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Explorer's Arsenal [3.12]

This mod allows you to research upgrades to the various space fauna & event weapons in the game as well as develop special new weapons to put into X sized weapon slots.


I'm currently burned out on Stellaris and moved back to Crusader Kings. Eventually I'll come back and update all my mods, but I make no promises on the timeframe. In the mean time I give my blessing to anyone who wants to make an up-to-date re-release of my mods. I'd just appreciate a mention as the original creator. Now back to the mod.


The mod adds the following weapon upgrades:

For Cutting Lasers:
- UV Cutting Laser (requires Mining Drone Lasers & UV Lasers)
- X-Ray Cutting Laser (requires UV Cutting Lasers & X-Ray Lasers)

For Energy Siphons:
- Improved Energy Siphon (requires Frequency Tuning & Plasma Throwers)
- High Energy Siphon (requires Improved Energy Siphons & Plasma Accelerators)

For Cloud Lightning:
- Focused Cloud Lightning (requires Cloud Lightning and Ion Disruptors)
- Supercharged Cloud Lightning (requires Focused Cloud Lightning & Phased Disruptors)

For Null Void Beams:
- Null Void Depleter (requires Null Void Beam & Plasma Throwers)
- Null Void Eliminator (requires Null Void Depleters & Plasma Accelerators)

All upgrades are extrapolated from their base version, following the standard weapon progression and are mostly tier 2 technologies for the first upgrade and tier 3 technologies for the second upgrade. The exceptions are Focused and Supercharged Cloud Lightning technologies, which are tier 3 and 4 respectively. For comparison UV Lasers are a tier 2 technology, X-Ray Lasers are a tier 3 technology and Gamma Lasers are a tier 4 technology.

The mod does not add upgraded Amoeba Flagella because I already included them in my Starfighters! mod.



The mod adds the following entirely new weapons:
- Focused Particle Lance (requires X-Ray Cutting Lasers & Particle Lance)
- Electron Flail (requires Supercharged Cloud Lightning & Arc Emitters & Dark Matter Drawing)
- Null Void Hyperbeam (requires Null Void Eliminators & Plasma Cannons)

The new weapons are all tier 5 technologies (highest tier in the vanilla game) and use X size weapon slot. The Electron Flail also comes with a T size weapon slot variant, so you can build full penetration titans. I originally also planned T sized variants for the other two new weapons, but T sized Focused Particle Lance had too much overlap with the existing Ancient Ruination Glare and the Null Void Hypebeam is too specialized to make sense as a T size weapon. The X slot variant will already wipe all shields off a typical battleship so there's no point in making a stronger version, since all the extra damge would be wasted due to anti-armor penalties.

Focused Particle Lance does 800-2000 damage (-50% vs shield, +50% vs armor & hull) with a 5 day cooldown and has 80 range. Compared to a Tachyon Lance it has inferior alpha strike due to doing almost the same initial damage at much shorter range, but it also has nearly double rate of fire, it's deadlier vs hull and the shots are more efficient because it fires only after Kinetic Artillery, so by that time the target will have depleted shields.

Electron Flail does 1-1300 damage (100% shield & armor penetration) with a 5 day cooldown and has 80 range. It's essentially an Arc Emitter with reduced range and double rate of fire. The T sized variant does 2-1690 damage with a 5 day cooldown and has 120 range. It's essentially a Focused Arc Emitter with double rate of fire and somewhat reduced range.

Null Void Hyperbeam does 400-1000 damage (+400% vs shield, -50% vs armor & hull) with a 10 day cooldown and has 250 range. Compared to Giga Cannon it's relatively weak overall, but more effective vs shields, it has extremely long range and it is an energy weapon, so it uses the same repeatables as the weapons you are most likely to pair it up with (plasma, lasers).



This is a gameplay altering mod and as such it will prevent you from getting achievements.

The mod mostly works throug addition, but it still overwrites a few things:
1) .../Stellaris/common/component_sets/00_weapon_special.txt (to order the components properly)
2) The entries for the original Cutting Laser, Energy Siphon and Cloud Lightning weapons (in order to make them auto-upgrade)

If another mod overwrites the same thing that will cause minor compatibility issues, but the two mods should still mostly work together, especially if the other mod is loaded after this one. That will break the auto-upgrading to the advanced variants of space fauna weapons and mess up the component ordering in the interface, but the weapons will still work just fine.



I would be grateful if you could rate the mod with either thumbs up or thumbs down. If you rate it with a thumbs up and you really enjoy it, please consider also marking it as a favorite. If you like this mod you might also like one of my other mods.

I also created a Discord server[discord.gg]