.com.unity Forums - Balance Mod Available for SE:V

.com.unity Forums (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/index.php)

- Space Empires: IV & V (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20)

- - Balance Mod Available for SE:V (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=30863)

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V

It's just the way the stock sets were made.

Here's the latest scoop on v1.15:

Added a new minister of ship naming. Players can use this guy to auto rename ships after retrofit. For example, if the ship "Tiger 0005" of the "Tiger" design is upgraded to a "Tiger II" design, it will be re-named "Tiger II 0005" etc.

Worked out a number of bugs in the new AI anger scheme. There's a SE5 bug with log dating that cuts off some combats in sequential turn games, so they are missed for anger items, but I'm hoping that will be fixed for the next SE5 patch.

I started to debug the AI's setup routine as I have suspected its had problems for some time. Uncovered a few issues! One of them was sometimes the AI would sometimes add a negative racial trait when they shouldn't have. Uncovered another SE5 bug where the starting tech levels of technologies were not being considered during the AI's starting tech selection, so they were wasting starting tech points on items they have by default. That needs a MM fix.

Still looking to tweak some racial trait costs as per recent discussions here. I did add back the extra facility space for "Advanced Storage Techniques" so you will gain 20% more facility space for 2000 racial trait points.

You can find out more v1.15 changes in this thread at SE.net:
http://home.spaceempires.net/ftopict-4254.html

Overall, there are a few big changes. The biggest one is that racial technology traits are available right from the start. A related change is that Organic and Crystalline only have their respective hull types available and not both their racial and normal hulls.

The new version should be posted with the next SE5 update.

Here's the current v1.15 changelog...

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Version 1.15 (xx June 2008)
---------------------------

xx. Changed - Slight revision to Small Shield Generator tech area requirements
xx. Changed - Decreased Organic Armor and Crystalline Armor to 10kT
xx. Changed - Reduced Organic Armor and Crystalline Armor to 16 tech levels
xx. Changed - Decreased Small Organic Armor and Small Crystalline Armor to 1kT
xx. Changed - Reduced Small Organic Armor and Small Crystalline Armor to 6 tech levels
xx. Changed - Reduced Energy Refractor to 5 tech levels
xx. Changed - Energy Refractor can only be placed in armor slots
xx. Changed - Adjusted tech level requirements for Ordnance Vat and Small Ordnance Vat components
xx. Changed - Adjusted tech level requirements for Genetic Recoding Lab facility
xx. Changed - Increased Wormhole Beam effect
xx. Removed - Anti-Ship Neutrino, Anti-Ship Ionic, and Anti-Ship Tachyon Warheads
xx. Changed - Only Shield Generators damage type skips armor and shields
xx. Changed - Adjusted damage amount of Shield Disrupter
xx. Changed - Increased the rate that population loyalty is gained and lost
xx. Changed - Adjusted happiness modifiers to make it a bit more challenging to obtain jubliant populations
xx. Changed - Modified engine requirements for Carrier and Dreadnought vehicle types
xx. Changed - Increased the size of Dreadnought hulls
xx. Changed - Small decrease to the size of Satellites
xx. Changed - Increased the bonus/penalty amounts for the Organics and Radioactives racial traits
xx. Changed - Increased the bonus/penalty amounts for boarding parties in the Brave and Cowardly racial traits
xx. Changed - Increased the cost of the Ancient Race Trait to 1500 points
xx. Added - The Advanced Storage Techniques racial trait will now provide 20% more facility space
xx. Changed - Increased the cost of Advanced Storage Techniques racial trait to 2000 points
xx. Changed - Players will now start with level 1 in their racial tech areas
xx. Changed - Organic and Crystalline races with only have access to their racial trait hulls
xx. Changed - Revised Crystalline weapons
xx. Changed - Revised Organic weapons
xx. Changed - Revised Psychic weapons
xx. Changed - Revised Temporal weapons
xx. Fixed - Error in displayed ranges for warhead components
xx. Changed - Clarified the bonuses from racial traits, government types, and society types
xx. Changed - Clarified the bonuses from the cultural tech areas
xx. Changed - Clarified the description for items that cured plagues
xx. Changed - Small increase to ship experience bonuses to attack and defense
xx. Changed - Reduced score calculation by a factor of 10
xx. Fixed - A number of errors in maximum tech levels

xx. Added - AI will consider a player's government and society type as a factor in relations
xx. Changed - Enhanced the AI's anger system
xx. Changed - The AI will examine treaty elements for their relevance
xx. Changed - The AI will be more aggressive in addressing a low resource condition
xx. Fixed - There will still instances where a player's design type wouldn't match the internal AI design type
xx. Added - AI will consider ordnance levels as part of its resupply criteria
xx. Added - The AI will evaluate each of its ship's orders to see if they are still valid
xx. Added - AI will use stellar manipulation technologies (In progress)
xx. Added - New minister, Ships (All) - Naming, to update ship names after retrofitting
xx. Fixed - The AI was sometimes choosing negative racial traits when it wasn't intended
xx. Fixed - The AI was spending starting tech points on tech area levels that are provided by default
</pre><hr />

Sounds very promising Kwok!

The latest SE5 patch is up:
http://www.malfador.com/se5patch.html

I'm not sure if BM v1.14a will work correctly with the new patch, so I'll try and post a v1.14b this evening.

v1.15 is not quite ready yet. I've been working on a new scheme to give the AI some adaptability to their strategy choices.

that's unusual, he didn't give us any warning...

I've posted the v1.14b batch for the Balance Mod for use with the new v1.74 SE5 patch. I threw in a number of AI additions from the forthcoming BM v1.15 update as a bonus.

You MUST have v1.14a installed prior to applying this patch!

Find it here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

The details:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
1. Fixed - Error in the AI's starting tech selection
2. Changed - Improvements to the AI's retrofit and scrapping routine
3. Changed - Improve the AI's definition of low and high resource states
4. Added - The AI will evaluate each of its ship's orders to see if they are still valid
5. Changed - The AI will check if a colonization destination is valid based on its treaty status
6. Changed - AI will check ordnance levels as part of its resupply routine
7. Added - AI will use its resource converters
8. Fixed - Errors in the AI's scrap routine for replacing facilities with needed ones
9. Fixed - There will still instances where a player's design type wouldn't match the internal AI design type
10. Updated - AI Scripts
</pre><hr />

Quote:

5. Changed - The AI will check if a colonization destination is valid based on its treaty status

Hmm, something like that might be handy for human players too... I suppose you couldn't do anything to actually warn players when they issue the order, but maybe a minister that checked all colonizers' orders every turn and warned the player with a log message if they're headed to restricted systems might be handy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And speaking of restricted systems, there isn't any way to get a list of marked "systems to avoid" via the script code, is there? If so, maybe said minister should check for colony ships headed there, too?

I can still use the FQM mod with the 1.14b right?