User:Shiver/Balance Mod

Objective

The goal of this project is to even out the effectiveness of Star Control II's ship line-up so that everything is worth using in competitive player-versus-player melee. The various ships have been strengthened or weakened accordingly. Additionally, many minor adjustments have been made for the sake of aesthetics or continuity. The changes are quite extensive, though I tried not to stray too far from vanilla gameplay. The Balance Mod is not suited for Star Control's main game, nor melee against the cyborg.

Recent Changes

Update 1.27

• Thraddash - Fixed an issue with the repulsor guns alternating incorrectly.

Update 1.26

• Kohr-Ah - FRIED cloud damage vs projectiles reduced back from 200 to 50.

• Melnorme - A blaster pulse suspended in front of the Trader now breaks down correctly when hit by massive burst damage. In vanilla melee these had to be killed twice over for them to break down, which is why a suspended red pulse would beat a red pulse in motion.

Update 1.25

• Chenjesu - Photon shard speed down from 72 to 64, once again the same as in vanilla melee.

• Kohr-Ah - Significant nerfs applied.
  • Buzzsaws - Buzzsaw energy cost up from 6 to 7. These things are stupidly effective and this change should force Kohr-Ah players to ration out their energy more carefully.
  • FRIED - FRIED cloud hitpoints down from 100 to 6, damage vs projectiles up from 50 to 200. FRIED can be shot through with big guns, though it will still melt every projectile it meets upon contact.
  • Propulsion - Reverted back to vanilla stats. Topspeed down from 32 to 30, acceleration increment up from 5 to 6.

• Orz - A very small improvement has been made to marine pursuit AI.

• Pkunk - Fixed the respawn code. Somehow Pkunk's death count was increasing by two every time it respawned. This has been rectified.

• Ur-Quan - Major revision.
  • Fighter AI - Fighters are much less inclined towards surrounding their target from off-camera; this behavior was highly effective, but below the belt. Fighters have been given a preference for swarming the sides and back of enemy craft rather than whatever section is closest to them. Fighter fan-out behavior has been refined.
  • Fighter Beam - Energy sapping has been reimplemented. The beam once again subtracts 1 crew and 1 energy per shot.
  • Fusion Cannon - Fusion bolt energy cost down from 9 to 8, velocity up from 80 to 92, duration down from 20 to 18.
  • Propulsion - Reverted back to vanilla stats. Topspeed down from 32 to 30, acceleration increment up from 5 to 6.

Update 1.24

• Ilwrath - Hellfire spread adjusted to be heavier on forward firepower.

Update 1.23

• Ilwrath - Major revision.
  • Hellfire Spout - This has been redesigned to combine the forward fire and spread fire into one all-purpose attack. These two variations were previously bound to different keys. The two firing styles for one weapon was too much of a departure from original melee.
  • Cloaking Device - Cloak energy cost raised from 0 to 2. Note that the vanilla cost is 3, though vanilla Ilwrath's battery is comparatively endless. Cloak has been rebound back to the Secondary button.
  • Battery - Energy regeneration has been increased slightly to 5 energy every 7 frames.

• Thraddash - Afterburner puff duration decreased from 140 to 120.

Credit

I received extensive assistance while making this project. I wish to express my thanks to the following individuals:

• Elvish Pillager wrote a few bits of the most difficult code for this mod and gave significant design input. His Crazy Mod source code was a valuable reference when altering melee.

• UQM core team members Meep-eep, Fossil and McMartin provided coding and debugging assistance.

• Gekko was my primary beta test opponent during this mod's creation.

• Bleeding Star gave some useful design input which led to several necessary adjustments.

• Death 999 cooked up a nifty program which saved me hours of work when making a larger antimatter cone for Umgah.

Links

• Full List of Changes

• Installation Instructions