STF's GSB Better Progression mod for Gratuitous Space Battles

The base game is, of course, a whole lot of fun, but it feels like it peaks too soon, with having most of the goodies from the start, and unlocking everything that's left while you're not even halfway through the missions. It could also use some fixes and a little polish in some areas.

That's why I've made this mod - to have a polished "what could have been" experience of GSB, which can be enjoyed by both new and returning players.

This mod is compatible with any fully patched version of the game, regardless of how many of the DLCs you have installed - see install instructions in the download.

Also fully compatible with making/doing vanilla online challenges and campaigns, as well as with other mods that add new files (and don't replace vanilla files or files from this mod).

MOD CONTENTS (Latest Version - 1.3):

Visual:

• The frigate Engine and Engine II module icons have been corrected. They were swapped and never got fixed.
• (1.1) Rabbit Cruiser got renamed to Federation Rabbit Cruiser and now spawns "hulks" when destroyed, like other ships. Brings it closer in quality to the other hulls in the game.
• Modules which had the ship's class in their name (vanilla: Cruiser Missile Launcher) no longer have it (now: Missile Launcher). It was never unclear which module belonged to which ship class, in any circumstance, so this change gets rid of what is essentially text clutter.
• Race-unique modules now always feature the race included in their name. Eliminates guesswork between similar shared and racial modules.
• (1.1) Power Generators and their variations have been renamed to Powerplants. Both instances were used in the game, so I picked the one that occupies less screen real estate.
• (1.1) Some modules names have been changed to better fit with established naming conventions and/or to better represent what it is. Ex: Nomadic Armored Powerplant is now Nomadic Reinforced Powerplant II.
• Renamed the tutorial from "Tutorial (Adding Ships)" to "First Contact (Tutorial)" and replaced the thumbnail with the background image. Makes it slightly more immersive and visually differentiates it more from the following mission.
• 4 missions have had their thumbnails tweaked (Alliance Survival, Order Survival) or replaced (Outcasts missions 1 and 2) to better showcase the enemy.
• (1.2) Restored unused turret sprites for some races. Tribe and Alliance as far as I recall, but it might have been other races as well.
• (1.2) Improved turret sprite assignment. The point is to have as few sprites shared between races as possible, while avoiding duplicate sprites for weapons of different classes.
• (1.0, 1.2) Typo fixes.

Audio:

• The DLC races with a non-unique battle theme (so all except Outcasts) have had them replaced with battle music from Gratuitous Space Battles 2 and Gratuitous Tank Battles. Because theme and variety.
• The Outcasts theme music no longer takes too long to start be heard. The first 10 seconds were basically inaudible ingame - not very gratuitous - , so it now picks up around 10 seconds sooner.

Gameplay:

• The Tutorial Cruiser is now based on the Rabbit Cruiser hull. Because you would never use it if you had any other cruiser hull from the get go.
• (1.1) 3 missions featuring Rebel enemies (3, 5 and 10 from the base game) have changed to feature equivalent Federation enemies instead, and have had their thumbnails replaced accordingly. Federation ship loadouts were already present in the vanilla game files, just never used. Also, there were way too many Rebel missions.
  
• (1.0, 1.3) The 1st scenario of every DLC is unlocked after clearing "Battle Above Edyai IX" (the last base game non-survival mission) and the 2nd scenario, if it exists, it's unlocked after clearing the 1st one of the same DLC. Preserves the intended mission difficulty, regardless of how many DLC you own.
• (1.3) Survival scenarios have been reordered and each of them unlock after clearing all the non-survival missions of the same afferent race. Survival missions are now presented as an unlockable reward.
  
• All race-unique modules start unlocked. Encourages experimentation when unlocking a new Race, especially when you haven't unlocked many non-unique modules yet.
• All races except Federation cost honor to unlock. Those which are more expensive to unlock start with more free ship hulls and/or racial modules. Makes each race feel a little more different and encourages experimentation.
• The number of unlockable stuff in the vanilla game + DLCs has increased to 94 modules (from 64) , 70 hulls (from 23) and 9 races (from 3). As a result, you don't start overwhelmed, yet end up with a lot more stuff to unlock.
• Unlock pricing has been redesigned and the values have been overall increased. A lot of work went into this, so I'll skip the boring stuff. In short, you can enjoy unlocking stuff until the very end of the game and you don't need to be an expert to do so.
  
  FYI: Even with this mod's overall increased prices and stuff to unlock, you may gain enough honor from the tutorial and 1st mission (on all difficulties) to theoretically unlock any other available race (I myself got 38000 honor under these conditions, with just the starting gear, and I'm no expert), so you don't have to stick with the starting race for long if you don't want to.

I hope you have fun if you decide to give this mod a go. If you do, please give a rating!

If you want to do something with this mod, please give credit to the original author (me!). If you want to spread the word, please link to this page instead of re-hosting. Thanks!

If this description gets updated with a new version which is not yet available for download, it means it's not yet authorized and should be available in 2 hours at most.

That's it,
STF