Mod: Dominions 3000 v0.81 - lots of new indies, new map (using the brand new map commands)

[rdonj]

The combat system is feeling much better now. I'm much happier with ulm's capital ships and how they compare to the nautiloid. I still don't know that they have enough firepower to be cost effective unequipped but they could be turned into fairly decent SC's with a few items. Transports still have fist weapons though. Meh. Plasma shields still might be a little tiny bit too good, but it's not that bad. I'm finding a lot less normal independants since you added the new varieties, but they still crop up here and there.

I think Ice Samurai battlesuits might be a bit too strong vs ulm, but that's debatable. They're almost invulnerable to small arms fire, but you can kill them in melee so it's not so bad. They just do a lot of damage before they die.

One thing you probably should change though is the spider independants. They have too many varieties of spiders with the web spit ability. You should remove it from all of them except maybe the netter spiders, but leave the melee web. I've had enough spiders get to me that they could start killing my troops, but then they all stand back and shoot webs at me... so that would help them a bit.

Also I had an idea for a spell. What do you think of something like a "combat drill" spell, that summons some immobile enemies with no ranged attack that attack a province. And maybe there could be a higher level one like a "live fire combat drill" that summons enemies armed with laser pistols. Just to give you a little more flexibility with how you use your troops. It would really help personal artillery marines, anyway, because they're not that good against space monsters (too many friendly casualties) but almost necessary against jomon. I'm not entirely sure if you can do it though. It was just a thought.

I'm also thinking of making a mod race of my own to go with it. I have absolutely no graphics-making skills so if I do make it I'm going to borrow some of your ulmish sprites as placeholders.

Edit: Yeah, ice samurai battlesuits are fine. However, ulmish personal artillery marines losing their heavy weapons and having them replaced with space blasters is frustrating. Could they be given some kind of space heavy weapons instead?

[Aezeal]

Rdonj good points you have

I already feared the ice suits might be too powerfull (but I feared they would be too strong in melee since they have 2 attacks and paralyse (don't you mean the lightning suits?))

Getting rid of fists a great problem for me and I don't know the solution yet.. I'll just keep adjusting stuff. Same goes for the spiders, the netters are the only ones supposed to have the net but getting rid of it after copy statting a spider isn't that easy it seems.

And the artillery can't get heavy space weapons find other ways.. buy more space craft whatever Ulm isn't supposed to be a very strong space nation They'll get a tank though.. which is even less usefull in space

I'll think about those spells you mentioned and see what I can do..
drop pods or something

[rdonj]

The Ice Battle Suits are supposed to have 2 attacks? I only see them as having one. Different version maybe. The Ice Battle Suits are really strong in melee and definitely kill their share even in small numbers, but you can gang up on them if they're in anything like reasonable numbers and bring them down, which I don't have too much of a problem with. And it helps that their attack skill is still fairly low. If you just massed them I don't know, that could be pretty hard to deal with. I'll try massing them and lightning suits in my next game with them. What was giving me doubts was not using anything stronger than ap 11 on them at range :P Bringing in fighters and personal artillery marines to kill them helped enough to convince me that they're not too overpowered against ranged attacks.

Lightning Samurai Battle Suits are really strong too. If you use them in small numbers it's not too unreasonable because you still get lots of misses, but if you used them in large numbers it almost certainly changes. But the lightning cannons do shock damage, so in a way, if you look at it right now even if they are overpowered (they probably do need to cost more in gold and or resources anyway if they stay the way they are. I think it might be better though to just give them really high ap and leave an to large ships so you can't mass it) jomon gets a lot weaker if you can get to midgame and bring out lightning/fire resistance. If that wasn't the case I would probably have to say that all their battlesuits are overpowered, because the fire ones do a huge amount of damage for their cost too.

[rdonj]

Okay, further testing leads me to believe the ice battle suits may be slightly overpowered but it's not really a big deal. Lightning battle suits are a bit more iffy because 20 an is a lot, but it is mitigated somewhat by the relatively limited number of them you can have in one province. An Ulmish player could probably take on a jomon player reasonably well as long as the jomon player didn't have food items, but with them it would look pretty bleak. R'lyeh would need some really powerful magic backing them up not to get torn up by a jomon player it seems. I am slightly surprised though that battle suits are size 4, I'm pretty sure fighters are size 3 and I wouldn't have thought the battle suits would be bigger.

Anyway, I would either lower the damage 5-10 points or raise it 10 or more points and make it ap instead. Another option could be to make them fire once every two turns. But if you did any of those I would consider making them smaller because their supply costs rack up fast. If you don't change their size you might want to give battle suits a siege bonus because it takes forever to get through city walls with size 4 creatures without huge strength without diseasing yourself horribly. You should probably look at this more yourself, I'm not entirely sure if there's a major imbalance here, it does seem like there's potential though.

By the way, one of the floating predator alien cages has mod commands in its description. And because they're useless in space it might be good to make them not have ap in forests.

[Aezeal]

Rdonj:
I think I'll give them a lower damage AN attack, they now have the big lightning cannon some ships have and that might be a bit too much.
I'll increase the gc a bit (5 each) too if you say it's all suits are bit overpowered.
I've changed size of all fighters to 4, suits should indeed be considered bigger than fighters but fighters aren't 5 and suits aren't 3.. so they should both be 4 I guess

I'll leave siegebonusses for suits out for the moment, guess Jomon just sucks at sieging .

[rdonj]

Those changes sound pretty good to me. Now you just need to see if anyone disagrees with me, I hear entirely too much of myself talking these last few pages.