Re: Balance Mod...
 

Captain , how about incorporating SJ's swirlly warpoints to your mod { if he approves } - I think it would enhance the visuals

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Seconded

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Thirded.

And for the record, we shouldn't refer to this mod file as "BM 1.0X" as it totally brings to mind other things...

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Thankfully Kwok didn't call it "Balance Dissapointing Stock Mod"...

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Some other major AI issues besides the 'stream of ships' problem:

So far it looks like every AI researches fighters and builds one or more 'Light Carriers' -- and then does nothing with them. They just sit there, usually over the homeworld, and never get stocked with fighters or deployed. Isn't this a bit wasteful?

Neutrals will do the same thing with colonizers. Even when the single system that a neutral has access to is fully colonizefd it will keep two or even three colonizers on standby like it's expecting a new planet to be discovered. This is very expensive for an 'empire' consisting of a single system.

Nitpicks:

Why is the Ionic Pulse Missile not placeable in units, while the Capital Ship Missile and the Plasma Missile are? In stock, it is just like the other missiles. ???

The field of torpedo weapons seems to have one more level than is needed. I researched Gamma Pulse Torpedo to level 6 (tech level 20) and there is still one more level. If I researched that, I'd get nothing because the GPT has maxed out. That would waste a lot of research points for some stupid AI that doesn't know any better.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

I re-wrote the ship purchase scheme for v1.04 - so the AI will now only build colony ships for colonizables plus a spare for every 5 colonizable planets it's recorded. This will benefit neutrals - as long as they don't go and do something stupid and trade system maps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

The Carrier is actually waiting for even fighters before joining a fleet. This is usually 50% of it's available cargo space. The problem is it's hard trying to get a single planet to contain a concentrated surplus of fighters.

The last two items are typos. At one point, torpedo tech did extend to 21 levels, but I cut a level out on the spreadsheet but never the data file itself. I'll make IPM placeable on units.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Is there an AmINeutral() function? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Its actually "am I not a neutral", but yeah.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Couldn't that be used to prevent AI players from building colony ships for systems outside their own?

Re: Balance Mod...
 

It probably could. Its actuually what you thought, though:
Sys_Are_We_Neutral_Empire

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Does that actually make any sense, though? Neutrals sticking to one solar system, I mean.

What would, in my opinion, make far more sense, would be if the neutrals didn't have spaceflight at all, thus effectively just being populations for conquer, which when conquered would provide the conquerer with the unique abilities of that race.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Containing them to a single planet means they will put up even less of a fight - making capturing their population that much easier...

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Maybe the carrier ought to behave like a human captain and go roving for fighters. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It's simple enough to make the ship go and pickup fighters, isn't it? Even better, invent a new class of transport: "Military Supply Transport" and have this go around collecting fighters from planets and then delivering them to carriers near the 'front lines'. That would save the carriers from having to travel out of the way themselves. They could be sent to militarily useful locations immediately.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

I'm just not sure what the purpose of 'neutral' empires is if they're just going to be like regular empires but with a handicap, being confined to one system( which by itself doesn't make any sense ). Why, then, not just remove them completely and go with only regular empires?

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Question: can fighters be prevented from launching at all, and only deployed to defend a planet during combat? The player can do this, why not the AI?

Actually, this is why I usually do. I've never felt that neutral empires add much to the game.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Yah, but that was my point; perhaps it would be possible to change them so they actually did add something ( interesting ) to the game.

Perhaps they could be made to be something akin to the antarans in MoO, having advanced technology but few ships and only one colony, or perhaps something else entirely. I just think the existence of the whole 'neutral empires' option should be taken advantage of.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

One more thing ...

Why aren't there plague warheads for drones? Now that the plague levels work, it makes perfect sense to have the capability to launch long-range 'sabotage' like this. You can mount the plague bomb on an anti-planet drone, I guess. But since the plague bomb seems to be a 'seeker' like any other (easily shot down by any reasonable amount of PD) I think the warhead is appropriate and necessary. It's simple enough to setup, just like neutrino or tachyon of ionic warheads for mines and drones.

BTW, have you actually tested the Alloy Burner missile? When I looked in the damage types file, I didn't see anything that indicated if the 'Burn Armor' damage type actually worked yet. It looks like a blank entry. And the Xiati AI isn't using it, so I can't say if it really works.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

The key entry is the 0 internal damage for the Alloy Burner missile. However I neglected to make it skip shields, which is why the damage amount was lower than you'd expect. Anyway, the idea was that a temporal ship might employ Shield Accelerators and ABMs to remove shields/armor quickly. Although thinking about it, not sure what advantage removing armor might convey... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Plague Warheads are a good idea, but it might be too effective. Plague Bombs on Drones don't suck though - they're only 20kT and fire every 2 seconds, so a small group of plague drones could still plague a planet even with heavy PD. That's a reasonable compromise given the nastiness of a plague.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Yeah, I wasn't sure what that entry meant since I don't remember how the defaults work.

Right now, heavy armor is a problem for Temporal tech. Having a specific weapon that attacks it is good. If Emissive armor does stack as you say, then lots of Emissive Armor would be a specific (and very effective) exploit against Temporal tech without the Alloy Burner missile to break it down. The Temporal Shifter 'skips' armor but has a much lower rate of fire, and shorter range, than most other weapons.

I still want a plague warhead for my drones. Guess I'll have to mod it myself if you won't do it. I'm already adding my preferred 'seeker upgrades with technology' changes where seekers get ECM and Armor tech bonuses.

Hmm, what do you call a mod of a mod?

Re: Balance Mod...
 

I didn't say I wouldn't do Plague Warheads, but it's something that I would wait until the next save-game breaking version.

I'll probably fix up the ABM to do something like 2x or 4x damage to armor and let it do just normal damage versus shields. Then the Shield Accelerator / ABM combo would work much better since they could peel the protection of a target off faster than with normal weapons, and other normal ships could mop up the internals.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

What about 25% penetration vs shields and 4x damage to armor?

That way, it does normal damage to armor until the shields fail http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Balance Mod...
 

I'm hoping to get v1.04 out on Wednesday. Everything is seemingly ok now, just making sure the AI is actually improved and the purchase system is ok. For a long time I had a problem with the vehicle purchase system I stuck in. It's basically a demand driven system where there is a target number of a design type wanted and attached to the design there is a demand variable per vehicle wanted, plus a reduce demand variable for the number built or queued. So essentially each design type gets a demand number and the highest demand gets built first etc. Anyway there was a problem with units being added to BSYs due to the queue sort, which caused the AI not to build anything at a certain point (since BSYs had no cargo space). It took a bit of trial and error to adjust the sort so BSYs would be last on the queue list for adding units. So it works as intended now, just some testing to make sure the numbers I choose give good variety in designs.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Why would this be a problem? Units built by a BSY should automatically drop into the planet's cargo. They did in SE IV. And AIs should only build a BSY over a planet. Only humans would be clever enough to build a BSY elsewhere if the need arose (unless you deliberately scripted it -- but then you'd also have to deal with the potential problems).

Re: Balance Mod...
 

The larger problem is that I can't return if the queue is a BSY and get its ID. If I could do that then I could check if it's in the same sector as a colony and then check for space on the colony etc. Also, if I could return that it was a BSY, then I could at least write a condition not to consider the available space and just hope the planet had the space.

---

Overall I have the AI building a nice mix of ships and there fleeting them together in decent combinations. It's also building a lot more units at planets then v1.03. Plus, I made a few tweaks to the load cargo routine, so the AI more actively moves it's carriers around to pick up fighters - in fact it actually has a pretty good record of loading carriers 80-100% full before adding them to fleets.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Before you release 1.04 there is one more nitpick. Why isn't there a Stellar Manipulations design in the designtypes list??? When I finally got to Stellar Manipulations in my game I went up and down the list looking for something equivalent. This is in stock. Why did you remove it?

Re: Balance Mod...
 

It's not in my stock O_O

But yeah, would be a fair addition; or better yet, add the various stellar manipulation types, not just a single 'Stellar Manipulation' type.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

There was never one in stock to start with. I suppose I have two options though, add a Stellar Manipulation Ship type or add the dozen or so "Open Warp Point" / "Destroy Storm" types the AI designates - this would enable the auto-complete for the player for any type of stellar manipulation ship.

What I really really need to do though is lobby Aaron to remove alpha-sort on the design types list!

Re: Balance Mod...
 

lobby him to put a Filter on the simulator page too. it gets way to crowded with ships.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Hi Kwok
With all the changes of the components in the next patch, will you be considering changing any BalMod components to follow suit?

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Not sure what the point of that would be.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

There are two reasons why I wouldn't. First being, I essentially did that already, but also because the stock weapons are configured against each other differently than in the mod. For example, all 3 types of torpedo are available right away in stock, while they are staggered in the mod etc.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Cool, I thought that would be the answer, but thought I'd check anyway. Thanks.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

Kwok, I was thinking. Would it be unimaginably hard to get the AI to use a net of 'spy satellites' throughout the galaxy?

I.e. have the AIs deploy a few satellites, with the latest sensor tech and a weapon or so, spreading them out in a sensible way in the systems they have explored. This would provide the AIs with much better information on other empires' ship movements, thus they'd be in a far better situation when deciding what orders to give their ships.

Re: Balance Mod...
 

The AI should be distributing satellites to WPs more effectively in the upcoming patch. This will help the issue somewhat. Dropping sats in unowned systems will be a little more tricky.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Greetings.

I've finally got around to uploading v1.04 of the mod. There's lots of little fixes and tweaks, changes to mounts, added FQM, and of course some needed AI enhancements.

Next on the agenda is v1.05, which will probably be focused on employing many of the new script functions from the next SE:V patch, plus anything I broke in v1.04...!

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Version 1.04 (28 February 2007)
-------------------------------

1. Fixed - Error in number of tech levels for Crystalline Dreadnought
2. Fixed - Inconsistency in cost for Crystalline Small Fighter
3. Fixed - Bases with Quantum Reactors were not adding Supply Storage components
4. Fixed - Organic vehicle hulls were not receiving their regeneration bonus amounts
5. Fixed - Error in Baseship defense penalty
6. Fixed - Miscellaneous seeker weapon errors
7. Changed - Increased damage amount for Anti-Matter Torpedo
8. Changed - Decreased planet defense modifier
9. Changed - Increased damage factor for weapons and facilities to be functional
10. Changed - Reduced ECM defense bonus amount to 4% per level
11. Changed - Reduced size of mounts: Large is 1x, Heavy is 1.5x, and Massive is 2x size
12. Changed - Increased damage bonuses for mounts
13. Changed - Added range bonuses to ship mounts
14. Changed - Added accuracy bonus for Large Satellite Mount
15. Changed - Costs for ship mounts are now fixed amounts rather than increasing per level
16. Changed - Ionic Pulse Missiles can now be placed on Satellites and Weapon Platforms
17. Fixed - Error in number of tech levels for Religious Studies
18. Changed - Slightly reduced number of tech levels for Resupply tech area
19. Changed - Small change to tech requirements for Quantum Reactor
20. Changed - Increased the research cost for Applied Research
21. Changed - Adjusted damage type and damage amounts for Alloy Burner Missiles. They now do 2x damage to armor.
22. Changed - Increased the number of tech levels for Alloy Burner Missiles.
23. Changed - Increased tech area cost for Applied Research
24. Fixed - Error in starting range for Capital Ship Missile
25. Fixed - Error in starting range for Plasma Missile
26. Changed - Tweaked score calculation
27. Changed - Emissive Armor ability reduced (Temporary until fixed)
28. Fixed - The Gravitational Quantum Resonator's range was too high
29. Changed - Incorporated Fyron's Quadrant Mod with a few small changes
30. Changed - AI will now use a mixed variety of ship sizes
31. Changed - AI will also scrap obsolete Satellites in addition to Weapon Platforms
32. Added - Patrol and Scout Ship AI design types
33. Added - AI will now scrap obsolete ships
34. Changed - AI will consider racial trait technologies in choosing Colony Types
35. Added - Updated AI Scripts
</pre><hr />

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Just an FYI - you'll probably want to start a new game with v1.04 - some of the FQM additions have shifted around system objects and you'll get errors if you try and continue.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Thanks CK.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Just checked out 1.4. Looks very nice with the new effects! What would you think about slowing down the warp swirl...

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Have you checked out Time Distortion Burst (and Temporal Tachyon Cannon)? They seem to have a short range and it just stops (no trail off in power). When letting the AI run battles with ships that have these, they just follow the enemy not shooting while being shot at. In the later levels it improves a little, but for the first 5 or so, not much.

Just checking if that is the intended effect.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

It might have something to do with the strategy being used on the ship. A lot of the ships stutter when they reach their desired range and this either causes them just to be out of range to fire or to fire their bolt weapons, which end up being just short of the target when they max out on range.

There are a few range fields in settings.txt that I might be able to experiment with to see if I can get the ships to be a bit closer before they fire and avoid the above situation.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Heya Ck, just a quick question.

Would this be a problem for currently running PBW games wishing to update to the newest Malfador patch about to come out (like 1.30 or there abouts)?

Thanks,
-Hippo

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

I don't recall any changes to the stock data files that break save game compatibility.

To elaborate on the source of the problem between v1.03 and v1.04 for the Balance Mod, it's new entries in StellarObjectTypes.txt that shifted various items around which will cause index errors when you click on certain stellar objects.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Okay, cool. Just to be clear, what I meant to ask was if there was any reason we couldn't use 1.03 with the latest Malfador patch (I remember in the past you've had to tweak the mod following Malfador releases). From your answer, I guess it'll work.

Thanks!

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

if there's a problem it's trivial to fix yourself.
normaly it's just a line in the settings.txt that's missing.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

v1.03 or v1.04 will need it's settings.txt updated to work with the forthcoming SE:V v1.3x patch.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Captain , on your next patch will you be upgrading Fyron's FQM to " Beta 6 " ? Thanks

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Dunno if this is just me, but in Balance (I'll check in stock in a second), but I am not getting facility/cargo space on planets after I colonize them...

Seems to be in Balance, but not stock - see attached figure.

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

Is there population on the planet?

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

There is no XXX/kT available on each planet.

I *think* there is a pop, let me restart a game and try again... I'm building facilities...

Re: Balance Mod v1.04 Available!
 

No, it happens on my homeworld at the start of the game. See the attachment from my first post to see what I mean.