[Starsector Mods][0.95.1a] Realistic Combat 1.22.5

• “…a revolutionary advancement for Starsector.”

• “I made an account to comment on this mod, absolutely stoked about it.”

The Bad

• “There is no telling how other mods react to this…

• “…forces blanket changes to every other mod…”

The Ugly

• “…fairly funny and turns the entire balance meta upside down.”

• “You’re an absolute madman.”

Present
Realistic Combat runs and works with content mods by overriding the Starsector damage code and changing the base stats of both vanilla and modded weapons, projectiles, missiles, beams, and non-station ships once the game loads.  Other mods were not designed for these realism mechanics and drastic balance change: some scripted combat mod features run differently or not at all.  (Please report any incompatibility, which I will document below and quickly work to fix.)

To ensure every user has read this warning to learn why other mods may behave differently, the Realistic Combat mod information file mod_info.json has a user-removable tag “totalConversion”:true that prevents loading Realistic Combat with other mods.

To load with mods,

• Open the folder of this mod
• Open mod_info.json
• Delete the line “totalConversion”:true

Incompatibilities
The following issues have been reported and, by users or me, replicated.

Support
I collaborate with the authors of the following mods to make Realistic Combat work with them.

• Open RealisticCombat/data/config, which contains relavantly-named and fully-documented .json settings files
• To toggle: Click the Toggles.json file and type true or false beside “shouldModifyShips”, “shouldModifyFighters”, or “shouldModifyWeapons”
• To configure: Click any other .json file and change any number in any field.

Skills
I’ll have to rework these skills because replacing the damage model has affected one or more of their features.

Combat
– Reduce phase cloak flux cost
– Let laser beams keep going but limit the range at which they are fired.

Jink
– Let projectiles meant for bigger, slower targets ‘pass through’ smaller, faster ships that can jink them.

Map
– Adjust retreat area to edges of the expanded map
– Move the flank deployment locations of escape maps toward the vertical axis of them

Vanilla
– Add my hand-tuned weapons and projectiles back into RC

Compatibility
– Create a guide/workflow/autopatcher for balancing other mods with RC
– Create interfaces for other modders to interact with RC

Sub-Modding
– Release Indicator Diamonds, Momentum Indicators, and Projectile Indicators as a separate mod(s)

Configuration
– Enable toggling the loading of replaced hullmods

UI
– Automatically zoom the camera out when the battle starts
– Enable allies to report retreats without spamming

Weapon Modification
– Modify every weapon, the weapon_data.csv row of which contains the SYSTEM tag, wherefore Global.getSettings().getAllWeaponSpecs() excludes it.
– Distinguish between guided missiles and unguided missiles and guided torpedoes and unguided torpedoes and adjust their stats accordingly
– Add weapon name and designation classification logic to override or augment the stat-based logic; e.g., detecting that the name and designation of a kinetic ballistic cannon indicates that it is a railgun and should therefore keep or increase its flux cost to fire while also gaining a much higher muzzle velocity and penetration.

AI
– Change the PD_ALSOAIHints of the WeaponAPIs or WeaponSpecAPIs of ballistic autocannons and missile launchers to PD_ONLY to keep them from wasting their limited ammunition on enemy ships.

1.22.4 – Fixed an Arma Armatura / Gundam UC related CTD caused by an index exception in the status indication of Realistic Combat.

1.22.3 – Fixed Advanced Optics and made Advanced Targeting Core and Targeting Supercomputer at least non-useless.

1.22.2 – Fixed missile flaming out out too early.

1.22.1 – Disabled allies from reporting retreats.

1.22.0 – Configurably soft-capped projectile weapon range based on the maximum of the expected original range of projectile weapons and the maximum modified range to which they should correspond. Reworked low-combat-readiness retreat mechanic to depend on captain personality, show but not spam messages, and allow overriding the automatic low-combat-readiness retreat order:

• Reckless captains ignore low combat readiness.
• Aggressive captains retreat below 40% combat readiness and ignore low combat readiness if given another order.
• Steady captains retreat at 45% and ignore it for two minutes if given another order and then must be given another order again and so on.
• Cautious captains retreat at 50% and ignore it for one minute if given another order and then must be given another order again and so on.
• Timid captains will retreat at 60% combat readiness regardless of orders.

1.21.4 – Fixed laser citadel penetrations insta-killing by limiting bonus malfunction damage to projectiles, missiles, and burst lasers.

1.21.3 – Fixed a null-pointer exception.

1.21.2 – Reintroduced skill changes after verifying that they do not affect performance.  Fixed a null pointer exception.

1.21.1 – Rolled back the skill changes because they might have affected performance.

1.21.0 – Added hard flux level indication and skill overrides.  Quality Captains will release a compatibility patch.

1.20.7 – Fixed weapons not firing by limiting non-launcher projectile weapon locking to the selected weapon group, if it is not autofiring and the autopilot is off, of the player ship.

1.20.6 – Fixed not reporting fighter weapon damage to DCR, tweaked projectile indicator sizes, and, by putting in the indicator config lines that should have been in Indicators.json already, fixed a hitherto unreported bug that would, because they weren’t there yet, cause problems if you ever turned off the default indicator settings toggle because the indicator settings loader would hunt for lines that weren’t there.

1.20.5 – Fixed a null-pointer error and, I hope, the problem of weapons not firing.  Changed the tooltip descriptions of damage to ones relevant to Realistic Combat: armor penetration and hull and compartment damage.

1.20.4 – Fixed the burst-fire bug.

1.20.3 – Disabled retreat messages because endlessly-displaying last hotfix has not fixed endless displaying.  Fixed a null-pointer exception in the retreat order method and the gun-locking code making some non-launcher projectile weapons spam and others lock up.  Expanded gun-locking to prevent firing non-launcher projectile weapons until and unless they are in range and on target, that is, pointed at the lead indicator.

1.20.2 – Fixed endlessly-displaying retreat messages.

1.20.1 – Fixed DCR breaking when the Realistic Combat Damage Model is disabled and a null-pointer exception when the player ship explodes.

1.20.0 – Replaced global non-missile projectile weapon range modification via MutableShipStatsAPI with a WeaponBaseRangeModifier listener that modifies weapon ranges individually.  Prevented non-missile projectile weapons from firing unless in range. Replaced all incompatible vanilla hullmods, made Three Dimensional Targeting toggle-able, reduced laser damage and missile and torpedo speed and acceleration, increased missile and torpedo maneuverability otherwise, and fixed problems with Detailed Combat Results.

1.19.0 – Removed all projectile weapon specification sub-categories, reinstated flux costs for all ballistic weapons, and replaced the muzzle velocity bonuses with a configurable muzzle velocity factor, which I have set to 10: all because all ships and weapons are balanced around their original stats, including flux cost, capacity, and dissipation rather than having more and bigger guns be the chief balance lever of ballistic-armed ships, and the only explanation for ballistic weapons costing flux to fire is that they must be coil-or rail-assisted.  Accordingly slightly increased map size, greatly increased full burn speed, and greatly increased the beam intensity factors, divided into a burst and beam intensity factor, and missile and torpedo speed and maneuverability.  Phase now gives a speed boost of 1-2x depending on flux rather than a speed penalty of 0.33-1x depending on flux.

1.18.0 – Changed strafing acceleration factors to their vanilla values: 1/1/0.75/0.5/0.25 for FIGHTER/FRIGATE/DESTROYER/CRUISER/CAPITAL_SHIP.  Projectile indicator colors are damage-type coded rather than team-coded. Version checker support enabled.

1.17.2 – Fixed beam weapon range depending on target.  Ignore chargeup and chargedown delay of three-shot burst projectile weapons when determining their sustained fire rate.  Slightly raised damage threshold for energy cannon.  Every HUD extension feature has a toggle in its own settings file.

1.17.1 – Reduced the kinetic damage factor from 0.67 to 0.5, increased the fragmentation armor thickness factor to 8, and made the lead indicator thin for all ship sizes.

1.17.0 – Fixed the radar, which now zooms in and out as it should, with its settings configurable in Radar.json

1.16.2 – Fixed crashes by adding lines of code to load the settings files whereinto I had moved the settings that had been in the main settings file.

1.16.1 – Put back a couple of factors I had dropped and which were causing NullPointerException.

1.16.0 – Refactored all the settings files by adding documentation to every setting and consolidating the common settings of the HUD extensions.

1.15.0 – Removed the sharp autocannon-cannon distinction by increasing the damage thresholds below which a weapon is considered part of the WeaponCategoryAUTOCANNON_BALLISTIC or AUTOCANNON_ENERGY and introducing two new WeaponCategory‘s for light projectile weapons: MACHINEGUN_BALLISTIC and MACHINEGUN_ENERGY.  Fixed a damage listener typo that has caused crashes.

1.14.1 – Fixed a shield damage function typo that rendered shields all but invincible.

1.14.0 – Shield damage model replaced for all projectiles, missiles, and beams: shields take less damage from weaker hits or ticks and more damage from stronger ones.  Ballistic cannon and energy cannon muzzle velocity bonuses increased by thousands across the board, exceeding those of ballistic autocannons and energy autocannons.  Fighter deceleration, turn acceleration, and max turn rate factors doubled. 

1.13.0 – Beam diffraction indicator added.  Built-in reporting for next version of Detailed Combat Results added.  Beam initial damage doubled.  Missile (but not torpedo) maneuverability greatly increased.

1.12.1 – Hotfix of crash-to-desktop and Realistic Combat – breaking bugs introduced during development.

1.12.0 – Beam stat modification constraints changed to having the initial intensity to diffract to vanilla damage at vanilla range and then stopping at a range that depends on flux efficiency. 

1.11.0 – High damage, fast-firing weapons will now be considered cannons because of an added a damage check to determining whether a weapon is a cannon.  Cannons have increased refire delays.

1.10.2 – Stopped projectiles from spawning projectiles inside ships by prohibiting projectiles with on-hit effects from spawning ricochet projectiles.

1.10.1 – Stopped the code that generates energy projectile triangles from bugging out and raising exceptions.

1.10.0 – Added projectile and missile indicators that appear when the player zooms out.  Added text informing the reader about some relevant in-game information that may relate to the causes crashes to crash reports.

1.9.0 – Upgraded velocity indicators to momentum indicators, the width of which now indicates ship mass.  Added automated retreat orders to ships with low combat readiness.  Modified indicator diamonds to thin and thicken depending on zoom and align perfectly regardless of ship collision radius.  Added stack trace logging to all try-catch blocks.

1.8.0 – Added velocity indicators for all ships.  Added a per-shot damage bonus to cannons.  Prevented 3d targeting from adjusting beam weapon range.  Limited the range of beam weapons by their diffracted damage plus EMP per second flux efficiency.  Added a configuration file for the velocity indicators and indicator diamonds.

1.7.1 – Hotfixed ballistic cannons having flux costs.  Also removed ballistic and energy cannon burst delays and set their burst sizes to their number of barrels.

1.7.0 – Put the modified damage model back–I never meant for it to leave.  Making it apply to each beam tick without turning the humble tactical laser into the death star was harder than I thought it would be and has involved significant spaghetti and arbitrariness.

1.6.1 – Fixed the cause of the over-performance of the Harpoon MRM: the missile specification was modified every time any weapon firing it was modified.  Removed the distinction between guided and unguided missiles and torpedoes from the WeaponCategories.

1.6.0 – Hull and flux diamonds appear around ships with hull and flux bars only when the HUD is off.  Also removed the standoff between the hull and flux diamonds.  I added it by accident.

1.5.0 – Beams are fixed and buffed.  The damage per second of continuous beams is increased by weapon size across the board.  Beam range is up because the range cutoff calculation is fixed.  Damage per second cutoff increased to 10.

1.4.2 – Beam weapon range is now limited to the range at which damage per second drops to 1.  Expanded the field manual, added tips repeating its lessons, and fixed the combat readiness reduction bug.

1.4.1 – Ballistic autocannons reload again.  I had dropped some lines while removing reloads from ballistic cannons.  Reloads for ballistic autocannons are now chunkier with the same average rate.

1.4.0 – Ship, fighter, and weapon modification can each be toggled in RealisticCombatSettings.json.  Targeted enemy ship now has red hull diamond.  Missile maneuverability, except acceleration, enhanced.

1.3.0 – Beams actually fixed now.  Autofire also corrected.  Removed ammo limit and fire rate modifications from projectile weapons, but kept ammo limitations for ballistic autocannons, because they were too hard to balance as-is.  They will return once refined.  Next patch will have toggles for features plus interfaces for your own code.

1.2.1 – Big beam fix: a typo in the beam weapon power calculation had left them underpowered and is now fixed.

1.2.0 – Fighter, ammo, and autofire patch.  Made fighters viable by massively increasing their range, speed, and maneuverability.  Reduced ‘sliding’ by slightly improving maneuverability of Cruisers and Capital Ships.  Reduced missile spam by introducing soft ammo limits for ballistic and missile weapons.  Reduced autofire ammo waste by cutting how far the target can move before the dynamic range algorithm cuts the range off.

1.1.0 – Added the total conversion tag to warn you that Realistic Combat, while stable with all mods, drastically changes ship and weapon balance and may make some modded ship and weapon scripts run differently or not at all. it drastically Reduced missile maneuverability, especially that of high-damage guided missiles, by adding four new kinds of WeaponCategory: UNGUIDED_MISSILE, GUIDED_MISSILE, UNGUIDED_TORPEDO, and TORPEDO.

1.0.4 – Added a failover mode to detect ballistic projectile weapons and energy projectile weapons that lacked the WeaponType.BALLISTIC or WeaponType.ENERGY

1.0.3 – Stations no longer get their maneuverability enormously buffed.  I had not known that getAllShipHullSpecs returns those of the stations, too.

1.0.2 – Built-in weapons now also have stats changed.  The default method to get all weaponSpecs hadn’t returned them, so now they are gotten from their shipHullSpecs.

1.0.1 – Wrapped a try-catch block around the body of each of several public methods because one of them had caused a fatal NullPointerException.

• Ships assigned harass or avoid engage suicidally aggressively by behaving and keeping distance as vanilla.
• Flak cannons wiggle back and forth instead of shooting at fighters or missiles and rarely hit.
• Shots sometimes penetrate shields on smaller craft but not on larger ship shields.

2. With credit and your permission I would gladly incorporate features of mods of Realistic Combat.

3. Beware that your mod might become incompatible with the latest version of Realistic Combat within weeks, days, or even hours because I am still actively developing this mod and frequently release updates that may break your mod of Realistic Combat by changing core features, re-arranging packages and config files, and more without concern for your or any other mods based on this one because I want to make Realistic Combat work and be fun before supporting derivative mods. 

4. Until and unless I so stabilize Realistic Combat that I could implement APIs etc., I intend for Realistic Combat to be a ‘terminal’ mod that uses other mods but is not a stable platform for further development.

• Saltydupler for changing the tooltip descriptions of damage to ones relevant to Realistic Combat: armor penetration and hull and compartment damage.

• borgrel for enabling Realistic Combat to order ships to retreat at low CR via

  Automated Commands

• lyravega for enabling Realistic Combat to modify obfuscated features of ship and weapon specifications when Starsector loads by creating and supporting the workflow and tools for a safe, extensible

  DIY API

• Dark.Revenant for the core math of

  Leading Pip, which I have modified and integrated into Realistic Combat.

• Lazy Wizard for

  LazyLib methods and the core code of

  Common Radar, both of which I have modified and integrated into Realistic Combat.

• The Starsector modding community for enabling me to programmatically modify Starsector by patiently and thoroughly teaching me how to install a modern Java IDE, attach a debugger to Starsector, and understand and access the Starsector API.