This mod isn't nearly as harsh (and as compensation, it makes longzhus somewhat more common).
If an item's enhancement is 50% or below, the longzhu sphere acts normally; +20% for a normal item, +10% after that. But at 50%, there is an (enhancement-50)% chance of Bad Things happening. The Bad Thing has a 10% chance of damaging the item (and setting its enhancement to +0%), and a 90% chance of simply subtracting 10% from the enhancement rather than adding it.
The effects on gameplay are as follows:
Code: Select all
Enhancement % chance of getting % chance of getting this enhancement
next enhancement without a single failure
+50% 100% 100%
+60% 90% 100%
+70% 80% 90%
+80% 70% 72%
+90% 60% 50%
+100% 50% 30%
+110% 40% 15%
+120% 30% 6%
+130% 20% 1.8%
+140% 10% 0.36%
+150% 0% 0.036%Also, I updated their description. It now reads "Longzhu spheres are antimatter containment vessels used by the Sung Slavers as power sources. They can repair and enhance weapons and shields, but too much enhancement can be dangerous for the device."
I think that "They can repair and enhance weapons and shields" should be in the vanilla description; it's ridiculous to think the player character can jury-rig these things to experimental and alien devices, but the knowledge that it's possible is not there for the player.
[Download]
I received a couple complaints about a longzhu nerf making a "gap" between the midgame and the lategame difficult to bridge- an argument to the effect of "lategame superweapons are much more powerful then midgame weapons, and you need excessive longzhu use to take on a supership to get one". I'm not at all experienced with the late game, but if this is true, it's a separate balance problem than longzhus being OP and deserves its own solution- possibly in the form of some midgame weapons designed to take on superships, but not good at much else. These would be in a separate mod. Any thoughts on the issue?
[EDIT] Forgot to mention, this was not tested on 1.08h but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
