Hello,

I just uploaded my mod, Heavy Nova, but it wouldn't take the description that goes along with it.  I guess it was too long.  Anyway, here it is, if there is any way to post this with the mod, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Silvermane

Hail Friends,

I’m proud to present HeavyNova, a balancing mod that doesn’t add or remove anything from the game.   It simply balances the existing game elements to provide an enjoyable single player campaign. 

Targeting & Damage

The chance for bigger ships weapons to hit smaller targets now goes down smoothly.  The damage ships do to targets of different size now varies smoothly.  This eliminates the effect of a capital ship and light frigate shooting each other for long time without doing much damage.  They can hurt each other now.  Each ship does 150% damage against its best target and 50% damage against its worst.  For example, and anti-fighter frigate does one and a half times the displayed damage against fighters but only half the listed damage against a capital ship because it’s weapons are designed for use against very light ships.  The opposite is true for capital ships.  Planetary defense modules are designed to repel any kind of invader.  Therefore, they do 100% damage against all targets. 

Pirates

 I increased the strength of the raids and changed the mix of ships, providing them with a more effective and balanced force.

Markets

I made the markets a little more sensitive to player purchases.

Artificial Intelligence

I reworked the artificial intelligence tables.  I don’t know how much of it is the 1.3 update and how much is the changes I made, but I’ve been playing on hard and they’re raising fleets, colonizing aggressively, developing their planets sensibly, and generally kicking my butt.  I’m going to actually have to make peace with one of my opponents just to survive.

Ships

I completely rebalanced all of the ships in the game.  Here are some things you should be aware of.  The costs and capabilities of a ship are based on and proportional to the slot count.  In general, a ship that takes twice as many slots will do twice as much damage.  Siege ships and carriers do 2/3 damage and colony ships do 1/2 damage due to their specialties.

Shields regenerate at twice the rate that hulls repair.  Tech ships have 100% hull and 50% shield.  Vasari ships have 125% hull and 25% shield.  Advent ships have 75% hull and 75% shield.  One cruiser for each faction gained the ability to bomb.  Light carriers now support two squadrons and have a weapon.  A weapon firing out of multiple banks does less damage.  1 = 100%, 2 = 75%, 3 = 66^, 4 = 50%.  Thus firing out of multiple banks is an advantage if the ship can maneuver to use both of them, but a disadvantage if only one has a target.  I try to move my battleships to the center of the fray so they can fire in all directions at once. 

Modules

The cost, slot count, range, and damage (where applicable) of all orbital modules has been rebalanced.  Modules require more metal, planet upgrades require more energy (crystals), research requires more money, and ships require equal amounts of all three.  All costs are divided into one, two, and three parts of the three different resources.

Planets

All planets have been rebalanced.  The asteroids, gravity wells, and costs, and slots have been redesigned.  There are six stages of development.  A given stage is the same across all planets.  The number of stages a planet can develop to depends on its type.

Terran – six stages of development, fewest asteroids.

Desert – five stages of development.

Ice – four stages of development, crystal asteroids only.

Volcanic – four stages of development, metal asteroids only.

Asteroid – three stages of development, most asteroids.

Dead Asteroid – two stages of development, no asteroids.

Pirate Base – special.

Research

Rebalanced the cost and time of research.  Changed the capital ship slots to two for each level of research instead of starting with one and finishing with three.

Miscellaneous Tweaks

Increased salvage refund percent.

Allegiance only goes down to 50% instead of 25%.

I’ve had some great games with this mod.  I hope you do too.

Regards,

Silvermane