Captain Kwok's Space Empires Nova

[Captain Kwok]

Greetings!

I've posted a new page on my website for my next mod - Captain Kwok's Space Empires Nova. It represents my take on the Space Empires Universe and will feature an expanded tech tree and some changes to game mechanics. I'll be building it on top of the Balance Mod, so a lot of the basic ideas will carry through with a number of areas being expanded.

The Nova mod page is here and has more details:
http://www.captainkwok.net/novamod.php

This is the same mod as I mentioned a few months ago under "Kwok's Galaxy Mod", but now I'm at a point where I've actually starting doing up the data files.

Feel free to post ideas or things you'd like to see. I'll be elaborating more on the planned features as time permits.

[Ed Kolis]

"The Balance Mod is nearing the end of its development cycle"? How do you know that? Aaron might continue releasing patches for SE5 for some time now - or did he say otherwise?

"Variety of good and bad events" - might want to remove/redo the Lucky trait then, since it affects ALL events...

Sounds cool though

[Suicide Junkie]

That would be maintenance rather than development, I think.

[AstralWanderer]

Would it be possible to include a random element in tech levels? As it stands, SE's research is overly predictable both in the amount of points needed and the results obtained - having the number of points needed for the next level fluctuate a bit (and ideally kept secret) and having new items' required TL vary by a level or two (e.g. 25% chance of obtaining X at TL5 Shields, 50% chance at TL6, guaranteed at TL7) would better simulate actual research.

Another option would be to add (as far as possible) indefinite research trees. As it stands, the most effective weapons tech tends to be decided more by its maximum TL rather than other factors. Individual items can and should reach a peak (though ideally one of decreasing effectiveness compared to alternatives, rather than a hard limit) but there should always be new options within a specific field. Ship hulls are another example - limits here should be dictated more by available resources (e.g. by making cost increase exponentially for larger designs) than by fixed TL limitations.

[Suicide Junkie]

Regarding the hull sizes:
I fully endorse using a system in which
A) Build cost = Size ^ 2
B) Total maintenance cost = Size^0.5

The practical result being that you can maintain 11 "size-1" frigates (total tonnage=11) at the same cost as 5 "size-5" (total tonnage=25) battleships.
But you can build 25 of those frigates for every 5 battleships.
Losses are quicker to replace with small ships, but you can field more tonnage if you spend the time and money on bigger ships.

As a bonus, you can provide all the hulls without tech requirements and still be confident that all of them will be used at some point during the game by the players.

[Tnarg]

Are you planning on incorporating any SEIV Proportions style facilities? I always enjoyed that mod simply for the fact that the home planet was really precious and it took forever to get new planets to become valuable assets to your empire that really hurt if they were lost.