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Avorion >  Workshop > LM13's Workshop > [2.5.2+] Xavorion: eXtended Avorion > Discussions
[2.5.2+] Xavorion: eXtended Avorion
Description Discussions53 Comments913 Change Notes
Snopzet 15 Jan, 2024 @ 1:17pm
Feedback after a "complete" playthrough.
So, after 86h I'm at a point where I did everything I liked and I think it is time to give you some feedback. Overall, I liked your mod, but there are some flaws:

What I liked most:
  • The class system is interesting and forces you to set priorities in a fight. Toggling the tactical view on and off to find big threats or smugglers is something I don't really like, but that is a problem of the base game.
  • The reduced importance of mining was refreshing.
  • New turrets are always fun to play with. (Usually I end up crafting super expensive Seekers, which delete anything within a radius of 80 km)
  • (Rift) Thanks to the sector-tier generator, it is possible to find higher-tier Rifts than in the base game.
  • The increased requirements for gunners make the AI artifact a lot more interesting. The artifact might be even too strong (I needed 1005 gunners).
  • (Rift)I was afraid your mod breaks Rift missions, but they worked quite well and I enjoyed farming "Into the Swarm" with the new weapons ^_^
  • Some other things, I already forgot. xD

What I didn't like:
  • Randomness of the sector tier introduces some issues. E.g. the final sector of a mission is a lot more unpredictable than in the base game. You can end up with a weak boss or a very strong one (for example, "Looking for Xsotan Artifact").
  • Finding a good spot for building a station like the "Antigrav Generator Factory" is a lot harder since you're limited to the economy. I had a hot spot on the map, but there wasn't any technology economy in it.
  • I was looking for a list to check in which economy I can build a specific station, but I couldn't find any.
  • Scanning sectors to find a specific tier and resource was not very enjoyable. Mostly because it was so slow. Known sectors don't "remember" their tier and you can't search for it. Allowing to search (text box) for previous visited systems and within your scanner range would be cool.
  • In the base game I have 2-3 mining ships doing operations, but salvaging operations have a much higher output in Xavorion, which makes mining worthless. At the end I did none of them, since you get so many resources from salvaging wrecks. Late game example: A Xsotan Invasion in a T52 Avorion system gives like 10+ m Avorion. Most wrecks have 200-400 k Avorion. The big ones 1-2 m.
  • Clearing a pirate sector can be a big challenge since many more pirates spawn, which increases the time to kill them all and this increases the chances for overlapping events (which is a problem I hate in the base game, too). Pirates attacking a pirate sector is kinda strange.
  • Proton torpedoes kill stations too easily. This is a big problem if another faction, pirates or Xsotan take over one and there is a friendly ship with proton torpedoes, which will launch a long line of death. Often, the station will be conquered back while the torpedoes approach it very slowly and you can just sit there and watch the inevitable. This is even more annoying if it is a special station like the Rift Research one. It might be better to give a station an invulnerable time for 2 minutes after it gets conquered.
  • The lag you get when 10+ ships jump into the system :(
  • (Rift) Critical hits can penetrate "shielded" bosses. I think pulse lasers can't penetrate the special shield in the base game.
  • (Rift) In Rifts you need to travel a lot of long distances (50 km - 120 km). If you enter one with a M6+ ship, you'll lose a lot of time, since you are so slow.

General feedback to your questions:
  • How combat worked for you, was it difficult and how that difficulty changed later in the game.
    At the beginning, it was very difficult (started with Expert and reduced it to Veteran). This was mostly because of the high tier differences in the starting region. As soon as I got some shields and decent weapons, it got easier. The shield-recharge mechanic surprised me. At first, I thought it was a bug, but I quickly got used to it and used it for hit-and-run strategies. In the endgame I had a single ship, which could delete whole fleets within a 125 km radius. "Into the swarm" (Rift) was very easy to complete. (700 m impenetrable shield HP, 5 m DPS with Auto-Cannons and 1,3 m DPS with Lasers)
  • Progression, how does it compare to vanilla? Is it too fast, tedious, or easy to exploit?
    There wasn't a claimable asteroid in the starting system... xD I struggled quite a lot since mining was so slow and I couldn't use the titanium I was able to mine at the beginning. Buying the knowledge for credits wasn't an option, since it was so much cheaper to buy with resources. As soon as I got my hands on r-mining lasers, the progression speed improved a lot and since I could buy the building knowledge with resources, the progression to Ogonite was faster than in the base game (I didn't have to upgrade my ship to clear pirate sectors).

Some Bugs I discovered:
  • Mission "Wanted: Dead not alive": If you snipe the boss (auto turrets) right after the dialog, the other pirates stay friendly. Fortunately, you don't lose standing if you shoot them and the mission completes after all the pirates are dead. Second "issue": The boss is always a very small, disappointing ship :(
  • Mission "A lost friend": Sometimes the sector becomes a hazard zone in the middle of the fight, which triggers hostile reinforcements.
  • (Rift) Some Rift effects, which influence shield recharge, don't work correctly.
  • Stations, which are built by a faction, seem to be broken. E.g. a Shipyard had only the tab for buying building knowledge.
  • Turret Factories built in a tier 52 system would only build tier 50 turrets.
  • Sometimes, the autopilot disables the "Attack all enemies" command in the middle of a fight.
  • After playing a couple of hours, the ship stats (Xavorion details) might not be calculated in the build mode anymore. Either you see the stats of a different ship or just "?" as values in all lines.
  • There is a similar problem with the economy scanner. If you open the window, the list of goods might not load at all (in sector view).

My endgame loadout:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561197993549941/screenshot/2278325040148659007/
Last edited by Snopzet; 15 Jan, 2024 @ 1:30pm
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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments
LM13  [developer] 15 Jan, 2024 @ 3:52pm 
Greatly, greatly appreciated. I've never expected anyone to finish eXtended playthrough.
As far I know, you're a second person that did so. Thank you, very much, for your time, and willingness to share.

It's good to know that Rifts work at all - Xavorion started even before Black Market,
DLCs were a potential issue I couldn't do anything about.
Also, glad that weapons are actually fun.

Really, really glad you've shared your loadout. You've picked the ultimate defensive combination of upgrades, which I tend to use.
Also, RBEs and a gatling Big Bang - which were supposed to annihilate anything.

Just curious - was there any encounter that could be a threat to that single ship?
( I expected ships like this to be M8 Capitals, on the heavy side ;D )

About stuff that did not work for you
  • Randomness, yeah. Adaptive spawn system was supposed to fix that issue, and to some extent it does work.
    What has been published is a toned down version, I'm still considering an optional difficulty tweak.

  • Economy and station building, that's something I wish I had time to finish. The original idea was to use actual goods and construction lasers to build any station,
    connecting with other economies around, also specialised station upgrades. But any change to current "system" would take a lot of time.

  • List of economy stations is something I should have made in Encyclopedia. My bad

  • Scanning sectors, been looking for a way to extend that to a searchable state.
    Forcing automated notes seems to be the only way. This may be added in future patches.

  • Clearing pirate sectors - that's a tough one. Combat challenge depends a lot on playstyle and loadout.
    The second thing is, some overlapping events and really unexpected encounters were intended to some extent.
    What's worse is that Avorion can be both RTS and TPP game. Switching between those does affect difficulty and overall experience.
    The hard part was to include all playstyles - and it always ends up with some issues. I tend to play both, adapting to situation.

  • PTL's were nerfed just recently, but due to their damage I expect this can still happen. Timer sounds like a good idea.

  • Lags... I've been very confident those were fixed. Only to find them again at some point, especially with Faction Packs.
    At this point, I don't think this can be fixed by me - whole spawn system has been rewritten just to fix that. one. issue.
    and it seems that lags can appear for even a single ship, just queued up 10+ times...

  • Rifts, did not know about special shields - one of DLC things I've missed.
    Also speeds... I think Rifts would need a general overhaul too, but as Xsotan and Station building did not make it, that's a third thing in that list.

About bugs and issues
  • Auto-pilot issues have been fixed just recently, no way you could see that.

  • Salvaging output, this is something I did not expect. Certainly needs fixing.

  • Wanted mission, that's a strange edge case. Thanks

  • Lost Friend mission, not that much familiar with that quest. I'll take a look, but something tells me I might like those hostile reinforcements being there. ( apologies! ;D )

  • Faction built stations, my mistake. Thanks

  • Build mode UI, I'm hunting for that issue for some time. The only clue I have is that it's related to a player-owned stations. Could not find it yet.

  • Havent seen issues with economy scanner. I'd probably need some help with reproducing that issue.

On General feedback

Thank you, beginnings seem to be difficult for all players. I'm always curious how that works.
Starting is not that hard as it feels initially, but figuring that out was meant to be a part of intended fun and replayability.
(Yeah, easy for me to say)
Last edited by LM13; 15 Jan, 2024 @ 4:03pm
#1
Snopzet 16 Jan, 2024 @ 4:34am 
Originally posted by LM13:
Just curious - was there any encounter that could be a threat to that single ship?

Not really. 700 m HP takes a long time for most NPCs to shew through and anything that is within the 23 km range gets vaporized by the RBEs. In a Xsotan invasion, all Xsotan spawn close to the center of the sector and they just melt the moment they are targetable. The bigger problem is that there are so many large wrecks that, after some time, I have to move around them to hit the Xsotan on the other side. I can do the corrupted AI completely AFK. 12 crafted PDLs with a 16 km range do a pretty nice job shooting down the torpedoes. I couldn't try the Stick of Doom since there aren't any lightning turrets to complete the research. Behemoths are a joke, too. But I think they don't scale correctly with your mod (70 m shield + 70 m hull).

Bugged Rifts are the biggest threat. "Into the Swam" can be very dangerous since there is a bug that spawns 8 waves at the beginning, so you're facing 30+ Xsotan, which you need to kill very fast, because in that state, new Xsotant spawn continuously and if you're not fast enough, they will overwhelm you. I had an extreme case once, and at that moment only 275 m shield (thought I could leave out the shield converter), but I'm not sure 700 m would have saved me. The Problem was that not only did the Xsotan spawn very quickly, but they were massive, too. The initial spawn died pretty quickly, but not the respawn. One Cultivator mini-boss had 150 m hull HP. After it died, something hit me very hard and I couldn't find the source (it could have been Auto-Cannons). There were fighters around me, so I suspected they were doing the damage. I tried to burn away, just to run into a new Xsotan spawn. The fighters slowly took down my remaining hull, and there was nothing I could do against it (at that time, my anti-fighter turrets couldn't hit anything behind me). In another "Into the Swarm" a Xsotan with Tesla-like turrets surprised me. He had 2+ m Omicron and sapped my shields from a 40+ km distance. By the time I finally killed him (old Auto-Cannons, with poor tracking, facing a different direction), my shield was down to 26% (at 25% it is penetrable), and that was very dangerous. Having only 1 m hull HP and so many sources that can penetrate shields, I was afraid to die again, but fortunately I was close to the end of the encounter.

A normal "Into the Swarm" is easy. I can sit at the starting spot, while targeting Xsotan in the tactical view, which spawn at 100+ km. The Auto-Cannons are pretty awesome xD To collect the loot, I use 4 wings of fast salvaging fighters.

Originally posted by LM13:
Build mode UI, I'm hunting for that issue for some time. The only clue I have is that it's related to a player-owned stations. Could not find it yet.

Might be possible. Perhaps switching quickly building mode between a station and a ship + some other unknown influence?

Originally posted by LM13:
Havent seen issues with economy scanner. I'd probably need some help with reproducing that issue.

I had it only once. Switching sectors didn't help. I had to reload the game to fix it. Not game-breaking and very rare, so not that important. :D
Last edited by Snopzet; 16 Jan, 2024 @ 4:53am
#2
LM13  [developer] 16 Jan, 2024 @ 5:01am 
Gold/yellow colored tesla-like weapons?
Those unknown damage sources were most likely other types of experimental weapons. So at least that part still works as a threat.

Anyway, thank you again - that's a lot of valuable information.
Games have to end at some point, but I'm still working on minor tweaks.
#3
Snopzet 16 Jan, 2024 @ 5:41am 
Yes, gold/orange. But it is very rare to see so strong Xsotan.

There were many little rust colored explosions around me (like the colour for physical damage types). Since I was a little bit stressed, I forgot to zoom out to check, if there any visible projectiles.

Happy to give you usefull feedback.
#4
OveglFhzl 12 Jun, 2024 @ 1:09am 
I understand the xavorion version used might be quite old, but how did you manage to get vanilla subsystems? As Energy-to-Shield is far superior than xavorion's Shield Support System.
#5
LM13  [developer] 12 Jun, 2024 @ 5:39am 
Originally posted by OveglFhzl:
I understand the xavorion version used might be quite old, but how did you manage to get vanilla subsystems?


Those were present before "Class Upgrades" update, which came out around month after this feedback. ( Discussions like this helped in shaping current state of the mod )

Originally posted by OveglFhzl:
As Energy-to-Shield is far superior than xavorion's Shield Support System.

As a single upgrade, yeah, but shielding works different now.
Support system is, well, a support system to existing shielding/upgrades

It's usually better to pick Shielding Modules, Feedback engine and Shielding framework before packing up support systems.
Flat KJ upgrades were supposed to be primary source of shields.
#6
OveglFhzl 12 Jun, 2024 @ 6:57am 
Originally posted by LM13:
Originally posted by OveglFhzl:
I understand the xavorion version used might be quite old, but how did you manage to get vanilla subsystems?


Those were present before "Class Upgrades" update, which came out around month after this feedback. ( Discussions like this helped in shaping current state of the mod )

Originally posted by OveglFhzl:
As Energy-to-Shield is far superior than xavorion's Shield Support System.

As a single upgrade, yeah, but shielding works different now.
Support system is, well, a support system to existing shielding/upgrades

It's usually better to pick Shielding Modules, Feedback engine and Shielding framework before packing up support systems.
Flat KJ upgrades were supposed to be primary source of shields.

Oh, okay wow. I guess for someone like me I guess I started playing your mod at the "wrong time".

I do have some comments about this whole class-system as I'm actually almost finishing up a 2nd playthrough on Insane difficulty using your mod. Err... expect a whole thing and a bit just like this thread by Snopzet.

"usually better to pick Shielding Modules, Feedback engine and Shielding framework before packing up support systems.
Flat KJ upgrades were supposed to be primary source of shields."
Errr, okay. That's an interesting combo of subsystems to use.
#7
Snopzet 12 Jun, 2024 @ 11:05am 
Originally posted by OveglFhzl:
I understand the xavorion version used might be quite old, but how did you manage to get vanilla subsystems? As Energy-to-Shield is far superior than xavorion's Shield Support System.

As clarified already... old game :D

A more recent loadout looks like this (same ship, with some modifications): https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561197993549941/screenshot/2449475694174204748/

Some of these systems are very hard to upgrade... :( Most rift systems are "downgrades" and only the distortion protection is important (if you go into rifts at all). In my version I'm still missing one, to get the 75+ protection, but if you can stay inside the starter bubble, you can ignore it, too.
#8
OveglFhzl 13 Jun, 2024 @ 1:07am 
Originally posted by Snopzet:
Originally posted by OveglFhzl:
I understand the xavorion version used might be quite old, but how did you manage to get vanilla subsystems? As Energy-to-Shield is far superior than xavorion's Shield Support System.

As clarified already... old game :D

A more recent loadout looks like this (same ship, with some modifications): https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561197993549941/screenshot/2449475694174204748/

Some of these systems are very hard to upgrade... :( Most rift systems are "downgrades" and only the distortion protection is important (if you go into rifts at all). In my version I'm still missing one, to get the 75+ protection, but if you can stay inside the starter bubble, you can ignore it, too.

Thanks, that is an interesting subsystem setup. Wow your shields got nerfed hard.

Errr just like a vanilla playthrough you don't need to specifically get subspace protection to 75 for Into The Swarm. Less subspace protection just means greater hull chip damage over time. As long as you always have mechanics with 150%+, from anecdotal experience you're fine with max of 15 less protection than the required mission.
ie. Rift mission requires subspace protection of 48 you can get away with only around 33.
#9
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