Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

That's great news. Thanks!

Re: Balance Mod Available for SE:V
 

In my version 1.06 game, I've noticed that:

a) AI empires are only putting version 1 of their weapon choice on their ships. The Eee have level 1 meason blasters and cap ship missiles, everyone else is using DU cannons. The year is 2405.4.
b) AI controlled ships don't approach within about 9 'squares' of a planet, even if they have weapons with less than 9 squares range. I ran a simulation with an AI's planetary bombardment ship, and it just went back and forth without firing. I ordered it to move in closer, and it obliterated the planet. My ships using level 3 AP beams (which have range 9, IIRC) destroy the planet without needing orders.

c) AIs propose very comprehensive treaties on first contact again.

Also, regarding the mod in general.

a) AI designs don't have enough armour, and don't research it enough. Early AI destroyers are /pants/ because they have, like, two beam or direct fire weapons, and then a heavy weapon which is usually a missile and then only two pieces of armour. Well, of course the missile gets shot down by point defence and ship is destroyed in short order because it has virtually no armour. It gets worse when they get shields, because shields aren't really worth it until about level five, so they waste 30kt for 120k of shields when they could get 100kt from a single piece of level 5 armour.
b) AI's are too agreeable, and want to be buddies all the time. I know it's probably a lot of work to try and get a really decent AI script that declares war, sues for peace and proposes treaties appropriately, but there's a few races in there that are not inclined to be diplomatic, and so you can write very simple scripts for them.

The Sergetti and the Amon'krie are xenophobes. They should be exceedingly reluctant to sign treaties with anyone. I actually wrote such a script myself for the Amon'krie, back when I was dicking around with the AI scripts. They *only* treaty they'd sign was a non-aggression treaty, and only if you had really good relations; these were always called non-intercourse or non-interference treaties. And if you so much as sneezed at them, they'd declare war. Very simple to write, but it adds character and variety to the AIs.

I had grandiose plans to make their anger level based on proximity and on entering their systems, so they'd lash out at nearby empires but tolerate ones on the other side of the map. Of course I never got round to any of it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif The sithrak could also benefit from a similar treatment.

And no, declaring war on everyone in sight doesn’t make good strategic sense. But a lot of the time, cultural or political forces in a society can cause it to do things they don’t make perfect sense, or any sense.

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

I made a change to the way score comparisons were handled and it looks like it's been returning 0 values often, skewing certain diplomatic variables that control treaty elements and other decisions. In theory it should behave more as you describe with aggressive or xenophobic races.

I been working on v1.07 which so far has involved modifications to the way designs are made. One of the changes is to emphasize complete direct fire or complete seeker designs. The other change focuses on improving space usage on designs.

The research queue itself needs major overhaul.. that'll probably be reserved for v1.08...

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

Hello Capt. , I have an idea , if it's not practical forgive me. The default amaount for systems is 100 yet we can use up to 255 . Why can't there be a setting in the map generator where we could pick the amount of systems we want 1 thru 255 or , small - 50 , medium - 125 , large - 200 and huge - 255 . Doing it this way instead of having to go in to Settings.txt seem easier and gives us more control - Thanks

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

Send an e-mail to MM about it. He's the only one that can change that. Some time ago I think we recommended either a slider or an amount to type in for the number of systems.

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

Don't forget to create the different classes of fighters, so we can better control there actions and targeting. ie: Fighter Intercepters, Fighter Bombers, Fighter Multi-role.

Those name are close to actual military classifications. Here is how the USA lists aircraft: US Military Aircraft Classification Symbols

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

Maybe I will finish teh game in 1.05 first. Hate to get halfway through a game and not finish it. I'll have to think about it.

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

Captain Kwok:

I'm using your latest empire scripts and having a AI slowness in expansion issue. I've modded your mod so that there is only one colony module and it for all three types. In 9 game turn I have nine planets in my home system the enemy two at best, doesn't matter if they have viable or only domed planets to colonize. I've looked at the empire scripts and changeed many things to no avail they just laze around and expand at a snails pace compared to me. I pretty much set the "demand" of all ship types majorly lower than colony ships among other things but they still take forever to expand. Any ideas? Should I just give them an AI bonus? thanks for a great mod, and I hope you releas said scripts again for new version if you tweak them alot.

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

I would change all the entries and related scripts for the three classic colonizer types and just make a single AI design type "Colony Ship". Also, for the Colony Ship demand I would add all 3 lists (gas, rock, ice) for the desired amount of ships. A low bonus is fair for the AI, as it can't quite do the advanced micromanaging of queues and resources that human players will do.

Re: Balance Mod v1.06
 

Thanks Kwok, Actually I already combined the three types into one "Colony (Multi)" type. I tried the demand list both ways with just multi once and multi three times simply replacing the other three. then upped the demand rating for each by a factor of 100 and the dec by a factor of 10 so they'd have ten ships before the demand satrted wanning (if I undertood it correctly...)

I have noticed this file is a bit finicky some change to the demand ratios makes the AI totally freak out and drop the worth/resources/everything to almost 0 (how they lose buildings/research just by having no demand for attak ships... It usually hapeens on the third or forth game turn their research will drop to 750 and everything else very low or 0 I don't recall their numbers.)

What I was going for is to have them produce ship wise 95% colony ships and very few defense ships until they meet someone else. they seem to either pull some info from another file or the AI is bugged (I had unit production/demand at 0 and they still made units...instead of colony ships...)

Oh well I play with it some more over the weekend, and see if there isn't something obvious I'm missing. (And yes I know you have to start a new game to get all the benifits of the file changes.)