Elemental Shift (Alpha)

[Song]

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ELEMENTAL SHIFT

Coding and writing by Song, Additional graphics (and script) by AssumedPseudonym & Aury

Alpha 0.98.20 now available via Dropbox for game versions 1.9.2 and later.

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Requirements:
- Transcendence version 1.9.2 or later (Note: Run on the 2.0 alphas at your own risk - I don't test on unstable versions)
- Corporate Command

Highly Recommended
Song 'N' AssumedPseudonym's Superior Sounds (Multiverse link)

Instructions

• Download ElementalShift.TDB from Dropbox.
• Save the file to your Extensions folder (if you are on the Steam version you may not have this by default, just create one in the game directory)
• READ THE REST OF THIS POST, in particular the known issues list. This is not a bug-free mod.
• It's not required, but installing and running SNAPSS alongside this mod will greatly improve your experience, and this mod is designed to be run with SNAPSS.
• Start a new Stars of the Pilgrim game with Corporate Command and Elemental Shift enabled. New starting ships will appear at the end of the ship selection list. Play on Challenge difficulty for the intended experience.

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What is Elemental Shift?

Elemental Shift is an overhaul mod for Transcendence that aims to rebalance and add to the game without changing its feel too much. This is not a total conversion or an adventure mod, though I do intend to add some story elements of my own later. This is....a fresh coat of paint on the existing game, intended to clean up my (many) complaints about the game over the years and to see what I can do without deviating too far from the path the core game sets. If you play this mod and can't tell if something is from my work or George's....I've done my job well (I've had him confused about that a few times too).

Elemental Shift accomplishes this by:

• Altering names and descriptions to make the world a bit more cohesive
• Adding quality of life features like item rarity labels and giving the player more reliable sources of fuel and repair items.
• Rebalancing 95 core weapons to fit more cohesively together
• Overwriting or overriding 52 vanilla stations to alter their equipment or behaviour
• Altering 117 vanilla ships to tweak their performance, behaviour, and/or loot, as well as adding over 80 new subvariants of existing ships to flesh out guard tables and suchlike
• Adding over 70 new ships and subvariants to the game from scratch
• Completely rebalancing the fuel system
• Almost completely rebalancing armor
• Rebalancing autons, adding new ones, and giving players more ships they can use that have access to auton bays
• Adding new trade goods and things to use them for
• Adding many more classes to the guard and traffic tables to make commonwealth space feel more alive
• Many more tweaks, both small and large (I'm sorry I'm writing this table many years after I started and it's hard to remember everything)
  

  

  Promo3.png (451.16 KiB) Viewed 78 times

  This mod is intended to be run at challenge difficulty, and is intended for players who have already made it through either Stars of the Pilgrim or Eternity Port at that difficulty. It is not recommended to play it at lower difficulties because...they're an unbalanced mess, frankly. Likewise, this mod is not tested with nor designed to play well with other people's mods - you're welcome to run ES with whatever other mods you wish, but any compatibility issues are your own problem to solve. Elemental Shift is generally intended to be slightly harder than the base game in terms of combat, especially in the very early game.
  
  
  The inevitable disclaimer
  
  
  Please be aware that this mod is not finished: There is placeholder content. There are a lot of missing things (plot, for starters). There are bugs that you will encounter as you play, some of which are related to core engine functions, some due to transdata problems complicating balancing procedures, and others due to the mistakes and omissions that build up over a decade-long amateur development process.
  
  Known issues (as of 0.98.9, running on Transcendence 1.9.2) include:
• Gaian terraformers will repeatedly create copies of their secondary weapons, generating hundreds if not thousands of high-end guns. This is due to a core bug - you may choose to exploit it or not as you see fit, it's on the honours system until the bug is fixed.
• Reactors that use non-levelled fuel criteria (eg "all fusion fuels") will feature nonsensical level ranges on the UI. This is a core engine bug.
• Certain missions (notably the "deliver data ROM" mission in CC) are harder than they should be because the core code spawns a lot of ships that have been buffed in ES
• Eden's Apples and counterfeit Eridani mineral water cannot be sold to the Victoria Nightclub (there's a core-side check for items that I need to work around)
• Some NPCs have questionable balance for where they appear in the game.
• In the Cyclops HQ mission, the various NPC ships will spread out due to their different speeds.
• Sung ships will not recharge their shield generators due to a bug in pre-API54 versions of the game. This will be fixed when a stable version of 2.0 is released that I can port the mod over to.
  
  
  Despite this, the mod is generally stable and should work reasonably well on an up-to-date copy of Transcendence compatible with API53. Note that if you are running a higherversion than the mod is currently intended to (like a 2.0 alpha) you won't get the full benefits (or issues) of that version because of how mod compatibility works. In addition, Corporate Command is required to launch the mod, and the use of SNAPSS is highly recommended: the two mods are designed to work together. This mod has not been (and will not be) tested for compatibility with other extensions, registered or otherwise. You are of course free to alter your own copy of the mod to get other mods to play nicely with it... just please don't redistribute it.
  
  I hope you enjoy Elemental Shift. It's been a wild ride making it, and I'd like to get off while it's got a long way to go...I'm pleased with what I've got to show for it.

[Song]

July 2025 edit!

This used to be a list of the starting ships, but it's been three years so let's update this with something more useful and up-to-date. Here's an incomplete list of the changes that Elemental Shift (as of version 0.98.20) makes:

General changes to ships

• Elemental Shift generally makes starting and low-level ships weaker than in vanilla - shipbrokers are a thing, and while you can get to the core in your starting ship it will usually be easier if you upgrade to a better ship somewhere along the way. Same is true of ship rarity, there just isn't UI to see that value yet.
• Thrust and agility is generally lower to make ships more differentiated
• Slot restrictions in smaller craft are more stringent
• Armor restrictions generally stronger
• Some lines have been split - eg: the Wolfen line in vanilla only features the Wolfen/C, in ES this has been expanded to the full lineup of the /A, /B, /C, /X, and /M models with appropriate statting.
• More variants and improved versions - eg: the Armstrong has two separate combat-class variants; Aldrin and Collins.
• Some very large ships cannot install certain upgrades
• More NAMI ships have auton bays

Changes to stock starting ships

• The Wolfen/C from vanilla is swapped for a Wolfen/A - the /C is a level four hull, you gotta go buy that if you want it
• The Sapphire is slightly buffed
• The Constellation has a different gun and a different auton loadout
• The manticore has been renamed (to the Raróg)to better fit the Manticore gunship naming theme (all NPC instances have also been renamed)

New starting ships

• Naga-class courier - fast and agile, but unable to fit heavier armors. Stay moving to avoid getting pinned down and killed by heavier enemies.
• Ronin/B-class gunship - a good all-round vessel, this is probably the easiest playership to start out in. Nothing exciting about it, however.
• Oromo-class heavy gunship - a utility class that starts with a mining setup. On the list for a rework at some point but I use it to test tweaks to ore availability.
• Sotho-class heavy gunship - A good all-around ship. Has a turret for single-point-origin weapons but pays for it with very poor thrust to weight
• EI100/M-class missileship - Do you like slowing things down, taking your time to think about things, and writing poetry while on autopilot? This ship is perfect for you. An omnidirectional missile mount gives frankly broken firepower to a hull that does 0.12c by default.
• Mako-class interceptor - TIny, cramped, and absurdly fast. The ultimate in fragile high-speed gunship combat (unless you buy a hornet). Fun, but challenging!
• Mouse-class shuttle - Because sometimes you're compelled to the core in the space age equivalent of the family SUV. You can fly between the shots of a dual-fire weapon in this thing, it's great!*

New purchaseable ships

• This is hard to count, but there's probably over a hundred different variations of ships that you can find at a shipbroker now
• Shipbrokers have more ships on offer
• There are more shipbrokers
• Keen-eyed players may find rare classes such as the Vindicator-class corvette, Sigyn-class missileship, and Anubis-class transport that significantly alter how they can play the game.

New factions

• Meet (and kill) AXTIR and the Sovereign Domain
• Freeworld stations now provide a less capable alternative to commonwealth and corporate stations - they may not have the same range on offer, but they don't care about illegal goods
• Talon Group...exist as placeholders. I'll get back to them I swear

Equipment changes

• Over 300 new guns, launchers, missiles, armors, shields, and other devices
• Many equipment items (guns, shields, armor, etc) have been renamed to allow for same-level sets, naming themes, and product lines to be visible. Some have changed manufacturer in the process
• Most armor in the game has been rebalanced and expanded into same-level sets. If you want to know more about how this works, check out the update post about it.
• Unique armor is generally better than rare armor, which is better than uncommon, which is better than common. There are exceptions, but if you're buying from a store this is usually safe to assume. This is also true for guns for the most part.
• More weapons are dual-slot to balance them appropriately and make use of the combat slots on many gunship classes
• Enhancement devices have been split - the more common and low-level forms only go up to +25%, while the rarer and higher-level counterparts go up to +50%
• The availability and strength of enhancement items (eg - laser amplifiers) has been significantly altered and more items have been added.
• The existing autons ingame have been rebalanced, some variants of existing autons added, and a whole parallel line of Tenhove autons added to compliment them, along with two military-grade autons from Pacific Defense.
• The urak howitzer has a projectile size that accurately conveys the power of the explosion, fixing a vanilla bug I ticketed in 2016 and that has only just been fixed in the 2.0 alphas.

Balance changes and scaled equipment

• Many factions and encounters have been tuned to be more interesting and/or challenging
• Factions that previously used commercial equipment now use their own custom gear where it wouldn't make sense for them to pop down to the corner store for things (eg sung, huari, urak)
• The guns, missiles, and shields on some ships and stations scale with level - they usually don't get much harder to kill, but they do more damage and have more reasonable gear to loot
• point defense units have improved target criteria (note: this does not correct core engine bugs in pre-2.0 versions)
• Reactors now use appropriate fuel types - you cannot use antimatter fuel in a fusion reactor, and vice versa. There are also more types of fuel item in the game. NOTE: This has a known bug where the text for the level of fuel a reactor will accept will bug out if the reactor doesn't use levelled fuel crtieria. Nothing I can do about it, sorry.
• Heliotrope fuel no longer boosts reactors, but is instead merely the best fusion fuel in the game by a substantial margin
• Heliotrope booster loops *do* boost reactors, but only fusion reactors
• Chimeric armor is now properly weird

Quality of life

• The rarity of an item is displayed on the item now!
• Traffic and guard tables for the commonwealth and corporate heirarchy have been greatly expanded so you aren't seeing the same things all the time
• A tinker station will always spawn in Rigel Aurelius
• Charon pirate caches always have fuel rods, and fuel items have been added to many other enemies
• "Swarm" enemies like centauri raiders, pirates, and sung sometimes have rare drops that make checking them actually worthwhile
• More enemies carry armor repair items as loot (they do not as of yet have the ability to use them themselves)
• Minefields have been added to the game to encourage players to pay attention when on autopilot
• Thor's Wonderous Devices can now repair devices
• Manufacturer-specific stations now usually repair their own devices and weapons
• Makayev and Rasiermesser factories now sell ships
• Corporate shipyards have more items for sale
• Adventure Outfitters now always have levelled fuel items in their initial stock
• Friendly stations have more defensive guns, and these guns level to make it less likely that they get blown up by passing hostiles
• Gaians give free money due to an ancient bug that duplicates their secondary guns over and over constantly allowing the player to loot hundreds of them at once and break the economy george please fix this I'm begging you

Misc

• More ores at low levels to round out the loot tables
• Many new trade, crafting, and consumable items
• New tinker recipes (it's a mess but the dockscreen needs more help than I can give it)
• Lots more I'm forgetting - this mod defines over a thousand UNIDs.

[Laika II]

Just wanted to say that this is very much appreciated! I'm downloading it now, hope to post something actually constructive later.

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.1

• Tinker Lamarr in Rigel now uses the current intended tinker inventory and trade system(requires new savegame)
• Tinkers will now not sell back damaged gear
• Removed deprecated Borer and Borer II overwrites that were breaking their gun selection (requires new savegame)
• Fixed Ranx Dreadnought using the old 40-facings graphic [Thanks to IronParrot]
• All core ship overrides now use ShipClassOverride, not ShipClass, which should mostly prevent similar bugs.
• Major Freeworlds should now buy illegals as intended
• Zvezda-400 now has the correct description text [Thanks to IronParrot]
• Updated Eridani mineral water with correct tags, it's still impossible to sell to nightclubs and I'm still working on a solution to that.
• Asterions now have an integrated auton bay, identify all autons ala the Constellation and Armstrong/Aldrin, and come with autons when you buy them. (requires new savegame)
• Asterion starter ship now begins with an AK5 heavy recoilless cannon, not a Trident. It seemed a little unfair to put a short-range weapon on a ship that isn't very agile. I have been persuaded otherwise, so this will be reverted in 0.97.2 unless I am re-persuaded other-otherwise.
• Asterion starter ship now begins with two autosentinels (also requires new savegame, also obviously)

The download links and known issues section of the OP have been updated to reflect these changes. To apply this patch, redownload the TDB and replace your existing one with it. Savegame bugs may result from continuing existing games.

[Song]

Well that went well.

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Hotfixed to 0.97.2

• This patch adds workarounds to numerous bugs caused by core engine issues with ShipClassOverride that the 0.97.1 fixes triggered including invisible and immobile EI200s and a 20-facing (??!) Kate Morgantal.
• No I have no idea what was going with that either.
• Earthzone 5000 is now split between player and NPC versions to get around the engine adding a linked fire weapon when it shouldn't
• Asterion has a Trident again
• Updated the Eir's setup, but did so as an overwrite not an override to get around override bugs.

This should make the mod work again, but there may be other oddities. Please report any issues with missing graphics or immobile ships, they are likely caused by the same problems with ShipClassOverride.

You can download this patch from the link in the OP. Effects on existing savegames is unknown.


Edit: Reuploaded to fix yet another inheritance issue where the Kronosaurus wasn't inheriting its wreck chance, and thus wasn't leaving a wreck.

[Laika II]

I enjoyed my short journey in the mod so far. It's refreshing to be surprised by new content in the early systems.

I've ran into a possible issue though. I can't seem to buy another ship at the ship broker. According to the price tag I should be able to buy the ships, but the option is greyed out.
edit: might be similar to the issue reported here

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.3

• Reverted use of ShipClassOverride wherever possible to prevent further random chaos from core bugs with that system.
• Freeworld trade posts should now purchase illegal items as intended

I've ran into a possible issue though. I can't seem to buy another ship at the ship broker. According to the price tag I should be able to buy the ships, but the option is greyed out.

This will be due to baHumanTechShip being missing, which is almost certainly due to the ShipClassOverride fiasco if you were running one of the last two versions. Most playerships in Elemental Shift inherit from a shipclass, which then inherits from the human tech base class. It's probable that the overrides broke that chain, thus stopping the broker from working. If that's the case, this patch should fix it (though it may require a new game). If this version still has the problem then please let me know what ship you're in (and if only some ships are greyed out, what ships they are) and I'll check for a specific error.

[Laika II]

Started a new game and the bug is gone. Thanks for the quick fix!

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.4

- Fixed ShipClassOverride bugs on Revelations-class missileship by swapping to an overwrite (thanks to IronParrot)
- Trinity cannon and omni trinity cannon are now level 3 and 4, not 4 and 5, are re-statted appropriately
- Sapiens stations and ships now use Trinity cannons instead of non-radioactive kinetics.
- T31 playership starts with a single level 2 gun, not a level 1 and level 3, also gains a smol shield.
- Crafting recipe for Trinity cannon updated to use the Flenser 10, not Flenser 40 (it is still almost certainly too expensive to be worth making, I will redo the maths on it later)
- Moved the ESNB branch of systems to better fit in with The Stars Beyond until I can yell at Aury about their system placement
- Added semi-rare easter egg to one of the Black Market ships you can buy.

I attempted to really fix the problem with Eden's Apples and Counterfeit Eridani Mineral Water not being sellable at nightclubs, but there's coreside code that prevents it (I think a mass limitation). I'll need to consult George on ways around it.

[Song]

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Hotfixed to 0.97.5

-Fixed centurions and minotaurs not having reactors (note: Minotaurs have not been tested to see how their reactors handle loads)
-Nerfed damage on the SEM series missiles heavily now I've made my point to George about how Transdata needs some work for cloud/plasma weapons
-Fixed incorrect mass on the BEL-15 energy missile, buffed damage for 40kg normalisation

[relanat]

Just downloaded it. Unfortunately:
"Unable to start game

TA5-class Sentinel (scTenhoveSentinel2): Unknown image: 100391"

Occurs in debug and play mode.

Really looking forward to playing this.

[Song]

Just downloaded it. Unfortunately:
"Unable to start game

TA5-class Sentinel (scTenhoveSentinel2): Unknown image: 100391"

Occurs in debug and play mode.

Really looking forward to playing this.

I've been unable to replicate this, so I'm not sure what's going on there. It may be an issue specific to your game or mod install.


...that class is obsolete and should be deprecated, but looking at my tables it turns out there's one that still uses it. I'll change the table, then in a later version do a savegame-breaking update that removes the class entirely.

[relanat]

I had a look. The image UNID 'rsTenhoveHD' isn't defined anywhere because it was obseleted in API 51.
Deleting the upgraded sentinel ship classes and removing them from the ship table lets the game start.

And, wow, ES is huge; new weapons, ships, stations, traffic.
The Fleet Outpost looks great, so do the Tigers. Enemy Scorpions?
Excellent.

It looks really clean too. Are you going to open a bug thread?
Until then, from the field repairs kit:

ESactionbox.jpg (57.22 KiB) Viewed 81740 times

The action box isn't big enough for the text.

[Song]

@Relanat That let me find the problem: my testing mod, and SNAPSS probably, are lower API versions that force a compatibility mode. I've replaced the graphics for the time being, will do something more concrete later.

I've also trimmed and reworked the fleet repair kit. Technically that's a core bug, but it's easy enough to resolve.

There is an Elemental Shift ministry page. It's just not public yet.


Patch will be incoming later this morning, once I've done a few more tweaks to some new things I'm sneaking into the patch.

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.6
-Corrected various typos
-Vanilla centurion playerships now repurposed as uncommon variations
-Solon anti-particle shield now correctly suppresses particle weapons
-Level 5 hammerhead now actually shows up at level 5, not level 3
-Level 5 Hammerhead no longer spawns with a reactor that cannot power its equipment
-Level 5 Hammerhead generally revised to be a more reasonable purchase
-Removed stray external tags from various sidemounts that weren't supposed to be breakable
-Removed stray NotStandard and NotForSale tags from various tinker items
-Fixed crash bug caused by legacy Tenhoves using obsolete resources
-Fixed Ascraeus reactor producing ten times the power it should have been
-Commonwealth stations can no longer refuel reactors that require Ares fuelcells
-Delta 25 and 27 now fire slower, use less reactor power, and are cheaper
-Updated the Tenhove sentinels with the auton base code and slightly altered configurations (this may cause some stations to be more challenging to fight)
-Added the Tenhove autons as player-usable items
-Swapped legacy TA5/7/9 over to new purposes
-TA5 and 7 implemented as improvements of the base TA3. This doesn't mean they are actually good however: they are still tenhove sentinels.
-TA9 converted to TR-350, an improved model of the TR-200.
-New auton added at level 7, the TMA11, an improved model of the TMA9
-Corporate auton dealers are now more common, cannot have 'tenhove' in their names (if the override works)
-Added Tenhove and Omnidefense dealers. These are unique in-system, and will repair any autons but only sell their own. They do not buy anything.
-Added new Tenhove auton table specifically for their dealers to use, so they don't have Omnidefense autons circling them. (Yes I could use the one various other faction use but eh)


Edit: oops, uploaded the wrong tdb. I'll fix that now.
Edit2: fixed!