Galactic Armory 1.7 news

Bring the heat!

After almost two months of hard work, Galactic Armory 1.7 is finally available. This release contains several new features, some of which we would like to present here.

orzelek's Remnant AI

If the passiveness of the Remnants in this game always has bothered you, this mod is definately for you. orzelek developed an AI for Remnants, which will no longer sit idly in their systems, waiting for you to catch up and hunt them down. Instead they will now research, retrofit their ships (as well as make them larger as time passes) and get reinforcements. As if this wasn't enough, they will also start attacking systems of both human and AI players occasionally. How often this happens depends how angry they are. And they are definately an enemy you don't want to make angry.

They also field a lot of updated and new ship designs, as well as stations. Especially command posts and stations are valuable targets, since they provide their ability to produce resources. If you want to be successful against them, these should be your first targets.

The Remnant AI is configurable and fully optional. If "Remnant AI" is left unchecked at game start, they will still spawn, but behave as usual.

Official mod thread

Robik's Advisor Mod

This mod is for all those who like a bit of number crunching. Resource production is usually limited by several factors, i.e. the inflow of raw materials that are to be refined to another resource. The advisor window (can be toggled with F8) shows planets that are of interest because of unusually high or low production efficiency, which is otherwise rarely noticed due to the size of an interstellar empire.
Screenshots as well as an in-depth explanation of this mod and its features can be found in the official thread.

Advisor Mod Thread in the Star Ruler forums

Heat Management for energy weapons

While ballistic and missile weapons are limited by the amount of ammunition that is carried or produced within a warship, energy weapons did not have any such limitation. As long as enough energy is produced, energy weapons can be fired as often as their rate of fire allows.

However, this is no longer the case. Instead of simply making energy weapons somewhat inferior to other weapons, we decided to go another route. Similar to games like MechWarrior, energy weapons in Galactic Armory now produce different amounts of waste heat. A power supply or heatsink is now mandatory when using energy weapons; while linked emergency power units will reduce their energy requirement, they do not provide heat storage capacity (called "heat level threshold"). In most circumstances, a power supply of sufficient size will provide enough cooling so that heat isn't built up over time. However, with advanced weapons like plasma throwers and particle cannons, combined with rack mounts or mass mounts, the increase in overall cost and rate of fire can easily lead to a positive heat release value. This will trigger a warning message in the blueprint editor window, saying that the ship design "will produce extreme amounts of heat". In such a case, there are two main options: You can either increase the size of the power supply, increase the power output and fuel consumption as well; or you can mount a heatsink, which vastly increases the heat release rate, gives a bonus to the ship's heat level threshold and doesn't even require power to run.

In case an energy weapon-based ship builds up too much excess heat anyway, it won't explode or take damage. However, once the heat level reaches or surpasses the threshold (which is possible), the ship's energy weapons stop firing and need to cool down to 50% of maximum heat. Once heat falls to or below 50%, energy weapons will continue to fire (until too much heat has built up again).

Important information regarding installation issues

Time and again we receive questions such as "Why are my ingame menus gone? This mod doesn't work!!!". Though this has been answered many times before, and has actually been part of the mod's readme for quite some time now, we feel that this should be adressed one more time, hoping that people actually read this.

Star Ruler mods are generally installed into the mod folder within your game directory. Yes, that is the folder that the game is installed to. If, for example, you own the game on STEAM, this will be something like c:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\star ruler\. This is a general thing and applies to all Star Ruler mods.

DO NOT CONFUSE THIS WITH YOUR USER FILES. The user files folder for Star Ruler also contains a mod folder, which is used to save your exported ship blueprints, screenshots, savegames and race profiles. DO NOT extract the mod to this folder, as it will show up in the new game menu, but WILL NOT FUNCTION CORRECTLY.

Another common mistake, also caused by failing to read the readme file, is forgetting to delete previous versions of this mod before installing the latest release. It may work, since we did not test every possible combination of old and new mod installations - but it may just as well fail and cause unusual errors.

For more information, check out the changelog below. If you have questions or feedback feel free to visit the official mod thread.

In case you haven't heard...

...or rather seen in this case, there's a teaser video I uploaded a few days ago. It shows one of the new weapons: The Mass Driver, which shoots giant chunks of rock at planets, a.k.a. asteroids.

Videos & Audio - Galactic Armory Mod for Star Ruler - Mod DB

Changelog

• Fixed: The Researcher type AI was out-researching players and other AIs when set to cheating due to an extreme focus on research worlds
• Fixed: Boarding Defense would not work on ships without crew
• Fixed: Boarding Parties were broken due to a missing provision entry
• Fixed: Default Fighter design would not move into attack range as engagement range was set to 1000 (way beyond weapon range)
• Fixed: Phased Railgun did not consume power as shown in its hint
• Fixed: Plasma Throwers didn't actually deal damage over time
• Fixed: Removed the incorrect rapid mount hint shown for the Fortress Hull
• Fixed: Corrected some display issues regarding cargo storage
• Fixed: Several technology requirement hints were incorrect
• Fixed: Superweapons will no longer conflict with jump drives and other tool-type subsystems
• Fixed: The Precision Bomb hint was incorrect, indicating a power requirement
• Changed: Increased minimum and maximum amount of planet slots for planets with extreme conditions (ice, lava, desert)
• Changed: Added new Waste Heat gameplay mechanics to energy weapons
• Changed: Increased chances for all types of AI to choose a governor from the random governor list to the same level
• Changed: Removed crew from Advanced AI Core and added Boarding Defense instead. Reduced HP by 60%
• Changed: Increased Boarding Party base range. Range will also increase with level now
• Changed: Added an amount of Antimatter Generation to AM generator and shielded AM generator, which is required by Antimatter Rocket Engines and antimatter weaponry
• Changed: Missiles no longer benefit from modifier subsystems except Extended Magazines
• Changed: Fuel Depot is now available from the start (without having to research chemistry)
• Changed: Added ammo generation and storage to shipyards
• Changed: Added new formula for AoE range of projectile weapons with area of effect. Maximum AoE range was increased as well.
• Changed: Fuel Cells and High Density Fuel Storage have only half mass at scale <=1
• Changed: Removed "explore multiple systems" order from default scout blueprints
• Changed: Reduced cargo bay base storage by 20%
• Changed: Halved hauler hull cargo storage
• Changed: Added power/ammo/heat cost multiplier to most modifier subsystems
• Changed: Removed general storage from planetary cargo storages; each dedicated resource storage was doubled
• Changed: Advanced AI Cores no longer gain HP bonus from Bulkheads (due to their Boarding Defense function)
• Changed: Thruster, Polypropellant Thruster and Ion Thruster now provide more thrust at increased fuel consumption for ship scale <=1
• Changed: Level of Repair Tool, Repair Facilities and Salvager is now linked to Materials instead of Metallurgy
• Changed: Reduced default Planetary Damage Resistance and Armor HP factors from 2.0 to 1.0
• Changed: Phased Railgun now uses Spatial Dynamics instead of Energy Science
• Changed: Modified several traits in terms of effect/cost
• Changed: Modified the default colony ship designs
• Changed: Superweapons are now activated by issuing a forced attack order (ctrl + left click on "attack")
• Changed: Artillery no longer gains range from targetting sensors or similar subsystems
• Balance: Reduced amount of ammunition storage provided by ammo caches and high density ammo storages
• Balance: Decreased Control increase per Level for all control subsystems except quantum computers
• Balance: Decreased Power Generator base fuel cost by 33% and increased power generation from 55 to 70
• Balance: Reduced Solar Panels base durability from 40 to 15
• Balance: Increased Solar Panel base efficiency from 1.3 to 2.0
• Balance: Increased Fusion Generator base durability from 30 to 120
• Balance: Reduced damage reduction for all armor types except reactive armor
• Balance: Reduced Pulsed Laser Clip size from 60 to 30 and decreased clip base delay from 4 to 2
• Balance: Doubled the amount of advanced parts generated by planetary Advanced Parts Factories
• Balance: Rebalanced cost and effectiveness of engines
• Balance: Increased T-Ray damage by 50%
• Balance: Increased Ion Beam damage by 10%
• Balance: Removed Boarding Party crew requirement, doubled requirement for Life Support
• Balance: Decreased Boarding Party troop strength by 20%
• Balance: Drastically reduced Computer Core and Advanced AI Core durability
• Balance: Reduced Fusion Torpedo Bay base delay from 9.0 to 8.0
• Balance: Doubled ammo generation rate of Ammunition Fabricator
• Balance: Doubled Muon Cannon ammo consumption and storage
• Balance: Reduced Integrated Command Center base crew value from 15 to 5, reduced air generation base value from 2.5 to 1.0
• Balance: Reduced Nanite Repair Unit repair rate by 37%, increased Repair Bay repair rate by 50%
• Balance: Reduced Nano Armor self-repair rate by 12%
• Balance: Increased T-Ray damage by 25%
• Balance: Reduced bullet speed of most ammo-based projectile weapons from 50% to 33% of maximum range
• Balance: Reduced minimum hit rate of most ammo-based projectile weapons from 50% to 33%
• Balance: Planetary defensive weaponry now gains increased range per level
• Balance: Jump Drive charge-up formula has been changed. Charge time increases with ship scale; maximum charge time is 120 seconds
• Added: New Subsystems: Asteroid Collector, Mass Driver, Mass Driver (Light), Fusion Cutter, Fusion Lance, Heatsink, Antimatter Cannon, Interceptor Missile, Cluster Missile, Tachyon Blaster, Antimatter Converter, Precision Mod
• Added: orzelek's Remnant AI for Galactic Armory (0.2.2). When selected at game start, Remnants will research, upgrade, respawn and occasionally attack other empire's systems.
• Added: Two additional Remnant ship designs
• Added: Fuel and Ammo generation hint for Matter Generator. Note: This is only a *rough* estimate of potential fuel/ammo generation
• Added: New effector graphics and particle effects
• Added: Added and corrected information in various subsystem descriptions
• Added: Troops is now shown in object window
• Added: 4 empire flags
• Added: Added new cargo bays dedicated to metal, electronics or advanced parts only
• Added: Added new Erudite version of each AI personality as default, gave old basic AI personalities "poor" designation
• Added: Implemented Robik's Advisor Mod (1.2.1); Advisor window can be toggled by pressing F8
• Added: Added new icons and gui-related graphics (i.e. for stats shown in the layout editor)
• Removed: Removed some obsolete files (mostly part of obsolete German translation)
• Removed: 'C' versions of default ships were made AI-only. They can optionally be made accessible via import function.