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RimWorld => Releases => Mods => Outdated => Topic started by: asdfghjk135 on December 11, 2017, 08:11:40 AM

Title: [A17] Glittertech Rebalanced
Post by: asdfghjk135 on December 11, 2017, 08:11:40 AM
Note: This "mod" is a RAR file that contains modified defs for Glittertech. You still need to download the original mod.

This mod is intended to balance Glittertech. Personally I love the idea of having some completely overpowered things for the endgame. After all winning is as easy as researching drop pods and maybe refining, and then pod hopping to the friendly AI. No sir, we are in it for the fun, and working your way from a worm that survives thanks to a few meals it managed to grab from the crashing spaceship to a god that teleports across the map, destroys outposts as an afterthought and is wealthy enough to buy the entire planet is one of the most enjoyable parts of a game for me.

However, My problem with glittertech was that the super OP things weren't really endgame. OC defense rifle, to pick a super low hanging fruit, is worth a measly 1200$ in silver, compared to an assault rifle's roughly 400$ (on that note, tynan, what did round numbers ever do to you?). However, its actual worth to the player is much more than that. If you have 3 unarmed colonists, you are literally better off buying the OP defense rifle than buying 3 assault rifles. I tried taking an exponential approach to Game value VS Market value: if something is worth twice as much for the player, it will cost four times more. Of course the numbers aren't that precise or easy and I probably strayed from that philosophy in some cases, but that's the general idea.

But balancing weapons required me to both learn messing with the defs and get used to the idea that I can. That quickly sucked me in, and I ended up changing everything in the mod I felt needs to be changed- aside from weapons, I also changed production, apparel, bionics, security, raids and materials. I even changed a few descriptions that conflicted with lore or logic (or whenever I felt like it, because power is addictive). I tried mostly increasing silver value when possible (or reducing- quite a few things got a buff), but sometimes I changed other values as well. I encourage you to do the same if there is a mod you feel is really close to being amazing but fails to do so because of some odd values- it's really easy.

Anyway, without further addo, here is Glittertech Rebalanced.

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j3jan0pjvb0hi2r/Glittertech%20Rebalanced%20A17.rar?dl=0

Installation (currently only for A17):
1. extract the RAR file
2. copy the contents of "Glittertech Rebalanced" into rimworld installation folder (use "Open file location" on launch icon if uncertain)/Mods/Glittertech
3. overwrite all

Changes from vanilla Glittertech

Weapons:

- Orion corp pacifier was seriously nerfed, from 3 pain severity (meaning 300% pain for every point of damage & thrumbo one shooting) to 0.2 (meaning %20 pain for every point of damage, exactly 16 times more than almost all other damage types). Also, the damage (and thus pain per hit) was halved, so it will not melt ears, fingers ETC anymore (which also negates the pain from the attack). This means a full damage hit against a human with a normal steel pacifier will deal exactly %100 pain. even if 25% of the damage is blocked and the target is otherwise perfectly healthy they'll go into pain shock. this only applies to normal quality steel pacifiers, a beta poly one will still knock out a thrumbo.
-All ranged weapons were balanced, and most notably their cooldown-warmup were changed to be much more in line with vanilla.
-Rail guns (MRG series including EMRG) are now high range-high damage-single shot-average firing rate weapons.
-Plasma weapons (APB series) have a lower range and damage per shot than rail guns but 2-3 shots per burst.
-Gunpowder weapons (OC series) has the highest shots per burst but lowest damage per bullet, and a range between that of railguns and plasma.
- The projector is pretty much the same as before but with significantly reduced firing rate.
- Orion rocket launcher was buffed because it couldn't hold a candle to psychic insanity lance nor doomsday rocket and now serves as a high range high accuracy low explosion radius tool to take out dangerous targets from afar (assuming they have psychic protection, because it still falls short of psychic insanity lance).


Turrets:

- All turrets had their energy cost increased, so a good defense will be taxing on your energy, putting the new generation methods to good use. Ranges from 500 for cannister turret to 7500 for cruise missile launcher.
- I'll refrain from describing the original efficiency of Cannister turrets because when I tried, there were more Fs than in this sentence. It will suffice to say they were bad. They were Changed to have a Much more rapid fire rate, higher accuracy (but still not high), and higher health. It is now your killbox turret- extremely short range, effective against densely packed enemies, can stand its own against damage, good DPS.
- EMRG is already good, its good range and KPS (Killing per second) balanced by very high cost. Changed range to match new standalone EMRG range, has higher accuracy and damage (not that many things would survive a standard EMRG shot). Reduced default health from 240 to 200.
- Cruise was way, way better than long range missile launcher. Cruise dispatched a raid in a single shot, long range missed most shots because they are too slow and have a lot less fire power with a far inferior spread. 2 miss range with 2 radius? No thank you sir. Changed to have higher projectile speed for both, but It serves long range much better. Cruise had radius halved to 13 (can still dispatch 3000 points raids in a single shot, but the possibility of failure exists- technically). Cruise damage is much higher, to make the blast feel powerful instead of letting half the pawns survive with pain shock. (250 VS 80).
- Automatic mortar seems to work as advertised, which is good. Cluster mortar is somewhat inferior although not nearly to the extent of cruise VS long range. Cluster had its explosion radius increased from 1.9 to 2.5.

Armor & apparel:

- Nano suit didn't cover shoulders and neck like power armor. It is now Fixed. it Also provides very good protection against heat now, since it's the only clothing item in the game that can plausibly have an AC system in it.
- Fiber skin suit is pretty OP. compared to power armor which had the same cost and protection, you lose neck and leg coverage but gain +70% work speed and +0.70 move speed. Price increased from 2800$ to 7500$. Cold Isolation reduced from -45 to -5.
- Orion pants cost almost as much as hyperweave despite having less than half of the sharp protection (albeit more insulation). Shirt is much worse in that regard, has shit stats and only covers torso but same as hyperweave. Still, they are the best anti cold protection in the game (even if that is completely useless for the shirt which is outclassed by buttondowns), so I didn't go crazy with the values. Both got reduced to 400$. Shirt got shoulders added to defended parts.
- Speed skin suit was completely OP. the boost to speed was relatively negligible on a bionic colonist but the boost to workspeed huge, while I feel it should be the other way around (probably easier to make someone run fast than to do literally everything faster which requires increasing brain processing speed). Movement speed buff increased to 12, global work buff decreased to +125% (so 225% total), cost increased to 10000, cold isolation decreased from -45 to -5.
- Nano suit helmet had body armor like stats instead of helmet like stats (although it does protect head). Its stats were changed to resemble power helmet. Since the helmet is mentioned to contain HUD, I wanted to make it enhance vision, but it didn't work. Maybe in the future.
- Orion corporation helmet is almost as good as plasteel advanced helmet yet costs about 2/3. Cost increased from 700$ to 1100$.
- Orion shield belt was way under priced. It regenerates so quickly it pretty much never breaks in a half fair fight. Colonist can tank 4 pirates without losing it. price increased from 2100$ to 3500$, capacity increased to the standard for vanilla shieldbelts 110% (yeah, weird, but true.)
- HC1 also way too good. With 1000 damage to shatter it pretty much isn't going down anyway, and with 40% regeneration it can't be bursted down. Price increased from 2400$ to 5500$, health increased to 1100 to be 10 times more than normal (as advertised). Note: this does not mean you should believe ads.
- Reactive suit gives extreme debuffs but has its own equipment slot and incredible defense. Pretty easy to wear only when combat starts. Got a cost increase from 1800$ to 3000$ and anti elemental protection.

Production:
- A few crafting recipes that didn't tell you how much of the result you are going to get now do tell you. Let me know if I missed something.
- Normal Medicine crafting was way too expensive, considering vanilla recipe requires only 1 herbal, 3 cloth and nitroimine. Bandages were removed altogether, they served no purpose since they were craftable in the same bench with the same research as medicine. Herbal medicine requirement reduced and ethanol requirement reduced to 1 (plus just the 8 berries for ethanol are worth 20$, more than the medicine itself). both medicine and neuatroatmine were so cheap it barely matters. It requires 3 cloth instead of bandages.
- Glitterworld medicine also felt pretty overpriced. It required tons of work, research, benches, phases and resources- some of which are quite expensive- to produce something with a measly value of 100$. It now requires a single medicine, a single serum, and a single computer component. That is since in my headcanon its relatively standard medicine with a nano bot kit in it to make even complete n00bs capable of complex surgery. there is no proof either way but I'll zealously stick to it. Still cheaper to buy glitterworld medicine than buy the ingredients and make it though.
-Serum was overpriced. 250 per one? That requires mostly 1.25 uranium? Changed to 50. Still a bit of profit for crafting it, assuming you already had and intended to sell the materials.
- Silicon is way too hard to craft. Recipe changed to be 5 silicon from 20 blocks.
- Plasteel to titanium removed. It was just weird. Titanium is its own material, worst case it can be bought.
- Added Recipe for duplicating luciferium to the Pharmacy table- 2 serum and 1 luciferium give 2 luciferium, which has a value change of 0, Seeing as you can already make the nanite utilizing glitterworld medicine. Should make taking luci a bit more viable.

General:
- Ethanol made printing money look like hard work. 250$ for something made out of 8 berries early in the research tree... WTF. Aside from value its fine. Ethanol worth 24 now.
- Computer components were overpriced as well. They really only cost 2 gold and 4 silicon per one with robotic assembler, or 3 components and 150 work without. Changed to be worth 80.
- Even with computer components downgraded to 80$, magnetic coil should be worth good money. They are super rare- 10 computer components and 20 titanium, along with an advanced bench. They are now worth 1800$.
- alpha poly and beta poly were made normally effective for rests and not super pretty (beta poly now has the prettiness of gold), and doors from them open at slower speeds than before. they still have the insane health and damage. After all, plasteel in the normal game was literally not as pretty as wood, and these are super condensed matter, not a plot device (looking at you Vibranium). maybe i'll add a few new materials for super prettiness, super clothes and super comfort-rest rate in the future.
- Super healing Pod's description is wrong according to author, male-female doesn't matter. Fixed.
-Impaction charges are so weak and so expensive. Need to be changed. It also definitely doesn't access any "underground resources" in version i played although looking at the code revealed it is supposed to open a steam geyser. The steam geyser part was removed for three reasons: 1. being able to get one anywhere you want, along with the big yields from glittertech's Xenon-ion turbine, made the plasma reactor pretty obsolete, 2. It didn't work and I had no idea why, and 3. it's not how geysers work anyway. they were made significantly cheaper (wanted to make the explosion more powerful as well, but see bugs). They now function as a triggerable by hand mine.
- Xenon ion turbine was pretty balanced, but given the high research and material cost and the fact steam geysers can no longer be created I increased power generation to X3 that of steam (10800) instead of 8200.
- Fixed a few inconsistencies, like: references to FTL travel (mentioned in lore to not exist), and beta & alpha poly being (presumably) polymers but referred to as elements.
- Increased blast door's health. For that cost, just X6 times more health felt a bit underwhelming. Now X20.
-Advanced Bionics were way too cheap, and had a weird flat +% to the function they are supposed to affect on top of their increased efficiency. Price was increased, flat +% removed and efficiency increased to 300%. It means that-
1.   While cybernetic heart still gives 300% blood pumping because it is a single organ, two bionic arms give 300% manipulation (from 300% efficiency to all manipulation providing parts, namely the hands) instead of 400% from 200% efficiency+ flat 100% manipulation bonus from each hand.
2.   Getting your cybernetic heart to 1/20 health will decrease blood pumping to 1/20 * 300%= 15%, instead of (1/20*200%)+100%= 110%. In other words the condition of your body parts had more influence over their performance.

Raids: (WIP, needs user input).
Since they access item values which were changed dramatically it was necessary anyway, but the goal is to make an advanced raid not necessarily worse than a normal one (because of a much lower raiders amount).
- Standard orion corp soldiers may now be equipped with charge rifles.
- Standard commando troops may be equipped with normal power armor and a few other clothing items.
- Orion corp directors (faction leaders) are now badasses instead of the weakest soldier in the mod. I can understand why the guy who makes the decisions might prefer keeping himself out of the action, but I can't understand why would he prefer to charge into the action while equipping himself with crap as if he stayed home.
- Likewise scouts are no longer the strongest commando, that role being given to heavies.
- Tanks are still OP as hell but had their point cost skyrocket to 1250- 6 times the highest vanilla cost, which was in itself quite bloated.

things I failed to do:
- Modify Impactation charge damage type and damage.
- Add a sight bonus for wearing nano helmet, presumably since no other item in the game modifies sight when worn.
- Give raiders the possibility for more than one bionic part.
- Change Pacifier's base silver value, which doesn't seem to be in its code.


Bugs:
Commando seems to come with stuff whose cost is beyond their max value, or maybe picks stuff from the already very high value according to their normal quality value and then arbitrarily upgrades them.

Todo:
Add traders to orion corp, and a trading option when visiting their bases. They are a *cooperation* for gods sake.
Remove research fluff and look into research in general.
Update to A18.

I'd love to get criticism, i'm not a good modder at all but i have no problem messing with numeric values.
Title: Re: [A17] Glittertech Rebalanced
Post by: OwenQuillion on December 25, 2017, 03:54:42 AM
First, I want to remark: the idea of exponential value (2x combat effectiveness = 4x price) is possibly flawed by the fact that raid value is largely calculated by colony wealth. This may not be an issue at the stratospheric heights of Glittertech, but it was my first-blush thought on reading the change notes.

I downloaded this the day it was released, since I've been sitting on an A17 save with Glittertech installed for a while. But I didn't want to give this a whirl until I'd actually had some experience with vanilla Glittertech.

It took two weeks, but Randy finally dropped a Commando raid on me.

It ended very badly. For them.

The short version: the APB is just pointing at dudes and set them on fire, which is as overpowered as it sounds. Not like, bigger numbers, evolution-of-warfare, chest explodes into gore if it's not covered by a nanoballsiticgelabsorber doohickawhatsit. It's basically the worst kind of stunlock - the victim can perform no (useful) action and is exposed to further harm. If there's a defense against it, it's not adequate. (I don't think there is - unless Heat armor absorbing the damage prevents the burning?)

The rest of this is one long story demonstrating why fire is bad.

The short version: 6 colonists with a single, shoddy APB rifle, four regular kinetics, and a metal stick beat 7 guys in nanosuits wielding APBs and EMRG rifles with no real special tactics other than 'kill them and take their stuff'.

---

I had a single, shoddy APB rifle in the hands of the colonist with the best combination of speed/shooting, two colonists with snipers and two with assault rifles, a brawler with a mace, and four other chucklenuts toting some useless (in this situation) miniguns. (There were a lot of centipedes, once).

They had seven guys - I believe a 4/3 split of Heavies/Commandoes. It was a clever drop-pod raid which I assume ate up some of their points. In the grim darkness of the far future, it seems that nobody really follows the buddy system, so they split - two guys just kind of wandered off to the right side, one guy wandered off to the left, one went straight down the middle, one decided that the sewage outlet on the far side of my colony could be suffered no longer, and the remaining two lagged behind like the fat kid in gym class and his skinny slacker buddy.

Mr. Down the Middle was brought low by being set on fire and then finished off by assault and sniper rifle fire from the doors. My Brawler liberated his armor while another fellow doubled my flamethrowing capacity.

Mr. The Left was fighting the leftern turrets with his EMRG rifle. That distraction, along with the snipers, allowed my brawler to run up and beat the hell out of him. The only damage sustained IN THIS ENTIRE ENGAGEMENT were a number of shiv cuts from this encounter (SimpleSidearms) and some stray APB fire that hit one of my snipers - which was *probably* friendly fire. Also a turret died somewhere in here. 

Meanwhile, the two jokers who broke right were engaging the right-side turrets that guard a bridge over the map's river. One had an EMRG rifle, the other an APB rifle. I moved most of my colonists over to deal with them.

To the south, my brave sewage outlet lost its life to a brigand with an EMRG rifle.

The two slowpokes, somehow, slipped past the sniper battle earlier, but decided to double back because life was apparently not worth living. One sought cover but only managed to walk face-first into the blunt justice of my brawler, while the other one just caught fire from the two APB wielding colonists. My lightly-singed sniper (no I don't know why I chose her) grabbed the one EMRG rifle I had access to and made her way to a firing position with a view of the battle in the east.

The Poop Loving Sewer Destroyer decided to join the battle against the right side turrets, stopping out of their range in the cover-less, sandy field east of the river. The other two commandos were spread out in an arc, one covering behind a tree to the north, the other in a nook in a rock formation straight across from the bridge. The Tree guy lost a sniper duel by attempting to gut check a railgun round, presumably depositing his stomach somewhere in the rainforest a few world map tiles northeast of my colony. The other two successfully destroyed three out of four turrets, and the APB wielder rushed in to get the last one. She reached cover, got set on fire, and then got her lung (and torso) sniped out.

The last standing commando - who struck the most grievous blow to my bathroom facilities - attempted to take up a sniping position in the same rocky outcrop his companion had just left. My brawler and another now-nanosuit clad colonist stormed the position and beat the fight out of him.

---

Now, there were no brilliant tactics on my part - I kind of just put some bullets (or plasma) in the air and some idiots walked single-file into it, then I commandeered their equipment to slaughter their friends. I would chalk this up to having superior numbers, but the maximum number of colonists engaging at any one time was FIVE. I had four guys with low shooting skill, miniguns, and cruft backup weapons. Two guys stood in reserve because there just wasn't enough cover for them to use. My brawler, two snipers, and two decent shooters with APBs rendered my casualties down to a sewer outlet, four turrets, minor structural damage, and some superficial burns and cuts on two colonists.
Title: Re: [A17] Glittertech Rebalanced
Post by: carpediembr on December 28, 2017, 05:26:04 AM
Apolgize my ignorance, but is this still on A17?

Sounds a good mod as I too found glittertech was very OP for early game stages.
Title: Re: [A17] Glittertech Rebalanced
Post by: DeLaFere on December 28, 2017, 04:01:11 PM
AW YESS
I love the Glitter Tech stuff, but found it gamebreakingly OP- so much so that I haven't even added it to my B18 game. I really hope this gets an update!
Title: Re: [A17] Glittertech Rebalanced
Post by: Albion on January 04, 2018, 10:29:21 AM
Glitter Tech is a great mod idea but way to unbalanced in my (and a lot of others) opinion.
This is why it inspired me to create my own Glitterworld technologies mod called Sparkling Worlds (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=35373.0) to have an experience more in tune with the vanilla version of Rimworld.

However I love that someone finally created a rebalance mod/patch.