Twinge's Balance & Bugfix Mod

[Twinge]

* FTL Jammer effect up to 300%.

It does not work anyway

This did inspire me to test it out. FTL Jammer DOES work - but it's hard-coded at doubling their FTL charge it would appear; the 'value' setting for it doesn't seem to actually do anything. Welp.

Guess that leaves me with the consideration of giving it some interesting blue options (or even strong-arming more than double escape timer via blue options) or possibly removing it from the game. Hmmm...

[Twinge]

Suppose I should post that the mod's been updated a few times - we're on v2.6.4 now. As usual the best place to check for the current version is the wiki.

Most recently I gave the Easy-difficulty Flagship only Level 4 Engines during Phase 3 (instead of L6) and further reduced the prices of some of the weaker augments.

[Twinge]

Updated to 2.7.0.

Drones upgrades cheaper; Flak1 less accurate; Fewer dead jumps in Mantis & Abandoned; Stun Bomb, Heal B., & Repair B. cooldowns further reduced; Further reduced free crew; Hull Rep. -10; Mantis -5; LRS +5; Hermes -5; Adv. O2/Medical cheaper.


Probably won't be updated again until after official FTL update and I rewrite the mod to fit.

[MantisManMike]

Good changes.

You didn't mention the biggest change though: hacking is now even more expensive (125 / 55 / 60)! This is painful but probably correct.

I'm starting a win streak with 2.7. Let's see how much the hacking price hurts.

[Twinge]

Oh boy. So, er, I haven't really been posting in this thread much, kind of assuming most people downloaded the mod off the wiki page directly -- but it looks like about *half* of downloads are probably coming from this forum thread, so I should, uh... probably update it!

So how about a quick overview of all the changes since I last updated this thread:

v3.1.0: Fed B reworked; Easy difficulty Flagship less challenging; Drone System cheaper; Hacking pricier; Flak less accurate; Misc. augment price drops; Misc. weapon cooldown drops

v3.1.1: Various text fixes and minor bugfixes; Gave Heavy Ion Stunner appropriate images; Combat Drone II slightly faster

v3.2.0: Enemy AE ships buffed; Enemies have less extra power for plasma storms; Lanius Bomber nerfed; Some weaker ships no longer appear in late sectors & have fewer missiles.

v3.3.0: Drone Part cost -1; Boarding Drone power req. -1; Fire Suppression buff; Drone Boost & Pheromone buffs; Event crew cheaper; Misc. system tweaks (mostly: bad system upgrades cheaper); Misc. minor cost/cooldown buffs; MantisB power -1; Beam color tweaks

v3.4.0: Sector 8 events make much more sense; FTL Jammer blue options; Racial augs sell for less; Ion Field & Battery Charger buffs; Backup DNA cheaper; Flagship Construction harder; Lifeform scanner giant spider blue option

v3.5.0: Free crew half as common in 8 events; Costs: Hacking L2/L3 +5; Mind Control +5; HL2 +5; L. Charger 2 +5; E. Resp. & Drone Arm -5; Ion Intruder blue option; Crystal Vengeance breach = 100%; Slocknog & Pony event tweaks; enemy missile count consistency (6/10/14 for Small/Medium/Large class ships)

v3.6.0: Enemy ships are stronger in Sectors 6-8; Nerfed Zoltan Custom Check; Slightly worse boarding rewards; Kestrel C +1 power; Crystal B & Lanius B -1 power; Lowered racial aug sale values more; Refueling platform event better; removed 30 instances of the word "small" in event text (about 1/5th of the massive total number)

...That's a whoooooole lotta changes! Near-future plans include trying out Ion Intruder at 2 power and enemy Boarding Drones at 2 power and re-adding Advanced FTL Navigation with the ability to map each sector when you enter (idea taken from slowrider; cost would be around 85 scrap). Give it a try and let me know what you think or if you find anything amiss - there hasn't been a ton of testing for the most recent releases, but everything seems to be working smoothly so far.

[Gidoza]

Hey Twinge,

While in the end our balancing edits probably ended being quite different from one another, I just thought it's worth your knowing that your effort in this mod is what kicked me off to do the ZHO CE Mod (mentioned in the 26 Flagships thread): I was quite irritated for some time about all kinds of balance issues and had made a big document of them on my own time, but never got around to doing balancing for one reason or another (likely either laziness or not knowing how to do FTL modding). Once I read your first post in the thread though and saw that you were doing some of the exact same things I was doing - or at least along the same lines - I realized that I wasn't alone in thinking what I was thinking and thought I'd actually do something about it. At this point I don't really recall anything specific other than Hacking's being more expensive.

Anyways, thank you for doing this - whereas others have enjoyed your mod directly, I must confess that I never did play your mod, but instead just incorporated much of the ideas into my own and got to appreciate your work there: your work inspired me to create something big that I've enjoyed myself and I thought was worth sharing with others as well.

Again - thank you,
-Gidoza

[Twinge]

v3.6.0->3.7.1:
* fixed a minor Zoltan C visual glitch; reverted the more annoying FTL Jammer blue options.
* few weaker augments 5 cheaper; Flak I slightly cheaper and slightly less accurate; Repair Burst -1s cooldown.
* Re-implemented Adv. FTL Navigation, which now maps sectors automatically. Lanius crewkill now gives augment instead of crew. Engis are slightly rarer. CV sells for less.
* Halberd nerfed more; Pheromones & Repair Gel sell for less; Lockdown significantly lower cooldown; Stun Bomb -1s cooldown; Vulcan & Swarm cost -5; Slug C fewer parts; Mantis C fewer missiles

[Twinge]

Whoops - fixed, thanks!

v3.7.1 -> v3.7.2: Respirator Effect 50%->60%, Less Repair Beacon Scrap, Zoltan Cost -5, Engines L4 +5, Oxygen L2/L3 +5, Hacking L3 +5, BL2 +5, Halberd +5, BL1 +5, Chain L +5, Charge L +5, Hull L1 +1s (back to vanilla cooldown), Bio Beam -5, Ion II -5, SlugGel Sell -3