Well i decided to try out some of these mods and post my findings and observations on the forum because im obsessed with the game again, and im bored.
I settled with EXPERT v.1, Weps/System/Ammo tweaks, and the Firepower v.4 all at once thinking this would be easier than Elite.
The Weps/System/Ammo fixes some of the problems with ship hardware, which includes correcting passive 4 sensors to a more reasonable value, (70000 vs the default 20000) and it makes the secondary fusion ring/high yield fusion injector/anti matter pod actually add power to the ship. It also adjusts the ammo counts for some weps, such as gatling cannons, the meson cannon, and the missles. Gatling cannons now hold 2500 shells each and the sniper cannon sports 40 slugs instead of 20. My opinion is that the gatling cannon ammo might be a bit too high, and that 1000-1500 would be more reasonable. Early in the game, these weapons are far more powerful than anything else you can get your hands on, and i felt the 1000 ammo count helped to balance it out. All in all, a good mod and one which i will keep on permanently, with maybe a few adjustments to ammo.
Firepower.4 tweaks the player and ai sensors and makes them much less effective. It definetly makes the game more challenging to have to get withink 10 km, but it just seems a little unrealistic that i can spot the ships easily with the naked eye well before the sensors pick them up. It also tweaked the firepower of the capital ships to make them stronger, thought many other mods do the same.
Now for EXPERT v.1 I have actually tried elite before, and i thought this mod might be a good intermediate step between the default difficulty and elite. Well, with the exception of the sensors, i think EXPERT might be tougher than ELITE.
This mod took a brute force approach to making the game more difficult. I checked the sims/ship folder of elite and most of the loadouts werent as deadly as the ones i found in EXPERT. Most enemies including the corporate interceptors now carry autorepair 4s and deadshot missles. The autorepairs make early missles except distruptors almost pointless, since they can heal most of the damage inbetween hits.
The deadshots are easily the most frustrating addition; the tug had a hard time dodging missles even in default, and now almost all your enemies can shoot missles wich kill you in four hits or less and hit you 4/5 times. The deadshots accounted for most of my deaths while playing this mod.
Mauraders have heavy pbc's as their default weapon, and the entire navy as well as many other ships carry neutron pbc's. On the haven station aftermath mission, i won by sitting back and directed my neutron/heavy pbc wingmen to take out the mauraders, maybe firing a disruptor or two at large formations.
Finally, the readme states that he adjusted all ai ships to track two targets instead of the default one, which in my experience playing the game meant that only gatlings or massed wingmen fire could take down an enemy with reasonable success. And i watched the maurader destroyer on the mission where you defend the Blackeye L-point take a withering barrage of gun fire from the stepson destroyer and about 10 other ships and block virtually all of it. Cap ships have to be killed with cutting beams, or they must be disrupted.
If i learned one thing from this mod, its the importance of setting up the fight. 3-4 interceptors are a real challange in EXPERT with their high speeds, autorepair 4s and deadshots. Two or three can be taken down with a lighting quick strike from behind. When i got REM missles as a reward, i decided to give them a shot. They dont work too well against large targets like they did in I-war and unfortunetly they destroy normal cargo pods, but i found they are the perfect weapon against mega-freighter convoys. Corporations love to send out wings of interceptors with their convoys, and 6 are almost impossible to shoot down by hand before the rest start maneuvering and shooting their missles. One REM though has a big enough blast radius to kill all 6 if aimed right and it doesnt destroy the large pods. Using only REM missles and going after megas i actually had an easier time pirating than i did when first playing the game years ago. I realize most of you probably knew that, but it was fun finding a use for a weapon i thought was useless.
Well, im right at the mission where im about to get the patcom, and i think im going to disable EXPERT for now, and maybe try ELITE. I think elite makes the game more difficult by adjusting the sensors of the ship which means situational awareness is more important. Im not sure how to use the sensors and stealth systems though, and they seem to be important in ELITE. Will someone who has played through ELITE tell me how ship stealth works and how to use active sensors/signal masks/etc? Also, could you tell me what to expect from ELITE, and how it compares to what ive described from EXPERT?
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