Subscribe to download
VSSTO

• VSSTO - Dome of the Rock

Designed to serve as a base mod for your next playthrough, VSSTO encourages a more strategic and tactical approach. While significantly altering core gameplay mechanics, it is intended to still be compatible with a select group of popular mods (and will be very soon!).

With the release of 1.03, VSSTO now includes the core gameplay ideas, and will be from here refined and balanced primarily through hotfixes. But that`s not all! A number of sub mods are planned to enhance a number of aspects which the player will be able to pick and chose from. More details below.

The main hope of this project is that defeating a player should not simply require rushing one stack of ships to a planet, conquering it, and repeating ad naseum til the war is over. Now a viable play option will be to attack an opponent's empire on a broad front, destroying resources over time, planning an intelligent strategic campaign, and outwitting your opponent with superior tactical deployment.

At present mod compatibility is still a work in progress, but should be greatly enhanced within the near future.


Planets:

• Planets have greatly reduced functionality as energy and mineral and research producers.
  Less time is required spent upgrading planet tiles.
  
• Food is a valuable resource.
  It is much more difficult to generate, provides higher bonuses to pop growth, and the effects of starvation escalate much more quickly. The main goal of planet resource production is now to keep your pops fed.
  
• Each pop provides two units of naval capacity.
  Pops are now the base generator of naval capacity
  
• Starbases add only a maximum of 2 to naval capacity.
  Aggressive expasion comes at a risk. You will not be able to up your fleet capacity and defend it until the planet has become more populated.

Orbital Resources:

• Stations are the prime source of minerals, energy, and research, and spawn at greatly increased rates.
  More Gameplay time devoted to system screen/building stations.
  
• They are much more expensive to build.
  Protecting them is a necessity, planning expansion crucial.
  
• Moons are much more likely to spawn.
  Creates resource rich defensive pockets within systems.
  
• All Station Hit Points slightly increased.
  Players are required/encouraged to build military stations/garrison fleets in important resource areas.
  
• Undocked Fleet Maintenance Penalty Reduced. Players are required/encouraged to garrison fleets in important resource areas
  
• Construction Ships much more costly.
  Defending them will be important.

Expansion

• Frontier Stations are quick and cheap to build, and very difficult to destroy.
  Most likely they will need to be removed using War Goals (balancing possibly required.)
  
• The border system created by MasterofGrey is used.
  Prevents "border blobbing", and creates a more interesing and challenging strategic map with more overlap and weak points.
  
• Terraforming is now very costly.
  As Rowan Kaiser says, "Space should be hard!")

Tactical Combat

• Sublight speed is greatly reduced.
  Hopefully leading to more interesting tactical battles and manouvering within systems. FTL travel is at present unchanged, allowing galactic expansion to proceed normally.

Diplomacy/Wars:

• Truce time has been greatly decreased, but cede/liberate planet warscore cost has been doubled.
  This is to encourage more wars, but also to make it more difficult to conquer another player by targeting their planets. Designed primarily for multiplayer, players will now have less impetus to quit when losing a war.
  
• Base Planet Warscore halved, base Fleet Combat Warscore doubled.
  Winning a war through sip combat and destroying stations more viable than capturing planets.
  
• Base Planet Fortification greatly increased.
  More time will be required to subdue planets, perhaps your fleets could be more effective in the meantime destroying in system resources.
  
• The AI will be much more aggressive!
  They will attack even if the odds are even in your systems, and slightly against the odds in their own. This may also need some balancing.

• Due to the increased number of moon spawns, turning down habitability is recommended.(0.75 is nice)
  
• Not yet designed for play with fallen empires/crises.

Compatibility is still minimal, but increasing!

Please see my custom collection for all verified compatible mods.

This mod changes the following files:

00_ascension_perks
all building files
00_utilities
00_defines
00_deposits
00_guardian_deposits
constructor
00_ship_sizes
misc_system_initializors
all war demand types
00_static_modifiers

• Compatability with: ISB, Planet Diversity, and more.
  
• Sub Mods! Internal Politics Mod up next. :)

• MasterofGrey for his wonderful RealBorders mod. :)
  
• Rowan Kaiser, because pretty much everything he says about Space Games is true.

Also if you like it, don't forget to (please and thank you :)