1.8 alternative here:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1143328069

@demonzabrak Make it happen. "What was shall be, what shall be was."

Weapons are controlled mainly by \common\component_templates\weapon_components.csv

It's a long spreadsheet with the following values that you can manipulate per weapon:
key;cost;power;min_damage;max_damage;shield_damage;shield_penetration;armor_penetration;min_windup;max_windup;cooldown;range;accuracy;tracking;missile_speed;missile_evasion;missile_health;missile_armor;missile_shield;end

All I've done is to go through the sheet and change the cost value and power value of weapons. But changing range is just as easy

# Lasers;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
SMALL_RED_LASER;2.50;-2.50;5.00;10.00;0.80;0.00;0.15;2.00;23.00;25.00; range =30.00;0.90;0.60;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00; <---- UNCHANGED (Base small laser)

SMALL_XRAY_LASER; 2.65;-2.65; 9.00;13.00;0.80;0.00;0.15;2.00;23.00;25.00; range =30.00;0.90;0.60;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00;0.00; <---- 2.65;-2.65 are values changed by me.

Yeah, that bothered me too. I mean, if the ship sections had an actual increase to the number of mounting slots on them, increasing the base cost would make sense, but on the corvette-destroyer step, they actually lose slots for double the cost? Poorly crafted.

Concerning range increases, that would be flavor appropriate. Missiles just improve their warheads and keep the thrust device the same, or the tracking system the same, and lasers just change the wavelength without also improving focusing arrays to keep the light from scattering at a given range? No way. Mass too, since the improved launchers would likely focus on an increase to velocity instead of just adding more round mass to a small gun, which would let the tracking system make longer range shots with accuracy. I would probably go with some arbitrary flat change case-by-case though, instead of a +5% per level. Hell, if I got into it, I might do a complete weapon overhaul. Assuming I can figure out how to.

@demonzabrak - Yes, with this mod, things are better. I misunderstood your first response, my bad. Still makes sense to me to increase range of weapons though, even if only 5%. It would be great to have the ships scale properly, that's been an unspoken gripe of mine for some time (as is the inability to change slots out as desired, ie, an X slot is clearly equal to a few large slots, but there's only three or so modules that allow you to use an X slot). If you do anything about destroyers, would you also make sure that they're actually worth their cost (3x the corvette)? Their outrageous base cost for less than 2x the corvette's power is one reason why I never use them.

Thanks for the heads up about Stellaris 1.8 demonzabrak.

Hopefully this mod will become obsolete with the ship component rebalance done by Paradox:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-79-ship-component-balance-changes.1036466/

I will not update this mod until I've tried the vanilla balance changes in 1.8, and hopefully I won't have to update it at all.

They'll get stomped with this mod on. Anyway, I have zero modding experience, and I was hoping to bring the ratios in line for the various ship types. To illustrate, if we take the mounting points of each class of ship, divided by ship size, equalized to Small size mounts, you get this

Corvette- 3 Weapon, 6 Utility, 1 Aux
Destroyer- 3 Weapon (2.5 on picket), 5 Utility (6 on Picket), 0.5 Aux
Crusier- 3 Weapon, 6 Utility, 0.5 Aux
Battleship- 3 Weapon, 5 Utility, 0.25 Aux

Now, be aware that the actual values are higher, but I was dividing by ship size, so the Battleship actually has effectively 40 Utility slots if you made them all Small instead of the 10 large.

If you wouldn't mind walking me through making my first mod some time, I'd appreciate it. I only plan really on bumping up the Destroyers missing slot, and maybe changing some of the preset hull types on Cruisers and Destroyers by a small amount without reskining them.

I wasn't confused about the need for this mod buddy, and I was using the mod values in my analysis. I know that the naked swarm beats the maxed swarm in vanilla, but with the changes here, the gap narrows by enough that, at least in smaller engagements like your first example, the naked loses. If we take your newer example, we can tweak the numbers and roughly estimate the new result.

With a cap of 43, and 43 maxed ships (with the mod applied), it should cost you 14.19 minerals in upkeep. Naked would need... let me make some math real quick. 14.19 cost = (ships made/43)* 0.18* ships made, so the square root of (14.19*43)/0.18, which is 58.22 ships. So the fight you described from reddit, adjusted to use this mods changes, would be 43 max vs 58 naked. A 35% advantage in numbers instead of a 268% advantage.

----------
"Naked" Corvette has 3 mass drivers, 2 tier 1 S reactors, warp drive, and tier 1 sensors/engines/warp with no computer. Maintenance is 0.18 minerals, cost is 62. Fleet cap was 43, so I could support 86 naked corvettes (2x fleet cap) for 86 * 0.18 * 2 = 30.96 minerals a month.

"Maxed" Corvette has 3 gauss cannons, Psi/Precog/Engine IV/Sensor IV, 2 tier 5 S shields, shield capacitor, + power. maintenance of 0.96, cost of 322. That means that for the cost of 86 Naked Corvettes I could support 32 Maxed Corvettes.

the fleet power of the 86 Naked was 2.7 and the fleet power of the 32 Maxed was 3.1 - and yet, the 86 Naked won. They lost 49/86 ships, and had 79.6% hull on the remaining ships, but they won. In other words, the Naked were down to 45% of the total hull points they went into battle with.
--------
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/69d6de/naked_corvette_test_part_1_default_naked_corvette/


And that's why I use this mod and why iru is a hero.

demonzabrak: you're two months late! But no disrespect taken. To address your comment... The reason this mod exists is because fully teched out ships are overrun by "naked corvette spam." I suggest you test it for yourself. Like the weapon upgrades, the armor fails to scale well and really doesn't offer enough increased protection to justify its cost (especially on a 'vette). Here's a gamer who said it better than I could have ever:

As I am rather bad at checking my steam friends chat I thought I'd add this as a pointer:

#Change destroyer section settings in this file
..\Stellaris\common\section_templates\destroyer.txt

#Change ship behaviors in this file
..\Stellaris\common\ship_behaviors\standard_ship_behaviors.txt

Demonzabrak; Not certain how much help I would be, but I sent you a friend request.

SpaceNinjaNate No disrespect, but you are undercutting just how much staying power they gain. It is very likely that the L5 will win with no lost ships, and possible they would win with no hull damage at 10 v 5, depending on what choices the targeting AI makes. 54 damage output for the fleet vs 19 shield regen per ship? Assuming all shots hit they would at best need to go 4 to 1. (21.8 damage vs 19 regen)

Point is, good looking mod. Could I maybe talk to you (iru, not SpaceNinjaNate, switching who I'm speaking to now) about making one that does some other balance changes? Or including some balance changes in this mod? Specifically, I've been looking at the slots avalible for the various ships, and I dislike how the destroyers get the short end of the deal, and how PDX thinks that Destroyers are Picket Ships, when they are, in fact, Destroyers, and one of Cruisers roles in modern military use is Picket Ships. I'd go into details but this post is already kinda long.

I see your point, if you only want damage per cost and maintenance then corvettes with max weapon upgrades and no shields should be the way.

I went with lower costs as that doesn't allow someone to jump too drastically in fleet power after finishing a weapons research. If damage followed the old cost increase then level 2 weapons would be twice as powerful as level 1s. Add to that the random card system and your game could be over simply because a neighbour got technology for bigger guns and you didn't.

Thanks for the feedback!

But I'm not ungrateful and I'll use this mod! Thanks for taking the time to do it

Nice nod. I've recently gotten into Stellaris and not seen any other mods that try to address this issue. I ran some numbers though and I really feel what needs to change is not the cost, but the damage output and range. By a lot. At the upkeep rate listed above, I can afford 2x the number of naked Corvettes. And for 530 minerals, I can buy 10 naked, or 5.5 of the fully teched out level fives. This turns into a fleet of naked Corvettes with 54 dmg and a fleet of level fives with 45 dmg. While they have more staying power than the naked ones, they're doing less damage for the same mineral investment and upkeep (not counting the time and cost of getting those Corvettes teched out to level 5).