Improved Ship Classes (3.14.x)

I have published this mod for the sake of getting play-tested feedback from anyone that might be interested in helping out. At this stage, most of the mod’s core features have now been implemented and seem to be working correctly, but there’s still plenty of development (And mod compatibility integrations) left to go, so please bear that in mind when giving this mod a try! And, thank you for indulging me in this effort!

In short, think of this mod as the vanilla-esque ‘less-is-more’ version of the New Ship Classes mod. This was originally meant to be an updated revival of the Realistic Ship Classes mod with some minor changes, but I’ve ended up incorporating a significant amount of additional features over the course of developing this mod, all of which have been designed and balanced to be vanilla-esque in their scope. The main features are:

• New ‘Standard’ Ship Classes – In total, this mod adds seven new ship classes, of which are; Escorts , a Destroyer variant focused on lighter weapons. Pioneers , a specialised support variant of the Destroyer. Rangers , a specialised support variant of the Cruiser. Battlecruisers , a much more powerful Cruiser design. Explorers , a Battleship-grade Science Vessel with the weapons to match. Dreadnoughts , a beefier weapons-only version of the Battleships. And, Carriers , a beefier Strikecraft-focused version of the Battleships.
• Rebalanced Defense Platforms – In addition to restoring the Medium and Large defense platforms, I’ve also done an extensive balancing effort on all of the defense platforms (Including the Ion Cannon!) to make more sense for their intended uses, especially in relation to the ship classes that they’ll inevitably be up against. This aspect of the mod is intended to play especially well with my Improved Starbase Designs mod, though don’t feel like you need to use it!
• Ship Sections Variety – Every single military ship and defense platform now has a new variety of section templates to choose from. These are balanced according to their vanilla counterparts, and as such, will have reasonable limits to the variety where it makes sense (i.e. No X weapon slot on Cruisers and below). You may still add new sections from other mods, but I’d advise against it!
• Improved Sections – Should you enable this option, you’ll unlock the ability to research a variety of new features that come baked into this mod, most prominently the ability to utilise much more powerful ‘Improved’ sections for your ships and platforms alike, of which build upon the balancing set out by their original counterparts. The other features tied to this setting are; Integrated Reactor Boosters , Reinforced Hull Modules , and all of their corresponding technologies.
• Vanilla Balancing – However, if you don’t enable the Improved Sections option, you’ll be able to play the mod in its pure vanilla-esque form. This will not interfere with the ability to use any other mods alongside this one – This purely disables all of this mod’s features that are tied to the Improved Sections option.
• Mod Compatibility – And, speaking of which; This mod is designed to be as compatible with other mods as possible. New ship sets and ship components mods alike will need internal compatibility work done on them, and any mod that attempts to modify the vanilla ship classes file will be innately incompatible. But, otherwise, there shouldn’t be any issues with using this mod alongside any others, so have at it!

Integrated Compatibility

Improved Starbase Designs | Improved Ships Downscaled | Real Space – Ships in Scaling | Extra Ship Components NEXT | Dawn of Ascension | Additional Vanilla Components Revived

Planned Compatibility

Ancient Cache of Technologies | Zenith of Fallen Empires 4.0

Please leave any additional recommendations in the comments below! I’ll try my best to accommodate what I can, but it’s going to take time.

• Balancing Adjustments – Fairly self-explanatory – All of these new ship sections and new ship classes alike open up the possible risk of ‘meta’ tactics coming up. Whilst this mod isn’t intended to fix any vanilla gameplay issues, I don’t want to add to those issues either!
• Finalise Custom Ship Designs – Currently, the vanilla Machine and Cybernetic shipsets have not been incorporated into this mod due to me not even having the Machine Age DLC. Between that and certain other shipsets potentially getting further tweaks to their Explorer designs, it’s safe to say that this aspect of the mod is not quite~ finished just yet!
• Incorporate non-Standard Ships – Cosmogenesis ships, event ships, and anything else in that vein will be due to get the same level of incorporation into this mod as the standard ship classes. Naturally, the more exotic nature of these ships might warrant trying some more exotic ideas for them, but we’ll see!
• Incorporate ‘Exotic’ Ships / Sections Do you want your Devouring Swarm empire to ‘grow’ its ships with food instead of needing alloys? Would you like mobile shipyards that are not Juggernauts? Suffice to say, I’m open to suggestions, and I’ll experiment with any ideas to see if they oblige by the vanilla-esque balancing that I’m strongly abiding by.

If you have suggestions / feedback, please leave them in the comments below!

• The Necroid medium / large defense platforms still show a Mammalian platform station core despite attempts to patch this issue. Sorry Necroid users – I’m working on it!

Save game compatible. Not Ironman compatible.

Whilst this mod is technically save game compatible, I wouldn’t recommend it! It’s also obviously not Ironman compatible.