Introduction

Ship stat balance is very tricky. There are hidden limitations imposed on the ships. Even PS failed to heed some of these limitations (carriers crash into stations). In the Torn Stars release we did not even attempt a new balance. And in the USpace release the balance we created caused a lot of bugs.

It is tempting not to try a rebalance at all, but it has to be done. The standard game balance is so skewed that Torn Stars is nearly unplayable from a combat perspective. The primary difficulty is that ships are quickly destroyed, making it impossible for the player to invest in wingmen and “level up” to more powerful fleets. Combat is so lethal that no sane player would ever fight. This makes for a very dull game.

Another issue is that once a rebalance is attempted, it is very tempting to change everything and remold the game into something new and exciting. While this is the whole fun of modding, it often results in bugs, or flight behavior that other EoC players don’t enjoy. Combat mods begin by trying to increase the combat life of ships, and end up with radically different flight models. It happens to everyone who tries it.

The Simplest Possible Rebalance (SPR) concept tries to make the absolutely minimal possible changes that still increase the combat life of ships. The minimum possible changes will not please everyone, but it will let the mod finish and release. Other combat balances are easily released as separate mods, and those balances can take whatever extreme view the author wishes.

Ship Speed and Acceleration

Changes to the ships speeds and accelerations cause the largest number of bugs. Ships that move too fast cause bugs. Ships that move too slow cause crashes.

The SPR does not make any changes to weapon speeds. It makes no changes to missile speeds. Most non-player ships have speed and acceleration values unchanged.

A minimum set of speed and acceleration values is calculated to allow any ship to stop before crashing into a station. All ships are increased in speed to this minimum.

The player ships are adjusted down in speeds and acceleration until the player has a 10-20% advantage over the NPC ships of the same class. (the player can increase this advantage by power shifting). This bonus allows the player a slight edge, but not enough to escape ever being hit (the standard fast attack patcom is wildly out of balance).

Ship Hit Points and Armor

Ship hit points are doubled across the board. Large ships, such as cruisers and freighters are multiplied by 4. Large ships get a bonus because they cannot dodge and take damage more quickly than small ships.

Armor values will not be changed from the standard PS values. The standard armor is matched to the weapons and if you change the ships armor, you have to change all the weapons. Changing everything goes against the SPR principal.

Weapons

Weapons are reduced in damage until they can do at maximum 100 points of damage per second. This is the damage of a standard PBC cannon. Rapid fire weapons will be most impacted as they are reduced based on rate of fire.

100 dps allows easy prediction of damage amounts. Instead of weapons being different from one another by the damage they do, weapons will be different by range, speed, energy use, rate of fire, armor penetration, shield penetration etc. These secondary properties will not be changed from the standard PS values. (they did a fine job of making the weapons all slightly different).

Shields

Shields will remain unchanged.

Missiles

Missiles will have damage and speed unchanged. Rate of fire for AI missiles will be cut in ¼. And ammo of AI missiles will be reduced. This should move the EoC game from the current missile swarm of death back to a dog fighting game of PBC cannons.

LDSI Missiles

LDSI Missiles will be equipped on interceptor class ships and no others. Interceptor class ships are used by limited numbers of AI fleets (pirate raiders, police patrols) but not station guards etc. This allows the player to escape from most foes, but not all. Again, this solution will not please everyone, but will allow the current game AI to function as designed.

Countermeasures

The manual counter measure mod should be supported.