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-   -   Babylon 5 Mod (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=4494)

Atrocities August 13th, 2005 12:32 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
NP, Hell I deserved it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Timstone August 13th, 2005 02:49 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
AT:
Haha... thanks man! Appreciated.

Grumbler:
That's the spirit!

*Doing worshippy towards Grumbler*

Have you clocked how many hours you've spend on this most holy of Mods for SE IV Gold? Hehe... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

grumbler August 14th, 2005 09:49 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Update: All the weapons are created and assigned, and the components.txt loads! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I had to retreat a bit on the AI_research, as I found a better way to organize the relevant research paths, so these are just starting production in the "final" form (they work now, but are not optimized).

Another few days, yet, and it will be finished.

Timstone August 15th, 2005 11:53 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

grumbler said:
Update: All the weapons are created and assigned, and the components.txt loads! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

All hail Grumbler!!

Fyron August 15th, 2005 12:38 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Hail!

Ed Kolis August 15th, 2005 06:29 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Fyron, I noticed that post lacks your sig line... are you attempting to not run afoul of German law? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Timstone August 16th, 2005 11:49 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
Hail!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

grumbler September 4th, 2005 11:02 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
1 Attachment(s)
Okay, it is done (as far as I am concerned, barring fixes). AI am attaching the zip with the "Beta 2" files for the 1.9 version of the Mod. All the weapons have been racialized so that there are no more "general" weapons (though the stats for, say, the Antiproton Cannon II are the same for all races who have antimatter weapons). Anyone who wants to "specialize" the weapons of any race can now do so without having to replace everything.

Not every race has every weapon, as I noted above. The race-driven weapons family shows the way races specialize in specific weapons (these weapons all have weapons families from xx001 to xx005 in order of most preferable to least preferable, with the xx being driven by hull size, not race). The AI has been re-written to accomodate these changes. Note that [race]_AI_DesignCreation, [race]_AI_Construction_Facilities, and [race]_AI_Construction_Vehicles are the same for all races. [race]_AI_Research is very specialized for each race.

I have tested this mod for 200 turns, and have not found any problems, but that does not mean that there are none! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Anybody who playtests this and finds something can let me know right here.

Note that, as per usual, there are no graphics in this package. It assumes that you have the downloaded images from the previous version of the mod, plus the latest Image Packs.

Tim, I left Gravimetric Weapons in as a tech for each race so you could play around with it. There are no gravimetric weapons currently in the game, and no race currently researches it.

grumbler September 4th, 2005 11:07 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Oh, and I cannot speak to the "optimal" nature of the [race]_AI_General files - all I did was to make the changes neded to make them work. I don't think they account for racial points very thoroughly.

grumbler September 5th, 2005 10:40 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
1 Attachment(s)
Already found a mistake - somehow I deleted the component "military ship" and that makes the AI_DC not work properly.

The components.txt that fixes this is attached.

Timstone September 6th, 2005 11:42 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Great work Grumbler!
As soon as I find time (a scarce comodity these days http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif ). I'll start working on the specialization of the weapons. And again I say you've done a great job, top notch! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon14.gif

Zaamon September 6th, 2005 12:46 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
There is one thing I hate on weapons. They are Big. You can put only one or two per ship.

El_Phil September 6th, 2005 03:08 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
That did seem to be the B5 way. A couple of big main guns and more secondary batteries. Or that's the way the battles seemed to play out in the episdoes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

grumbler September 13th, 2005 09:15 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Yes, the weapons are designed for 2 primaries per ship, plus secondaries on larger ships and PD mounts on all ships designated "heavy" (Heavy Destroyer, etc). You can think of each as being a weapons system that has several facings (since ship facing has no meaning in the game). I given laser mount in this mod, for instance, just represents a laser that can fire on the target given the firing ship's facing, as well as the one or two or three others that cannot come to bear.

grumbler September 17th, 2005 08:54 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Oh, and if anyone is actually playing this mod, they will note that I redid the satellites rather significantly, reducing them to about a fifth of their former size (so they are like other units, not the size of small ships) and making their mounts reduce damage approximately by 1/4, then making sats easier to hit. I was trying to get that "hordes of satellites" feel we saw in the show.

I am not sure that this does not make them a bit too weak given the leaky armor system. If anyone IS playing, I would appreciate feedback.

Zaamon September 17th, 2005 10:25 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Ok. Weapons have couple mainguns and some secondaries. But I want realistic. Like Olympus Corvet
weapon: 4 Pulse Cannons
2 Twin Particle Beams
2 Long Range Rail-Guns
4 Missile Racks - 20 per.
defense: 1.8 meter armored hull - 4 Mk. I Defense Grid Energy Projectors

If iI remeber right It is 200kt.

Or let say Nova Destroyer
22 Twin Plasma Cannons
6 Particle Beam Guns
Fusion missiles [2 launchers]
defense: 8 to 10 meter armored hull - 22 Mk. II Defense Grid Energy Projectors

If could get even half of that armament.

I took those ships cause they are quite small. And almost every ship have hangars.

Fyron September 17th, 2005 04:46 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Personally, I do not see the benefit to being able to add 30 or 50 guns to a ship design. That's just a hell of a lot of clicks during design and really slow combat replays (and tactical combat) to deal with for very little gain. Now, 1 weapon per ship is probably not good either. Stock has it at a decent amount, ranging from 3 to 7 weapons on most hull sizes.

Zaamon September 17th, 2005 05:31 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I dinīt mean tha t30 or 50 gons. I mean more than 1 or 2.

grumbler September 19th, 2005 10:30 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

Zaamon said:
Ok. Weapons have couple mainguns and some secondaries. But I want realistic. (snip)

I pointed out some time ago that my mod was not based on B5wars, which I don't have, but rather on the TV show, modified to fit the game's format.

Feel free to change around weapons to your heart's content. The best way to do so is probably by making new weapons mounts just like the engine mounts, based on hull size, and fractioning the weapons as they exist. Then you can easily adjust based on experience without having to do a lot of cutting and pasting in the massive components file.

My goal was a playable mod, not a perfect or "final" one. I am, in fact, having to tweak the AIs a bit (partially to make them build more BSYs and partially to plug some holes I left in AI_Research). The components I will pretty much leave to others to refine.

grumbler September 30th, 2005 07:52 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Just curious; is anyone actually playing this mod except me?

El_Phil October 1st, 2005 06:54 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I'm giving it a go, playing EA and cursing the Minbari for their bigger better guns. Great fun it must be said.

Just to check a couple of things though
1. The ancients are supposed to be broken.
2. Weapon Platforms can only mount PD weapons.

Ragnarok-X October 1st, 2005 11:12 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I would like to see a pbw game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

grumbler October 2nd, 2005 12:48 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
a. The Ancients are not player-races (they have no research to do) and are just there as a an AI-controlled threat. In one of the versions I failed to include a bridge for the Vorlons http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif and so they are a tad.... slow. I have fixed this in the next iteration, as well as tweaking the AI_research and AI_construction files to make the AI a little better.

b. WPs have only PD weapons in order to make satellites the primary planetary-defense weapons. This conforms with the show and also eliminates complications regarding the types of weapons that could fire out through an atmosphere.

Fyron October 2nd, 2005 02:11 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Why does the Maps folder have several superfluous subfolders?

pathfinder October 2nd, 2005 08:56 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Grumbler: So far so good, Running as EA and no major problems.

1 minor quibble: The Shadows gave me an error message about not finding advanced race trait 4 Natural Merchants. Only saw it at very start of game.

Wolfman77 October 3rd, 2005 10:54 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I'll try it out tonight. Somehow I missed the post with the downloads. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Fyron October 3rd, 2005 12:24 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I no longer have a copy of the port of B5 mod to gold (1.8) that used to be hosted on Rambie's site. Could someone with a lot of bandwidth email it to me at nolan dot kelly at gmail dot com?

grumbler October 3rd, 2005 03:57 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
My guess is that i left in some saved maps. Delete them.

grumbler October 3rd, 2005 03:58 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

pathfinder said:
1 minor quibble: The Shadows gave me an error message about not finding advanced race trait 4 Natural Merchants. Only saw it at very start of game.

Yep, forgot to change that trait when I re-activated the Ancients. You can change it to "Lucky" for the nonce.

grumbler October 3rd, 2005 04:03 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
I no longer have a copy of the port of B5 mod to gold (1.8) that used to be hosted on Rambie's site. Could someone with a lot of bandwidth email it to me at nolan dot kelly at gmail dot com?

I found it still available at http://www.xmission.com/~rstulce/B5Web.htm
but will send it to you via gmail as well.

pathfinder October 3rd, 2005 09:02 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Grumbler: Just a couple of comments, probably flavored by the way I play and design things.

The AI seems to stuff troops into satellite layers which would be ok for planetside invasion but not exactly what one would want for boarding parties. Also the AI still has carriers running around empty (I never could figure out how to "fix" that).

In general the AI ship designs seem to pretty decent (Narn & Centauri...oh my!).

Suicide Junkie October 3rd, 2005 09:04 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I have a "B5 v1.8" sitting on imagemodserver in the se4 mods section.

May 12th 2004, is the reported modification date...
Is that about right, or does it need updating?

Fyron October 3rd, 2005 09:24 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

grumbler said:
I found it still available at http://www.xmission.com/~rstulce/B5Web.htm
but will send it to you via gmail as well.

I get 404 error when clicking on it. I can get it from SJ's image mod server, no problem.

grumbler October 3rd, 2005 10:57 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

pathfinder said:
Grumbler: Just a couple of comments, probably flavored by the way I play and design things.

The AI seems to stuff troops into satellite layers which would be ok for planetside invasion but not exactly what one would want for boarding parties.

Yeah, I seem to have made the AI build WAY too many sat layers. Oops.

Quote:

Also the AI still has carriers running around empty (I never could figure out how to "fix" that).

I am tempted to eliminate carriers from the AI completely, and just have them haul around fighters in their capital ships. I dunno how to solve this either.

Quote:

In general the AI ship designs seem to pretty decent (Narn & Centauri...oh my!).

Yeah, i am pretty happy with the ship designing, other than a lack of self-destruct devices. Other than renumbering the weapons, though, I think the ship design stuff is mostly your work, so you should get the kudos for the ship designs.

grumbler October 3rd, 2005 11:03 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
I get 404 error when clicking on it. I can get it from SJ's image mod server, no problem.

I think I majorly spammed your gmail box, then! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Fyron October 4th, 2005 02:00 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Hmm.... 4 hours, and still no email. Guess it got lost along the way. Oh well, I already downloaded it from SJ's server. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Are there any special precautions I need to take care with when building the latest version of the mod from all these pieces of scrap metal?

Wolfman77 October 4th, 2005 10:24 AM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I got a couple error messages, one when starting: The Lorkan racial traits are giving error messages at the begining of the game. Probably just a name typo, but I'm not sure.

Infantry must not have a backup image listed for people using shipsets without that image. I got an error and couldn't build Infantry.

Excelent work.

Suicide Junkie October 4th, 2005 01:23 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
Quote:

grumbler said:
I found it still available at http://www.xmission.com/~rstulce/B5Web.htm
but will send it to you via gmail as well.

I get 404 error when clicking on it. I can get it from SJ's image mod server, no problem.

The link on the news page is broken.

If you go to the files section on that site, you can download it.

grumbler October 4th, 2005 01:43 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
Hmm.... 4 hours, and still no email. Guess it got lost along the way. Oh well, I already downloaded it from SJ's server. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Gmail choked on it - it was still sending after six hours! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif I killed it, as you have the game.



Quote:

Are there any special precautions I need to take care with when building the latest version of the mod from all these pieces of scrap metal?

Should not be, if the latest EA aqnd Narn files are in there (I think rambie's site might have had them seperate). There are a few startup files that may retain the "Natural Merchant" tech which is not used any more. I am tweaking the AI_Research and AI_construction files a bit to get the AI to play a little better at the beginning and produce BSYs and hope to have that done by week's end.

pathfinder October 8th, 2005 01:23 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Rats.....

Biotech weapons and both planetary & advanced planetary weapons were dropped.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

userx October 8th, 2005 04:37 PM

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 
Where can I downlaod the lasted version of this mod?

Suicide Junkie October 8th, 2005 10:56 PM

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 
There is a copy on imagemodserver:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/B5mod/

grumbler October 9th, 2005 03:17 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

pathfinder said:
Rats.....

Biotech weapons and both planetary & advanced planetary weapons were dropped.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif Added back in with today's version, though the AI is not yet programmed to use them.

grumbler October 9th, 2005 03:36 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
1 Attachment(s)
Here is the "beta 2" mod of the mod, mostly Ai upgrades (which will not affect games in progress) and some slightly tweaked data files, which you should use next time you start a game (it includes the Lorkan race data, which was still listed as "Lumati" in the RacialTraits.txt file).

You should find the AI a better opponent now (they build more sensibly, I hope). The Centauri AI files have been further "specialized" so that the Centauri now build slower but more heavily protected ships, plus they have offensive disadvantages and defensive advantages in the AI_General file, just to make them "more different." The rest of the AI remains largely generic except for the speech files modded earlier by Pathfinder.

Anyone looking to mod a race's general stats will probably want to use Centauri_AI_General as a template, as it lists all of the modifiable racial traits.

I will need to add a planetary bombardment ship to each race, as I left them out.

pathfinder October 9th, 2005 04:16 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Quote:

grumbler said:
Quote:

pathfinder said:
Rats.....

Biotech weapons and both planetary & advanced planetary weapons were dropped.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif Added back in with today's version, though the AI is not yet programmed to use them.


No biggie, as I figured out a way to teach those scummy Vree a lesson or three! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

One thing I noted...the Vree sure use a lot of defense ships instead of satellites...(battleships and battlecruisers, oh my! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif)

grumbler October 9th, 2005 09:07 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Yeah, the unit balance among the AI players is still not optimal. I bumped it up a bit with this round, but they still build gobs o'ships.

I don't think the AI_Construction_Unit.txt works as I thought it did, and I (or you?) may have to put some more units into the AI_C_V.txt. Modding Ai is the weakest part of my toolbox,and there are no sharp tools in there to begin with.

grumbler November 4th, 2005 04:09 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Is the thread dead?

narf poit chez BOOM November 4th, 2005 04:50 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I think a lot of SE players are on hiatus until SEV.

Wolfman77 November 4th, 2005 04:59 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
I played the mod some, but I don't have very many shipsets for it. I only put the pics in for about 1/3 of them. The vorlons seemed overpowering to me. I might have just had bad luck though. Didn't run into any major bugs, but I didn't get very far. Is there a plan for getting everything together, or parts still being worked on?

Ragnarok-X November 4th, 2005 06:04 PM

Re: B5 MOD General
 
Im looking forward to making a B5 mod for SEV, wether it be a new product or more of a conversion of the existing mod, so i guess narf is right. SEV all the way. Does anyone know when it will be released anyway ?


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