What mod can anyone recommend to try next?

[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.

[wilhil]

That sounds really good, I like the sound of CBmod and may try it later, but I do not really want to start any more games at the moment as I am playing 2 pbw games and a few diffrent solo ones on diffrent mods! I will give the mod a look when I am finished a few others, I only really like playing the game for restricted hours at weekends and pbw as that only needs one turn every few days as I have a lot of work to do and dont want to become addicted!

Thanks

[wilhil]

I understand a bit better now about the buildings, thanks Alneyan, but another question now, I captured a planet, and I wanted to move some of my pop over to it, I have a troop transport (the one I used to capture the planet with) And I can not load one person on to it :S this may be something obvious, but what did I overlook or do wrong?

Thanks

[Alneyan]

Proportions requires 1000kt to transport one million settlers, so you will need specialised vessels (Starliners to do that), using the specific component. It also means you will have a hard time moving a bunch of settlers around... well, a bunch as in "250 millions" (one million is already a bunch, after all).

[wilhil]

ok, I just built a rock habitat on a planet already with a cultral center, and it gave a big resource bonus :S I thought that both give a planet wide bonus, so do they stack?

I just love the game so much, but as I said before, stacking really confuses me! what order they go in, what can you have with others... ARGH!

[Alneyan]

You mean a Colonial Community or-that-other-facility-in-the-same-line-but-
whose-name-I-forgot?

If so, your increases production does not come from the planetary bonus, but from the production of the facility itself. So, take that Cultural Centre with X15 to planetary mineral production (figure pulled out of my hat), and build a mineral facility producing 200 minerals.

You will now have 15X200=3,000 minerals because of the bonus granted to you by the Cultural Centre, plus all the other bonuses, including happiness, mineral values higher than 100%, your mining racial aptitude, and the like. So, a facility producing a mere 200 minerals on your homeworld will end up giving you a good 4,000 minerals or more, and you will be swimming in money.

On an aside, system-wide facilities do not affect the output displayed in your colonies, but does affect total production (in the budget, research and score screens), so you may experience a gap here.