[1.2] Sparkling Worlds - Glittertech on the Rim

[rawrfisher]

Yea Would make sense.  Kiame said the same thing when he uploaded a quick fix for that issue

[Rezonance]

So I saw these in the mod folder and was kinda disappointed that their not in-game. Any chance you will be adding them in the future? I think their really cool and would work as an alternative to gauss weapons.

[Albion]

Yes, I plan to add them to the game but not as weapons the player will be able to use.
The issue with weapon balancing is that it is way to easy to just throw in an overpowered weapon that is simply better than vanilla alternatives. Fitting a weapon into the existing lineup and finding a niche for it is rather hard. I think I did it quite well with the gauss weapons since they are underpowered compared to charge weapons but have a very high armor penetration which makes them better than charge weapons against heavily armored targets. This makes them balanced.
Unfortunately I don't see another niche for some more weapons which is why I didn't add any more.

Now to the Graser weapon textures you found: Grasers are basically the same as lasers but for gamma rays instead of light.
I plan to use them for an upcoming new event which is a Glitterworld military raid. It's a very hard raid that starts with a solar flare, so your turrets shut down.
After that the raid will arrive via drop pods. The raiders themselves will be equipped with high end gear like power armor, bionic implants and Graser weapons. The Graser weapons will be generally better than any charge rifle but not by a lot. However the weapons will be destroyed on drop just like the centipede mechanoid weapons. There the player will not be able to obtain these weapons.
The event will scale with the difficulty setting and won't appear on the lower 2 or 3 difficulties.
At least that's the plan for now. Anything will be subject to change and maybe I won't even include this feature into the main mod but make it a separate extension mod.

[Canute]

Don't forget to add deathman trigger's on their armors ! :-)

Just a question, the crash site salvage team by Blue moon corp's it is based on the caravan strenght or does it got a generell base strenght ?
Because my 4 pawn caravan got a bit overwhelmed by them, i think 10 or 12 Blue Moon.

[Madman666]

Don't forget to add deathman trigger's on their armors ! :-)

Just a question, the crash site salvage team by Blue moon corp's it is based on the caravan strenght or does it got a generell base strenght ?
Because my 4 pawn caravan got a bit overwhelmed by them, i think 10 or 12 Blue Moon.

Judging by the quantity you encountered i'd say it uses vanilla hybrid threat generation system... But i might be incorrect.

[Albion]

Right now it's raid of a raid size within a specific point range.

I plan to eventually rework this but didn't have the time yet.

[Madman666]

Thanks for clarification. Do you plan on making it dependent on caravans size?

[Albion]

Yes, probably caravan size.
Tynan had some kind of calculation in the caravan ambush event if I remember correctly.
Again: I haven't looked into it too closely and it might be a while before I actually change it but it will be done soonTM.

[Madman666]

Got it, thanks, Albion! Although Tynan's own threat gen depends on colony wealth, not caravan. It just has some other things in that formula, like amount of weaponry\armors available, amount of colonists and thus sets some kind of upper limit, so that you won't have to send out literally over half your colony to just survive. At least as far as i know from discussion we had on 1.0 feedback thread.

[Mc_Peterson]

You can make a mod for only the pain gun?

[Albion]

You can make a mod for only the pain gun?

Sorry but no, I don't plan to do that.
If I would start to move every single feature into a seperate mod I would end up with 30 different mods which are a pain to maintain.
However you can use the Core mod which has reduced features but includes the pain weapons.

[Ser Kitteh]

This is a micro-review for Sparkling Worlds More Events mod, I won't be speaking about any other issue in regards of Sparkling Worlds:

Cassandra Rough
278 days in
14 colonists
Temperate forest

I think More Events has an issue in regards to balance, especially the crashed ship event. But first:

1. The infested ship chunks is IMO, an excellent idea and it really does make you rush your tech quickly. However, the sheer amount of bugs spawned by them is, at least for Rough, far too much. Some 40 bugs, a mixture of megaspiders and the little ones really did a number on my (then) 8 man colony, and while I emerged victorious, the sheer numbers these ship chunks produce is far too much.

I think a more balanced method would be have them spawn at different times. For example, 4 out of 7 should spawn them, and the rest will only spawn after a certain period of time (a day or so) do the rest. That way, it will force the player to deal with them ASAP instead of waiting.

2. I don't exactly recall which quest it was, I think it was the Traders Fair, but needing to pay X amount of silver to know where it is I feel, no longer the right choice as it was back in B18. It would be better to make it free, so as to encourage players to explore, as Tynan expected it would in this Beta.

3. The psychic emanator is a grand idea, I really don't have an issue with it save one problem: the guarantee of a psychic emanator. I literally have 7 of them in my base, and that to me makes this ancient artefact a lot less special. I think having them appear with a chance (perhaps in regards to difficulty, or a flat 50%) would make the event much fairer.

4. The crashed ship event out of all the events is the most unbalanced part of the events. Here is why:

4a. Four days isn't enough. Well it is, but when it comes to the threats inside it isn't. I think 5-7 days would be much more manageable.

4b. The crashed ship has a chance of not only having bugs/mechanoids, but us not knowing how many there are.  In B19, you pretty much know the exact number of threats and that allows players to plan accordingly for most events. This? Not so much. There could be 20 bugs or 10 mechanoids and then you have to actually deal with the occupants and that's not just condusive to the risk/reward of the event. And there's the salvage team.

4b. The salvage team is another kicker, and I do like the idea of it, but the numbers certainly need balancing. I had 20 raiders come against my 4 man team and that's NOT including the bugs inside the ship. I think it can be implemented better, say by having a timer for the hostile salvage crew to come by so players need to finish them quickly. Or maybe having the salvage crew come earlier than us, and opening the ship themselves. There's a lot of ways to do it, and I'm sure you can figure it better than I can.

4c. The amount of slag is insane! A nitpick for sure, but you can cut the number in half and it would still look super dope.

5. The Trader Fair should, IMO, only disappear after the timer ends, not after the player leaves. This would allow multiple trips to them, especially useful when doing the other quests. How doable is this,

6. Hunting lodge is fine as is. The one I got was the tribal type. Is there a non-tribal type? Because IMO, that would be useful especially if there's electric stoves and a freezer to keep our food in.

Overall, I am certainly enjoying this mod. I think paying for quests needs to go, as well as some points should be adjusted. I will continue having this mod in my load order.

[Albion]

Thank you for this great and detailed review. I would love to see more of those.
First a disclaimer: B19 changed a lot of things in regards to balancing and player colony progression. Adjusting to this is an ongoing process although I feel I'm getting closer to the point where I want to be. Reviews like the one above help me with this.

Here my thoughts on your raised opinions:

1. The infested ship chunks were getting a little out of hand. I now adjusted the maximum amount of chunks to about 50. There will never be more chunks regardless how wealthy your colony is. This is mostly to not kill someones CPU once all the bugs spawned.
I also increased the points required per chunk by 50%. This means you'll get 33% less chunks than before. Less chunks means less bugs.

2. The trade fair never costs silver to visit and never will. However if you have the More Faction Interaction mod it's trade fair might cost you silver to attend. I'm not sure. The only event in Sparkling Worlds that costs silver is the hunting lodge but only if the faction that offers the lodge is not an ally but a neutral. Considering the event gives you free stuff with no risks I find that fair.

3. I'm not sure when you started your playthrough but I have adjusted the psychic emitter a while back. It now can't happen more than once every 68 days (a year and a week). So in a 300 day playthrough you can never get more than 4 emitter events and therefore only 4 emanators max. Unfortunately I can't really make the emanator spawn randomly. Even if I could though I wouldn't reduce the drop rate too much since it's the only real reward you get for traveling to the site (except for shuting the emitter down early).
On a side note: I also raised the earliest appearence of the emitter to 20 days and increased the wealth threshold for the drone intensity.

4a. You shouldn't stick around too long... get in, get out. There might be more dangers/raids coming to investigate that ship. If I would increase the days threshold to more than 5 I feel like there should be another salvage team raid some time around days 5.
However I increased the days before exit from 4 to 5 on the normal ship crash and from 5 to 7 on the mech hive ship crash.

4b. It is true, I don't broadcast what type of danger there is on the map. The reason is twofold:
1. I don't want to. If you always know what exactly to expect it gets boring. Even in vanilla it sometimes says: danger unknown.
2. I can't. The way it is coded right now simply doesn't allow for it to broadcast before the map actually gets generated. It would require significant work to refactor the code and change it so the danger is known beforehand. The only information that is available at the start is if another salvage team is coming or not. That information is hidden by design though.
4b. I don't much like the idea of a timer to be honest. No one knows when the enemies might show up or even if they ever will... The way it is implemented means it'll always be a raid of a certain point range (500-1200). 20 person raids should therefore only happen against tribals. However I get your point and I reduced the upper limit to 500-800 point raids.
Having them open the ship up early is certainly an interesting idea and I thought about it too in the past but it would require a lot of coding to do it properly and interestingly. Basically: it would require a lot of time I could spend implementing other awesome events.

4c. The slag is there to get the point across that this is a crashed ship. It is badly damaged and mostly destroyed. It will never fly again... ever!
It also serves another purpose: ad-hoc cover. Slags are not sandbags but can provide a decent amount of cover when fighting mechs and salavage teams. However I get your point and reduced the amount of slags by 25%.

5. Impossible the way the game works right now. If the last colonist leaves the map despawns. However you can always leave 1 dude who waits until your next caravan shows up.

6. I only generate "tribal" versions. Having a whole electrical system means the map generation code gets more complex and secondly it would shower the player with free components because they would deconstruct everything once they want to leave. Either bring your own materials to construct coolers or go tribal
However there is always a stack of wood near the fueled stove(s) so you can keep them running. I would recommend turning the hunted meat into pemmican or survival meals. You have to get the meat/meals back to the colony without them rotting anyway.

Thank you again for this and I'm up for further discussions of the topics.
Note: I kind of give the impression above that the changes are already implemented. I only implemented them in my local version right now and will continue to work on a few things throughout the day. I'll upload and publish the changes some time in the next 6 hours. Both on steam and nexus mods.

[Ser Kitteh]

Hey, no prob! Modders do all the hard work, the least I can do is review. As for the poits:

1. Good to know! They can be a bit crazy. I don't recall any LPers using this mod, so hopefully if they do it's after the patch.

2. Ah yes, that must be the Hunting Lodge. I admit, when I wrote that post I didn't exactly recall most of the details. I didn't know it was dependent on the relations. If so, then I guess that would certainly make sense.

3. Well I started about ... 2 weeks ago? I play in short bursts and I install all my mods manually. I do understand making the drop 100%, but making the quest more rare and after a certain treshold would be the best way to balance it.

4a. Ah, then it might not be the best idea to tell me the actual amount of days. Now when I go to the ship, I can instantly tell if there are mechs or bugs or nothing. I'm sure you'll find a way to balance the amount of days.

4b. I also understand not telling the exact threat. Even B19 vanilla does that. However, imagine if I'm a new player. Less than 100 hours in. I installed this mod because crashed ships sounds rad. Then I go and get my best fighters wipe out! I uninstall the mod in rage.

Tynan made the right decision to give numbers, I just think he overdid it by giving SPECIFIC numbers rather than a vague one. I think the best way to do it is gate it behind a number of days and really spell it out: "HEY THIS IS SUPER DANGEROUS REALLY CONSIDER THIS". As for the slag and amount of raiders, yeah those were 20 tribals with knives/clubs (should have specified) and I'm not too worried about the number of slags, I was just being nitpicky.

5. Yep, I thought as much. Perhaps I'll mention it when B20 comes out.

6. Well, I should have consider bringing an oven and some batteries! Maybe for new players, you could have a line that goes "bring your own wood/fuel and maybe construction supplies"? I do enjoy the hunting lodge event, it's probably my second favorite one of them all and once saved my colony because SOMEONE set the food on fire.

Sure, just leave a message you updated and I'll download the new version as quick as I can and get back to it. Your mod and More Faction Interaction are like, the only two quest mods! It's great to see this part is still getting the love it needs.

If you don't mind me asking, what other events might be added? More Faction Interaction goes for the factions specifically with more traders and such as well as the fancy shaman event. If you don't mind a request, even something as basic as a normal ancient danger with an actual chance of good loot (say a higher tier weapon, or an artefact) out in the wilds would also be nice. This game is seriously lacking dungeons IMO and my current map absolutely has none.

[Albion]

Well there are a few LPers which use(ed) the mod. So far not that many though

Regarding the warning of danger I might adjust the letter text in the future to warn of potential dangers.
However at least for the mechanoid hive ship this is already present. It's a rather rare event that gets a different letter that specifically warns the event is extremly dangerous (which it is). This is also why I believe you never got the mechanoid hive ship event. You'll know what I'm talking about once you get it.

I think the hunting lodge is alright. You have to distinguish between the one from my Sparkling Worlds mod and the one from More Faction interaction. We both implement it differently and at least in my version there is already wood present so you can run the fueled stove even on an ice sheet or in the desert.

The update is now live and you can get it from steam or nexusmods. All the mentioned changes are implemented as well as a small new event.
It is now possible that weapon cache pods crash on the map. They contain some random, slightly damaged weapons instead of boring resources. Enjoy the new event.

Fun fact: More Faction Interaction was created by Mehni because he was inspired by the events in my mod. This is also why we both feature a Hunting lodge. He requested this event from me but included his own version in his mod.

Regarding future events:
Unfortunately I'm rather busy with work and life right now so the amount of time I spend modding was reduced drastically about 2 weeks ago. I try to dedicate some more time but at least October looks pretty grim since I'll be away for a few weeks.
However I actually got another event mostly ready to go already. Mehni and I will collaborate on an event mod and I got the first one mostly ready already. It'll be a while before it gets released though so you'll have to wait. It's also super secret so don't ask what the event(s) will be.

As for the dungeon? Let me put it this way: It's not something I created already but it's something that will be added to Sparkling Worlds in the future. At least something similar to what you mentioned. Real "dungeons" can't really be a thing since you could simply mine to the loot room and bypass any danger. It'll therefore not look like a classic RPG style dungeon but I already got something in mind that'll work well.