auxiliary Fire-Control: chance to hit +5, Tracking +0 = Total +5
Crystal Targeting Matrix T1: chance to hit +5, Tracking +0 = Total +3
so, about the half cost of Auxiliary Fire-Control would be better fit to Crystal Targeting Matrix T1

so,
Auxiliary Fire-Control: Power use 10, alloy cost 9, chance to hit +5
Crystal Targeting Matrix T1: Power use 20 → 5, alloy cost 18 → 4, chance to hit +1, Tracking +2
Crystal Targeting Matrix T2: Power use 40 → 11, alloy cost 27 → 10, chance to hit +2, Tracking +4

Originally posted by Ajey:

regarding accuracy and tracking that's something that i am open-minded about changing incl. individual component stats like crystal matrix. Why do you feel ships need a broad accuracy and tracking change anyway though? what's your argument for that - help me understand it better please :)

After I got Crystal Targeting Matrix T5, I think it allows to build big-gunned big-ship with enough accuracy and tracking tracking to trashing any agile ship of 90% evasion.

https://i.imgur.com/SafZFwl.jpg
Mega cannon itself has 75% acc and 0 tracking

Agile ships (corvette and destroyer) have limited hull integrity, so even single lucky shot of Mega cannon can be critical. And my Mega cannon in the screenshot has 75+23% acc and 0+57 tracking (+60 if maxed lvl 10 radar is used). It's 155 in total and 65% hit against maxed 90% evasion (With lvl 10 radar, it will be 158 in total and 68% hit). It's no way to make agile ships useful enough against such enemy.


In simplification, effective health (expected average ability to survival) determined by "health*(average hit chance)", so

1000 health with 0 evasion (100% hit)
500 health with 50 evasion (after tracking, so 50% hit)
these two are roughly same in term of expected average survival.

With 65~68% hit, corvette with 90% evasion make it roughly +50% (1.5 times) stronger than 0% evasion. Obviously don't matter at all, considering how fragile corvette it is against later-game weapons.


Changing individual weapon component stats to solve that requires significant nerf of every weapon ACC, so likely far more troubling than introducing stealth war using anti-tracking aura.


Fundamentally, I (and many people in my local community) think evasion in later game become too easily obsoleted since capped by 90%. I played ACOT, NSC, ESC and see how their end-game components nullify the matter of evasion, and so winning battle in later game become who can spam biggest ship with biggest guns only. (That is intended especially in ACOT, as some of it's end-game weapon has fixed 100 acc and 100 tracking, so ALWAYS hit)

ACG is far much balanced than those mods, but the evasion in later-game is already useless in vanilla game, solve evasion problem without nerf everything (or very seriously nerf every tracking bonus) seems impossible mission.


Of course, the simplest way is just big nerf Crystal Targeting Matrix T5's ACC and tracking bonus (and much cheaper to match nerfed spec), but I think introduce stealth war can make contents rich in long term.


P.S: One more thing, I think the description of AI crew does not match to it's bonus.

https://i.imgur.com/Lugvcdn.png

By looking it's description, I expected upkeep reduction and evasion bonus, not penetration bonus it currently gives.

Hello, first of all I wanna say this mod is outstanding and an absolute must have for every single playthrough of mine from now on. That being said, I have one suggestion/issue I've noticed with space battles. Different tiered ships all move at different speeds than the other tiers in combat. This, I know is an intended feature. However, I've noticed that at the start of any battle, corvettes, destroyers and cruisers all tend to shoot forward away from the fleet's formation and die extremely fast. I found this to be an odd result, as it makes it more reasonable to build only the larger ships mid-late game since they will be the only ones tanky enough to survive long enough for backup before being picked off if they wander too far from the fleet. My suggestion would be to do what NSC2 has done, and replace individual ship ai computer components with ones that allow us more control over their positioning in combat. Just a thought I wanted to share, hope it helps in any way feedback-wise!
Edit: I also noticed in a comment further back you asking why we might feel weapon accuracy needs a rebalance and I can also agree that it might need looking at again. My recent playthrough had most of my combat situations leveling out at 99-100% accuracy on late game combat and that utterly devestates the smaller craft that rely on speed and evasion to survive.

@Droiyan7 (Yi, JoonHo)
thank you for your feedback.
1. i will adjust the crystal targetting matrix and nerf it.
2. i will also add a reworked description for AI Crew and i will also nerf the AI Crew (from 10% penetration values to 5% penetration values)
3. i will add 2 more building slots for starbases spreaded until the higehst level of starbases

you can check out my changes once i release the patch for federations - i will include those adjustments.

@nadesammich
thank you for your feedback as well. i will think about further improvements for smaller ships once i finished the patch for federations but since additional adjustments might need some more time to think about a reasonable way to add them without causing other issues regarding balance/cinematic combat behavior/performance etc. i might not include them in the next patch for this mod but will rather need a little bit more time to think about them. but please note that i have read your feedback and i am thinking about a way to improve it :)

I still feel the combat speed is too slow despite all the good argument you gave, especially when I using carrier superiority fleet (with cautious admiral to maximize range superiority).

It takes some (and too long) time between engagement begins (so combat slow start to apply) and the first shot fired.


How about make fighters and bombers flight faster? Some of in ACOT or ESC use drastic speed (500~600) without causing any trouble. Although such drastic spec itself will not likely fit to ACG directly, a little increase of combat speed wouldn't be hurt in long term, I think.

@Droiyan7 (Yi, JoonHo)

thank you for your feedback. are you sure you mean fighters and bombers and not normal ships?

carriers are already very powerful because strike craft is attacking enemy ships usually way before they reach the carriers with their own weapons. if i increased the combat speed of strike craft that would make strike craft only more powerful and i don't think they need a buff. apart from that if i increased the speed of strike craft it would make them harder to recognize during space battles and the cinematic experience would take a hit. and last but not least performance would certainly take a hit. please note that ACG makes all graphical effects visible. Neither ACOT nor ESC are doing that. i therefore need to optimize the mod for those adjustments and the limitations of the stellaris engine as well.

also carriers are already super strong in ACG. if some speed has to be increased then most likely the speed of normal ships but not strike craft. combat speed for ships (except strike craft) could be increased like i said but it will have some other adverse effects, why i am reluctant. i am thinking about a way to improve balance here but i won't rush further adjustments atm since i think the current experience in combination with the most recent general speed increase a few days ago makes for a good experience in game and tests that i made with further speed increases had worse results on different areas.

hence like i said before i will think about further possible improvements here but i need to be careful and i can't simply change some values without having an eye on all core pillars of this mod. i hope for your understanding :)

I meant all of ships but especially fighters and bombers.

The point of problem I see is that the first part of battle (two fleet slowly fly into each other without firing any weapon, because no weapon range can reach yet) takes too long time.


I watched battle with fastest speed until the first shot fired than changed to slow speed. It looks the battle since the first shot taken is well balanced, but the part before that is sadly not. It looks too slow even though I used fastest speed to watch that part.


I did some edit to my local files to reduce combat slowdown to 75% (so increase combat speed from 15% to 25%, about 1.67 times of current ACG default), and double the all flight speed of fighters and bombers (300~330).

I did through several wars without no problem. Although I didn't put balance in mind to do that, and fighters and bombers looks a little bit too fast to watch them in slow speed, but it means something at least, I think.


Therefore, I think looking to the fastest possible speed for fighters, without hurting the cinematic experience too much, could be a good start to increase overall battle speed. Of course this will have cascading affect on balance, may requires a lot of works (start from nurf fighters and bombers spec to make them rebalanced with new speed), so can't be done in a day or weak.

But it will worth of trouble in long term......or at least I think so :)

@Droiyan7 (Yi, JoonHo)

you are putting a lot of work and effort into this. i really appreciate that :)

although if i understood you correctly then the battle itself after the first shot fired seems to be fine. what is disturbing you is the time before the first shot is getting fired i.e. when ships are moving into battle slowly.

if that's true then please be aware that your suggested adjustments modify battles after the first shot fired as well and they will decrease the cinematic battle experience (because you can less likely see fighters and bombers because they move too fast) and it will be a hit to performance and balance both as well.

hence i will not make such adjustments. BUT i am already looking into decreasing the time before the first shot is fired by adjusting other values. i hope to being able to adress the issue itself alone without disturbing the battle experience after the first shot is fired. just give me some time :)

@Ajey Thanks for your response, for some reason steam didn't notify me. I get your reasoning, and I guess it makes sense. I might just give this another spin and see how I get on.

I don't know if this is possible, or even desireable, but I think it would be cool if the game automatically adjusted the speed to slow whenever you're in the system where a battle is taking place. Given that this might be annoying for many players, it would only be viable if it were a togglable preference.