Rebalanced Expanded Systems

[Zoura3025]

This is my first officially published mod that I'd consider a proper "release". My friend and I did a collab stream where he did a run of the game with a custom ship and a custom weapon pack I've made, but I haven't released the ship yet and the weapon pack is still in early beta (only about 30% of the custom weapons have custom graphics).

But, that's all besides the point! This is Rebalanced Expanded Systems.

Ever want to run 4 vulcans? Maybe 4 combat drone Mk. IIs? How about a Glaive Beam, a Vulcan, and Ion Blast Mk. II, and a Hermes Missile, all at once? Well, this mod aims to make virtually any kit possible by massively expanding the limits of viable systems (see below). I've taken the liberty of testing every system (yes, even Artillery) to see how scalable their effects are, and have packaged the results of my research as a mod that somewhat alters the balance of the game to be a bit easier, in a sense (many systems have had their upgrade prices reduced, though overall, you'll still have to spend way more scrap if you want to max out a system in 95% of cases), but the aim of this mod was to really help free up the game and allow the player to go nuts with their kit, even on higher difficulties.

For modders who would like to check out the details of why each system has the limits they do, retype the file from a ".zip" to a ".ftl" file, and unzip it. It's a very small mod, so you should have little trouble finding everything. You can also extract the mod to steal the system limiting code, or look at the hard costs of everything.

Detailed List of Improvements:

Weapons and Drones: Weapons and drones have had their system limits doubled, from 8 to 16. They behave the same no matter how high their level gets: One level gives one system power. This will allow you to use up to 4 4-power weapons or drones, or gives you more room to play with if you want to fiddle with 5- or 6-power weapons in mods.
Shields: Shields have had their limit doubled from 8 to 16 as well; every 2 levels, you get another shield layer, and because of how shield piercing works, you will begin to block missiles with your shield at 6 shield bubbles (12 power) or higher!

Cloaking: Cloaking has gone from its paltry 3 power cap to an absolutetly huge 12 cap. Every level gives your 5 more seconds, up to a full minute of go-invisible-hidey-hide. Grab yourself some stealth weapons and you officially win.

Oxygen: Oxygen has gotten a massive increase in power, from its original 3 to 8. Going up to 8 gives you 27 times the O2 refill rate of a level 1 oxygen system. Why would you want this much oxygen? I dunno, maybe you have a fear of hypoxia. Or maybe you just really, really want some damn buffer bars.

Backup Battery: The Backup Battery has gotten a gargantuan increase from 2 maximum power to 6, giving up to 12 bonus power. Just... Be careful around Ion Storms; your newly expanded systems may be able to handle the power surge, but the game kinda can't. If you go over 30 total reactor power (important to note, Zoltans do not contribute to this limit, and as such, do not cause a crash) while something like an ion storm (or combat augment from CE) gives you the blue crossed-out power bars on your main reactor meter, it will cause a crash. The best advice I can give to combat this is just avoid nebulae and be very careful around modded events and whatnot.

Piloting, Sensors, Doors, Mind Control, Hacking, Teleporter, Artillery, and both the Medbay and Clonebay have all remained largely unchanged, aside from maybe some tiny price reductions (5-10 scrap). These systems cannot function when upgraded without some degree of hardcoding. Weapons, Drones, Oxygen, and the Backup Battery all have what I like to call "Scalable" effects, because they can infinitely scale up no matter how much power you pump into them. You could upgrade the backup battery to level 600, and (assuming the game could handle 1,2025 power bars) it would still be able to potentially handle more.

Here's the download!

Big, important download link (leads to google drive)
It's a tiny li'l file, so you should have no problem downloading and doing as you please with it.

[porcu93]

So:
- level 4 teleport gives you 0 seconds cooldown to teleport people back and forth, the tooltip doesn't exist for it;
- level 4+ medbay increases the heal power, the tooptip doesn't exist for them;
- level 9+ engines doesn't drop evasion to 0, it simply makes it behave like level 1 engines for evasion, I don't remember if manning bonus is also applied, but you're right about the increase of the FTL charge speed;
- each level of artillery removes 25% of the base cooldown of the weapon, so a level 5 artillery in the Fed cruisers would fire every 10 seconds and still gives weapon manning xp to the guy on weapons, level 6 artillery would take the cooldown to 0 making the weapon fire as fast as the animation allows and the guy manning weapons still gains xp, level 7+ is the same as level 6 but the guy on weapons no longer gains xp;
- level 4 doors and level 4 sensors gives you the same bonus as if you were manning the same system at level 3; level 5+ on both seems to not give or take anything;
- level 4+ hacking is broken, with some levels hacking forever and others hacking for 0 seconds;
- level 4+ mind control will crash the game when it goes on cooldown after you've used it.
The rest of the comments on your blueprint files are correct

[Zoura3025]

So:
- level 4 teleport gives you 0 seconds cooldown to teleport people back and forth, the tooltip doesn't exist for it;
- level 4+ medbay increases the heal power, the tooptip doesn't exist for them;
- level 9+ engines doesn't drop evasion to 0, it simply makes it behave like level 1 engines for evasion, I don't remember if manning bonus is also applied, but you're right about the increase of the FTL charge speed;
- each level of artillery removes 25% of the base cooldown of the weapon, so a level 5 artillery in the Fed cruisers would fire every 10 seconds and still gives weapon manning xp to the guy on weapons, level 6 artillery would take the cooldown to 0 making the weapon fire as fast as the animation allows and the guy manning weapons still gains xp, level 7+ is the same as level 6 but the guy on weapons no longer gains xp;
- level 4 doors and level 4 sensors gives you the same bonus as if you were manning the same system at level 3; level 5+ on both seems to not give or take anything;
- level 4+ hacking is broken, with some levels hacking forever and others hacking for 0 seconds;
- level 4+ mind control will crash the game when it goes on cooldown after you've used it.
The rest of the comments on your blueprint files are correct

Oh, very interesting! I'll take these bits into consideration; perhaps I'll update the mod to include them. Thank you for sharing your own knowledge; I had already experimented with expanded systems long before this and only briefly tested most of the systems.

[porcu93]

Oh, wait, I forgot about cloning: level 4 cloning gives basically full health to everyone when you jump, and replacing someone takes 0 seconds, which is basically an instant respawn.