Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

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

Re: Balance Mod
 

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.

Re: Balance Mod
 

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 />

Re: Balance Mod
 

Sounds very promising Kwok!

Re: Balance Mod
 

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.

Re: Balance Mod
 

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

Re: Balance Mod
 

Looks like a nice list of fixes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Balance Mod
 

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 />

Re: Balance Mod
 

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?

Re: Balance Mod
 

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

Re: Balance Mod
 

Colony ships are never sent to a system that has a known enemy presence, regardless of whether or not it's marked as a system to avoid.

Re: Balance Mod
 

Sorry, I was talking about a minister for human players to use, not part of the AI...

Re: Balance Mod
 

Did a test game after patching to 1.74 and 1.14b,
(large galaxy, full AIs, paradies quadrant, 3k races, 50k research points, medium research cost)
and this is what some spot tests showed:

@turn 10

- Drushoka (AI no.1) researched "org. engineering" @19% .. ~4.0 years at least
- Drushoka had 2 "research &amp; intel" colonies, but only build units there with all facility spaces open except 1 which was used for a space yard
- it didn't have a single pop transport

- Norak (AI no.4) researched "religious studies" @ 40% in 3.1 years (!)
- "research compound" (max 500pop/5fac): 1 space port and units build, no research centers, no intel (later one not researched)
- no pop transport either

- minor nation: no research centers on "research compound" colony either


@turn 20

- Drushoka was happily using the single pop transport I ordered them to build in turn 10/11, but hadn't any more build

- no research centers build by any race

conclusion
=&gt; AIs should start researching with cheaper techs and go for speicals (organics, religious etc) later when more research points are available. Past turn 20 maybe?

=&gt; AI should build research centers. (it did fine in 1.71/114a)

=&gt; AI should build 1-2 pop transports based on small freighter hull early: colony ship building cannot keep up with pop growth in the early turns, therefore pop growth is wasted. More pop on new colonies would help with construction/mining rate as well.

=&gt; colony ships not build on the homeworld should be routed there before been given colonizing orders - dunno if thats possible via scripting, though.

Re: Balance Mod
 

In the upcoming v1.15, empires with technology racial traits will actually start off with them right from the beginning, so the research issue is no longer.

Population growth on domed colonies is not such a big deal in the mod, considering there's not much benefit to production unless you're talking hundreds of millions. I used to have the AI pick up population at other planets, but changed that when the auto-colonization amount was re-introduced. It sometimes wasted movement picking up population which for domed planets wasn't significant.

There was no changes to facility preferences for construction. Usually they try and use a planet for what's its best at, which means you might not see an even distribution of facility types until it has 10-20 colonies. Also, once in a while, a research compound might end up with 0 research facilities if a spaceport or resupply depot gets built first.

Re: Balance Mod
 

Let me rephrase (or simply repeat, partly):

On turn 20, the AIs had several planets designated as "research compound" which where producing units only, while there where:

- 0 research centers on them
- 0-1 facilities build, therefore 1-9 free facility spaces !

.. therefore I can savely concluded the AIs build units instead of research centers, what does not make any sense within the first 20 turns !
This might be an issue of 1.74 (and not your quite great mod) but, frankly, I was too lazy too test that ...

Re: Balance Mod
 

Facilities have higher priority than units, although sometimes if a planet has a Space Yard it might push vehicles ahead. Did you notice if there was a SY present?

Re: Balance Mod
 

Some have spaceyards, on others the AIs seems to build non-colonytype buildings out of desperation http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif , on other its only building tons of units.

I'll try to attach a savegame.
Master Password is "master", I only peeked into the Drushoka, Pong, Norak and xxxef (last one down the bottom) turns, but most likely the others don't behave any better ..

Re: Balance Mod
 

I looked at the save game and a number of the races you mentioned are in potential danger from nearby enemies, which is why they have started building more units. A couple of the other races are just getting started really and only have a few colonies, so their facility distribution tends be a bit skewed until they colonize more planets.

You sure got a crowded galaxy there!

Re: Balance Mod
 

Bad news:

Started a quick test game (large quadrant, few AI, no events etc) .. after 20 turns, those 2 (!) AIs again have "research compounds" with 1 spaceyard build and 4 empty facility slots ... and even an empty build queue !

And now don't tell me they're both building scouts all day long because they're feeling so lonely in that large quadrant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Savegame attached .. in case someones wants to have a look .. master-password is "master", again ..

Re: Balance Mod
 

I identified the problem. The AI has a desired research to intel ratio (typically 4:1 research to intel) that it would like to maintain. Sometimes to keep them in balance, it will add an intel facility on a research planet. This mostly exists for smaller empires that don't have a lot of colonies and may not have declared a planet specifically for intel purposes. What is happening here with research compounds is that the AI is wanted to add an Intelligence Center but hasn't yet researched intelligence services, so the planet gets stuck not building anything until Intelligence Centers become available.

I'll have to put a fix for this.

Re: Balance Mod
 

make the Intelligence Centers become available from the start that will fix the problem http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Balance Mod
 

I was leaning towards allowing them from the start already for v1.15, so that could be part of the fix. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Balance Mod
 

I don't think the AI should build IC such early in the game - even before meeting any other player. Better build some RCs first and at least 1 pop transport ...

And is it possible to check for planet (pop) size when deciding if a space yard will be build? All those 500 pop planets will never get a decent build rate IMHO ..

Re: Balance Mod
 

There is a bug where if you issue orders to colonize a planet, a colony ship will strip a planet dry of population. Is there anyway to set it so they take from the total population minus 1 million?

Re: Balance Mod
 

It's an SE5 bug that somehow got re-introduced in the latest versions. Not too much can be done about it, but I'll try and add a workaround for the AI in the next update. I've noticed they tend to deplete a few planets dry.

Re: Balance Mod
 

http://home.spaceempires.net/ftopict-5074.html

"How does FQM break ruins?"
"I had re-numbered the unique areas to 1-6 instead of the 1-4, 6-7 used in stock (which needs to be fixed). Simply edit the entries for unique ruins to be 1-6 and you'll have no issues."

Can you give a more detailed explaination?

Re: Balance Mod
 

Edit the 6 "Empire - Grant Unique Discovery" entries for the Normal Planet record - which is the first one in the StellarAbilityTypes.txt data file.

Re: Balance Mod
 

Why wouldn't you just post the question in the thread you linked to?

There are actually 12 in FQM (2 possible descriptions), and you only need to edit 2 of them... I added this bit of text to the FQM5 help page a few days ago. Hopefully its clear enough. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Open Data\StellarAbilityTypes.txt in the new folder. Find Abilities 17 and 18 of the Normal Planet entry. Change the Amount 1 Formula values from 7 to 5.

Re: Balance Mod
 

I don't have an account there, plain and simple.

And thanks for the detailed explanation.

Re: Balance Mod for SE:V
 

The next version of the Balance Mod, v1.15, is in the very last stages of testing. There are many improvements to the AI and a number of data file changes that should shake up gameplay for the best.

The BM forum at SE.net has lots of info on it:
http://home.spaceempires.net/forum-73.html

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Cool! Looking forward to it. Balance mod is the main reason I'm still playing SpaceEmpires. ;)

(Ok, combined with Fyrons, TampaBay sounds and the media package. :D)

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Capt. Kwok , great news ! Are you still including updated versions of Fryon's mod in Balance v1.15 ? Thanks

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

The Balance Mod retains its own version of FQM.

Re: Balance Mod v1.15 Available!
 

Greetings!

Balance Mod v1.15 is finally available! It's a significant update with lots of tweaks, changes, and AI upgrades.

Some of the bigger changes include the availability of racial trait technologies from the game's start, revised combat physics, and Robotoid Factories now modify building rates. There's also been a lot of tweaks and fixes based on feedback to improve general game play and usefulness of items.

The AI has been greatly improved over previous versions. They maintain much better economies, build and colonize faster, make better ship designs, and conduct more sensible diplomacy. The AI can also make use of stellar manipulation technologies, atmosphere and resource converters, and will try to adapt to its enemies. A lot of fixes and tweaks were also made to improve all facets of the AI's empire management.

Important:
Balance Mod v1.15 is not compatible with older versions of the mod, nor is it compatible with older Balance Mod maps, game setups, or empire files!

You can find v1.15 for download here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

Here's the most recent changelog:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemodhistory.php

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

As Phil Rizzuto would have said , " Holy Cow ! " , now that's a big one !

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Greetings.

I posted the v1.16 patch at my site:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

Note you need to have v1.15 already installed as the download for v1.16 is a patch only!

It's savegame compatible with current v1.15 games!

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

.. checks changelog for 1.16 .. hmmm ..

Is it only me or does someone else not get combat replays anymore with 1.15 in a hotseat, simultatious turn game (running with only 1 human player though)? In fact, SEV even doesn't seem to bother to write the combat replay files at all!?
Didn't have the time to do "proper" testing with(out) other/any mods, so it might be my installation that went bad. Though it worked fine with 1.14 ..

Ok, checked with vanilla 1.74 and combat replays are working ...

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

1.15? Hmm, when I was beta testing that version, I noted the same problem, and Kwok said that combat replays were disabled temporarily in Settings.txt, but that he'd turn them back on before releasing the mod. Perhaps he forgot to... :P

edit: oi, it's still set to false in 1.16! KWOK!!!!! :P

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Fixed that, and combat replays are o.k. .

Some more minor quibbles I found playing a max sized game up to turn 64 (atm):

- organic races shouldn't use Elec. Discharge on (early) scouts, as it cannot target missiles, so the scouts are sittings ducks vs. them. Furthermore the +50% damage against shields is wasted because no-one has shields at that point.

- higher levels of hull construction of the same type seem a tad expensive. (Try high research costs and you'll see that it is cheaper to research towards Light Cruiser than to improve the FF, what seems odd). This is especially true as the early hulls are severely limited in terms of size, therefore you have to improve them at least one notch.

- solar generator (Cryst.) are nerfed too much; in 1-sun systems, at least the early versions barely pay for themselves. Return-of-investment is 100 turns or something. Even in 3-sun systems (which are not that widespread and usually have few, if any, usuable planets), they just can "keep up" with standard facilities.

- AIs are far to eager to offer intersettling treaties. And minor AIs which cannot leave their home sysem shoudn't offer such treaties at all, or at least not on mutual terms. (Maybe if you pay them with your recent tech or something .. because of low planet count they're usually far behind in the tech race)

- AIs seems too eager to do tech transfers; e.g. the Terrans have access to Psychic, Religious, Temporal, Crystalline and Organic Tech in this game. As Terra is only ranked 6th, I doubt this is from spoils of war, intimidation or 3 dozend ruin worlds (can you get racial tech from ruins?). Maybe this is only the EmpireList Screen with its 50% uncertainty, but I have never seen any tech listed there that wasn't really accessible ..

Re: Balance Mod
 

The estimated technology screen is in error when it reports the racial trait technologies. SE5 is not correctly checking the requirements before displaying the estimates. The Terrans do not have access to the traits.

Solar Generators shouldn't be effective in single star systems. They'd be far too unbalancing. They're a supplemental facility that in certain situations (binary/trinary systems, low resource value planets) can provide a needed boost - particularly with the later upgrades.

The per-kT effectiveness you gain with a ship is what you're really paying for with the tech costs. Level 1 in Light Cruisers is cheaper than Level 3 in Frigates, but the level 3 Frigate is more effective than a level 1 Light Cruiser.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Greetings!

You can now get v1.17 here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

It's compatible with v1.15/v1.16 games and both SE5 v1.74/v1.77. It also works fine for simultaneous games and SE5 v1.77.

It contains the usual mix of fixes, tweaks, and AI improvements. See the history blurb below for more details.

I also updated the tech chart to have an index.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

As always thank you very much for your excellent and continuous work Kwok!

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Whoa! The zip version is 9.1 megabytes, but the rar version is only 3.9 megabytes? Is rar really that much better? Or did you accidentally leave something out of the rar version?

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

They are the same. The .rar I posted is a solid archive. It's much more efficient at packing, particularly with text-based files. The drawback to a solid archive is that one corrupt file can corrupt the entire archive. It also has to re-pack all its contents if you remove or add an item. In the past I had forgot to use this setting when packing the .rar download version, that's why the difference wasn't so much previously.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Zip really is that ineficient. Try out 7z - The difference is rather large, on average.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

rvrn if you use the 7z zip compression, you get an average of 25% more compression than with winzip.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Greetings.

I've started creating a few add-ons or extras for the Balance Mod. The first batch includes:

Random Research Events:
- Introduces variability in research by allowing for breakthroughs and setbacks
- See here for more specific details: http://www.spaceempires.net/ftopict-6105.html

Pollution Events:
- Introduces pollution from facilities that decrease a planet's conditions
- See here for more specific details: http://www.spaceempires.net/ftopict-6106.html

Small Systems Mod:
- Reduces the size of solar systems, but maintains the small visual space and scales movement/sensor ranges to the smaller system size. Increases turn times and general performance by reducing the total amount of ship movement that has to be done and reduces the number of objects in nebula and black hole systems.
- See here for more specific details: http://www.spaceempires.net/ftopict-6107.html

You can download any of them here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod-extras.php

Be sure to read the special notes because some of the extras may not work with your current save games etc.

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

Here's a sample image of the Small Systems Mod:
http://files.spaceempires.net/user/9/SmallSystems.png

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

I'm not sure, but this mod may well have been what I've been looking for, to simplify SE5 enough for it to be enjoyable. You've done some real good work in the past Captain Kwok: so I will try this out very soon.

Re: Balance Mod v1.18 Available!
 

Greetings!

Just a small patch with a few fixes and adjustments. Should definitely help with the 'infinite' fire bug. Note #5 doesn't work - apparently SE5 doesn't evaluate these limits for unit designs. I had already packed and uploaded the patch when I found this out, so just ignore it for now.

The changelog:
Grab it here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php