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New Combat Experience

VERSION 0.3

PURPOSE:
The goals of this mod are to allow the player more control over fleet behavior, and to improve ship targeting behavior. To accomplish this, weapons and shields have been aggressively rebalanced, the combat computer has been repurposed, and ship behaviors have been overhauled.

Also, this mod adds a little variety to the galaxy by introducing new AI fleet doctrines.

MOTIVATION:
Currently, the only way to customize how the various ships in your fleet act is to alter their weapon loadouts. The underlying behavior, however, is not clearly communicated to the player, is not intuitive when reading the define files, and often doesn't behave how one would want. The end effect is that naval combat doesn't offer many interesting choices to the player, and can feel boring.

Beyond this, current weapon balance with regards to the shield bonus damage stat encourages most weapons to favor shooting shields. This has the effect of spreading damage liberally across the fleet. This would be fine, except weapons with strong penalties against shields will tend to focus fire, and aggressively kill unshielded targets. Strangely, this encourages a tactic of massing heavily-armored unshielded ships to confuse the targeting system of anti-armor weapons.

MAJOR CHANGES: QUICK LOOK
- Combat Computers have been repurposed to provide customizable ship behavior.
---Can now choose between assault, harass, escort, and skirmish. Each behavior has specific movement patterns and target priorities.

- All ships were given a small amount of shields.
---Allows targeting logic to assert that unshielded targets are damaged, enables focus fire tactics, and attempts to prevent gaming the targeting system with mass unshielded ships.

- All weapons have been given small amount of shield penetration.
---Enables anti-light and anti-heavy tactics that prioritize targets based on armor values.

- Standard weapons were rebalanced to have penalties against shields
---Enables targeting behaviors that prioritize unshielded targets.

KINETIC WEAPONS REBALANCE:
- Mass Drivers now have penalty to shield, slight armor penetration, slight shield penetration
- Autocannons are now anti-shield. They have moderate shield bonus, and minor damage reduction versus armored targets.
- Kinetic Artillery is now moderate anti-armor

ENERGY WEAPONS REBALANCE:
- Lasers are fairly similar: moderate penalty to shield, and moderate armor penetration
- Disruptors are still heavy anti-shield weaponry.
- Plasmas are still heavy anti-armor weaponry. Slightly less powerful versus armor than unmodded.
- XL Arcs are now effectively XL disruptors.

MISSILE WEAPONS REBALANCE:
- Regular Missiles now have slight shield penalty, poor armor penetration. They have moderate shield penetration, though.
- Torpedoes are still heavy anti-armor. Now have major shield penalty, high shield penetration, high armor penetration.
- Energy torpedoes are now heavy anti-shield. No longer penetrate.
- Swarm Missiles were made into a moderate anti-shield weapon with missile evasion.

STRIKE CRAFT REBALANCE:
- Unchanged currently.

SHIELD REBALANCE:
- Shield HP and Regen values had to be throttled down 25-33% to account for all the rebalancing of shield bonus damage.

NEW TECHNOLOGY:
- Added tech for a battleship bow section named "Starburst Bow". This section has 5 torpedo slots, and fits into the tech tree around where XL weapons are. Mostly for giggles.

AI FLEET DOCTRINES:
Broadly speaking Stellaris is balanced so that:
corvette < destroyer < cruiser < battleship < corvette
with the thing to the right beating the thing to the left when properly fit. Given this, the AI will adopt one of four fleet doctrines:
Balanced - same as unmodded case, even split between ship classes
Swarm - emphasize small ships
Dreadnought - emphasize large ships
Midrange - emphasize destroyers and cruisers
This should add a little variety to the galaxy, and force the player to adapt to their enemies.

MOD COMPATIBILITY / OTHER MODS:
This mod touches a large number of base game files. I can't currently recommend using this with other mods due to conflicts, etc. You can check the roles-only version of the mod linked below. Those changes are relatively easy to patch into other mods. Modders, feel free to use any of these changes in your own mods.

TODO:
Tweak AI fleet doctrines and ship build choices. Playtest, and check balance.

DON'T LIKE MY WEAPON REBALANCE BUT LIKE THE NEW ROLES?
Check out this mod - https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1148315851