Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

I have a new concept for what I think will be a good mod.

The Conquest Mod

The year is 2400.00 and the galaxy awaits exploration. Who could imagine the wonders and horrors to come. Where peaceful exploration and diplomacy end and conquest begins.

The mod will feature real world cultural types such as:
Dictatorship
Communism
Theocracy
Republic
Imperialistic
Democracy
Totalitarian

Special optional racial traits, both advantages and disadvantages.

The mod will have some new technologies, components, weapons, facilities and ship designs.

Components that can be place upon Starbases that will train ships and or fleets.

Asteroid ship sizes for the racial trait Stealth. (Ships that look like Asteroids for stealthy operations and camouflage.

Smaller ships will have a weapons mount bonus that will allow them to carry stronger torpedoes, and reduced cloakings size components to simulate submarines.

Carriers will be beefed up and have stronger hulls (with shielding and special armor mounts) that will make them a far more Lasting vehicle type than they are currently.

Additional ship sizes using the neo standard hull system

The mod will strongly promote the use of carriers and fighters as it will focus many components and advantages toward those ships and their weapons.

Basically I want to try and make the mod a war mod that reflects how I feel a space war would be fought. Not with phaser and photon torpedoes, but with fighters, carriers, and speciality ships.

[ May 31, 2004, 07:17: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Sounds good! You have an ETA for this? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Uh oh... Civ II/Empires in space! Run Away!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What do you foresee as the game effects of these? Is a democracy inherently better at research than a theocracy? What about a republic? Is a dictatorship better at offensive combat than the others? Or worse?

SpaceBadger

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

sounds fun.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

if earth history is used. Democracy is better at killing people.

Dictatorship should have minus in produciton

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

heh. three in one week. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

looking foward to it.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What do you foresee as the game effects of these? Is a democracy inherently better at research than a theocracy? What about a republic? Is a dictatorship better at offensive combat than the others? Or worse?

SpaceBadger</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have set each culture, with 20 + and 10 - each and would like to keep that ratio. VIEW However I am open to suggestions for each of the following.

Neutral
Monarchy
Tyranny
Dictatorship
Communism
Theocracy
Republic
Imperialistic
Democracy
Totalitarian
Capitalistic
Militaristic
Renegades
Isolationist
Religious
Fascism

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

I'm guessing you jsut left in some editing notes in these two palces. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The way that 'theocracy' gets a bonus to research and not intelligence is different than the way it would seem to me. just curious.

[edit: don't know what put a bee in my bonet. tone changed a little.]

[ October 18, 2003, 00:39: Message edited by: Loser ]

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Loser I started out with a basic concept. Hopefully with discussion we can refine these types down to workable cultural types.

Any suggestions and help are more than welcome. The more in fact, the better.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

You are truly a man after my own heart, I had planned something like this but with fewer govs and more of economic focus. However my complete inability to use the modder and unwillingness to dedicate soo much time to it left on my shelf of good ideas never tried. One thing I would like to see (if your open to suggestions) in this mod is a focus on economics and ecology- something thus far looked over, ie., ALL facilities have attributes in population happinness, conditions change, and value change so that as you play your planets and facilities are a dynamic force and you have to steadily adapt your planeteering techniques as well as control a sometimes unruly population. Plus it would add a feel like you really were a leader where every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And of course the facilities and their effects differed from government to government (you can see that this would be a formidable task and so I only had the big three -MONARCHY, REPUBLIC, COMMUNIST- and their three economic counterparts -COMMUNISM, CAPITALISM, PURE FREE-MARKET- as well as three ecological outlooks; RECYCLE(fights pollution), ENHANCE(rebuilds environment), INTEGRATE(depends on pre-existing environmental resources)....OK sorry that was a lot of suggestions as well as an outline of what mine had been but as i said i have very little time myself and to here you(an excellent modder by all accounts) announce these intentions...well i get a bit carried away THX for reading!

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Some dictators increased (Industrial) Production though; such as Pinochet and Stalin.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

1. Your definitions of Monarchy and Tyranny don't suggest any real differences between them other than the likelihood that power in the Monarchy is inherited. Without any other differences between them, I wonder why the Monarchy should have a Trade minus and the Tyranny a bonus; the Monarchy get a Happiness bonus and the Tyranny a minus; and the other differences in Ground Combat and SY Rate. What do you see that makes them different in these attributes?

2. The Communists get a -bonus- in production? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

3. I'm not seeing a big definitional difference in Theocracy vs. Religious; however the difference in Happiness (Theocracy -10, Religious +10) suggests that maybe not everybody in the Theocracy follows the same religion as the ones in charge of the government? If they are all true believers, why would they be unhappy?

4. I don't really see a connection between the goals of an Imperialistic culture, as you define it, and the the various plus and minus areas.

5. I understand the political difference between a Democracy and a Republic; I don't really see why this would result in the difference in their plus and minus areas. Why would the Republic be better at Research, Happiness, SY Rate and Repair, while the Democracy is better at Production, Space Combat and Ground Combat?

6. Some of them seem to be apples and oranges - some are political labels, some are more economic, others are attitudes such as Militaristic, Imperialistic, Isolationist. Although perhaps you intend to represent the one factor that is most important in summarizing a culture, so that while you might have several monarchies that are both imperialistic and capitalistic in nature, their label would depend on which aspect of their culture was most important: their form of government, their economy, or their imperialistic attitude?

I hope not to be over-critical, just to help you refine your concept a bit, perhaps.

SpaceBadger

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

A Theocracy should have -10 in research, not +10. New ideas threaten the rule of the church (or whatever), and are suppressed. There is a plethora of evidence for this throughout history. Why do you think the Fundamentalism government in Civ 2 gets -50% to tech advancements? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Also, their people would be happier, as they are closer to the gods than others are and all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Also, I'd give them massive bonuses to ground combat, as you can't get any better than fanatical troops willing to die for no reason, just cause you ask them to.

Also, why does a Republic get -5 to combat, and Democracy gets +5? What is the reasoning behind that?

[ October 18, 2003, 01:41: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

I like everything you guys are saying. I loosely based these cultures off of an on line game I played a few years back.

Please keep in mind that these cultures are not set in stone, they are just the starting point. I can change things around as more logical approaches become clear. I can even drop cultures that are redundent.

The info you all have provided is an utter gold mine to me. Thank you.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

I suggest you remove all specific monothesitic references from the Theocracy and Religious ones (why are they different, anyways? A "religious" government is necessarily a theocracy...). The vast majority of the people on this planet are polytheists, not monotheists. There is no reason to assume that all alien religions would be monothesitic (nor polytheistic). Being a bit more generic would IMO be a good thing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Although it is cleaner looking and more convienient to use set amount of bonuses and penalties (ie, +20 / -10), the various traits are not balanced. For example, +10 in space combat is worth far more than anything you could put in repair. See PvK's Balance Mod for discussions on this.

However, if you wanted to keep it simpler than PvK's point system, you could probably group the traits in three categories, and give equivelent bonuses per Category. For example, here's how I'd group the traits (without putting too much thought into it):

Good: Space Combat, Maintenance, SY Rate
Fair: Production, Research, Happiness
Poor: Intel, Trade, GroundCombat, Repair

Then, if you assign a +10 to a Good trait, you should assign a -5 to one of the remaining Good traits.

This should give you sufficient variation to choose from, I would think, and you could still keep the culture types fairly balanced.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

I hope that as well as better fighter roles--that also the role of troops can be added. I dont enjoy spending a colony ship--then transporting population--and reasearching planet defenses--just to have a ship or fleet waltz in and bake the planet to a cinder. While i do agree that certain races and or ideoligies do in fact destroy planets--- the use of troops to conquer an inhabited world is key to me--so i hope to see this))).

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

my thoughts

Fascism should have a minus to happiness and a plus to intel

Isolationist perhaps they could be your neutral

i do not understand why religion has the minus for reseach... ( a religous tech tree would be really cool )and Theocracy has a plus ???

Hmm.... it is a good start though.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">vast majority? doubt that.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

I was just thinking about the Capitalistic society and it occured to me that that it sould really increase Intelligence (Industrial espionage), why put in R&D when you can get it for free (ish).

Also I don't really like the Happiness increase, if anything overall it should be slightly reduced since most people will be aspiring to things that the do not have (capitalistic tend to also be materialistic), only the rich will have what the want. Though this should really motivate the populace http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Yikes i seem to have some unresolved issues with this. Time to go earn some more money http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">vast majority? doubt that.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oddly, I'm going to have to agree with the mouse here. Animists should not be counted as polytheists. There really are four separate Groups in the socio-religious evolution: animist, polytheist, monotheist, atheist.

Please note that I don't mean one faith is superior to the others, but that it is supposed that a meta-culture must go through the certain faiths if it is to arrive at other faiths.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">vast majority? doubt that.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Less than 20% of the people on Earth are monotheists. Buddhists and Hindus make up around 2.5 billion people (possible even more), and those are both polytheistic religions. Most of the other various religions in Asia are polytheistic. I do not think there are any monotheistic religions native to Africa, only imported brands of Christianity. All of the tribes of people indigenous to the Americas are polythesitic, save those converted to some brand of Christianity. It is primarily in Europe and the so-called Middle East that monotheistic religions developed, and those places are not nearly as populated as Asia. I am sure my figures are off, but I am also sure that my statement about the vast majority of humans being of polytheistic religions is true. What you see around you in Canada (or here in the US) is not an accurate picture of the rest of the world.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Got a nit to pick. Two things Fyron.

One. You very nearly referred to Islam as a 'brand of Christianity'. Historical arguments aside, that is not something one should imply without a whole lot of qualification.

Two. While they are not monotheists, animists are also not polytheists. The structures and pantheons of gods that make up polytheism are not the same as the more casual idealization of certain objects and ideas that comes out of the belief that every object has an innate spirit that can interact with the surrounding world. Animism is not polytheism.

Now, since no one seems to have gotten offended yet, and this has turned into a discussion of religion, I'll hurry things along by making a lengthy argument that Catholics are polytheists and push the contentious monotheist even further into the minority... just kidding.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">How did he do that? I don't see any referrences to Islam being a branch of Christianity in Fyron's text.

Edit: And we're again going off topic...

[ October 18, 2003, 22:22: Message edited by: TerranC ]

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Islam is certainly not a branch of Christianity; it is a branch of Judaism ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif j/k, though it is technically the same God that Judiasm, Christianty and Islam follow, just with major differences in regards to divine prophets and such). Loser is talking about my statement regarding the monotheistic religions in Africa being imported brands of Christianity. I should have said "Christianity or Islam", as there are plenty of Muslims in northern and eastern Africa. I do not think there was ever a massive conVersion drive sponsered by Jews in Africa like there have been with Christianity and Islam, though I could be mistaken. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

And how many animists are there around? Most animistic religions I know of also have a polytheistic pantheon...

But anyways, my whole point was that Monotheists are a relatively small minority on Earth (hence, "vast majority are polythesists"). Now back to your regularly scheduled Conquest Mod (hopefully with more generic terms in the future).

[ October 18, 2003, 22:35: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I did not mention the Troops, but they are a focus of the mod as well.

Again thanks for all of the insightful input and duscussion. I can not thank you all enough.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Getting back on topic...

This sounds like a great mod, Atrocities. I was thinking of creating a mod loosely based on Civ/Alpha Centauri, with cultures based on political and economic structures found in human history (and a few MoO style alien ones as well). Here's what I came up with: link
Please feel free to borrow/steal from these.

If you would like another collaborator on your mod, please let me know. Perhaps some of my ideas would fit into this mod?

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Those look like very nice advanced traits. I like the idea of disadvantage traits as well. Perhaps you could borrow from Fyron's Adamant Mod, and call the poor storage disadvantage "Naturalists," because they sacrifice for the evironment?

As far as other traits...How about "Defensive Specialists" that gain extra PDC, Security Station, ECM, Shield and Armor options? Combine that one with "Peaceful" and you might be able to combat the inevitable "Militaristic" onslaught.

I'd be happy to help with testing, or whatever else you might need. I'll check here in from time to time to see how things are going.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

sounds kinda like the racial selection for stars!

shouldn't the warp engineers get warp manipulation technology?

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thank you for the link. As I get parts of the mod done and running, I will could use help in testing it and adding removing items.

I wanted to keep all of the SE IV technology intact while adding some new stuff. Ideally I would love to turn the starscape into a blue ocean and the planets into various size islands. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Warp points would simply be accelerated distance points or votexes. But that will not happen.

Help is always welcome. If you can think of some good racial traits with a good technology tree that would be great.

This is what I have so far:

Militaristic
Race gains access to larger starbases, ship classifications, Drones, adv. training facilities, troop technology, and minor mounts

Peaceful
Race gains access to limited mount that are limited to smaller ships sizes, improved happyness and production facilites, and planetary improvment facilities

Warp Engineers
Race gains access to faster engines, engine damaging weapons, and adv shield technology.

Advanced Carrier Technologies
Race gains access to advanced Carrier, fighter, Point Defense technology, and combat bonuses.

Advanced Stealth Abilities
Race gains access to advanced stealth abilities such as advanced cloaking, and sensor avoidance components.

Advanced Mount Technologies
Race gains access to advanced ship mount technology.

I also have some disadvange traits as well:

Poor Power Conservation
Un-Lucky
Propulsion Limitations
Poor Storage Techniques
Industrially Challenged

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Thanks guys, I will be working on redoing the cultures bonuses tonight sometime.

I am very egar for this mod as I hope it will work the way I want it too and thus fill a void in game play that has been bugging me for some time.

Any good ideas for new technologies and such?

I will be making the cloaking device cost more and will limit non steal races to a cloaking level of 2 both for stealth armor and the cloaking device. They will still have full access to scanners and sensors and such to detect cloaked ships though.

The Asteroid ships are going to have to be added to all races. Just in case someone chooses to use the stealth race ability.

What I am thinking is to add AI files for all standard SEIV Races and a few others such as:

Blue Race (Unnamed as of yet)
EDF
Huron
Illuminati 2
Kiraith
Pandoran
Starwolf

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

I have pulled this mod off the shelf and am in the process of dusting it off for possible work.

I just want to play around a bit and make a mod that fits the story I started some time ago and focuses on military technology of today and expands it into the distant future where fleets are based around the carriers as in Wing Commander.

I would love to make the mod a WWII in space experience.

To do that I need to get off my arse and start thinking. Additionally I need to suck it up and start writing again. (Deep Breath) I hate being lazy and unwilling to work on things that I enjoy.

I think it would be fun to make a new mod from the ground up, a mod that does focus on fleet and ships like our modern day governments do.

That being said can any one offer me information on how ship hulls of today are best being used?

Cutter
Escort
Frigate
Gun Boat
Destroyer
Heavy Destroyer
Light Cruiser
Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Battle Cruiser
Battleship - Basically lots of guns thick armor
Dreadnought - Even more guns and thicker armor

Light Carrier - Bassically a fleet support craft - fighter cover (Small short range interceptors)

Medium Carrier - Used mainly as a sea going BOMBER platform (Bombers and Troop Dropers)

Heavy Carrier - An Air Force wing on water - used for ground assualts, battle group protection, and long range attacks against enemy fleets.

Carriers should always play an important roll in any space fleet I would think. To that end I want to break the Point Defense Cannons into two types if I can. One that targets missiles and one that later can target - albeit less than accurately - fightrs.

I am not a big fan of huge mine laying fleets that the current Ai uses, and it has been proven that mines slow down games. So I am considering limiting the use of mines dramatically. I know that many players love mines, but the simple truth is they bog the game turns down in SP.

It is kind of fun thinking about making a new mod, one that will do what other mods have done before, and one that will more likely than not, never be played.

The future of SEIV is still strong, and I hope that if I ever finish this mod it will be a good enough mod that people will want to pay me to play it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif J/k... That people will want to play it.

Any who we will see what happens.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Sorry for hijacking AT, but I have an interesting idea. It's inspired by your words about WWII: why not to make a se4 total conVersion mod about naval battles through the human's history? Say from XVI century up to the present time. From the cannon caravels to the nuclear submarines.
It's not a problem to change space background to water, planets to ports, stars to ... well who cares about stars http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I think it could be a good job for some unemployed modders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

That would be a great idea Aiken. We could change the star map into an ocean and use island images for planets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Somebody actually started a mod like that a while ago. I don't think they got too far with it though.

Re: Conquest Mod (Under Development)
 

Reviving the mod but under a new name. The work on the mod will be combined with the work that was done with my concept for a carrier dependent mod (The New Age Mod). There is a lot of work to do and many new things to figure out. I will work on it over the course of the next few months. NeoTech gameing is where some of the descussion will take place for the mod. DF has been working on his own Conquest mod so its only fitting that discussion take place on both forums.