Really liking this mod. I am generally cautious about adding mods to my games, but this one won me over easily - it's one of only two mods I'm using currently.
I most like the increased fuel efficiency on the Firestorm, good reason to use it more.
And the new interceptor is very useful.
Still, the mod has its problems. Sorry if this is going to be kinda detailed, but I like this mod and I wanna shore up what I see as its weaknesses.
To put it brutally, it's a nice change of pace, but at least in craft weapons it ends up replacing one kind of fake variety with another. Previously it was Avalanche and Plasma Beam, now it's Craft Cannon and Laser Cannon.
1. Laser is the new plasma.
TBH this is my only real problem with the mod: Plasma Beam seems near-useless now. Laser has higher DPS against everything except Very Large ships, where it's kinda equal. UFOs with < 35 range can be shot down safely with lasers, while stronger UFOs have too many hitpoints for plasma anyway.
I could maybe see using plasma on multiple firestorms to chase down Supply Ships, but that is too narrow a role, and still multiple firestorms with laser cannons will do just as well with only a little repair time. Besides, we don't shoot down supply ships, we let them land to seize their Elerium intact.
Plasma is supposed to be the pinnacle of beam technology, requiring researching the weapons of an alien, superior civilisation. How about give ship weapons the same balance as ground ones? Think about the difference between Plasma weapons vs laser rifles. Could do the same thing with the Plasma beam: make it strictly superior, but cost precious Elerium to rearm.
That way you might want to have Ravens/Firestorms with laser cannons for Elerium-efficient shooting down of small ships, and Avengers with plasma beams for the dangerous targets. There, real variety for good reasons.
2. Craft Cannon is the new Avalanche missile.
I just end up using Craft Cannons every time. 15-20% accuracy missiles are a joke. Even more so after you count in ship size penalties, difficulty level penalties, damage variance-based reductions, and when the Avalanche clip has a size of 2 and a greater cost than a Skyranger. It's very possible to send both of your interceptors with a total of 24 stingray missiles and fail to down a Medium Scout, after catching up to it 3 times because it keeps outrunning. That's not fun!
But if I use solely craft cannons, I can get by just fine until laser cannons, just gotta be cautious and pay attention, and withdraw when damaged. The rare interceptor loss I could manage just fine (hasn't happened yet in two games).
Of course you could "fix" this by making the cannon worse, but if using this mod required me to build a 4th hangar to be able to deploy enough missiles against a single Small ship, I'd give up on it.
BTW, I like the idea of Avalanches being powerful-but-costly. That's good enough for balancing reasons, as early in the game you're not exactly swimming in cash, unlike later. So there's room for higher accuracy - or a larger clip (more cost to arm!).
3. Improved Accuracy tech doesn't work out that great.
I end up ignoring it every time. Two main reasons. One, craft cannon works okay and laser cannons are just around the corner. If I first beeline to Laser Rifles as I usually do, from there it's just an average 880 man-days (18 days with a 50-man laboratory) to Laser Cannons, and 450 man-days (9 days) to Improved Accuracy, a mere 9 days difference. So there's no point producing all those Tuned weapons when you can have laser cannons soon enough.
They just clutter up the Manufacturing screen for the rest of the game, which is my other reason: I hate that clutter. Though that's mostly the fault of the interface, inefficient use of screenspace by the manufacture list.
IF the research was much shorter (100 man-days? And maybe have the research require just the Navigation item, directly, not Navigation researched?) AND if you could make it so that it doesn't require manufacturing new items, merely change stats on existing ones, then I'd see use for it. But I guess that can't be done. So what i'd suggest instead is removing the Accuracy research and just giving the starting Stingrays and Avalanches their "improved" stats.
I know this is an old topic and there's a chance the author isn't reading (let alone going to be convinced). But for anyone else who would like to try these ideas, here are the changes I made in my own game:
Plasma Beam:
* performance back at vanilla values (52 range, 140 damage)
* 24 ammo (up from 10)
* requires 6 elerium to fully rearm
Stingray missiles:
* start with "tuned" accuracy (50%) and costs
Avalanche missiles:
* start with "tuned" accuracy (40%) and costs
* clip size increased from 2 to 3
Fusion Ball launcher:
* clip size increased from 2 to 3
Improved Accuracy:
* research no longer available (disabled in a dirty way, by adding an impossible requirement, as I didn't want to clean up the whole file)
Ruleset file attached. Install Istrebitel's original first. You'll need the Resources. EDIT: updated due to Nightly build changes.
