Let's discuss race-specific weapons

[Realspace]

I am redoing part of my REM mod to be more strict and, to me, more immersive by removing the "can mount anything on any ship" feature of X4.
I feel it as a terrible immersion-breaker since X3. And makes improving rep with factions pointless.

So I've already redone ALL S and M shields, engines, thrusters. REM already reduced their number and divided them into basic, advanced and enhanced (not 9 classes).
I went further: not only each race's ship can mount only its specific engines (there are many exceptions and interesting cross-overs thou), each type of ship now has its engine/thrusters, so for instance a frigate can mount only M combat stuff of its race, trader only basic M stuff of its race, so on.
I did it for shields too.

Now the point I'd like to discuss: WEAPONS.
While with turrets it is self-explicatory, there is a M version of each turret for each race, I wish to also remove the Argon S ship mounting a Split gun and viceversa.

I'd like some feedback on which guns maybe can be crossed by two races (Teladi maybe wish to sell their stuff, I did it also with some of their engines).

Do you think that a Split use only split guns and Terrans use only Terran guns would make some unbalance?
REM of course is already different from vanilla, I adjusted many guns to be more effective...but is there some "hole" in the range of guns if I do such a change?

(p.s. I don't want to add new weapons to bloat the game, I wish for a different approach: limit what already exists giving to each race a pro and cons)

[Vovadrik]

I think it an interesting idea, the only problem is that terran and split have more unique weapons while they also have all the common weapons which leads to much bigger variety of configurations. If you want to make weapons race specific, you need to add some unique weapons to other races as well

[Realspace]

I think it an interesting idea, the only problem is that terran and split have more unique weapons while they also have all the common weapons which leads to much bigger variety of configurations. If you want to make weapons race specific, you need to add some unique weapons to other races as well

Indeed I did...

I've ended the first part of changes, after having edited all S and M ships for engines and shields (different among races but also different among kinds of ships, as I told..).
Now it was the turn for the guns. I always aim at max compatible changes so I did not add any new gun but changed the existing.

Mk2 and Mk1 guns are no more. Changes:

- Mk1 are no more the weaker/cheaper version, they cost 70% of mk2 and 70% of resources needed, they serve a different approach.
Guns are split in 2 kinds: #power and #fast. A fast weapon delivers less damage but is usually faster, less heat, more bullets, etc. (a lot of parameters I played with). Power guns deliver more damage per hit but in longer time/salvo/frequency/etc.
Guns are also split into: normal guns and plasma level guns.

Only an heavy fighter can mount a #power and #plasma kind gun (example Burst Ray #Power, ex Mk2).

Normal fighters can mount #fast and #power guns but not plasma kind.

Scout and trader etc. ships can only mount basic guns aka #fast (and basic engines/thrusters).

I've also differentiated all races, so now the guns produced by a race can be mount only in that race's ships. Split and Terran oc, they mount only theirs, but also some exceptional ones of other races are unique for them, so f.i Argon Ion only on argon ships etc.
Pirate ships despite being a bit weaker have the benefit to mount guns from many races.

By using ex Mk1 guns and making them special I've virtually doubled the kind of guns available so making the race-only limitations seems to work fine. A fast laser, as it is now, is enough against small fighters so no need for a semi-equivalent bolt that I could in theory make it even more race-specific.

Anyway, I' updated REM with these phase one changes so people you can test and give feedback, thanks

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/848

[Vovadrik]

What about balancing large ships vs small ships combat? So I assume light ships (without plasma) cannot really kill big ship, but heavy corvettes can? And what about capital ships turrets and main weapons? I will check out this mod at free time, sounds very interesting

[Realspace]

What about balancing large ships vs small ships combat? So I assume light ships (without plasma) cannot really kill big ship, but heavy corvettes can? And what about capital ships turrets and main weapons? I will check out this mod at free time, sounds very interesting

REM is a long-time established one, these changes of race/kind specific are new. Doing them requires a lot of tedious work I never wanted to start..but they are an additional layer to the balancing that you already find in REM where, f.i. capital ships are very strong. I felt that the race-specific was missing...anyway if you had not tried REM before it will be a big change for sure, an overhaul of many things