Ship Combat Overhaul – Modular ESMs V1.1

What does this do?

Weapon Reblance:

– Laser weapons have increased Range (~3x) and do more Shield damage.

– Particle weapons have reduced Range (~33%), but do addtional EM damge, since Hi-energy particles are known to cause disruption to electronic systems & do damage ship sub-systems in vanilla lore. This does make fighting Va’uun ships more interesting.

– Ballistic weapons have better Range (~2x) and Rate of Fire (~1.5x for autocannons, 2x for non-auto).
– They also have a -1 Power cost reduction (~3 -> 2), but they got a 15x increase to their mass.

– Missiles got a 20x increase to their mass (~6 -> 120). One experimental missile has its Power cost reduced (10 -> 6). All ranges are doubled.

– EM weapons have been tailored to have unique advantages over each other (either in Range, DPS or RoF) based on their product names.

– Ship Targeting system has been properly updated to provide an adequate target acquisition range (~2x) for Missiles.
When a tracking target disappears from the reticle center, vanilla Locking progress is lost rather acutely. The decay is now made much softer (~50% slower).

– Some particularly slow projectiles have been streamlined for better aiming with target lead reticle.

*NOTES: Particle weapons were the best weapon in vanilla by default, outshining any other type of weapon in Range and DPS. They’re also quite versatile, doing high to both shield and hull. Once I got enough credits for Particle weapons, I no longer wanted to try out other weapon types. Turns out I missed the fun.

So, I would like to give vanilla ship weapons a little more tweaking, with the latest release of xEdit RC build. The effort eventually snowballs into current ship combat overhaul mod.

Since Particle weapons are deadly enough, I give them a obvious shortcoming, the Range. They shoot little further than vanilla laser now. Still, if you can get your target in range, which mean skillfully manuveuring your ship matching speed, they kill as they did.

Laser, on the other hand, which was underwhelmed secondary citizen in vanilla game, inherited the Range of vanilla particle weapons.
They do good damage to shields, and sufficient damage to hull. With new implemented range advantage, they’re becoming a versatile weapon type, mainly to harass your enemy, shrinking the pack from a safer distance.

Whenever there’s a weak struggler with exhausted shield, one can switch to ballisitic weapons, rush in, blast the salvo and finish them off.

Ballisitic weapons are enhanced in a distinctive way from energy weapons. They no longer take as much Reactor Power to operate, which gives a tactics to place many more guns than other weapons. Their bursting DPS against Hull at close range is now unrivled. It’ll still take skill to do the rushing and speed matching at the right moment.
Howerver, ballistic weapons have their mass massively increased, since, for realism’s sake, cannon shells have to be stored somewhere in your ship.

The same goes for the Missiles. Versatile and remain deadly even with 1 Pip of Power, the Missiles are supposed to be heavy (real world Air to Air missiles are close to100kg). You have to design a bigger ship, to be a dedicated Missile cruiser.

With their mass changed, now that Guns & Missiles distinct much more from their lightweight, plug-and-play energy weapons (lasers, particles, EMs) counterparts. You have to design your ship and tactics beforehand, to realise those weapons’ full potential.

Ship Module Edits:

– All decorative structs now increase ship Hull, roughly 10x of their mass.
– To compensate EM damage added to particle weapons, Radiators (decorative struct) can now provide some EM shielding for ship’s shield & engine sub-systems.

– Engineering Bays now have a stackable bonus to shield regen (~1%). Each engineering bay also increases ship hull by 100, and increases robustness of ship’s engine and reactor sub-systems.

– Each Computer Core increases robustness of ship’s Grav Drive sub-system.

– Having at least 1 Computer Core onbroad would receive a bonus reduction to ship locking time (~33% with 2*1 core, ~50% with 2*2 core).
– If you don’t have a Computer Core, installing a Taiyo Forward Sensor can also reduce locking time by ~16%. The bonus is non-stackable.

– Nova Thruster Arrays and Braking Engines of all brands are now functional engines. They increase a decent amount of Maneuvering Thrust at cost of 1 engine power.

– Some early game landing gears have their Lander Thrust increased to compensate for mass increase in Ballistic weapons & missiles.

– Storage & Cargo Hall Habs now give Cargo spaces (Storage hab 80, 2*2 400, 3*3 1200). Player can opt out some cargo containers to compenstate weapon’s mass increase.

*NOTES: In vanilla game, you can only build Engineering Habs & Computer Cores for decorations & roleplay reason (other habs do better at providing basic stats like Crew Slots).

It’ll be great to see thses ship modules have an actual effect in the gameplay in a reasonable way.

Since an Engineering Bay should increase redundancy, which is vital to the survival of an actual spaceship, it is now increasing survivablity of our game ship. Other ship parts, the decrorative ones, should do the same, because they’re basically hulls and armours.

In vanilla game, you can only plate yourself up with cargo containers, which is practical, but not ideal. Modifying those modules gives room for more roleplay and more gameplay. Cheers.

Max Speed Overhaul:

– All Engine Parts Max Speed is now additive. (eg. place 4 130 class-C engine and you’ll get a max speed of 520).
You can actually out-run hostile engagers with a built-for-speed ship (4 * 180 class-A engine, or 6 * 150 engine, at cost of some lower maneuvering thrust). Beware though, AI ships fly faster too.

– It’ll take time to accelerate, but eventually you can fly up to 2x of the UI “Max Speed”. Since there is no atmosphere in space, there shouldn’t be a hard limit for max acceleration. You can choose to fly faster than standard in case of emergency.
Beware though, once you’re racing high above your ship’s standard Max Speed, it’ll be a hard time turning around or slowing down. In this case, consider using thrusters to quickly lose velocity.

– Boost Acceration is increasd by 2x.
Boost is much more effective now. You will see a lof of enemy ships dashing in and out of your gun ranges.

– Ship Turrets have their aim speed increased to compensate the changes.

*NOTES: Vanilla “Max Speed” is set to a relatively low value, which is reasonable for easy gaming.

However, it leaves hardly any space to do Inceptor-styled evasions or bascially play out any tactics. Every encounter is you shoot them dead or you’re dead, before having any chance to break contact. Yes, you can dominate battlefield with a Top notch Shield, OP Particle weapon and numourous crates of Ship Parts, before it gets old. Repetitive.

Since the removal of max speed restriction, everyone, you and AI, are a lot nimbler than vanilla. You can dodge bullets, fly through asteroids for cover, play hit and run, dash to finish off straggler, match speed against a fast target ship for optimal shot, catching the window of opportunity to fire before that window vanish in split seconds. AI do that too. It’s much more exciting to fight in space now.

Reactor Class Based Max Hull Edits:

– Class B & C ships now have a much tougher Hull.

*NOTES: With previous changes made in this mod, class A ships can last longer in dogfights than class B & C ships, due to having better evasive capability. To make them more of a challenge again, they’re given more Hulls and are much tougher now. It’ll take some repeated fire to destroy a class B ship, and it’s recommended to have some tactics & preparation (like installing EMs, particle weapons, ballistic guns and missiles) before taking on a class C ship.

Compatibility

This mod is most likely going to work fine with other mods that don’t modify vanilla ship modules.
In case they do, you can always place those ship module mods lower in the load order so that their edits override mine.

Engine Mods:
– Spaceship Engine Overhaul
– Interplanetary Engines
100% Compatible. SCO doesn’t modify any ship engines directly.
Mods that modify vanilla engines or add new engines will be fine with my mod.

Ship Module Mods:
– TN’s Supplemental Thrusters
– TN’s Hab Tweaks
– TN’s Useful Ship Structure
Semi-compatible. We’re basically doing the same thing with different values.
If you favor his version, just place them lower in the load order and let TN’s edits override mine.

– Robs Ship Upgrades
100% Compatible. It doesn’t modify vanilla modules.

– More Gooder Cockpits
100% Compatible.

– Spaceship Hab Overhaul
– Ship Module Overhaul
– Heavier Happier Healthier
– Cargo Hab Modules Give Cargo Space
Semi-compatible. Similar to TN’s mods. Place them lower in the load order so that their edits override mine.

Reactor Mods:
– 10x Grav Jump Thrust and Reactor Output
Will conflict with my reactor class based max hull edits. Grav jump should work just fine.

Ship Weapon Mods:
– More Gooder Ship Weapons
Semi-compatible. Similar to TN’s mods. Place it lower in the load order so that his edits override mine.
You will probably miss out new changes post 0.8 though. Current version is 1.1.

Known Issues
When taking off to orbit, sometimes your ship get launched orbiting the planet at a speed of 300 m/s. It could be a feature.

Installation

Install Nukem’s Plugins.txt Enabler and place ShipCombatOverhaul.esm (or other modular esm files) in your plugins.txt.

or

Extract in the usual way to the Data folder in your install path.

Then go to: \Documents\My Games\Starfield\

Open or create: StarfieldCustom.ini

And add the following lines:

[General]
sTestFile1=ShipCombatOverhaul.esm

[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=

Change the TestFile # to one that is not in use (1-10).

*NOTES: It’s recommended to park your ship next to a local ship builder before installing this mod.

Intalling all features of this mod can make ship combat quite different from vanilla experence.

I wrote some tips on space combat with SCO, in case you find it too harsh.

Uninstallation
Just remove the ESM from your plugins.txt or StarfieldCustom.ini, then delete the ESM.

Credits:

gpgpgpgp