Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

When creating a new empire, there's the possibility to choose between three overall minster styles; defensive, aggresive and moderate, or some such. Do you happen to know what exactly they do, and if they're available for the pre-made AIs or only for player-created AIs? Can't remember having seen that setting in any of the AI files.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

If there was any difference between them (which there is not at this time) they would make your minister's behave differently.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Top job with the mod!

I would explain the difference by imagining a game of tennis. Playing with Stock SEV is like playing the people on the local 4pm bus using ping-pong bats, cricket bats and tennis rackets. Playing with the Balance mod is like playing the local C-grade team using good tennis rackets - quite a lot more fun.
I guess you could also say the court will be one of the best in the world once the bugs under it which keep making holes are exterminated...

I sent some problems (below) I noticed playing the Balance Mod 1.01 with SEV 1.20 & sent to se5@malfador.com (att), but some may be caused by the mod - haven't heard back yet.

- Loading hides system objects (png & save att) Loading a game showing the same system hides all system objects. Moving the view to another system then back fixes this, but if you have only explored one system you need to restart the app.

- Load Game - Game Info - Mod text not moved with window (png att) Saw this making a screen shot for the one above.

- Combat icons in main view after new or load game from combat (png att) Requires app restart to fix.

- Empire names wrong in treaties. It shows mostly blank and sometimes another empire where it should show mine. I was setting (trying to) treaties to get other races to migrate to my planets, but they never did. See Liniha counter treaty - migration options screwed.gam or Empire name not displayed in treaty with some empires 1& 2.PNG

- Treaty migration not working - probably caused by the empire names thing.

- Col. status icon - pop bar showing past limit (save & png att) Here, a planet has 8000 out of 2000 population, and the pop bar icon goes over the top. This game I wanted to check out alliances but gave up after so many strange things like this made dealing with the other players pointless.

- Can not accept a countered alliance like you can with a treaty. Saw this in the same game as the Col. status icon problem above.

- Ships move very slowly when showing long movement lines. I noticed this with a ship with repeat orders picking up troops which took 5+ turns. With very fast icon movement settings, there is an extra delay of 1+ second between moving a single sector when showing movement lines.

- Can't upgrade, retrofit, mothball etc. ships in a fleet.

- Can't upgrade, retrofit yada yada with multiple ships selected.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

This are primarily SE:V issues, but some of them I can address (most of the treaty items) via the scripts. The counter-proposing treaty or amend treaty options I believe are two diplomatic actions where the proposing Empire's name is invalid and therefore appears as blank. I had meant to fix that for v1.02 but forgot about it.

I haven't touched Alliances so they are just as screwed up as in stock. Eventually this part of the game will be addressed by the mod.

The load a game from a game image error was actually fixed previously but somewhere around 1.1x it got borked again. Running the turn though will restore the images.

No retrofitting/mothballing in fleets is intentional - although you can retrofit a fleet of the exact same ships. I also believe you can select multiple ships of the exact same type to retrofit as well. Anyhow the lack of a retrofit window like in SE:IV certainly makes retrofitting more tedious in general.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

I like the new protectorate treaties the AI is sending.

Re: Balance Mod
 

I'm surprised you're lagging that far behind. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Actually they're not new though - it was a problem with a score calculation and the fact that the AI never proposed another treaty if one existed.

Re: Balance Mod
 

In fact, the Xi'chung proposed it on first contact. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

I'll have you know my empire is ranked first and shows every sign for staying there for the rest of the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif

Re: Balance Mod
 

Any other AI observations from v1.02?

Re: Balance Mod
 

They are upgrading treaties, in logical steps.

From a Non-Agression, to a Trade, or Trade and research, to adding other items in.

However, I've a question. In my current single player game, I'm playing with 8 computer controlled empires. I've met all 8 and have treaties with all but one, whom I'm at war with. In the last few turns, I've taken over first place in points, after doing so, many of the races attitudes towards me droped, I'm maybe 250,000 points above the 2nd place player. So why did they suddenly just all drop?

Re: Balance Mod
 

Hmm, evil empire? Not sure how much of a lead is required to trigger it though.

Re: Balance Mod
 

It could just be a factor of how many ships and colonies you have in their sight, which in most cases will make them angrier.

Re: Balance Mod
 

I haven't had a chance to play a great deal, but it seems that the AI is now relatively competitive in terms of ship numbers, resources &c, but it still doesn't make effective use of it's ships.

It does something I've seen in a lot of 4x games, including SEIV and various Civ incarnations. It moves its ships around in small groups, apprantly at random. Whereas what those ships should be doing is sitting on important planets unless the AI is at war, in which case they should be off attacking enemy planets, in groups of 20 or 30 not 7 or so at a time.

I predict that a humam player could win a war against an AI with equivilant ship design and technology and a 2:1 advantage simply because of the AI's fleets are all over the place.

Consider the attached screen shot. It's a small map, so this is the Phong's only system. They're at war with both the Norak and the Sergetti. The Norak ship has been sitting there ever since I put my ship in the system to observe the AI's fighting a war with each other. The Sergetti planet is more recent, but it's been there for 3 or 4 turns and hasn't been attacked.

Now, I know whatever you did to make the AI attack targets works because my own ship got attacked exploring another empires system, an I'm seeing plenty of combats between the AIs during turn processing. But one thing I noticed in my last game is that an AI fleet, if it has orders, will not cancel them to do something else. That is, if you have a single ship near one of their fleets it's safe from attack because the fleet probably has orders to go somewhere and won't break off to attack your ship.

Now, according to the score card the Phong have 18 ships. Where are they? Off on some mysterious errand, that's where. And while they're excuting orders to move about randomly, they won't be given orders to attack anything. And when ships do get attack orders, there's two few of them to make an effective attack force because the empire's fleet is so fragmented. Meanwhile, any sentient player can just bulldoze the barely defened AI planets with just a few ships almost irriguardless of their fleet size.

Getting the AI to use it's ships probably is, in my estimation, the last major obsitcle for a really decent, competitive AI.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

I agree. In my current revision I'm going to clear the fleet order's each turn so I can effectively assign a top priority for the fleet in that turn.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

But wont that ruin long-term AI plans, like attacking other empire's colonies? At least if they're 1-2 systems away.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

The last thing you want is the AI to have several turns worth of movement/orders to a target without checking the conditions around it. If attacking that colony is their first priority than they will have an order to move to that planet and attack. On the next turn, they will likely receive the same order since they'll be even closer to the target and it will be an even stronger priority to attack. The only time this will change is if new info is available that says there is another target closer or the planet is now too heavily defended etc. Overall the attack priority will be based on target strength, distance, and perhaps a few other small modifiers and a randomness factor to throw off human players.

Fleets currently are sent on long wayward patrols, but that will be eliminated as well with next update. Instead I'm implementing the scout and patrol design types for frigates which will be instructed to travel to defense and attack systems where they can keep targets in sight range. This will keep the AI's attack locations more consistent from turn to turn, giving fleets a chance to attack if appropriate.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

One thing I didn't see is the AI laying mines on warp points. They lay mines in sectors with colonies, which is very good, but warp points would be still a good place for mines too.

Re: Balance Mod
 

Thanks for your earlier info on those issues.

A little while ago I had a game with team mode (don't know what version), and the AI seemed to fight each other more than the fought me. It was quite funny actually. Several times when my scout went through a warp point guarded by two 'teamed' AI fleets. They would blast each other to smithereens while he made a casual getaway to explore the rest of the system.
The game I had yesterday with 1.02, I took control of the computer players for a couple of turns & created an alliance so they wouldn't do this again. I only had to start it, and soon all the players were added to the alliance - including me! They don't even ask - you just get a message saying how they are coming to burn your cities, and you are now in their alliance... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I managed to change the alliance rules so that they needed 100% of the votes to make a change which stopped that.
A possible improvement may be to allow the AI to create an alliance for team mode, or for normal games as well, but the alliance stuff seems a bit dodgy at the moment, so this may not be such a good idea.

The other thing I looked at was the population transport, as I was considering turning this on for my empire. At the time I had two races breathing different atmospheres, and from what I could tell from looking at the script it was purely based upon numbers and distance, so may mix these making planets domed when they need not be.

Re: Balance Mod
 

One more observation: the AI researches the other two colonization technologies quite late in the game, which slows its growth.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

This if fixed in the next version. There was an error with the script function that returned the number of units in space, so the AI was always launching its mines and not keeping any in cargo for Mine Layers to pick up and drop off.

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AI's in team mode should be making partnership treaties - I'll have to double check to make sure that is happening all the time.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

These are the current general orders for AI ships and fleets in the mod:

Attack Ships:
- Supply / Retrofit / Repair
- Attack Priority 1 - Defense locations
- Attack Priority 2 - Attack locations
- Attack Priority 3 - Attack any valid targets (Usually aggressive races)
- Explore / Survey
- Scout Priority 1 - Non-colony systems with enemies
- Scout Priority 2 - Non-colony systems with friendlies
- Patrol Priority 1 - Warp points that lead to enemy systems
- Patrol Priority 2 - Warp points that lead to friendly systems
- Join Fleet

Note that there are maximum amounts of ships to use for most tasks, so many of the attack ships are sent to join fleets. Attack orders will be issued only if the AI's strength is comparable.

Fleets:
- Send out obsolete ships for Retrofit
- Resupply
- Wait for joining ships (if # ships in fleet low compared to # available ships)
- Attack Priority 1 - Defense locations
- Attack Priority 2 - Attack locations
- Attack Priority 3 - Attack any valid targets
- Buildup for Attack
- Go for Training (Not implemented)
- Explore

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

The Drushocka empire, which has organic technology, still uses DUC as weapons for the design of crusers, although they have the technology for racial organic weapons.
Is that intentional?

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

Seems it might be nice for them to vary weapons a little bit, but yeah races with race tech should use those techs chiefly. Maybe throw in a DUC or two if it compliments the design in some way. Dunno how to program the AI to do that though.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

I'd assume it's a Defense Ship design type for the Cruiser, which uses the secondary weapon. If they haven't reached Acid Globules yet, it would default to DUCs. Although perhaps inserting Seeking Parasites between DUCs and Acid Globules in the progression might be more appropriate.

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In other mod news I've been re-scripting some more diplomatic stuff focusing on adding score percent comparisons to modify AI responses. For example, a much weaker AI should be more inclined to accept a poor treaty or give a gift and things of that sort. I was also able to clean up the way the AI offers new treaties - it should now be done using the Change in Treaty message header and not as an entirely new treaty. I suppose I should come up with a scheme to prevent the same "class" of treaty being offered though.

I spent earlier today merging in some of the new AI functions added in SE:V v1.22, which focused on Spaceports/Space Yards construction. The AI will check it's build queues for these items, which means no more building multiple spaceports in a system if the planets are colonized approximately at the same time etc. I extended this to Resupply Depots as well. One related function I hope to add for v1.03 is the AI's scrapping of facilities to make room for resource enhancers (on planet's with appropriate numbers of resource facilities) or replacement of Resource Facilities with Monoliths on mixed resource colony types.

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It will probably be a couple of weeks to v1.03 is released since it uses functions that were added post v1.20 of SE:V and will need the next patch to work.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

I'm finding some A.I ship designs are mixing normal armour with emissive armour.Relations between A.I's and myself can never form Partnerships because relations never go high enough,same with A.I's between each other.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

That is a good thing, is it not?
Normal armor provides the hitpoints, emissive provides the damage resistance (at least it will once the ability is fixed).

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

I thought you needed the ship to only have emissive armour before the ability worked?

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

Nope. Actually you only get the benefit of one emmissive ability.

SJ: what's wrong with it at the moment? I know it has some oddities when it comes to damage penetration, but it seems to be working otherwise.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

Still, if the emissive armor is damaged/destroyed first then you loose its damage resistance, so it might not be that bad of an idea to keep only emissive armor on the ships, or at least two components.

Re: Balance Mod Designs
 

The regular AI will mix up the armor types, with the larger ships using mostly regular armor, plus a couple of emissive armors, and either stealth or scattering armor. Smaller ships will use regular armor and usually add just 1 emissive armor - so no backups there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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The updated treaty package scheme will have the AI sometimes propose better treaties like partnerships or cooperative treaties to stronger players even if relations aren't the greatest.

Re: Balance Mod Designs
 

The trick CK, is to add the emissive last.
First placed = First hit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Sucks, I know.

The emissive armor does all-or-nothing at the moment.

59 points of emissive vs a 60 damage CSM = 60 damage to the hull.
I know we had to press him to fix this in SE4, to make it work usefully, as it did in SE3. Such a pain to have to repeat the process.

Re: Balance Mod Designs
 

First placed = First hit

So do you mean this is true for all components (this would really suck) or just for armor?

Re: Balance Mod Designs
 

Just armor, in combat. Probably shields as well.

Re: Balance Mod Designs
 

Shields are all merged into one sad pile of points, and use the lowest numbered shield type in shieldandarmoretypes.txt

No layering at all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Balance Mod Designs
 

ahaa. Ooops.

..ok, time to redesign my mod's shields..

Re: Balance Mod Designs
 

Components should be damaged by the direction they are hit.

I've bugged Aaron a few times about shield layering although we'll need to be more persistent to get it working like it should.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Great mod , but think I have a bug . Playing SEV 1.20 , Balance Mod 1.01 , playing against 8 AI's and I took " Hearty Merchants " as one of my traits which means I need no spaceports in any sysrems to generate resource points. Yet except for home system [I have 6 systems now } I am not getting any points from the other systems . Anybody else having this problem ? Thanks

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

I wouldn't be surprised if its been broken again.

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I'll be away (in lovely Sabetha, Kansas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif) until Friday but keep posting observations/problems here.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

The Point Generation Modifier - Research and Point Generation Modifier - Intelligence abilities are semi-broken: they stack( unlike the other modifiers ). So basically you can build as many facilities with these as you want and gain stacked bonus. Perhaps bother Aaron with this?

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

I'm not having this problem. Are you sure you seleced the correct trait?

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

I will start another game when I have some time and check

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

There is no "Hearty Merchants" trait - there is "Natural Merchants" (which is the one you want) and also "Hearty Industrialists" (which increases planetary spaceyard construction rate)...

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

" Natural Merchants " was the one I meant

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

"hardy" industrialsists, surely...

I WANT to be a Hearty Merchant. Right now I'm just a merchant. The money's good but I could be heartier.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Just a little bump to say I'm back from my trip and work on the mod is resuming. The most recent beta patch added had lots of AI updates so I'll be spending most of the week adding those in.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Something I noticed when I played my last game - an AI empire surrendered to me and I paid more attention than usual checking out their ships. I'd already noticed the AI would send a few ships to attack my planet then after getting blasted by my WPs a new combat would start this time with a freighter that immediately ran for the border. I took a look at some captured troop transports and the orders on them showed Optimal Firing Range rather than Capture Planet. Or maybe this just happens when the ship gets captured and it's orders default to Optimal.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

In version 1.02 i can't create a new empire with a shipset that is not included in original se5 game. It was working fine with 0.9X but not anymore.

Re: Balance Mod
 

There are instructions in the read-me file for adding custom races to the mod. A change was made to eliminate the double flag/portrait bug in the mod.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

It would seem that all treaties are completly ignored during combat, as empires with 'col eachother systems' treaties turn on eachother as if they were at war. By themselves, these empires do not start combat entering the same sector, only when a 3rd party does. For empires to fight together they need to be part of an alliance. But there are as many bugs in the alliance part as the rest of the game making it almost un-usable as well, so up to you if you use it with the AI.

When a fleet from AI_B is re-supplying at a plannet from AI_A (treaty), attacking with anything (1 small drone) will cause them to fight and either the planet, fleet or both will be destroyed.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

This will be fixed in the next patch.

Re: Balance Mod AI
 

I can't create a new empire with 0 points.. (start game) save it... and try to load it up when I start a new game

It tell me I have too many points!!!! I know I know next patch it MIGHT be fixed