[Starsector Mods][0.9.1a] Kiith Nabaal Shipyard 1.3.1 – Hiigaran Marine & Assault Frigates

Honoring the 20th anniversary of the Homeworld franchise and the upcoming sequel announced today, a small mod to introduce the ships of Homeworld 2 into Starsector.

All fresh out of the factory midlines without paint jobs, any faction with midline blueprints’ll sport them.
Rare painted versions’ll show up as loot out in the fringes.

Download 1.3.1
Source onGitlab
Donationswelcome
Integrated with

Version Checker

Ships
Fighters
(Large by Starsector standards, wing size reduced)

Class: Sahir Role: Recon Scout Arms: 1x Light Kinetic Autogun	Class: Nasir Role: Heavy Interceptor Arms: 1x Kinetic Autogun	Class: Midhi Role: Plasma Bomber Arms: 2x Plasma Bomb Launcher
Class: Kashaf Role: Survey Scout Arms: 1x Light Flechette Cannon	Class: Alharis Role: Assault Craft Arms: 1x Flechette Cannon	Class: Mufajir Role: Plasma Bomber Arms: 2x Plasma Bomb Launcher	Class: Ramah Role: Lance Fighter Arms: 1x Light Plasma Lance

Corvettes

Class: Tira Role: Corvette System: Wing Leader[Video] Mounts: 1x Medium Energy

Frigates

Class: Banika Role: Transport System: Ram Drive[Video] Mounts: 1x Small Ballistic Mods: Modular Holds	Class: Hinsra Role: Heavy Frigate System: Ram Drive[Video] Mounts: 1x Medium Ballistic, 2x Small Ballistic, 1x Small Missile

Destroyers

Class: Vidhvansak Role: Heavy Destroyer System: Missile Defense[Video] Mounts: 1x Large Ballistic, 2x Medium Composite Arms: 1x Rajih MRM Battery

Cruisers

Class: Tajmahir Role: Carrier System: Reserve Deployment Mounts: 1x Large Composite, 2x Medium Missile, 5x Small Ballistic, 3x Fighter Bay

Capitals/Utility
TODO

Weapons

Light Zenith Cannon Role: Point Defense (Area) Mount: Small Ballistic Damage: Fragmentation	Pulsar Cannon Role: General Mount: Medium Energy Damage: Energy	Kitar Flechette Cannon Role: Anti Shield Mount: Large Ballistic Damage: Kinetic

Feedback
    Welcome suggestions of what to prioritise.
    Balance’s taken a backseat to making more ships, pipe up if anything’s over/underperforming.
    Homeworld’s right sparse on information about its ships or technology, will begrudgingly take corrections and fan theories.

Credit

• Relic Entertainment for the original ship designs and sounds.

I am working on reviving the Hiigaran Descendants mod, the Homeworld 3 announcement adds just more wind into my sails 

Awesome looking fighters!

I am working on reviving the Hiigaran Descendants mod, the Homeworld 3 announcement adds just more wind into my sails 

Homeworld’s good enough for ’bout a dozen mods of it, won’t be a faction mod of this for a while anyhow until’ve gotten all the ships in.

V1.1 – Hiigaran Carrier

Shoved the Hiigaran carrier cruiser in there, +faction skin.
All the carrier subsystems exist, though there’s no way to remount ’em for now. One variant with all slots filled, one bare.
Don’t do much at the moment save for looking fancy.

Rubbed mitts on all the fighter sprites again, Vaygr Bomber/Lancer got scaled up to have same size bums with Interceptor.
Release notes here.

goto to Barren planet
click `Mine`
click `What ships can mine?`
and instant crash

note: 1.0 is fine, only 1.1 crashes

8153999 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: com.fs.starfarer.loading.specs.HullVariantSpec.getHullSpec()Lcom/fs/starfarer/loading/specs/privatesuper;
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: com.fs.starfarer.loading.specs.HullVariantSpec.getHullSpec()Lcom/fs/starfarer/loading/specs/privatesuper;
	at nabaal.hullmods.HiigaranFleet.applyEffectsBeforeShipCreation(HiigaranFleet.kt:13)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.updateStats(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.init(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.createFleetMember(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.rulecmd.Nex_PrintMiningInfo.printMiningTools(Nex_PrintMiningInfo.java:194)
	at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.rulecmd.Nex_PrintMiningInfo.execute(Nex_PrintMiningInfo.java:54)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.rules.super.execute(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.rules.ooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.runScript(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.rulecmd.FireBest.applyRule(FireBest.java:98)
	at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.rulecmd.FireBest.execute(FireBest.java:47)
	at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.rulecmd.FireBest.fire(FireBest.java:53)
	at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.RuleBasedInteractionDialogPluginImpl.fireBest(RuleBasedInteractionDialogPluginImpl.java:176)
	at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.RuleBasedInteractionDialogPluginImpl.optionSelected(RuleBasedInteractionDialogPluginImpl.java:208)
	at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newui.Objectsuper$1.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newui.super.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newnew.buttonPressed(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.ui.I.?00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.ui.I.processInput(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.ui.O0Oo.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
[code]

And to DreXav, good luck! 

If you don’t mind though, a critique about the scale. The scout looked too large compared to the interceptor, so I pulled a scale reference to check if my eyes weren’t messed up.
So here’s the results of a quick and dirty comparison:

I scaled it to the interceptor’s size as the main reference, and there’s a bunch of scaling differences. The most obvious is the scout though, so maybe scale the sprite down a bit?
The scale reference is compiled by someone on Deviantart btw, they also did scale for corvettes, frigates and capital ships.

Some other thoughts about how HW ships would balance in SS.
Since most of the ships don’t have shields (save for that one lone Field Frigate maybe), they should have a higher armor and hull integrity rating than vanilla ships (built in Heavy Armor, Armored Weapon Mounts and Hull Integrity mods perhaps).
Kinetic weapons generate less flux compared to vanilla , but have a hard time damaging shields, because most of the kinetic weapons are designed for armor penetration (200% vs armor & hull, 25% vs shields), while beam/energy weapons are comparable to big energy weapons in vanilla.

Anyway glad to see HW getting some love again, keep up the good work!

(I should really work on my Homeworld-ish mod some more…)

Some other thoughts about how HW ships would balance in SS.
Since most of the ships don’t have shields (save for that one lone Field Frigate maybe), they should have a higher armor and hull integrity rating than vanilla ships (built in Heavy Armor, Armored Weapon Mounts and Hull Integrity mods perhaps).

Mechanically, it’s very hard, verging on impossible, to balance large shieldless Starsector ships for the player; they tend to be very binary (you either have enough armor and hull to tank long enough to kill your target or you don’t) and either boring (nothing to do) or overpowered (nothing competing with weapons for flux) or both.

Add to that the fact that unlike an RTS, you don’t really have the ability to produce an endless stream of ships, and direct 1:1 mechanical stuff like that isn’t a great idea (although once the faction roster is fleshed out, there’s always the advanced option of painstakingly designing a shield-replacement system).

I would instead make them extreme versions of low-tech Starsector ships; poor shield efficiency, slow, with ponderous ballistic weapons and lots of PD. High per-shot kinetic and long bursts of fragmentation damage with slow refire rates and shot speeds would make the guns work within Starsector’s balance environment, with HE ion/pulsar beams to ruin hull armor.

First off, great work, thank you for reviving Homeworld for SS! -snip-

Thanks darling! Might take yet another hand to the scout, as for the scales in general, there ain’t a winning option.

Do use the HW2 scale as a starting point e.g. Interceptor’s 17.3m to the Bomber’s 23m. Given the I occupying 46h pixels, B should be ~61, made an even 60 to dodge interpolating.
Promptly goes halfway into the rubbish bin since these fighters’re already breaking Starsector’s sprite limits in some ways, game becomes how small they can be made while still evoking the original ship and staying approximately in scale.

To the carrier, doesn’t take a chart to see they’d barely get their momma size bum out the hangar bay.
S’ a few things let me suspend my disbelief. Based on the Starsector bay exit animation, fighters’re probably a good deal smaller than their sprite’d suggest, occupying a layer closer to the screen.
Or NLips is ticked on. In both games, something’ll go bampy with the scale for the benefit of whoever’s laying peepers on it, so’ll do the same.

Gonna get more egregious from here since’m compressing “super capital ships” within Starsector’s class sizes.
Things’d get out of hand immediately if I just looked at their actual size: “Well the Carrier’s 45 times the Interceptor, 2000h pixels it is.”

These are really lovely; I’m especially enjoying your Vaygr bomber. It’s really nice to see someone doing a Homeworld mod from scratch instead of reviving Gotcha!’s.

(I should really work on my Homeworld-ish mod some more…)

Ah stoked to hear that from ya vectorian brother, thank you! Thought that carrier was a Keeper at first because of the bloody twitter compression, looks terrific though, I’ll take 20.

Some other thoughts about how HW ships would balance in SS.

I would instead make them extreme versions of low-tech Starsector ships; poor shield efficiency, slow, with ponderous ballistic weapons and lots of PD. High per-shot kinetic and long bursts of fragmentation damage with slow refire rates and shot speeds would make the guns work within Starsector’s balance environment, with HE ion/pulsar beams to ruin hull armor.

Not sure how’s factored into HW2’s health bars, but there’s a “shield” defined for any ship larger than a Scout.
May be only against EMP damage but’m drawing a blank on any concrete info.

addShield(NewShipType, "EMP", 10000, 20)

Planning some kinda armour repair system for the Shipyard, preferably where the ships came in to dock. Could extend that to the resource collectors and carrier subsystems as a shield replacement mechanic, with some CoH2 style internal crew-repair that disables the ship as a last alternative. But heck even as’m writing this it feels taken too far and doesn’t really introduce a new engagement mechanic, just an infuriating back off n’ heal one. Particularly if hyperspace systems get introduced, can just hop away from any danger and come back fresh as a brass flannigan.

Vaygr’d be more likely to get the low-tech treatment, but in terms of weapon mount real-estate theirs is the smallest, those’ll be a case-by-case design revolving around their built in weapons (trinity cannon, fusion missiles, etc) to bring ’em up to class, rather than some unifying faction mantra.