No Man's - Prepare to Sky Edition (PTSd) -- A Progression-Difficulty-Balance Overhaul

No Man's - Prepare To Sky Edition

The title is mostly a joke: while by default PTSd does attempt to substantially increase the challenge of combat, exploration, trading, farming, etc. while reducing many "overpowered" income options, you can reduce most of that back down with the in-game Difficulty Settings. Even with the default settings, a number of activities / rewards / costs are actually improved from vanilla, such as Settlement rewards, the loot from most exploration activities, Class upgrade/Pet unlock prices, larger Refiner stacksizes, etc. And much of the mod is not centered around difficulty at all, but instead on improving balance or adding new options.

If you enjoy starting new save files, the sense of progression of a new character through the early & middle portions of the game, and start to lose interest once your character has unlocked everything and can do anything easily, and prefer choices without overpowered or underwhelming options, PTSd may interest you. Covering many aspects of the game through a wide range of cost/value/reward adjustments, rebalanced equipment stats, improved enemy combat stats, and a few added features, PTSd aims to:

[]Remove or restrict most "overpowered" get-rich quick schemes, such as market crashing, chlorine refining, Activated Indium mines, scrapping Interceptor ships, etc.[/]

[]Remove or restrict most "overpowered" get-rich quick schemes, such as market crashing, chlorine refining, Activated Indium mines, scrapping Interceptor ships, etc.[/]

[]Stretch out the early & mid-game so the player is not able to immediately buy any & everything. Generally there will be more time where the player can be "looking forward" to unlocking various tech or features that are currently unavailable or unaffordable.[/]

[]Stretch out the early & mid-game so the player is not able to immediately buy any & everything. Generally there will be more time where the player can be "looking forward" to unlocking various tech or features that are currently unavailable or unaffordable.[/]

[]Make buying & using weaker C Class ships or upgrade modules early on more appealing, as the higher class items should be expensive enough to prevent the player from simply always just buying the highest quality options available.[/]

[]Make buying & using weaker C Class ships or upgrade modules early on more appealing, as the higher class items should be expensive enough to prevent the player from simply always just buying the highest quality options available.[/]

• []Make it more rewarding when the player eventually is able to get higher class starships / multi-tools or better exocraft, or invest upgrades into them, especially since enemies / the environment are challenging enough to appreciate the added ease / convenience they bring. Generally there will be a more noticeable gap between the performance of a fresh Class C piece of equipment, and a maxed out Class S full of upgrades.[/]

• []Increase the base challenge of most combat encounters (can largely be offset with various combat-related in-game Difficulty Settings)[/]

• []As much as possible, avoid situations where either one playstyle is so clearly superior to the alternatives that they aren't worth considering, or the inverse where an option is completely underwhelming compared to others. For example, in Vanilla an Activated Indium mine or Fusion Ignitor farm are orders of magnitude more profitable than any other activity, while conversely Settlements, salvaging Crashed Freighters, or rescuing Freighters from pirates typically provide so little reward that it is hard to justify the time taken to do them. In PTSd the rewards of many activities are more comparable, although they each still have advantages or disadvantages.[/]

• []Relatedly, in general reduce the gap between "passive" forms of income such as Extractors/Farms/Frigate Expeditions and "active" income such as exploring, finding & selling valuables, destroying spaceships, completing space station missions, etc. so that "passive" income doesn't completely overshadow "active" income, and "active" play is encouraged more.[/]

• []Similarly, differentiate & balance the Multi-Tool / Starship weapons and Multi-Tools / Starships themselves so that there is no "clear winner" which is statistically superior to all the others. E. G. Why pick the Neutron Cannon when the Scatter Blaster kills everything much quicker? Or why pick a Hauler when you can upgrade an Exotic to just as much storage with excellent stats? Or why pick a Royal/Experimental/Pistol when an Alien Multi-Tool has higher Damage (which also improves mining speed), and the Scan stats provide negligible benefits? In PTSd the various kinds of equipment and weapons are both made more distinct from each other with more noticeable differences in speed, abilities, etc. while still making sure each has a specialty or niche that makes it worthwhile. For example, the Mining and Scan stats for Multi-Tools now directly improve the resources / units you receive when mining/scanning things.[/]

• []Add more ways of steadily earning Nanites throughout the game.[/]

• []Add more ways of obtaining Tritium, Di-Hydrogen & Salvaged Data to the mid/late game.[/]

• []Correct some Vanilla bugs such as the Ship Agility stat only affect maneuverability while boosting, or supercharged slots making the mining laser/scanner tech slower instead of faster, or mining speed being affected by both the Mining and Damage stat bonuses on your Multi-Tool, or certain items / effects having typos in their values making them far stronger/weaker than intended, etc.[/]

• []When possible, clarify unintuitive vanilla mechanics or PTSd changes that are particularly important with expanded descriptions on techs/items/buildings/Difficulty Settings (see bottom of the Customization section below on how to make these PTSd changes to vanilla in-game text display on computers set to languages other than English).[/]

• []Maintain Discovery data & terrain "sync" with vanilla players. IE You should see all the same planets, biomes, creatures, flora, minerals, terrain shapes, bases, .etc. that vanilla players see, as well as the Discoveries made & named by vanilla players, and vice versa.[/]

Changes Made & Reasoning

The individual changes made are too many to list, but here is the "bullet point" version for reference (which can be searched through with ctrl-f after opening all the Spoiler tags), along with the gameplay reasons for how they help achieve the goals above. Note that many of these changes are designed to work together, E. G. player starship shields are increased, but enemy ship damage and groups are increased even more. The actual individual value changes mad

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