Bay 12 Games Forum

Arsenal Expansion adds a good selection of ships & weapons, along with at least one new quest. (It does add one new mini-faction as well, but not the normal sort of one.)

Blackrock Drive Yards is really darn cool, and over the years has gone from vanilla+1 to being pretty balanced. Still a few outlier ships in the player flagship category, but those tend to be high risk high reward.

Combat Chatter just adds text lines (in the combat log). Adds a bit of life to things.

Common Radar sounds like what it is - pretty handy.

Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering is one of those 'cool but vanilla+1' mods. Lots of interesting content and a neat faction, but the ships and fighters are a little overtuned in my opinion. Also adds an antagonist mini-faction with intentionally overpowered ships. Generally speaking you can't use their ships and their looted weapons are hard to use thanks to high OP and flux requirements, so it's intended more as a challenge. That faction doesn't interact with the sector like normal factions do (at least last I played), so no worries about them conquering the sector.

Diable Avionics. Same story, though mainly just due to some of the fighter (see: space mech) options.

HMI is a kind of neat 'vanilla-1' mod. Lots of crummy ramshackle stuff, a somewhat interesting new faction along with unusual star systems.

Interstellar Imperium is quite neat, but I'd consider it at least vanilla+1.

Junk Pirates adds three new factions, each of which I'd consider well-balanced and visually quite distinct. Their weapons can be a little 'vanilla-1' at times, though.

Kadur Remnant is perhaps a tiny bit bland compared to some of the other factions out there these days, but it's a) still interesting and b) made by Vayra, which means it integrates well into their 'Sector' mod (see below).

Leading Pip is a QOL mod that gives you a lead indicator for your target. Not overpowered as enemy AI is smart enough to not just walk into shots.

Legacy of Arkgneisis is a pretty well-balanced faction mod. It also behaves a little differently from normal factions.

prv Starworks is another nice faction mod. Maybe a tad undertuned, at least the last time I played, but it brings a number of neat things to the table.

Nexerelin is a diplomacy/war/etc. overhaul that's quite neat, and many of the popular mods play well with. It makes things pretty different from the normal vanilla, though.

Shadowyards Heavy Industries looks lovely and generally has some good balance, though the last time I played it definitely had some ships that are maybe a little too strong in the hands of the player. (Charybdis is just so versatile.)

Ship and Weapon Pack is actually not just a ship and weapon pack - it adds an International Bounty Board, which are basically a series of bounties against unique ships that you can then take for yourself. Some are quite challenging, and the ships you get can be 'vanilla +1', but it's balanced a bit by only ever being able to get 1 of 'em.

Starship Legends lets you 'level up' ships. Sort of. You generally end up with a mix of positive and negative quirks meant more to inject a bit of variety. If I recall there's a mechanic where enemies can get some 'leveled up' ships as well. Some of these are vanilla+1, though.

Tahlan Shipworks adds a bunch of ships to existing factions, and one 'dead faction' with a neat line of ships and equipment that are normally found as rare finds on the market or via blueprint scavenging.

Underworld adds a bunch of new pirate ships, plus a (I think optional?) new extra-jerk pirate faction to harrass you.

Vayra's Sector adds in new 'outer worlds' factions that form competition for you in terms of colonization and the like. By default it uses vanilla-style ships, but it'll integrate with some of the other faction mods as well. Also overhauls the bounty system to be better (in my opinion).

Vayra's Ship Pack is all vanilla-style ships, and they're pretty well-balanced and integrated into existing factions.

Combat is quite like Convoy but faster-paced - kinda-sorta tower defense on the move, protecting your central vehicle with your smaller vehicles and fending off enemies. There are several missions types, but they generally boil down to 'kill this stuff and maybe protect some unarmed allies while doing so'. Between each mission you return to a central hub for shopping/repairs/upgrades/etc. Only real objective over time is strengthening your team + base and doing harder missions.

Effectively no game over condition, but only one autosaving save slot - you lose a smaller vehicle it's permadead (you can always get more); you lose the central big vehicle and you fail the mission + lose your full team (if I recall). You have some garage slots to store vehicles and equipment in, though, so if you're fairly far along and get a TPK it's not like you've lost everything. Damage to a vehicle persists past the mission, which means you'll be keeping a decent stable to swap in out and for repairs as needed.

One amusing mechanic is that as your team gets stronger, they'll object to easier missions - you have to pay them off to do one, which could potentially eliminate profits entirely. Losing one of your vehicles sufficiently chides them into not objecting against easy missions for a while, which help you recover from losses. (You can also just swap out your vehicles for weaker ones.)

There are several different damage and armor types - HP, Fury, and Armor. Fury is basically Mad Max-ified shields. Damage types are have their pluses and minuses version protection types, along with overall traits / behavior. E.g. explosives very good against Fury, crummy against armor, and tend to be low ROF + high power weapons. The four different enemy factions each have different strengths in weapons and protection, so you need to kit up your team properly before a mission.

Only three options for the biggie vehicle but each one has a skill+equipment upgrade tree, which lead to one having a few different weapons plus at least one special active ability (plus a bunch of passive bonuses). The biggie can move from side to side a little during a mission, but that's it.

Over a dozen regular vehicles, falling into several groups. Interceptors are basically speedy tanks; Marauders are fragile but have wide attack angles and secondary weapons; Attack vehicles are specialized damage dealers, and Support vehicles are, er, kind of other. They level up to increase stats, but don't have upgrade trees. These smaller vehicles can move around more freely, though generally speaking staying close to the mothercar is advisable.

There are also 'hero' vehicles - basically mercenaries that bring their own equipment and are utterly expendable, but which have an upfront cost + take a portion of the mission payment. They can also be classes that you don't have normal access to - e.g. a biker.

Regular vehicles each have one armor and one weapon slot. Armor is generally just stats, though rarer pieces can come with special abilities like an additional weapon or special perks.

Weapons come in several types across three classes. Light has relatively short range but a 360 angle, medium has restricted angles but a good mix of stats, and heavy slows the vehicle down but packs a punch. Each one also has a damage type, which has pluses and minuses. Weapons also have ammo ratings - you'll have a total ammo capacity across your team that you can't go over. No need to worry about running out of ammo in-mission, just means that you can't just use all heavy weapons. Usually comes down one heavy, one light, plus a mix of others, though ammo ratings within a weapon class can be pretty broad.