What mod can anyone recommend to try next?

[wilhil]

Hi

at the moment I am playing with the star trek mod, and I really love it, I feel like every time I play, I do have a lot of fun, and could play a hundred more games with it, but at the same time, I really want to try something a bit diffrent and was wondering if anyone can recommend any good mods that are really good and worth playing?

Thanks

[General Woundwort]

Probably the two best mods are Proportions and TDM. Proportions makes homeworlds *much* more important than they are normally, and makes some interesting changes to the tech tree. TDM is mostly unmodded SEIV, but the AI's are toughened up considerably.

[wilhil]

I will try proportions, I looked on pbw and saw 2.0, is this the latest version?

I have always thought that homeworlds should be more important! I have not tried the mod yet so I really cant comment on that, but whenever I play SEIV, I just think they should have some mass influence, and not the only diffrence be their type name, for example your empire collapses with it, some massive disadvantage, or like one central command building, and without it, morale is lower, you loose your culture bonuses.... something like that which is better than just loosing a space port and loosing a few bonuses untill it can be rebuilt!

[Ed Kolis]

The latest version of proportions is 3.0.5. Get it here: http://www.latibulum.com/pvk/proportions/

[wilhil]

wow, I love this mod so far!

my head hurts trying to take it in, and work out all the diffrent areas of research! This looks really good!

Im going to have fun! again nothing against the normal game, or the star trek mod, they are great and I could play over and over again, but sometimes you fancy a change, and this one seems really good!

[wilhil]

Ok, I really like this mod, but having a few problems trying to understand what I am meant to be doing :S

The homeworld planets all have cultral centers, and I can tell they are much better than the other sort of settlements,

Is it meant to be that I build on each planet as soon as I colonise, a settlement, then just upgrade to the latest whenever I can, but then the cultral center is something that I should aim to get much later on, if there is enough time to build it on a planet?

also I always seem to mess up on buildings that give bonuses both system wide and planet wide, however hard I try, I never really understand this and always seem to mess up, I was wondering if you have a systemwide and planetwide feature that do the same but do not stack, will it just do the first one built, or the one that gives the highest bonus?

With all the bonus giving things here, I am sure I will mess up, and just want to make sure I will not loose out!

[Fyron]

The best system-wide bonus will stack with the best planet-wide bonus. If you have a Mineral Scanner III and a System Mineral Scanner III, you get a total bonus of 1.3 * 1.3.

If you want to play a mod that is very different, try Adamant Mod.

[wilhil]

Thanks for that info, Im happy that the best ones stack!

I like the look of that mod, I will play a few games with this one, and then I will try that one. As much as the core of the game is the same, I really like these mods that change everything and make it a lot more fun!

[Alneyan]

Are you playing Proportions #3, and not #2? If so, you will find that there is only one, uber facility in your homeworld, and everything else is mundane. That one facility is *very* important, so be sure to protect it! Other than that, you can customise your homeworld: do you wish more research? Build more research centres at home then, and scrap those mining facilities, and watch your research soar.

Your other colonies are going to want some cultural facilities too, but the Homeworld ones take *thousands* of turns to be completed on most planets, so let's forget about them. In #3, Cultural facilities are a lot more attractive because of their planet-wide bonuses: for example, a middle-level Metropolis gives X5 to mineral production, among others.

Upgrading your cultural facilities is usually the best option, as it is cheaper, faster, and brings you some benefit along the way. Minor Cities are the first cultural facility that allow to upgrade all the way up to Arcology, so you may want to build these if you would like to improve it further afterwards. Colonial communities are very cheap and give a lot of bang for the buck, but they are a dead-end; Spaceport Cities are nice, but are also a dead-end.

[Suicide Junkie]

Carrier Battles Mod is very very different too.

No AIs, but I've got PBW games open (both competitive and newbie games).

Overall, CBmod has an aura of honorable, stand up combat.
It has significantly less "stuff" in it than stock (components, facilities, hulls, etc) but each item is finely tuned, so there is infinitely more variety in gameplay.
No mines, leaky shields and armor, leaky PD which almost never gets them all, but hits more often when there are a lot of missiles.

For example, there is no "best" weapon. Mixed fleets are basically required. Without a proper balance of heavy missiles, light missiles, light torpedoes and lasers for PD, heavy short-range DF, and lots of dogfighers, interceptors and bombers to fill out your ranks, you are vulnerable.
Some long range heavy torpedo boats don't hurt either.

War in CBmod is brutal, gruelling and bloody. Even when you win, you can expect very heavy casualties. And casualties in CBmod are quite often due to cripplings, not vaporizations.
In CB#2 on PBW, the last two players standing had a nasty melee in a central system. When it was over, both sides were left with 30% of their navy stuck in parking orbits at the repair yard facilities behind the front lines

All of the cultures are playable, even though they are wildly different in effect.
You can get everything from 2x-build-rate "Disposable Societies" to the maintenance-free "preservationists", to the good 'ol Berzerkers, and the egg-head "brainiacs".

In fact, in CB#3, we have both a "Preservationist" and a pair of "disposable societies" in the same game.
There is a "Hard workers" player buffering the two so the disposables haven't managed to kill off the P's early. As the game progresses, those Preservationists will become ever more powerful, and eventually have some nice, big, maintenance-free, stomping fleets.
Gonna be interesting.