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"Essential" expansions/mods that burned you out (rants likely)
Sorenson
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Man, forget likely, I'll start the thread with one.
We hear it all the time: someone is talking about a game and somebody else says that they "must" install a particular mod or expansion, that it adds so much to the game or changes/corrects so many things about it that it's almost like a new game unto itself. But what we don't hear all the time is the darker side to these mods, the stories of those people who installed these expansions or mods expecting bliss only to wind up being suckerpunched by some unruly facets that had for whatever reason escaped description or faced with several minor quirks that send them down a dark, depressing spiral that by its end has completily destroyed any desire to play or, worse yet, destroyed much of the appeal of the game.
Let me tell you such a tale.
TL;DR (I don't blame you)
The Mod: Xtended for X3 Reunion
Stage 1: These lasers shouldn't be so slow, let me edit them.
Stage 2: Jesus Christ, what the fuck were they thinking? Why is this set to this and why can this only do this despite it being a spin-off of a widely-applicable piece of equipment?
Stage 3: IT'S A MADHOUSE! A MADHOUSE!
We hear it all the time: someone is talking about a game and somebody else says that they "must" install a particular mod or expansion, that it adds so much to the game or changes/corrects so many things about it that it's almost like a new game unto itself. But what we don't hear all the time is the darker side to these mods, the stories of those people who installed these expansions or mods expecting bliss only to wind up being suckerpunched by some unruly facets that had for whatever reason escaped description or faced with several minor quirks that send them down a dark, depressing spiral that by its end has completily destroyed any desire to play or, worse yet, destroyed much of the appeal of the game.
Let me tell you such a tale.
I like space sims, especially the Elite/Privateer/Freelancer-styled ones that just let you loose on a universe with nothing but a pat on the back and a whisper of "do what you want". There is no greater pleasure than creating a massive one-man empire from the ground up, with fleets of ships custom-kitted for various roles, whether they be running trade routes and protecting the ships that run such routes or reducing entire sectors of the galaxy to ash. Anyone who likes this genre knows, thus, that the current king is X3, and anyone who plays X3 knows, thus, that the current de facto mod for it is Xtended, which adds a whole bunch of new ships and sectors and that sort of stuff. I thought it would be great, so I installed it.
At first, things were great: the new sectors were interesting to explore, the new ships quite potant, and alltogether things were satisfactory barring some bullshit bug that stopped the storyline cold in its tracks. After going "fuck it" and spoiling myself, I then turned to a new game, transferring all my stuff so I could get to the chase a lot faster. Here's where things started going downhill.
Having become stupendously rich by means quite unexpected, I decided to start claiming sectors for my own through one of the available mods, and for that "purchased" (or rather created through a cheat menu and then subtracted the credits from my account because apparently the shipyard it's bought at is fucked up) one of the new uber-cruisers: 32 medium cruiser guns, 32 heavy cruiser guns, pretty much the ultimate broadside. Took it into a string of pirate sectors and went to work...
From satisfaction to annoyance: retarded-as-fuck bolt speeds
...and got blown up by a bunch of fucking fighters.
I couldn't believe it: I had six gigajoules of shield power, 64 guns that were spraying out a virtual wall of energy with each bolt capable of one-shotting the lighter craft, and I was getting my ass handed to me by a bunch of fighters who, despite the sheer volume of fire I was putting out, was easily able to evade my shots which were moving at three-fucking-hundred meters per second. This is slower than a god damn scout can fly! This is a god damn Photon Pulse Cannon or whatever the fuck it is; photons, the shit that makes up light! They're not supposed to be lolligagging about at pitiful sub-sonic speeds, they're supposed to be zipping around and ripping ships new assholes!
Now before you say "switch your loadout to anti-fighter, noob!" let me explain: I don't want these guns to be the end-all be-all guns that can blow up every hostile in the sector with one shot. I'm perfectly fine with the slow-as-fuck tracking speeds of the turrets: hell, I even think that the aim-assisstance area should be cut down for these things so as to require more precise aim. But if I want to take out a fighter in a horribly inefficient manner, having to rely upon them entering a considerably-smaller field of fire as compared to other weapons, then I should be able to: I should be able to blow a fighter out of the sky by virtue of sheer massed fire, patience, or dumb luck, and I should fail to do so because the fighers approached at a vector with the least fire coverage, not because the shots fired are so fucking slow that a fighter can change its bearing by one degree and be wide and clear of the shots.
So I changed it. Downloaded an editor and gave the bolts thrice the speed they normally have (and thrice the range unintentionally, which I should cut down to a max of 10K for the AI's sake). And then I got curious.
From annoyance to astonishment: why the fuck is X set to Y?
I could have stopped with this little tweak. But I didn't.
You know what's wierd? Tractor Beams are considered an S-class ware, but have a volume of 50. Gamma Phased Shockwave Generators are M, but have a volume of 15. Beta Electro-Magnetic Plasma Cannons are L, but have a volume of 10. Ore is an XL ware, but has a volume of 8. Titans can equip Alpha/Beta PPCs (L-50 and XL-100) and Beta IREs (S-1), but not Alpha IREs (S-1) Tractor Beams (aforementioned) or High Energy Plasma Throwers (S-6 and L-15). Only one ship in the game is capable of capturing other vessels despite two (not just one, but two) independent mods enable the same thing on any ship provided it's equipped with the (in one case stupidly-overpriced) systems in question - and they still can't capture stations despite another two independent mods allowing such (one with the retarded logic of "well, you have to blow it to hell first, and then there's a chance it'll self-destruct just to spite you".
It's stupifying. All throughout the data files for weapons and wares and stuff there are these stupid inconsistancies and hipocrysies and shit that just doesn't make sense. Where were the people who were supposed to be looking out for these sorts of things and shout "Hey, this doesn't look right!"? Did it not occur to people (developers and modders alike) that if something is of a certain volume then it should be a certain ware class? Did they not stop and think that if a ship can support a large gun and a small gun in the same mount and can switch between them willy-nilly that they should also be able to support weapons inbetween or of the same volume and nature? Did it not occur to these people that certain things just did not make sense?
I decided to take a break (I'd finished my little purge anyway) and decided to start planning an infrastructure for the genocide I had planned for a few of the races.
From astonishment to head-desking: "You outsourced our factories WHERE?!"
I'm not even going to get into the sheer stupidity of the Energy Cells thing for factories, as anybody who's played an X game is familier with that bit of bullshit.
I needed guns: lots and lots of guns, of such numbers that the only way to get them would be to manufacture them myself. So off I went to the shipyards to get the factories to make the guns - and since the race that owned the shipyard was the one who had developed the gun I wanted, according to a BBS article I read once, I figured it was a sure bet to find it there.
I didn't.
I figured "well, maybe their allies have some of the factories, I should be able to find some through them.
I didn't.
You want to know who has the factories to make the guns? The enemies of the race who developed the guns. They've got fucking complexes devoted to making them, of all the different varients. They've got a complex in their home system, like a gigantic fucking middle finger for everybody to see.
What the fuck happened to the idea of self-sufficiency? What kind of ass-backwards idea is it for shipyards in the home systems of a race to not have available all the different models of basic resource production facilities, especially the ones that produce goods that they are credited with developing? Jesus Kong Christ riding Hi There!, it's the equivilent of the U.S. giving the rights to produce Tomahawk missiles to North Korea and blowing up all their own factories!
And don't give me any of that "Well, there's that one shipyard in Omicron Lyrae that sells alpha PPC factories, so quit your bitching!" nonsense! First off, it's (A) way off in the ass-end of fucking nowhere as far as many folks are concerned, and (B) it still doesn't answer the question of why a factory that produces a good that is crucial to the military strength of a race, and was developed by said race, is not present in any of their central systems or built in their central spaceyard!
And then I was finally broken. Where once there was the supposed pinnacle of the genre, all I could see was a broken, conveluted mess of bad ideas, illogical variables, and unfeasable loadouts. Perhaps Xtended had merely sped up an inevitable realization, or perhaps ignorance of its capabilities truely would have left me with bliss, but whatever the case, the damage is done.
At first, things were great: the new sectors were interesting to explore, the new ships quite potant, and alltogether things were satisfactory barring some bullshit bug that stopped the storyline cold in its tracks. After going "fuck it" and spoiling myself, I then turned to a new game, transferring all my stuff so I could get to the chase a lot faster. Here's where things started going downhill.
Having become stupendously rich by means quite unexpected, I decided to start claiming sectors for my own through one of the available mods, and for that "purchased" (or rather created through a cheat menu and then subtracted the credits from my account because apparently the shipyard it's bought at is fucked up) one of the new uber-cruisers: 32 medium cruiser guns, 32 heavy cruiser guns, pretty much the ultimate broadside. Took it into a string of pirate sectors and went to work...
From satisfaction to annoyance: retarded-as-fuck bolt speeds
...and got blown up by a bunch of fucking fighters.
I couldn't believe it: I had six gigajoules of shield power, 64 guns that were spraying out a virtual wall of energy with each bolt capable of one-shotting the lighter craft, and I was getting my ass handed to me by a bunch of fighters who, despite the sheer volume of fire I was putting out, was easily able to evade my shots which were moving at three-fucking-hundred meters per second. This is slower than a god damn scout can fly! This is a god damn Photon Pulse Cannon or whatever the fuck it is; photons, the shit that makes up light! They're not supposed to be lolligagging about at pitiful sub-sonic speeds, they're supposed to be zipping around and ripping ships new assholes!
Now before you say "switch your loadout to anti-fighter, noob!" let me explain: I don't want these guns to be the end-all be-all guns that can blow up every hostile in the sector with one shot. I'm perfectly fine with the slow-as-fuck tracking speeds of the turrets: hell, I even think that the aim-assisstance area should be cut down for these things so as to require more precise aim. But if I want to take out a fighter in a horribly inefficient manner, having to rely upon them entering a considerably-smaller field of fire as compared to other weapons, then I should be able to: I should be able to blow a fighter out of the sky by virtue of sheer massed fire, patience, or dumb luck, and I should fail to do so because the fighers approached at a vector with the least fire coverage, not because the shots fired are so fucking slow that a fighter can change its bearing by one degree and be wide and clear of the shots.
So I changed it. Downloaded an editor and gave the bolts thrice the speed they normally have (and thrice the range unintentionally, which I should cut down to a max of 10K for the AI's sake). And then I got curious.
From annoyance to astonishment: why the fuck is X set to Y?
I could have stopped with this little tweak. But I didn't.
You know what's wierd? Tractor Beams are considered an S-class ware, but have a volume of 50. Gamma Phased Shockwave Generators are M, but have a volume of 15. Beta Electro-Magnetic Plasma Cannons are L, but have a volume of 10. Ore is an XL ware, but has a volume of 8. Titans can equip Alpha/Beta PPCs (L-50 and XL-100) and Beta IREs (S-1), but not Alpha IREs (S-1) Tractor Beams (aforementioned) or High Energy Plasma Throwers (S-6 and L-15). Only one ship in the game is capable of capturing other vessels despite two (not just one, but two) independent mods enable the same thing on any ship provided it's equipped with the (in one case stupidly-overpriced) systems in question - and they still can't capture stations despite another two independent mods allowing such (one with the retarded logic of "well, you have to blow it to hell first, and then there's a chance it'll self-destruct just to spite you".
It's stupifying. All throughout the data files for weapons and wares and stuff there are these stupid inconsistancies and hipocrysies and shit that just doesn't make sense. Where were the people who were supposed to be looking out for these sorts of things and shout "Hey, this doesn't look right!"? Did it not occur to people (developers and modders alike) that if something is of a certain volume then it should be a certain ware class? Did they not stop and think that if a ship can support a large gun and a small gun in the same mount and can switch between them willy-nilly that they should also be able to support weapons inbetween or of the same volume and nature? Did it not occur to these people that certain things just did not make sense?
I decided to take a break (I'd finished my little purge anyway) and decided to start planning an infrastructure for the genocide I had planned for a few of the races.
From astonishment to head-desking: "You outsourced our factories WHERE?!"
I'm not even going to get into the sheer stupidity of the Energy Cells thing for factories, as anybody who's played an X game is familier with that bit of bullshit.
I needed guns: lots and lots of guns, of such numbers that the only way to get them would be to manufacture them myself. So off I went to the shipyards to get the factories to make the guns - and since the race that owned the shipyard was the one who had developed the gun I wanted, according to a BBS article I read once, I figured it was a sure bet to find it there.
I didn't.
I figured "well, maybe their allies have some of the factories, I should be able to find some through them.
I didn't.
You want to know who has the factories to make the guns? The enemies of the race who developed the guns. They've got fucking complexes devoted to making them, of all the different varients. They've got a complex in their home system, like a gigantic fucking middle finger for everybody to see.
What the fuck happened to the idea of self-sufficiency? What kind of ass-backwards idea is it for shipyards in the home systems of a race to not have available all the different models of basic resource production facilities, especially the ones that produce goods that they are credited with developing? Jesus Kong Christ riding Hi There!, it's the equivilent of the U.S. giving the rights to produce Tomahawk missiles to North Korea and blowing up all their own factories!
And don't give me any of that "Well, there's that one shipyard in Omicron Lyrae that sells alpha PPC factories, so quit your bitching!" nonsense! First off, it's (A) way off in the ass-end of fucking nowhere as far as many folks are concerned, and (B) it still doesn't answer the question of why a factory that produces a good that is crucial to the military strength of a race, and was developed by said race, is not present in any of their central systems or built in their central spaceyard!
And then I was finally broken. Where once there was the supposed pinnacle of the genre, all I could see was a broken, conveluted mess of bad ideas, illogical variables, and unfeasable loadouts. Perhaps Xtended had merely sped up an inevitable realization, or perhaps ignorance of its capabilities truely would have left me with bliss, but whatever the case, the damage is done.
TL;DR (I don't blame you)
The Mod: Xtended for X3 Reunion
Stage 1: These lasers shouldn't be so slow, let me edit them.
Stage 2: Jesus Christ, what the fuck were they thinking? Why is this set to this and why can this only do this despite it being a spin-off of a widely-applicable piece of equipment?
Stage 3: IT'S A MADHOUSE! A MADHOUSE!
Sorenson on
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I'd been a huge fan of the previous games, and played them to death. Override was, I thought, an awesome achievement in balancing a 2D space game. No one weapon was ideal in all situations, and all weapons and ships had some significant drawbacks that were very hard to compensate for, and even the more unbalanced vessels (such as my namesake) could easily take you to very challenging combat situations that really called for them. Also, there was no real end to the game, as there were a lot of story missions that were kind of random and not a lot of mutually exclusive stuff, so you could play for 40+ hours and still not do everything, and continue to be drawn forward by the sense of discovery.
Enter Nova. I was psyched for this thing. Awesome engine improvements, even better story lines, another large enthralling universe. And I was loving it until a few hours in, when I finished the Auroran story line. In my valkyrie that I bought in first hour of the game. Equipped with hellhound missiles and fusion pulse cannons that were cheap and easily acquired. With inexpensive and penalty-less maneuverability upgrades. And it wasn't that hard. And after I finished the story line there was nothing. The game was over. No reason to keep playing what should have been another awesome sandbox game. No endlessly building your badass character, because you have to start another one every 6 hours or less.
Ultimately, that setup turned out to be pretty much the best in the game. Unless you went Polaris (and I don't even want to start on them) there was no reason to ever do anything besides buy a mod-starbridge and put FPC's and hellhounds on it. So I set out to mod some balance and decisions back into the goddamn game. I slaved away at this for months, in the process playing all the story lines and quitting every time I saw a typo to add the fix to my plugin.
The result? My game was so horribly broken and not that great that there was even less reason to play it.
So sad.
All I wanted was something that removed some of the stupider things from single-player and modded the ships up so that you could have a decent fight. What I got was a forum full of people debating the speed of a plasma projectile under a 30-killowatt light shield or whether it was "historically accurate" to allow fighters to have a +.05% damage rating against frigates. I stopped bothering with the 15 different installs around the time I found a post explaining that the battles would now consist of moving your ungainly capital ship, being sure not to tell it to attack anything, and then watching for an hour or two.
It wasn't a mod to make a better game, it was a mod to make a better screen-saver.
Same thing for me except with Oblivion.
Honestly, I still had the most fun with vanilla Oblivion, despite its flaws. (Actually I think I used BTMod for the map.)
Although, I did turn to mods because I stopped having fun with the original, but they all just gave me headaches.