incompatible with Mayhem 3.15
no ETA for an update right now, sorry
- asymetric factions, evolving fleets
- new quests and events
- new diplomacy system
- improved combat & fleet AI
- streamlined gameplay
- newcomer friendly, removed time limits
- very customizable (t-file)
Download & Installation:
1.6 Beta:
https://github.com/temetvince/x3ap-swm3/releases
1.5.2 (latest stable version):
https://github.com/temetvince/x3ap-swm3
Diplomacy System:
- vanilla notoriety gets expanded with a new War Motivation mechanic
- reputation is much less important. Bad rep can be repaired quite easily by signing a formal peace treaty in the ministry of war
- your true long term relations are only determined by how much war motivation a faction has against you
- this system refreshes itself in slightly randomized 4-5 hour intervals. Whenever the following description refers to a "cycle" or "diplo cycle" it basically just means "4-5 hours later"
- this replaces most of the vanilla notoriety system.
- it only responds to territorial actions (killing ships is fine)
- only player vs. NPC. Factions don't have war motivation between each other
- Motivation rises when you expand your territory in ways others see as unjustified
- starts at 0 and as long as it is still below 50 and your rep is also good you are basically close allies
- at 50 motivation or higher you both have become rivals and there cannot be long lasting peace between you. Eventually they will declare war on you
- the first bits of war motivation must always be caused by player actions (stealing sectors or building in dejure sectors)
- once you have caused 50 motivation it will start to increase passively over time (they basically noticed that you are a problem)
- motivation can only go down in 3 ways. When they send fleets to invade you, if your empire looses sectors, or once your empire size massively outperforms theirs.
War Motivation of 100 or higher allows factions to:
1) declare war on you
2) use coordinated invasions against your sectors
Increasing Motivation:
- +5 for claiming a sector by destroying the 1st station
- +35 upon completely clearing a sector out (killing the final station)
- +50 upon conquering a dejure sector, even when it is currently empty (added new warning message).
- all of this can add together. Example: if you conquer a Republic sector which is also a dejure for the Empire you raise Republic motivation by 40 and Empire motivation by 50
- Rebel Alliance gets 150% of the motivation from these hostile territorial actions (because they have less sectors)
- passive motivation growth during rivalry: factions with at least 50 motivation get random additional 5-20 points over time if they are currently not at war with you (rivalry is like a cold war that eventually turns hot)
- all factions will disapprove when you are still a fairly small empire (8 sectors or less) and you rush expand your territory into more unknown sectors before utilizing the station support slots that you already have available. When you claim a new sector, each main faction will gain some war motivation. How much depends on how many free support slots you have not used in your other sectors. Sectors with only 1 free slot are not accounted for to make this effect less strict.
A new warning message will give you an average estimation how much motivation you would cause, but there is a bit of randomness (+/-30%). Rushing unknown sectors with only 1 station each might push certain factions over the edge of 50 war motivation and start a rivalry! - all increases of Motivation instantly apply at their full effect at the moment the player causes them
Motivation decreases:
- for each battlegroup that actually gets sent to invade you. The reduction is based on total fleet value and game stage. During early game an M2 attacking you is worth about 30 motivation points. Lategame requires much stronger fleets to reduce motivation by the same amount (getting motivation down gets more difficult)
- -3 points flat each time a Task Force attempts to raid one of your jump beacons
- Loosing a sector: -200 with each faction but divided by current amount of player sectors The actual conquerer faction looses double
- Abandoning a sector: -80 with each faction but divided by current amount of player sectors
- Transferring a sector: -60 with each faction but divided by current amount of player sectors. The receiver looses triple (this gets tripled again if its his correct dejure sector)
- if your empire is already bigger, smaller NPC empires fear you and passively loose Motivation just from being at war with you. Their loss rate is five times the size difference between your two empires either as relative loss in % or absolute loss in points depending on which one is higher.
Example:
You own 15 sectors, he owns 8 sectors and has 123 Motivation
Empire size difference in sectors is 7
Motivation loss rate is 7x5=35 so he looses 35% (43) of his Motivation and ends up with 80 Motivation
Lets say nothing changes and next cycle he would loose 35% again, but now that would only be an absolute loss of 28 points, so the minimum loss of 35 points takes over and 2 cycles later his Motivation reaches 0 and he could offer to become your vassal. - all reductions of Motivation only apply AFTER the next diplo update cycle.
- below 50 is always safe. It means that they either don't consider you to be a real faction worth their attention yet. Or they think that there is no quarrel between you:
- once your actions have caused motivation of at least 50 there will be a war some time in the future:
- if a war ends for whatever reason and the enemy has any motivation left it will carry over into the peace time
- note that motivation reductions have a delay. Your enemy can always get another tick of passive motivation growth. If that puts him back to 50 you will still be rivals.
- ending a war with 50 or more Motivation means that there probably weren't any real decisive battles yet. Your enemy believes that the winner is still undecided and he won't accept the current territorial situation forever. From his point of view its justified to come back and declare another war on you again. Even if this sometimes takes up to a few days. And he might get you by surprise, with stronger fleets stationed in completely different sectors from before.
- with 50 war motivation a faction becomes your rival and prepares for war. Their motivation starts to increase passively by 5-20 points on each cycle.
- this passive motivation growth only works when you are at peace. You can stop it immediately by attacking them yourself:
- any point of motivation above 100 equals a 0,5% risk that this factions declares a war against you if you are currently at peace (gets checked on each cycle)
- ending a war always provides a significant (but temporary) risk reduction, which makes it very unlikely that a faction can declare another war for some time
- new playthroughs start with the same temporary risk reduction bonus:
- at each diplo cycle all main factions which are currently at war with you (but not in a permanent war) will evaluate if they should offer peace
- you cannot offer them anything, but are free to accept their conditions at any time you like.
- making peace resets all your negative vanilla reputation back to 0 much like a truce would and it ends the current war by stopping hostile forces.
1) No peace offer
- when they don't want to end the war yet
- usually happens if the war just started recently
- but even later they can sometimes simply be too stubborn to offer peace, even if they already did offer it before (so you can't rely that a currently active offer will always remain available!)
- if they start a coordinated invasion against one of your sectors they will immediately refuse to make peace until the battle has been decided (but repairing notoriety by killing their enemies would still be possible)
- usually rather quickly you will be offered the option to pay them resources via interorbital storage in exchange for peace
- most often its actually really cheap but of course you are directly supporting their ship construction with this and NPCs build more efficient than you (that effectively makes your loss higher than whats actually taken from you)
- if your enemy has a strategic resource shortage he will offer you to pay him with only that at a 50% discount
- if they don't need anything specific they will always demand a good mix of ship crafting resources
- you can never receive reparations from NPCs, (even if they started the war)
- the amount that gets demanded depends mostly on how big your empire is and how long the war lasted. NOT on how much stuff you actually destroyed.
- this type of peace costs you nothing. You just click a button and your reputation gets repaired for free (the war ends)
- white peace is always offered if the war drags on for too long (multiple days).
- also if they loose sectors quickly that will scare them and they want to peace out earlier
- if their war motivation plummets all the way to 0 they'll think that they already invested too much into the war with you and also want peace sooner
- if they didn't even have any motivation to begin with they won't believe its worth it to fight you in a prolonged conflict (this would be the case if you just killed their ships but didn't destroy stations)
- if your empire has more sectors than theirs they will fear you and offer peace sooner and more frequently
Peace Conditions:
Which offer you get depends on a combination of 4 things.
- your vanilla notoriety (reputation rank)
- the War Duration (new)
- their War Motivation (new)
- and a good portion of randomness
- peace cost does not necessarily scale linear. There are certain special thresholds. For example when you have only accidentally slightly hurt your reputation and your rank is not worse than -2 you'll get a huge discount on peace cost. Basically if you just blow up a few freighters for some loot they will acknowledge that this doesn't really justify the extermination of your entire empire and all its citizens and they will quickly offer good peace conditions to end the war.
- Motivation also slightly increases peace cost and will NOT get removed by repairing your bad rep manually, nor by making formal peace!
- the Cartell (shady background superpower) always provides a rating of how much current peace cost deviates from average (the default cost is 200k per sector you own)
- greatly lowers peace cost over time
- very short war duration also completely prevents that you can get any peace offer at all
- very long duration (multiple days) always enables a white peace, regardless of all other factors. At some point they basically forgot why the war even started in the first place and just want to end it.
- the game also keeps track of how long your peaceful relations with each faction lasted. The risk for a war declaration from them gets reduced if the previous war was not very long ago. Even a completely outraged NPC with very high war motivation will likely respect a certain period of ceasefire before declaring another war to take revenge on you
Reputation:
- your reputation rank only determines if you can trade and if they may invade your sectors or shoot you on sight
- negative notoriety always means that you are at war
- 0 or positive means you are not at war, but this can be anything from you being very close allies or them hating you, but still resepecting a truce
- bad reputation only has a rather small impact on overall peace cost. Only the lowest reputation rank will raise their demands notably (thats only when you have destroyed a great amount of their assets)
- if you manage to repair your bad reputation manually by helping your enemy to kill his enemies will also end any war like usual and doesn't require that you also make formal peace from the ministry of war.
- major fleet operation which recruits multiple nearby Battlegroups
- against the Player it requires either a permanent war or more than 100 war motivation
- between NPCs it happens randomly
- factions like to target their dejure sectors. In these cases the recruitment range is higher and more fleets will migrate to take part in the operation
- coordinated invasions can have many secondary effects. Lots of Battlegroups might go into completely different areas. Current invasions are aborted and their previous locations might suddenly have much less military presence. It makes everything more dynamic, less predictable and creates opportunities
- needs at least 2 Battlegroups (max. 4)
- each BG must have a minimum strength
- fleets first travel to standby positions behind adjacent jumpgates and then wait on each other before the attack
- all ships fight to the death and never retreat
- the sector claim can never time out. Such operations only stop once the sector has fallen or all forces have been wiped out
- no warning for the player. When you get the actual invasion message the enemy fleets will already be pouring through your jumpgates
- no range restrictions. Any sector can be targeted. But there must be a minimum of 2 Battlegroups of sufficient strength in recruitment range
- the chance to attempt a coordinated invasion gets checked for each faction seperately on each diplo update cycle.
- each faction can only have 1 operation currently active.
- the risk for the player to get targeted at all is usually very low. Its 0,2% per point of war motivation above 100 and an additional 4% flat risk independent of motivation if you are in a permanent war.
- once a faction attempts to target you, the chance that they are actually able to launch an operation is usually pretty high, because they check ALL player sectors if they would have enough strong Battlegroups in recruitment range and then start an operation if even just 1 of your sectors would work
- against the player 3 out of 4 times they must target their own dejure sectors. That means that you can greatly reduce your own risk by not controlling any of these!
- maximum recruitment range is 5 jumps on the galaxy map (8 when the correct dejure owner targets a dejure sector). The distance gets measured from the current flight destination of the Battlegroup
- Rebel Alliance has much lower requirements on minimum fleet strength and no maximum recruiting range (they can recruit from almost all their Battlegroups)
- NPC vs. NPC use a much simplified method. Each faction that doesn't already run a coordinated invasion simply always attempts to target 1 completely random non-player sector. 50% of the time this would also need to be their own dejure sector to work.
Most often these attempts will fail, because the sector is not claimable, not their own dejure when its required, or they already own the sector themselves. It may also be a Cartell protectorate, unknown sector, protected by a truce with the owner, owned by Xenon or whatever. Or its simply too far away and they don't have enough strong BGs in range. - obviously you can only get targeted if you are at war with the faction (negative vanilla reputation)
- NPC sectors get claimed immediately so that the player sees that that sector is currently blocked and cannot be claimed/conquered
- Player sectors only get a hidden claim at first. It just prevents that other NPCs can put their own claim on your sector
- up to 4 Battlegroups can get drafted to take part in the operation.
- in the following positioning phase each Battlegroup regroups to the closest jumpgate which is leading straight into the target sector. Different Battlegroups might choose different jumpgates and attack from multiple angles.
- once the last BG has reached its jumpgate the attack phase gets triggered for all fleets at once. If the target is a player sector it is only now properly claimed and all BG immediately invade
Living on the limit.
- optional t-file challenge
- new game required
- only 1 starting sector. all remaining unknown sectors will become Mandalorian
- early territorial expansion is very difficult
- all factions slowly go hostile with you
- keep the right factions appeased for as long as possible
- bend the knee to save yourself!
- all neutral corp trading stations trade with every ware
- 2 additional perk slots on all your Outposts
- double income from tax perk
- start with 2000 global research discount
- you can stop motivation growth of a faction by giving up your independence and becoming a tributary
- no Midgame Quickstart available
- Midgame phase (Mandalorian arrival) starts with your first sector (not 4), Lategame phase starts at 10 player sectors (not 20)
- the Mandalorians immediately occupy ALL unknown sectors in the galaxy! (but they only get starting military fleets of usual quantity, many of their sectors will be very vulnerable!)
- passive war motivation growth is always active (doesn't require you to cause 50 motivation first)
- the game keeps track of how often you repaired bad reputation into good reputation
During your entire playthrough you can only end 5 wars (all factions combined). This includes formal peace from ministry of war and manual vanilla rep repair. Once you used up the limit and your reputation with a faction becomes negative again it will be a permanent war. It doesn't matter who started the war.
- this is your only chance to aquire a long term 'friend'
- works a bit like paying protection money to the mafia
- always available for every faction
- your empire must be smaller than 10 sectors
- you cannot be in a permanent war yet
- they won't accept if you control any of their dejure sectors (transferring sectors doesn't require rep rank 6 anymore)
- immediately repairs all negative reputation. This does count towards the 5 peace treaties limit so you might want to subjugate yourself before a war even breaks out
- clears all War Motivation against you and stops the passive growth (prevents all future wars for this faction)
- every diplo cycle you gain 2 favor points with your master but 10% of all your money in all bank accounts and 10% of all resources in all cargoholds (stations + ships) get transfered to him! (only resources, no final products like lasers, missles or shields)
- never get negative rep with your master (don't attack)
- never have him gain war motivation against you (don't claim his dejure sectors)
- never grow your empire above 15 sectors
Once you break even just 1 condition your master will declare a permanent war against you.
You can be tributary of multiple factions. But doing this with all 6 will frequently take a large share of all your cash and resources which effectively ruins your economy and makes it practically impossible to ever grow powerful.
Warlord Tips & Strategy:
- for about 2 days you should be completely fine, but there will be a point when almost every faction has reached a critical level of war motivation.
- surviving the first half of your playthrough without a master might be impossible but you can also try to keep your independence in some hidden corner of the galaxy
- becoming a tributary is very effective to defuse a dangerous faction which has lots of war motivation against you. You can use the income in Favor points to call for some protection or even have their fleets aid your own expansion.
- some factions like the Republic, Rebels or Mandos will loose a lot of their punch or even die from special plot events during the lategame. Breaking free from such a faction will be much easier
- the contract is always a one way ticket. Once you're in you can only get out again by starting a permanent war with your master. So when your empire is still small it may be best to just swallow up your pride and pay up! Once you have secretly grown much stronger you can flip the table and overthrow your master! The OCV also arrives much earlier and the chaos they bring might even help covering your betrayal.
- Timing is everything during the Warlord Challenge.
Galactic Empire:
Lore:
- Phase: early Empire days (up to Episode IV) with basic Star Destroyer 1, basic TIEs and mostly carrier tactics
- Phase: Episode VI tech and beyond, adds many advanced light/medium ships
- Phase: adds a few next-gen SDs from the sequel movies + more heavy fighters
- War Machine: good military in all phases, especially defense fleets
- Rebel Hunt: special permission to completely wipe Rebel Alliance out (that actually wastes time and is a disadvantage!)
- rarely looses battles. High chance to reach endgame in good shape. Second most powerful endgame fleets.
- greater risk to get targeted by the Rebel Cell ability (Empire's primary way to loose territory)
- battlegroups waste time reconquering rebel sectors
Rebel Alliance:
Lore:
- Phase: early Rebellion days, old tech and no MonCala cruisers
- Phase: Episode VI
- Phase: -
- Underdogs: weak fleets, especially at gamestart, less + scattered starting territory
- Sympathy: produces cheaper due to secret funding and donations
- Safe Havens: Rebel faction can be larger than usual and still be ignored by other factions (not invaded)
- Always on the Run: Rebel sectors never protected against the Empire
- Rebel Cells: important special ability which causes random NPC sectors to defect to the Alliance! Doesn't work against small factions and Empire sectors are always more likely to turn than others. When the Rebel faction is small its likely that multiple sectors turn at once. A large Rebel faction looses this ability. (pending: A large New Republic faction in phase 3 also disables this ability.)
- HyperJump specialists: Rebel outpost stations work like jump beacons! Instant teleport across their territory.
- Deep Strikers: naturally invades distant targets way behind the territory border, invasions can also last longer
- almost never grows large and powerful without player help but is very difficult to wipe out completely
- unstable. Sectors are 'wandering' on the galaxy map. Looses often, but gains new Rebel Cell sectors in remote locations
- small-medium Rebels often ignored by other factions. But never safe near the Empire
- squadrons jump across the galaxy and over hostile territory
- invades unpredictable and everywhere
- starts the game without any large capitals but later builds MonCalamari cruisers in limited numbers
New Republic:
Lore Summary:
- Phase: problematic founding period theme. Lack of ship crews, low numbers.
- Phase: same as 1 but unlocks advanced post-Endor capitals
- Phase: galactic dominance theme, 12-25 NSY (Legends, after beating Dark Empire until Yuzan Vongh conflict). Also adds a few resistance ships from the canon sequel movies
- Tech Victory: superpower potential, but needs to survive phase 1 and 2
- Crew Shortage: low numbers across all squadrons. Only fixed in lategame.
- Turtle Focus: decent rearguard defense squadrons
- (pending: Katana Fleet: special lategame event grants a super powerful battlegroup to enable faction comeback)
- most powerful endgame fleets
- advanced ships, but expensive and limited numbers
- faction usually looses hard until becoming a minor faction which is simply ignored by other NPC empires.
- should flip the table with free Katana fleet during endgame. But these are just lots of old Dreadnought cruisers with bad shields which will slowly die from receiving permanent hull damage during most battles.
- potential to grow into a monster faction with insane economy boost and many advanced post-Endor capships.
Separatist CIS:
Lore:
- Phase: pre-Clone Wars (Episode 1) mostly just Droid fighter swarm galore
- Phase: early-mid Clone Wars (Episode 2+)
- Phase: late Clone Wars (Episode 3)
- Rigid Swarmer Tactics: heavy focus on cheap droid fighters. Later they adapt and go heavier, but never fully give up this fleet doctrine
- fragile ships, frequent losses
- some squadrons are pure Droid fighters which travel fast!
Republic:
Lore:
- Phase: Old Republic up to Episode 1 (Era of Peace theme)
- Phase: Clone Wars
- Phase: -
- Rusaan Reformation: very bad early military
- System Autonomy: large starting territory
- Negotiators: Republic faction can be MUCH larger than usual and still be ignored by other factions (not invaded). Ability gets lost after phase 1.
- The Clone Wars: unique phase 2 boni. Massive militarized buildup with new ship types. Transition takes ~1-2 days
- easy early game prey. But Negotiator ability ensures that faction reaches midgame still somewhat capable.
- Clone Wars unlock Venator carrier tactics with heavy fighters and lots of supporting frigates
- faction might grow large on its own after reaching the Clone Wars era, but if initial losses were too much to handle they also might need your help.
- faction starts with huge economic advantage and gets buffed greatly during the midgame. But if you want to support them you should really use that middle stage of your playthrough. Lategame they fall behind again.
Mandalorians:
Lore:
- Phase: Death Watch terrorists
- Phase: Mandalorian Wars theme (Crusade against galaxy)
- Phase: -
- Late Arrivals: faction doesn't own sectors at gamestart but sabotages and raids factories
- Mandalorian Uprising: real empire gets created in a special event.
- Shady Buisness: not targeted by pirates and mandalorian outposts double down as pirate bases!
- Deep Strikers: naturally invades distant targets way behind the territory border, invasions can also last longer
- Rush: more efficient production during phase 2. Advantage lost in lategame.
- (pending: major plot decision)
- hostile against all factions but starts neutral with player
- passively hurts surrounding economy with pirate spawns
- aggressive start. Mandos arrive with strongest invasion fleets against a rather unprepared gameworld. After 1-2 days the other navies usually have catched up
- most ships have much fewer different weapon choices
- Laser energy is basically irrelevant
- no laser knockback effects
- AI claims more unknown sectors
- all ships got video goggles and Transporter Device preinstalled
- faster repair rate
- hacking UI markers
- maintenance factor restoration in Drydock outposts
- general invasion protection threshold below which small factions get ignored and no longer invaded by others increased from 3 to 5 sectors (certain SWM3 features have unique exceptions to this rule)
- slower pirate respawns > delay is 50% longer
- +50% delay between large Sith (Xenon) invasions which got capships
- maintenance cost increases 50% slower
- unlocking the final plot stage only requires to terraform 3 planets instead of 10 (there is an alternate trigger at 20 player sectors)
- no higher research costs for random ship types
- disabled Mayhem's coalition system
- additional waits in the capship turret script (this doesn't hurt at all and performance is supposedly better)
- no NPC factions builds only half size squadrons when they own few sectors (in SWM3 NPCs don't need this, they get unique production discounts)
- AI ships which are waiting very long to be outfitted but can't due to a lack of resources get their weapons for free after just 1h instead of having to wait 4h
- gameworld can't change much unless player reaches certain empire progress
- factions start very weak and escalate from early to middle to lategame
- those 3 phases are separated by 2 milestones that you must achieve
- owning 4 sectors
- completion of the terraforming quest (but requires only 3 planets) OR owning 20 sectors
- no Xenon difficulty upscaling after certain gametime
- OCV waves are MUCH easier.
- true endgame is a megawar between Galactic Empire and New Republic
Special Rules Overview
Early game:
- all fleets are much weaker, especially Battlegroups
- the Republic starts as the largest faction but has the weakest military
- Rebels start as smallest faction
- Rebels will occasionally gain new sectors with a special ability
- Mandalorian faction arrives with small territory but most powerful fleets. Starts conquering sectors
- other factions are mostly helpless but slowly build powerful fleets over the next 1-2 days. Especially Republic becomes powerful
- if a faction owns 40% of the galaxy it stops invading others
- 1 day OCV timer starts
- New Republic receives powerful Battlegroups for free
- total war of Galactic Empire vs. New Republic
- no invasion restrictions, both factions can wipe each other out
- Rebels and Republic disappear
- Mandalorians become very weak
- put some ship crafting resources into your Interorbital Storage. The freight exchange takes some time and already having a stockpile in there allows you to accept cheap reparations as soon as they get available.
- blacklist an entire faction to keep your worker ships away from their territory. This can be useful if their motivation and the risk that they declare war on you is high
- dejure sectors are a burden. Conquering them causes lots of war motivation and quadruples your risk to get targeted with coordinated invasions by the rightful owner. If the sector is not exceptionally good it might be worthwhile to leave it be.
- but if your empire is small enough you still get lots of motivation reduction from loosing sectors. To appease someone you can try to conquer a dejure sector and hand it over to the rightful owner. This will give you a net Motivation benefit as long as your empire is not larger than 5 sectors.
- consider how much of the motivation penalty for unknown sector rushing you want to risk. It can be well worth it to quickly claim the best sectors for yourself. But maybe try to stay below 50 motivation with every faction. Thats the sweetspot and the only way to remain peaceful.
- war motivation of 50 or higher can be difficult to get down again. And doing it peacefully is almost impossible!
- you can customize a lot in the t-file. Switch off individual features like coordinated invasions or war declarations against the player. Or only get the benefits of peace treaties without any downsides of the diplomacy system. This can be done by setting the motivation multiplier to 0.
- Tax can now be upgraded. This is especially helpful during permanent wars. But its more of a perk sink and usually not worth doing on your first couple Outposts.