Initially, the rebalanced GDC and Lazarus were added to the bottom of the XML file for Descendence, but I eventually decided that they should just be placed in a separate XML instead. At the same time, I remembered one particular complaint about how a lower-level Lazarus would fit somebody's bill and began to consider making a new shield generator that has the same traits as my rebalanced Lazarus, except at a lower level.
Star Weaver also griped about how the ICS' Quantumsphere Disintegrator sounded like a staple gun, despite it shooting an ultra-destructive globular sphere that can instantly vaporise most unshielded ships, and how the game might have a better feel if some of the weapons sounded different. This motivated me to create something that was ultimately a little more than just a rebalance of the GDC and Lazarus.
The final thing I needed to do was find a nice name for the mod. Star Weaver suggested "Andro's Balance Tweaks", but I wanted something a bit more flowery, so I did a Google search on the term "Lazarus". As it turns out, one of the Lazaruses in olden times was a Persian martyr who died alongside another martyr named Zanitas, so I used the latter as the name for my new shield generator and named my mod after both.
The primary purpose of this mod is to rebalance the Gaian Demolition Cannon and Lazarus Shield Generator to make them practical, usable items. Secondary purposes include giving some weapons new sound effects and increasing the durability of some weapon projectiles. The modified weapons also have their dock screen images changed to new ones made by DarthGeek, with any modified Iocrym weapons getting their own set of dock screen images he made specially for them.
Most of the major things that this mod adds to the game are listed below:
Zanitas Shield Generator (new item)
- - Level V
- 11000 value
- 2200 mass
- Uncommon
- 40 HP
- No type resistances or weaknesses
- Recovers 3 HP every 12 ticks (15 HP/sec)
- 5-tick delay before beginning recharge from 0 HP
- 90 MW power use
- - 140 HP
- No type resistances or weaknesses
- Recovers 10 HP every 10 ticks (60 HP/sec)
- 4-tick delay before beginning recharge from 0 HP
- 580 MW power use; 25 MW idle power use
- - Easy install
- 15d6+235 ammunition
- +200 value per charge
- graviton:20d12 damage
- Level 1 shatter effect - scuttles targets with a mass below 50
- 320 MW power use when firing
- 140 MW power use when not firing
- 60 bullet HP
- 36 bullet duration
- Flare effect upon firing
- Can be recharged using PM/pm912's Player Ship Drones 6 mod (not included)
- - Level 1 shatter effect - scuttles targets with a mass below 50
- 40 bullet HP
- - 60 bullet HP
- Impact sound effect
This mod is not designed to be a very drastic modification to the vanilla game like the way Descendence is shaping up to be. Rather, it was meant to add a bit more feel into the game, as well as to (hopefully) reduce complaints about some of the little things that George won't be fixing for the foreseeable future.
NOTICE: As of 3 October 2013, I've decided to upload two different versions of this mod. The Stable version is the original upload that will be updated less frequently and will run on the latest stable release of Transcendence. The Development release is a new upload that contains the most updated version of this mod but may only run on development versions of Transcendence. As per any mod release under me, the download page for both will state the API version used, as well the minimum version of Transcendence required to run them.
Stable version at Xelerus.de
Development version at Xelerus.de
