Mysteries of the Sith - Single Player Rebalance

[Markus Ramikin 107]

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Same as the other mod for JK:DF2, but works for Mysteries of the Sith. Can be used with MotSE.

I did some work on the MotS-specific powers, too. Chain Lightning chains through enemies the way it should, Push is stronger and has an AoE effect, and thrown lightsabers reliably return to your hand. Kinda proud of these! And having fun with them.

I'm not even going to bother to try to salvage Project or Farsight, though.

Readme for version 2.0:
 

Spoiler

Markus Ramikin's Single Player Campaign Rebalance
Mod for Mysteries of the Sith

version: 2.0
Developed together with the 2.0 version of this mod for Jedi Knight.

Table of contents:

I. Concept
II. General changes
III. Force Powers
IV. Enemies

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I. CONCEPT
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This is meant purely for Single Player, as the balance in multiplayer is much different.

I'm addressing the following issues:

1. Force Powers

New to MotS:
- Chain Lightning often fails to chain to nearby enemies. It also cannot target droids (why?), and cannot be used continuously.
- Saber Throw is slow and unreliable; the lightsaber doesn't return to hand.
- Protection is useless in the last few missions due to not absorbing physical damage.
- Push is much too weak to be useful, most of the time.
- If you want self-healing, you have to sacrifice your only free Tier 3 selection for Heal. Having a lifedraining power in Tier 2 and Tier 4 each should add flexibility to the player's selection of Force powers.

Old JK issues:

- Low mana regeneration. If you rely on offensive Force powers, you kill 1-3 enemies and then have to wait a long time.
- Force Pull is much too fast, cheap, and convenient, making later Force Powers obsolete against anyone with a gun.
- Protection is practically godmode against people with blasters.
- Persuasion lasts too long and has no cooldown.
- Bosses are unnecessarily immune to Grip and Deadly Sight.
- Sound effects for Force Seeing and Force Protection are annoying.

2. Enemies

I also make Jedi enemies more aggressive and dangerous, make them use their powers more, to balance the increased spammability of offensive powers.

Droids (and Dianoga) can now be targetted by Chain Lightning and Push.

Vonskr can now be targetted by any power (previously untargettable by anything that required lock-on).

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II. General changes
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1. Force capacity and regeneration

Mana maximum and regeneration are constant, independent of your Jedi rank (somewhat like in Jedi Academy). This helps balance the cost of earlier abilities (especially Pull and Push) against later ones.

Mana regeneration = 24 per second, 6x faster than maximum regeneration in the unmodified game.

2. Cooldown icons

Several abilities have a cooldown, a period you have to wait before you can use the ability again.

Some of these cooldowns have their own icons. They are based on the enlarged icons from jkgui mod, so if you want all your icons to be the same size, get that mod too.

Channelled abilities with new cooldown icons:
- Persuasion
- Absorb
- Protection
Single-shot abilities with standard icons during the cooldown:
- Push
- Pull
- Saber Throw
- Chain Lightning
- Destruction

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III. Force Powers
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1. Tier 1 powers:

* Speed
- Mana cost changed from 20 -> 400/Jedi Rank (400 at Initiate, 50 at Jedi Master).
- Duration set to 10 seconds regardless of rank in Speed.
Higher ranks still give you higher speed, of course.

* Jump
- Mana cost changed from 20 -> 400/Jedi Rank (400 at Initiate, 50 at Jedi Master).

* Seeing
- Mana cost changed from 20 -> 400/Jedi Rank (400 at Initiate, 50 at Jedi Master).
- Turned off the annoying channelled sound. Now you can listen for footsteps as you check the map for enemies!

* Project
- Mana cost changed from 50 -> 400/Jedi Rank (400 at Initiate, 50 at Jedi Master).

* Push
- Mana cost 20 -> 160.
- Can target anything, including droids.
- Force increased by 50%. At 4 stars can be used to kill medium-mass targets like stormtroopers if close to a wall; not so much heavier things like Noghri or Vornskr.
- AoE effect: nearby targets get thrown too, but with less force, depending on distance. Area of effect depends on rank in Push.
- Disorients all affected targets. Heavier targets suffer shorter disorientation. Examples: 2 seconds for stormtroopers, 2.25-3.14s for various Pirates, 1.5s for Probe Droids, Vornskr and Noghri.
- Interrupts Dark Mara's Deadly Sight and Dark Kyle's Grip.

2. Tier 2 powers:

* Pull
- Mana cost 20 -> 160.
- Cooldown increased from 0.6s to 2s.

* Saber Throw
- The returning saber returns to your hand: chases you even if you're dodging enemy fire.
- The saber travels twice more quickly, both ways. Slows down when close to you.
- Mana cost changed from 100, 80, 60, 40 to 200, 160, 120, 80, depending on rank in Saber Throw.
- Cooldown lowered from 5.5 seconds to 4, 3, 2, 1, depending on rank in Saber Throw.

* Grip
- Longer range, equal to Pull now.
- Crushes life out of the enemy and gives it to you. You gain 1-4 health per tick, depending on rank in Grip.
- Mana cost: 50 -> 80.
- Always lasts 4 seconds (and ticks 8 times) instead of depending on rank.
- Cooldown reduced from 4.5s at max rank to 2s (it's absurd to have a longer cooldown at higher ranks).
- Works on enemy Jedi and Vornskr.
- Against enemy Jedi and massive targets (Vornskr, Noghri, Swamp Wampas) costs 200 mana, does half damage and gives you half the healing, and doesn't stop Vornskr or Noghri leaping if in range.

* Farsight
- Mana cost 50 -> 160.

3. Tier 3 Powers:

* Persuasion
Modified. Now more of a brief advantage rather than an "Ai=off" cheat:
- Duration lowered from 10, 20, 30, 40 seconds to 4, 5, 6, 7 seconds, depending on rank in Persuasion.
- Added a cooldown after it ends: 20, 15, 10, 5 seconds, depending on rank in Persuasion.
Note: Persuasion no longer fools droids in MotS. This is not my change.

* Heal
- Heals 5 * rank instead of 20 * rank, to partly offset the increased mana regeneration.
No longer a good panic button, but it's more convenient to heal small wounds.

* Blind
- Can't Blind the same enemy until the first Blind wears off. (Solves a bug with re-blinding bosses that existed in the unmodded game too.)
- Mana cost 100 -> 80.
- Against bosses (Jedi and Vornskr): mana cost increased from 100 to 200, and duration lowered from up to 20 seconds to up to 8 seconds.

* Chain Lightning
- Chaining much more reliable now; chains to targets in your view and range rather than your victims'.
- Can target anything, including droids, vornskr, and dianoga.
- Can be cast continuously at a rate of about 1.25 shots per second.
- Range increased to match Pull.
- Damage lowered from 25 to 10. Additional damage to single targets lowered from 30 to 5.
- Mana cost lowered from 100 to 20 per shot.

4. Tier 4 Powers:

* Absorb
- Always absorbs 100% Force damage, otherwise having less than 4 stars would be useless. (Stars still affect duration.)
- Added a sound effect when the power is active, so you can still know when it stops and goes into cooldown.
- 10 seconds cooldown after it ends.
- Mana cost lowered from 200 to 40.
(Smaller cost than in the Jedi Knight version of this mod, because in MotS Absorb lost some utility: it no longer helps you use conventional weapons against enemy Jedi.)
- Mana regeneration drastically lowered when this power is active. Absorb enemy Force attacks instead!

* Destruction
- Unchanged. Benefits from increased mana regeneration.

* Protection
Heavily reworked. Now a bit similar to its equivalent in Jedi Academy.
- Reduces all damage by 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, depending on rank in Protection. This includes blasters and physical damage.
- Lasts 8 seconds. Once it runs out, it turns off completely, without leaving misleading visuals.
- Costs 300 mana.
- Followed by a 10 second cooldown.
- Lowered the sound volume. It's high-pitched (compared to others) and was kinda loud.

* Deadly Sight
- Drains life from all the enemies you see. You gain 0.5-2 health per tick per victim, depending on rank in Deadly Sight.
- Works on enemy Jedi and Vornskr.

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IV. Enemies
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1. Vornskr
- Grip, Push, Chain Lightning, Deadly Sight work on them.
They're too heavy for Push to do noticeable damage, but still suffer disorientation. And Grip doesn't stop their jump if they're in range!
- Health increased, base: 200 -> 250 (on Hard difficulty it's 240 -> 300).
Still require two strong saber attacks to kill, but now they can survive a bit more Force damage, to partly offset the increased mana regeneration, and the increased variety of spells that work on them.

2. Dark Mara
- Casts up to 3 Lightning at a time.
- Also uses Deadly Sight from time to time.

3. Dark Kyle
- Casts 2-6 lightning at a time.
- His grip lasts longer and has no minimum range. However, it is now interruptible by damage, Push, and Blind.

 

[HK-47 84]

 

 

I'm not even going to bother to try to salvage Project or Farsight, though.

 

 

- Fixed s problem with Kyle sometimes inescapably choking the player to death at the start of the first encounter, if they didn't have Absorb or some other way to interrupt at long range.

- Fixed a problem with the player occasionally staying immobile after Grip, making it an easy death to Lightning.

 

Oh good! I hated those glitches. I was always stressed out fighting him in the first place, and always hoping those things didn't happen.

 

What is wrong with Project or Farsight that they need salvaging?

[Markus Ramikin 107]

Only that they're useless. And they compete with other, more useful spells, since you can only take so many per skill column. So I imagine few players ever take them.

[Jj117 9]

cant download what happened

[Markus Ramikin 107]

11 hours ago, Jj117 said:

cant download what happened

Try now

[Jj117 9]

1 hour ago, Markus Ramikin said:

Try now

Thank you so much. I am trying MotS Again. Is there a map edit where we get friendly NPCs like in the first mission? There's a mission where the Republic ship is attacked by pirates and was hoping that there would be more Republic soldiers alive *sprinkled* around the ship since they ARE fighting the pirates and not mara jade alone. 

[Markus Ramikin 107]

8 hours ago, Jj117 said:

Thank you so much. I am trying MotS Again. Is there a map edit where we get friendly NPCs like in the first mission? There's a mission where the Republic ship is attacked by pirates and was hoping that there would be more Republic soldiers alive *sprinkled* around the ship since they ARE fighting the pirates and not mara jade alone. 

I have no idea. The one Jedi Knight mods repository I used to know burnt down. Literally, if the message is to be believed, the datacenter had a fire, heh.

[Jj117 9]

Ahhh... No wonder lol. I was hoping to get an editor to make changes to the main campaign

[Markus Ramikin 107]

Updated to 1.04. (Remember: old savegames will be incompatible!)

Grip's damage nerfed vs bosses, as it was too easy to kill Vornskr with a Tier 2 ability that also prevented movement. Cost lowered a bit, though.

Absorb made drastically cheaper, to make it more worthwhile against Dark Mara, and to compensate (compared to DF2:JK) for its lost function of allowing the player to shoot guns at enemy Jedi.

Chain Lightning and Destruction are cheaper than before. Destruction can be fired more often; cooldown back to unmodded values.

[Markus Ramikin 107]

Updated to 1.05b. (As usual, expect savegames to be incompatible.)

Chain Lightning can now be cast continuously, which is much less annoying. Also it fires faster, though for less damage and cost; overall DPS comes out roughly the same.

[Markus Ramikin 107]

Update to 2.0 - a fairly major revision. Link in the original post.

After a good deal of experimenting to find out what what works and is fun, and what doesn't and isn't, I think this should be the final version. Main changes from the 1.x versions:

• Mana reworked. Your mana pool maximum (400) is now constant, like in Jedi Academy. Mana regeneration slightly increased and is also constant.
  This makes it a LOT easier to balance things, especially the cost of Force Pull vs later enemy-neutralising powers. It also allowed me to put some abilities back to their original cost (i.e. Persuasion = 250 mana, Deadly Sight = 300).
  Then what do Jedi ranks do, if not give more mana? Well, besides granting new Powers, they lower the cost of basic abilities: Speed, Jump, Sight, Project (400 mana cost at Initiate, 50 at Jedi Master.)
• Dropped: "Force regeneration drastically reduced during status effects" for all abilities that had this property (except Absorb). This feature felt mostly anti-fun, and a step back in a mod whose main purpose was to fix the long Force downtimes produced by the low mana regeneration of the original game.
• Force Pull and Force Push remain slow to use and fairly costly all game (2s CD, 160 mana cost). Best supplemented by cheap abilities like Grip, Blind, or Saber Throw.
• Fixed a bug caused by a mission ending while a cooldown was in effect, sometimes resulting in a power getting "stuck" in the next mission.
• A host of minor balance adjustments.
• Dropped support for GSX, since I can't even find a download of GSX for MotS online and in any case I don't remember it working well.

I've played through this version with three different builds, had much fun, and I'm happy with the result, so I guess this is it.

As Kreia would say...