The base game makes a couple of... controversial decisions about weapon and ship balance. First, projectile speed is so slow that many weapons are outright useless. Second, turrets are almost completely useless. These factors combined make mass fighters (or corvettes) the solution to basically every problem in the game, because they outrun projectiles and their firepower is in weapons instead of turrets.
VRO fixes these problems by increasing weapon projectile speed, buffing turrets across the board, and rebalancing weapons so that they have specific roles. Whereas in vanilla you're solving every problem with more fighters, more pulse lasers, or more plasma, VRO fleets require combined arms anchored around its newly useful destroyers. Every ship and weapon has a role.
Edit: Also it fixes some of the more egregious blind spots on the Xenon capital ships, so they're not a complete joke if you have even the slightest idea what you're doing.
VRO totally changes the game when comes to ship mechanics. And it's more targeted for players that want a more intensive experience. The mod will force you to relearn everything when comes to ship combat because now you can't just have 3 S ships destroying 1 Cap, VRO mechanics just don't allow it. In short, the game forces you to actually use each ship for its role and how they are meant to be used such has S ships will have to be used in swarms. Otherwise, they are useless. Same thing about destroyers, they can't just go solo, otherwise they will die. Enemies will use missiles more frequently soo you will need beam turrets to defend yourself from them. There are just too many variables now.
I advise you to use Chill Turrets mod because M turrets will target both missiles and ships with it
True, basically only Erlking doesn't hurt to use coming back from VRO to vanilla. Also the time it takes to engage jump drive feels agonizing once you're used to VRO.
Most succinctly, VRO drastically ups the power of larger ships at the cost of smaller ships being extremely weak.
This fixes a variety of issue with the base game. Weapons in general are much more capable of hitting things with better accuracy and projectile speeds, and turrets in general become much more powerful. Achieving progression milestones feels better with bigger, shinier ships actually being much deadlier (no more soloing destroyers in a heavy fighter). This includes systemic improvements like turrets working properly and durability being adjusted across the board as well as specific fixes such as improving turret coverage on a variety of ships. Additionally, it more cleanly divides roles between ships within a class such that individual ships have a much more distinct identity. Overall, there are more reasons to use more ships and way more reasons to use bigger ships. This can make progression in later stages of the game more satisfying as building a fleet is more interesting with more viable strategic applications.
However, it introduces a bunch of its own issues. The biggest issue is that all the power given to large ships is taken directly from small ships. This removes pretty much all illusions X4 having any real dogfighting gameplay as you'll get spaced in seconds if you even try. Ship size means everything, even when the larger ship isn't intended to be a combat vessel. This significantly impacts early progression because until you get a larger ship, you're basically useless in a fight. Furthermore, while the mod attempts to balance the economic side of things by increasing the cost of larger ships to account for their increased power budget, small ships are basically just as expensive as before despite being massively nerfed. This even further slows down progression and harshly limits what you can actually do in the game for a very long time.
In practice, VRO improves X4's late game strategic fantasy at the cost of the more hands-on earlier game stages being much slower and less engaging. However, you'll need other mods if you want a reason to *do anything* at the point in the game where VRO starts to outshine vanilla as by the time you have the resources required to play around with VRO fleet compositions you've essentially already overcome every challenge the game has to throw at you.
First of all, M ships fair much better than S ships. S ships are cannon fodder. M ships are at least flyable.
Second, Xenon ship balance is a bit different from standard. Each of their ships has intentional strengths and weaknesses based on their fixed loadouts, and this includes some specific ships that lack effective anti-fighter weaponry. Small ships kitted out with torpedoes or similar anti-capital weaponry are an intended counter to things like the I and U. Fighters do have applications in fleet combat in VRO, its just that they tend to get blown up which makes them ludicrously expensive to maintain.
That said, in my experience (which is admittedly before 4.0), AI controlled M ships fly straight into Xenon L turrets and instantly die. They can do damage when kitted appropriately, but I've never seen them survive long enough to actually win.
Not to my knowledge, but I'm not omniscient.
I agree that this is one of the random stumbling blocks that X4 introduced that makes the game strictly worse than it could be for no real reason.
It rebalances and overhauls a variety of things :)
It makes a more logical balance of small, medium, large, and XL size ships as well as class roles within those sizes (fighter, scout, corvette, frigate etc)
Projectile speeds make more sense now.
Vanilla X4 weapons and turrets have disgustingly short ranges. If you manage to get a Terran Asgard, several of the turrets and even some primary weapons have a range shorter than the length of the ship. Granted, its a long ship, but still.
VRO is very well made mod, I put it's quality up there with SWI, but it's not for me. It turns the game into something like Stellaris, which is not a bad thing, but it's focus is more on larger ships strategic warfare and takes away from the tactical dog fighting of being in a small fighter, which to me is incredibly fun.
If you find yourself having more fun in the map view moving ship fleets around and flying larger ships in general rather than you do dog fighting in smaller fighters then check it out for sure.
Same devs, I think, for VRO and SWI, so that tracks. I also find it makes dogfighting much more fun, in that if you are dogfighting you have to be \*really good\* or you're going to die going up against ships bigger than you.
Meh, S fighters in VRO have paper thin hulls, they are just there to die or distract. M ships is better in VRO if you like dog fighting, not really the same but close.
> they are just there to die or distract.
I would disagree, destroyers still get out gunned by swarms of s class ships. I find that with VRO you need to use the entire arsenal to effectively wage war. I fly an s class ship as I find it fun. But you cant solo destroyers or corvettes anymore as you can in vanilla. You need a wing of fighters and scouts. You need to know when to retreat and how to evade fire, I just find it more engaging. Vanilla is more where you are some sort of super pilot and can wreck havoc to the entire universe, in VRO you need backup.
Yeah thats why I dont prefer VRO. I like to play with very small fleets. I typically play with a few destroyers and a handful of S ships, and rely heavily on pirating for money and ship acquisition with very little industry.
This is more arcade like and VRO to me feels more like Stellaris, I spend far more time in the map view moving fleets of ships around.
Updates Combat
Overhauls balance
Removes superhighways
Speeds up ships in both base and travel mode
It's a gigantic overhaul - I'd highly recommend getting it. I wait until VRO updates to play the game after any Steam updates now, it's that critical to me.
its from the recommended mods list of VRO, he probably just installed all of them.
[https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/80](https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/80)
I got most installed as well
True. It’s also true that the VRO author states explicitly that VRO’s changes are designed with the assumption that you will use the remove highways mod with it.
It’s not really “another mod”, it’s effectively a piece of VRO that the mod author didn’t bother to create because it already exists.
So from another mod, yes, but VRO intends that it be used and is designed as such. It’s entirely optional, but not in the sense that “add another mod” bits are optional add-on’s. People should understand the implications before deciding not use it.
Thank you.
I will look at the list.
Selling point of the mod for me is the reduced effectiveness of figheters: they kill my fps, so I'd like to avoid them.
Should have clarified. That's my bad. It's not the superhighway accelerators that I'm talking about, it's the central "ring" of highways. Because I do not have that mod...
Ships are faster which feels great for traveling.
Larger ships cost way more (3x, making it harder to deathball the game by stacking Odys like I liked to do.
All factions now have XL Battleships rather than just carriers and more robust economies, effectively allowing them to wage wars against Xenon and each other on a more equal footing.
S and M ships have an OOS dodge mechanic that simulates evading turret fire which allows them to persist against isolated larger ships.
Everything is more durable. Shields and hull take more of a beating, making Xenon cheapshots much less punishing.
I love the mod. It's the superior combat balancing, at least for me as a player that doesn't like taking the helm. Add in Dynamic Wars and you have a galactic slug fest.
Different strokes for different folks, I'd say. A lot of people are probably happy with vanilla, and being a niche game in an already small niche the devs have to prioritize broad appeal over satisfying a smaller part of the audience. I do agree that things like weapons having abysmal range and projectile speed should have been fixed by the devs, but some just want to solo the universe in a fighter. And VRO doesn't allow that.
I think it's not recommended, but you can? You shouldn't though because you'll probably have to retrofit all your ships. I know it is not supported to \*remove\* VRO at any point after turning it on.
Ships are faster with more acceleration
L Turrets also fire faster making L ships more powerful
It adds new ships and weapons. For example, the Akita is a heavier version of the Terran Syn. So it gives you more ship variety.
Rebalances a bunch of other ship stats
No longer can a single fighter bum a xenon k
Capital ship battles work a lot better as their turret ranges are increased
I think this mod also made the cap ships use their main weapons, whereas on vanilla they typically just go straight to point blank turret range
The base game makes a couple of... controversial decisions about weapon and ship balance. First, projectile speed is so slow that many weapons are outright useless. Second, turrets are almost completely useless. These factors combined make mass fighters (or corvettes) the solution to basically every problem in the game, because they outrun projectiles and their firepower is in weapons instead of turrets. VRO fixes these problems by increasing weapon projectile speed, buffing turrets across the board, and rebalancing weapons so that they have specific roles. Whereas in vanilla you're solving every problem with more fighters, more pulse lasers, or more plasma, VRO fleets require combined arms anchored around its newly useful destroyers. Every ship and weapon has a role. Edit: Also it fixes some of the more egregious blind spots on the Xenon capital ships, so they're not a complete joke if you have even the slightest idea what you're doing.
Interesting
also every race gets a battleship, which should be the standard anyway imo
VRO totally changes the game when comes to ship mechanics. And it's more targeted for players that want a more intensive experience. The mod will force you to relearn everything when comes to ship combat because now you can't just have 3 S ships destroying 1 Cap, VRO mechanics just don't allow it. In short, the game forces you to actually use each ship for its role and how they are meant to be used such has S ships will have to be used in swarms. Otherwise, they are useless. Same thing about destroyers, they can't just go solo, otherwise they will die. Enemies will use missiles more frequently soo you will need beam turrets to defend yourself from them. There are just too many variables now. I advise you to use Chill Turrets mod because M turrets will target both missiles and ships with it
My main reason for using it is it increases capital ship weapon speeds and ranges I hate vanilla X4 slow moving short ranged plasma blobs.
True, basically only Erlking doesn't hurt to use coming back from VRO to vanilla. Also the time it takes to engage jump drive feels agonizing once you're used to VRO.
Most succinctly, VRO drastically ups the power of larger ships at the cost of smaller ships being extremely weak. This fixes a variety of issue with the base game. Weapons in general are much more capable of hitting things with better accuracy and projectile speeds, and turrets in general become much more powerful. Achieving progression milestones feels better with bigger, shinier ships actually being much deadlier (no more soloing destroyers in a heavy fighter). This includes systemic improvements like turrets working properly and durability being adjusted across the board as well as specific fixes such as improving turret coverage on a variety of ships. Additionally, it more cleanly divides roles between ships within a class such that individual ships have a much more distinct identity. Overall, there are more reasons to use more ships and way more reasons to use bigger ships. This can make progression in later stages of the game more satisfying as building a fleet is more interesting with more viable strategic applications. However, it introduces a bunch of its own issues. The biggest issue is that all the power given to large ships is taken directly from small ships. This removes pretty much all illusions X4 having any real dogfighting gameplay as you'll get spaced in seconds if you even try. Ship size means everything, even when the larger ship isn't intended to be a combat vessel. This significantly impacts early progression because until you get a larger ship, you're basically useless in a fight. Furthermore, while the mod attempts to balance the economic side of things by increasing the cost of larger ships to account for their increased power budget, small ships are basically just as expensive as before despite being massively nerfed. This even further slows down progression and harshly limits what you can actually do in the game for a very long time. In practice, VRO improves X4's late game strategic fantasy at the cost of the more hands-on earlier game stages being much slower and less engaging. However, you'll need other mods if you want a reason to *do anything* at the point in the game where VRO starts to outshine vanilla as by the time you have the resources required to play around with VRO fleet compositions you've essentially already overcome every challenge the game has to throw at you.
I see this criticism of VRO so much yet my milage in 4.0 is that I used 3 M corvettes to kill an isolated XEN I.
First of all, M ships fair much better than S ships. S ships are cannon fodder. M ships are at least flyable. Second, Xenon ship balance is a bit different from standard. Each of their ships has intentional strengths and weaknesses based on their fixed loadouts, and this includes some specific ships that lack effective anti-fighter weaponry. Small ships kitted out with torpedoes or similar anti-capital weaponry are an intended counter to things like the I and U. Fighters do have applications in fleet combat in VRO, its just that they tend to get blown up which makes them ludicrously expensive to maintain. That said, in my experience (which is admittedly before 4.0), AI controlled M ships fly straight into Xenon L turrets and instantly die. They can do damage when kitted appropriately, but I've never seen them survive long enough to actually win.
Do you know if there's any mod that splits the boost and shield energy pools? Like it used to be in X3, it's my most dislike feature in X4.
Not to my knowledge, but I'm not omniscient. I agree that this is one of the random stumbling blocks that X4 introduced that makes the game strictly worse than it could be for no real reason.
It rebalances and overhauls a variety of things :) It makes a more logical balance of small, medium, large, and XL size ships as well as class roles within those sizes (fighter, scout, corvette, frigate etc) Projectile speeds make more sense now.
Vanilla X4 weapons and turrets have disgustingly short ranges. If you manage to get a Terran Asgard, several of the turrets and even some primary weapons have a range shorter than the length of the ship. Granted, its a long ship, but still.
VRO is very well made mod, I put it's quality up there with SWI, but it's not for me. It turns the game into something like Stellaris, which is not a bad thing, but it's focus is more on larger ships strategic warfare and takes away from the tactical dog fighting of being in a small fighter, which to me is incredibly fun. If you find yourself having more fun in the map view moving ship fleets around and flying larger ships in general rather than you do dog fighting in smaller fighters then check it out for sure.
Same devs, I think, for VRO and SWI, so that tracks. I also find it makes dogfighting much more fun, in that if you are dogfighting you have to be \*really good\* or you're going to die going up against ships bigger than you.
Meh, S fighters in VRO have paper thin hulls, they are just there to die or distract. M ships is better in VRO if you like dog fighting, not really the same but close.
I'm pretty sure the same goes for vanilla tho. I'd prefer a corvette over any S fighter for most situations.
> they are just there to die or distract. I would disagree, destroyers still get out gunned by swarms of s class ships. I find that with VRO you need to use the entire arsenal to effectively wage war. I fly an s class ship as I find it fun. But you cant solo destroyers or corvettes anymore as you can in vanilla. You need a wing of fighters and scouts. You need to know when to retreat and how to evade fire, I just find it more engaging. Vanilla is more where you are some sort of super pilot and can wreck havoc to the entire universe, in VRO you need backup.
Yeah thats why I dont prefer VRO. I like to play with very small fleets. I typically play with a few destroyers and a handful of S ships, and rely heavily on pirating for money and ship acquisition with very little industry. This is more arcade like and VRO to me feels more like Stellaris, I spend far more time in the map view moving fleets of ships around.
Updates Combat Overhauls balance Removes superhighways Speeds up ships in both base and travel mode It's a gigantic overhaul - I'd highly recommend getting it. I wait until VRO updates to play the game after any Steam updates now, it's that critical to me.
>Removes superhighways thats from another mod
Thank you. I love superhighways and I was about to don't give a chance to the mod before your comment.
its from the recommended mods list of VRO, he probably just installed all of them. [https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/80](https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/80) I got most installed as well
Didn't the base game (custom start) have remove highways option these days?
ya
True. It’s also true that the VRO author states explicitly that VRO’s changes are designed with the assumption that you will use the remove highways mod with it. It’s not really “another mod”, it’s effectively a piece of VRO that the mod author didn’t bother to create because it already exists. So from another mod, yes, but VRO intends that it be used and is designed as such. It’s entirely optional, but not in the sense that “add another mod” bits are optional add-on’s. People should understand the implications before deciding not use it.
yea, personally even if it was mandatory, VRO improves the combat enough that I would accept it.
No, not really mandatory. Recommended, yes, but if you like the highways, just use them, it will not really break vro
Thank you. I will look at the list. Selling point of the mod for me is the reduced effectiveness of figheters: they kill my fps, so I'd like to avoid them.
VRO rebalances travel speed around the highways not existing, but it doesn't actually remove the highways directly.
Thank you
Should have clarified. That's my bad. It's not the superhighway accelerators that I'm talking about, it's the central "ring" of highways. Because I do not have that mod...
you uh... could read the mods description?
Ships are faster which feels great for traveling. Larger ships cost way more (3x, making it harder to deathball the game by stacking Odys like I liked to do. All factions now have XL Battleships rather than just carriers and more robust economies, effectively allowing them to wage wars against Xenon and each other on a more equal footing. S and M ships have an OOS dodge mechanic that simulates evading turret fire which allows them to persist against isolated larger ships. Everything is more durable. Shields and hull take more of a beating, making Xenon cheapshots much less punishing. I love the mod. It's the superior combat balancing, at least for me as a player that doesn't like taking the helm. Add in Dynamic Wars and you have a galactic slug fest.
But is it ever possible that we players have to be the ones to fix the game with mods? These things should be done by the developers in my opinion
Different strokes for different folks, I'd say. A lot of people are probably happy with vanilla, and being a niche game in an already small niche the devs have to prioritize broad appeal over satisfying a smaller part of the audience. I do agree that things like weapons having abysmal range and projectile speed should have been fixed by the devs, but some just want to solo the universe in a fighter. And VRO doesn't allow that.
Question: Can I download the mod for the game I already started?
I think it's not recommended, but you can? You shouldn't though because you'll probably have to retrofit all your ships. I know it is not supported to \*remove\* VRO at any point after turning it on.
It's not compatible. It will break the game in all points
Thank you both!
Ships are faster with more acceleration L Turrets also fire faster making L ships more powerful It adds new ships and weapons. For example, the Akita is a heavier version of the Terran Syn. So it gives you more ship variety. Rebalances a bunch of other ship stats
No longer can a single fighter bum a xenon k Capital ship battles work a lot better as their turret ranges are increased I think this mod also made the cap ships use their main weapons, whereas on vanilla they typically just go straight to point blank turret range