golightlyb / tao

Total Avorion Overhaul

Tao - Total Avorion Overhaul

[ Install (Steam Workshop) | Changelog | Roadmap | Donate/sponsor ]

Tao is a total-conversion mod for Avorion.

It's "headline features" are:

• less overwhelming loot system
• galaxy & combat overhaul
• massively better performance
• quality of life improvements

What to expect

• a fun sandbox experience
• a reasonably balanced "1.0"-quality release.

What not to expect

• Any story, or tutorial. Play the original first!
• Multiplayer hasn't been tested at all.

Features

• inventory

  • less focus on managing heaps of random loot
  • reduced trading goods from more than 150 to less than 50.
  • fewer weapons and subsystems, but with clearer roles
  • no randomised weapon or system bonuses or variants
  • main progression is material & rarity

• performance

  • all around fewer stutters, better framerates, and shorter loading screens
  • plan cache system
  • optimised asteroid plan generation speed
  • fixed and improved wreckage cleanup script
  • some expensive shaders simplified
  • salvaged and mined materials appear directly in cargo bay if possible rather than becoming entities
  • no more fighter spam
  • fewer asteroids, but arranged in a way that feels much denser

• combat

  • fewer guns with clearer roles
  • fun coaxial weapons from the start
  • slowly-rotating main guns for battleship style combat
  • no "accumulatingBlockHealth" - ships can now be broken in half
  • vastly reduced turret slots, but...
    • weapons don't take up more slots as they get bigger
    • instead, each type of weapon takes up a specific number of slots (e.g. artillery cannons take 4, dirsuptors take 2, autocannon takes 1...)
    • so you have fewer weapons
    • but as you progress those weapons can get bigger and better
  • NPC ships can equip coaxial weapons (front side only) and actually use them properly.

• story

  • blank slate with existing story removed completely
  • may be extended by other mods in future

• overhaul

  • completely new goods, systems, weapons, stations, events, sectors, etc.
  • completely new station founding mechanic
  • completely new equipment and weapon purchasing UIs
  • pirates only attack outer sectors
  • no Xsotan :p

• new features

  • proximity mines

• quality of life enhancements

  • hidden stashes can now be interacted with at transporter range
  • some Avorion bug fixes
  • refining is instant - no more waiting at refineries
  • Torpedo bulk auto-purchase-and-install at spacedocks

Known Issues

Can't sell newly purchased equipment back to spacedock

Close the spacedock dialog then open it again. The sell tab will now be populated properly.

Spacedocks not able to build ships

Exit to your drone with T and build by pressing B.

However, you will have a lack of starting crew.

Current workaround for that is to build a second small ship that has enough starting crew to be manouverable and use that as a crew shuttle.

Additional damage resistance shows as a weakness instead (can't fix)

This is merely a cosmetic issue with Avorion. Rest assured that weapons testing has verified that the resistance is still applied as intended.

FAQ

How do I get past the center barrier?

Wormholes can now pass through the barrier.

How do I found a new station?

Open the player menu with P and go to the new station founding tab.

How do I get more building resources / how do I refine ores and scrap?

Go to an ore processor for ores, and a recycling station for scrap.

How do I report a bug or make a suggestion?

Please feel free to make a GitHub issue or comment on the Steam workshop page!

Can I support the project?

Yes!

• Graphics - can you make promotional graphics e.g. a logo for the mod? Can you make models that can appear in the universe?
• Video making - can you make a video of you playing the mod?
• Financial - v1.0 was a month-long side-project. Can you sponsor me montly or as a once-off for future work?
• Programming - pull requests are welcome! (I'll actually unzip the files at some point; I don't normally develop on Windows so don't have git installed...)
• Social - tell your friends! :)

Copying

See LICENSE.txt but basically you can do whatever you want as long as you keep the credit.

tao's Issues

Mining lasers don't work with autofire

Systems are empty

Only mod enabled is this one, the starting system is populated, but all other systems i warp to are completely empty.

Can't refine newly mined ores or salvaged scrap in inventory

This is a priority to fix. In the mean time a workaround is to exit to menu and re-enter the game, at which point you can refine resources properly.

Turret needs more than one slot

From that here
"vastly reduced turret slots, but...
weapons don't take up more slots as they get bigger
so you have fewer weapons
but as you progress those weapons can get bigger and better"
I got the feeling turrets size isn't relevant for the slots they take. But as you can see a bigger turret still take up more slots.
Not sure whether it was intentional and I just misunderstood.

Spacedocks not able to build ships

Spacedocks (renamed Shipyards I am guessing?) no longer have the ability to build or randomly generate new ships.
This may not be an issue if there are still Shipyards in the game elsewhere, but then that is another bug that Shipyards do not spawn in your home sector at start.

Presents as problem in a few ways:

• Can no longer randomly generate designs for ships based on AI seed
• Can no longer auto-supply new ships with "crew" so if you build a ship via B menu with building block and are too far away from dock you cannot hire any crew because your ship has 0 thrust/maneuverability from lack of crew.

Needs update to current Avorion version

Missing translation strings

I'm not capable of writing translations, but I think supporting l11n/i18n is super important.

Two tasks here:

• Create a template translation file with all the new strings so that it is easy for a translator to provide translations
• And in the process of doing so, ensure all modded strings have the correct annotations and comments in the lua code to support translation (not all of them do).

Avorion crashes with "too many open file handles" after a long time.

Due to a bug in Avorion, after the game has been running for some time (even if returning to the main menu), it will stop being able to open files and crash, which happens faster on dev mode due to opening new files more often.

I'm not sure but I might have I ran into this recently even with dev mode disabled. There may be a few instances where the mod exacerbates this by loading some scripts conditionally, I'm not sure, but it's something to note if it happens again and investigate if there's any way to mitigate this mod side.

Mod breaks Tutorial

If you start the game with Tutorial enabled when you get to the part where you click on Missions for your new quest, it is blank and it says "No Mission Available". This locks the screen and keeps the tutorial text up because you cannot click anywhere else. Also disables the ESC key so you can't exit the game. You can only force quit out of the game, which upon entering the game.. re-enables the tutorial, in which the whole cycle repeats itself.

This does not happen if you start a game with no tutorial enabled.

Additional damage resistance shows as a weakness instead

This is merely a cosmetic issue with Avorion. Rest assured that weapons testing has verified that the resistance is still applied as intended.

Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed by modding and must be fixed by the Avorion devs.

Xsotan event

I somehow got the Xsotan attack event on a ai (outside) sector after a few "signal get stronger" messages.
I thought they don't exists.

Can't sell newly purchased equipment back to spacedock

Workaround: close the spacedock dialog then open it again. The sell tab will now be populated properly.

Avorion displays Picture UI elements upside down

This is an issue in the next mod update:

Either the Picture, or Picture:fadeTo(), is upside down, due to an upstream bug with avorion.

The rocket is supposed to be pointing up. It looks even worse with some of the other icons.

Workaround: stand upside down or tip the computer monitor over

Before release, I need to make copies of the icons that are vertically flipped and use them instead.