Long Range Strikecraft Mod

Long Range Strikecraft Mod

Hello all! I’ve enjoyed a variety of Stellaris mods and I figure I would throw in my two cents into the ring.

– Description –

I made this mod to finally allow strike craft to be useful in the mid to late game. As long as you have the spotting laser on a ship, then any strike craft from this mod on the ships will fly out to engage enemy fleets at extremely long ranges. This means it now matters a bit more on how you enter into a hostile system, since the longer your distance from the enemy, the more time your strike craft have to engage the enemy fleet. I’ve added in three new techs for the long range bombers, and seven new components. I may add more into the future, including additional specialized crafts. Thank you very much for looking at this mod and I hope you have a lot of fun with it!

– New Components –

LONG RANGE SPOTTING LASER: This is an extremely long range laser that goes into any medium slot. It does essentially no damage, but allows the long range bombers to engage targets at almost any range.
LONG RANGE BOMBERS: The main component of the mod. These use a custom behavior to be able to engage at extremely long ranges. These bombers are essentially the XL-equivalent version of strike craft. These have very high damage, especially at the third tier, and high counts. If your enemy is using these, you will need to have point defense.
HEAVY FIGHTERS: A fighter that has much higher health and damage compared to the standard fighters in the base game. They have a higher count as well and should prove to be a useful defense against the long range bombers.
LONG RANGE SHIELD BOMBERS: A variation of the third tier long range bomber, these bombers have a strong attack against shields.

– AI NOTE –

*The AI will not use the long range spotting laser component, but they will use long range strike craft in some situations. So if you engage an enemy fleet at long range, they will engage you with their own strike craft. I’d still recommend using this mod in multiplayer if you want it to be a bit more of an engaging part of the combat.

– COMPATIBILITY NOTES –

*Compatible with likely all mods and savegame compatible. I took care to ensure the files are all named so to ensure they do not overwrite or conflict. Let me know if you have problems! Thank you for downloading and considering this mod.
* Although it is compatible (and fun!) to use with New Ship Classes, the supercarrier component of the carrier class, if used twice on the carrier, will allow a single carrier to deploy 180-240 strike craft depending on the tier. Apart from being extremely powerful, it does mean there will be 240 strike craft flying around at one time. So if it lags during this, there’s not much I can do for you. The mod is meant to be balanced to be basically one tier above vanilla XL weapons.