Basic Guide to Modules

Guide by Selkie

Ship modules are often misunderstood, poorly-documented, and can be frustrating to work with, this guide aims to change that!

So just what are modules?

On a technical level, station and ship modules are totally separate "ships" that are connected to a main controllable hull. There are many advantage and disadvantages to using modules, but they are generally used to avoid stat bloat, particularly when dealing with flux and armor. Modules are a great way to make a ship (or station!) tankier without inflating their armor values, and can also serve to make boss encounters much more interesting!

///IMAGE HERE

Why should I avoid super high armor stats?

Due to the way armor values work in Starsector, very high armor stats (>2,000) result in low-damage weapons dealing next to zero damage, rendering them totally useless. In practice, this is incredibly restrictive and leads to only very high single-hit high explosive weapons being useful.

Why should I avoid super high flux stats?

For this example, let's say we have a super dreadnought filled to the brim with weapons and a whopping 5,000 flux dissipation. If the ship were to have hard flux dissipation, say, 15% from the 'Field Modulation' skill, it will passively vent 750 flux per second, resulting in an unsatisfying fight with an opponent that is difficult to make any real progress on.

What are the advantages of modules?

Modules can allow you to really spice up that fancy boss encounter you are working on. For example, Kadur's 'Caliph' dreadnought has two shield emitter modules with the "anchorrotation" and "shield_always_on" hullmods, which give this lumbering behemoth its iconic rotating shields! Furthermore, modules have their own fully independent ship systems, and flux & armor grids, meaning that you can have multiple shields on the same ship, or even weapons & PD that stay active while the main hull is venting or overloaded! Lastly, modules give players that satisfying sense of blasting a ship apart, of watching a boss get weaker with every section of the ship that they slaughter. You can further supplement this by adding destruction visuals that only show when the modules are blown up!

///IMAGE HERE

What are the disadvantages of modules?

The effects modules have on how a ship functions are deceptively complex, and a great deal of care should be taken when designing something with them. Below is the Alysse-class fast attack battleship from our upcoming mod, Knights of Ludd. This is a low tech faction made with ablative armor modules in mind!

///IMAGE HERE

So just what design considerations were taken when making this ship? For starters, modules can easily defensively overtune a ship and make it unfun to fight against, and this is doubly true for ablative armor. Alysse comes with four tanky armor modules, each with a built-in point defense weapon. Furthermore, the ship's defensive system activates damper fields on all four armor modules simultaneously. These factors could make the ship extremely difficult to destroy (and thus, not fun to fight) if not for a number of intentional weaknesses; for this example we will be looking at two of these in particular :

• A) The ship itself has very low hull & armor values

• B) there are a number of exploitable gaps between the armor plates. This allows players to 'snipe' the main hull, bypassing all of those tanky armor modules and rewarding them with a quick kill!

  As a side note, players cannot control ship modules; if the bulk of a ship's weapons are not on the main controllable section of a ship, players will not have a whole lot to do while piloting it.

Effects of Modules on AI

Modules are seen as ships by the AI, thus, a capital ship with 5 capital ship modules will be seen as SIX separate capital ships by enemy AI, who will be very hesitant to engage. A typical modular ship should have the normal size class for its main hull, while its modules should generally be classed as frigates!

///IMAGE HERE

Hostile AI will always target the center point of your ship. If we again use the Alysse-class as an example, we can see that in a 1v1 situation with both targets facing eachother head-on, the Alysse is at a disadvantage, as the hostile AI will naturally exploit the gap between her armor modules.

///IMAGE HERE

How does this affect the player experience?

A clever captain can use this information to their advantage : by turning the ship slightly, the hostile target is forced to shoot at the Alysse's armor modules.

///IMAGE HERE

AI Targeting Manipulation

The above sections come with some.. caveats. First off, a script is used to designate the modules as 'station PD drones' (rather than ships). This forces enemy AI to see the armor modules as a smaller threat and to (usually) focus on scarier targets, say, the main hull the armor is attached to.

///IMAGE HERE

Second, you may have noticed that the armor modules are further up than the center of the ship they are attached to. Given what we know about how AI targeting works, wouldn't enemy ships prioritize the armor modules as they are closer? Not quite!

This is because the armor module's center point is actually physically close to the main hull's center coordinates. This causes enemy ship AI to target roughly the same area, allowing it to exploit the gaps we put between armor modules. In the below image, the right-side armor module has its center coordinates placed where the module physically is. This results in enemy AI prioritizing the armor instead of the actual ship, which we do not want. However, The left-side module uses the previously mentioned offset center coords trick, resulting in enemy fire correctly targeting the center of our ship!

However, this causes problems with how the modules show in certain windows in-game, though they will look normal in the refit screen and combat. It is not recommended to use this technique on non-armor modules, and more code-savvy modders are encouraged to use the “hulk” technique mentioned below.

///IMAGE HERE

ALWAYS_DETACHES vs NEVER_DETACHES

These hidden hullmods drastically change how a ship will be fought. ALWAYS_DETACHES modules always, well.. detach from their parent hull when destroyed. This should be used for most modular ships and stations to avoid turning the fight in to a slog. Conversely, the NEVER_DETACHES hullmod will result in destroyed sections of a ship or station staying connected to the main hull when destroyed, effectively giving them a huge chunk of hull that must be shot through to reach the main hull. This should almost always be avoided unless exploitable gaps are present. Do note that this will discourge players from wanting to deal with the modules at all, as killing the main hull is still the fastest way to destroy a modular ship.

MODULE IMPLEMENTATION

Each module must have the following :

• [ship_data.csv] info
• a [.ship] file
• a [.variant] file

HINTS

• The main hull must have a SHIP_WITH_MODULES hint.
• Each module should have UNBOARDABLE, HIDE_IN_CODEX hints. - UNBOARDABLE : makes the module unrecoverable. - HIDE_IN_CODEX : module will not show in the codex. - UNDER_PARENT : module is placed underneath parent ship. - DO_NOT_SHOW_MODULES_IN_FLEET_LIST : hides the module from the fleet view, and left sidebar in refit.

TAGS

• module_hull_bar_only : hides flux UI from module on mouseover & lock-on; useful for modules that cannot overload, such as armor modules.
• module_no_status_bar : hides all UI elements from module on mouseover, and prevents lock-on.
• module_unselectable : module cannot be selected (or customized!) in the refit screen.
• module_refit_bright : module appears at normal brightness in the refit screen; this should always be paired with the above tag!

PLACEMENT

• Modules can be assigned to a STATION_MODULE weapon slot from the variant editor mode of the ship editor
• Module placement is determined by their "center" coordinates, and the location of their STATION_MODULE weapon node. - Module's "center" marker should almost always be placed on the center of the image, or else they will not display correctly on ship preview images. - Alternatively, "moduleAnchor" coordinates can be set in the module's .ship file; this is the point on the ship that will be centered on the module mounting point.
• Order of modules in the .variant file determines render order; Modules lower down on the variant full will appear above modules at the top of the list.
• Modules can be placed underneath their parent ship via the UNDER_PARENT hint.
• Weapons on the main hull render above ship modules, and below fighter modules. - Fighter modules will not collide with ships. [?] - Fighter modules will not show with the 'list ships' console command.

HULLMODS

• axialrotation : Rotates around axis.
• anchorrotation : Rotates around anchor attachment point. This can be used for neat things such as rotory shields when combined with the "shield_always_on" hullmod! - shield_always_on : shields are forced on at all times.
• always_detaches : Module will always break off from parent on death. This should go on most modules.
• never_detaches : Module will never break off; this should rarely ever be used, as dead modules can be very tanky.
• reduced_explosion : Reduces explosion radius and damage, this drastically lowers death explosion damage dealt to the parent ship.
• vastbulk : This goes on the parent ship; prevents death until all modules are destroyed.
• do_not_fire_through : Weapons on other modules will avoid firing over this module.
• shared_flux_sink : Handles some flux dissipation for all attached modules. If modules are lost during battle, the extra flux dissipation is redistributed among the remaining modules.

MISC

• Officer skills apply to the parent ship and all modules attached to it.
• Hullmods work on a per-module basis.
• A module with no OP is essentially unselectable even without the tag
• There is another hint DO_NOT_SHOW_MODULES_IN_FLEET_LIST that hides modules in fleet list and refit ship selector, though I don't know why anyone would want this