Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Captain Kwok]

Yet they have the tech lead since the first few turns, simply they have 11% better planets

The Abbidon use the Advanced Storage Techniques trait, which gives them 20% more facility space. Fyron\'s generally balanced out the distribution of facility space amongst planet types.

\"Spacing\" population is crude, but it\'s very effective. Dome planets generally have low populations and slow growth, so the population increase from migration and population growth of native breathers makes up the loss (and probably results in a net gain of population) versus transporting the population. There\'s no reason why I can\'t make the AI do it the long way, but it is less effective.

Sorry to disappoint you here, but it doesn\'t [use Cargo Transports / Colony Ships to transport population]

It surely does, but the prerequisite is that the ships have to be idle (ie excess Colony Ships) or if there is a zero population planet (hijack Cargo Transport). In general, population migration is faster for moving breather populations around. The AI\'s primary strategy with their transports is to get their domed planets to the 40/50M level for 100% production efficiency. If anything though, a small boost is probably needed in the overall numbers of population transports.

[Arralen]

Originally Posted by Captain Kwok

The Abbidon use the Advanced Storage Techniques trait, which gives them 20% more facility space. Fyron\'s generally balanced out the distribution of facility space amongst planet types.

Generally speaking, it pretty much ****** it up - and I ran test games and counted the planets, and found the following not only theoretically, but actually true:
While ice/rock dwellers have "Oyxgen", "None", "Methane", "Hydrogen" and "Carb.Diox." as atmospheres to chose from (and each one has a 20% probability of occurence), there are no gas giants of "none" atmosphere type, giving each other type a 25% of occurence.

Therefore, for the first 2 race types 20% of planets are breathable, while for gas giant dwellers 25% of planets are breathable.

This gives them a -theoretical- planet size advantage of 11%, or even 28% with "Advanced Storage Techniques".

This could have been accounted for by making gas giant smaller on average, but that would not only be counter-intuitive, it doesn't not seem to be the case anyway. Though I must admit that planet sizes seem highly random, and counting 961 planets does not result in sufficiently "obvious" results.

Originally Posted by Captain Kwok

It surely does, but the prerequisite is that the ships have to be idle (ie excess Colony Ships) or if there is a zero population planet (hijack Cargo Transport).

I didn't say the AI isn't able to, but I said I never found it actually doing so, most likely simpy because it never let's the ships in question go idle ...


small missile weapons
The numbers on the Small Rocket Pods and Small Anti-Matter Missiles are off; while all other small weapons (ok, those I checked ..) are 10% size, 20% damage of their bigger counterparts, this is not true for the missiles. SAMM has double size, and damage numbers are way too high, especially compared to special weapons like bombs and kamikaze warheads, which are thoroughly outclassed and useless therefore.
Furthermore, SRPs are classed as "direct fire", what is a bug obviously carried over from Vanilla ...

weapon mounts
Is is possible for a weapon mount to
- add a negative "to-hit" modifier, while keeping a positive "to-hit-at-range" modifier, to simulate the biggers guns being harder to aim at small targets, but the bigger shell/beam being more "steady" ?
- take away a target type from the list; no more shooting of extra heavy main guns at flimsy fighters?

fighter balance
I found fighters seriously lacking, unless one uses the ridiculously overpowered SRPs ... and that with the 100% boosted damage in BM
But this doesn't seem so much a damage thing but a survivability thing: even small fighters (max def bonus) with up-to-date ECM are easily shot down at max range by main guns it seems - and against those all shields and armors you can slap on a fighter are quite useless.
Therefore, a big def bonus seem to be in order, combined with an att bonus on PD, which in turns makes the seeker needing rebalancing as well ...
Could understand if you're not that happy with this proposition

edit: PS: Tried to fix those small weapons issues myself, but I'm running into trouble with that damage-over-range thingy ... . If I get it working, I'll post the lines from components.txt here.

[dumbluck]

Originally Posted by Arralen

This could have been accounted for by making gas giant smaller on average, but that would not only be counter-intuitive, it doesn't not seem to be the case anyway. Though I must admit that planet sizes seem highly random, and counting 961 planets does not result in sufficiently "obvious" results.

Another way to compensate for that advantage would be to make gas giants slightly less numerous than their icey/rocky counterparts. I suspect that this is probably the method Fyron used in balancing his systems mod.

Just my highly overpriced 2 cents.

[Arralen]

Originally Posted by dumbluck

Another way to compensate for that advantage would be to make gas giants slightly less numerous than their icey/rocky counterparts. I suspect that this is probably the method Fyron used in balancing his systems mod.

Isn't the case - my test sample yielded 31.8% rock, 34.3% ice and 33.8% gas type planets ...


Oh, how long 'til the next part of your story is ready and posted?

[Captain Kwok]

Originally Posted by Arralen

The numbers on the Small Rocket Pods and Small Anti-Matter Missiles are off; while all other small weapons (ok, those I checked ..) are 10% size, 20% damage of their bigger counterparts, this is not true for the missiles. SAMM has double size, and damage numbers are way too high, especially compared to special weapons like bombs and kamikaze warheads, which are thoroughly outclassed and useless therefore. Furthermore, SRPs are classed as "direct fire", what is a bug obviously carried over from Vanilla...

Small Rocket Pods have traditionally been direct fire weapons in the Space Empires series, so it's intentional. However, that is changing to v1.20 of the Balance Mod with the introduction of the small seekers...

Brief summary of changes are listed here:
http://home.spaceempires.net/ftopict-6632.html

Currently, you'll notice both the SRPs and SAMTs have different firing rates than their regular counterparts, while most other small direct fire weapons have matching rates. In the classical comparison of dmg/kT/sec, they're a bit lower than most of the other direct fire weapons. They do have good upfront damage versus ships with emissive armor. Previously SRPs weren't able to target fighters, but they can know. Although in this respect they are a little overpowered, but that's part of the reason for the small seeker overhaul for v1.20. The higher level of ordnance usage does make them a bit more management intensive when used in large numbers.

Regarding fighters it general, I've found through feedback over the last few years that it's really about how they are being used. Some claim they are too strong, others not strong enough. As with many SE:V strategies it seems to be a matter of "dedication" to the strategy. For fighter or seeker weapon strategies to work well, it has to be a full commitment or the results won't be there etc.

Originally Posted by Arralen

Is is possible for a weapon mount to
- add a negative "to-hit" modifier, while keeping a positive "to-hit-at-range" modifier, to simulate the bigger guns being harder to aim at small targets, but the bigger shell/beam being more "steady"?
- take away a target type from the list; no more shooting of extra heavy main guns at flimsy fighters?

You can't change the valid target types using a mount. You'll notice that some of the biggest damage items don't target them at all for this reason. While I can provide a gross bonus/penalty to the to-hit value, I can't alter the to-hit at range decay using a mount.

[Captain Kwok]

Fyron will have to comment on the planet aspect. I believed they had been balanced from a facility total perspective based on balance work done for SE:IV using SJ's planet distribution tool...?

[Suicide Junkie]

While there are no none-atmosphere gas giants, all the gas giants are medium or larger.
You also need fewer colonizers to grab more facility slots, which helps during the initial rush, but you'll get fewer ruins too.

Best to fire up the map analyser and look at all the pie charts and tables yourself
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...E4mapstats.rar

[Captain Kwok]

It doesn't work with SE:V's data files SJ. File name differences I guess. :P

[Arralen]

Originally Posted by Suicide Junkie

While there are no none-atmosphere gas giants, all the gas giants are medium or larger.

This is not true in SE5 - check the attached graphic.
Numbers are from an actual game, and show some interesting things:

- atmosphere distribution for rock/ice is nearly exactly 20% each, but 25% for gas giants
- planet types appear with 33% probability each
- size distribution is either highly random, or totally ****** ** for some type/atmosphere combinations
- there's nothing to be seen of some special balancing for gas giant to counter the effect of the missing "no atmosphere" type

[Fyron]

Moons have "any" for planet type, which will explain most of the discrepancy in the planet type totals.

I don't believe SE5 does anything to make sure each atmosphere or planet type ends up with a balanced distribution of sizes. It is supposed to keep each individual aspect distributed closely to the percents at the top of SystemTypes.txt (for planet entries with "Any" attributes), but nothing checks to see how they come out together. Individual maps can be quite skewed by size distribution, as you can see in your data.

Yes, it is true that there will initially be more breathable gas giants than other types due to the lack of gas/none. It is also true, however, that it is entirely possible to start in a position on the map that is devoid of breathable planets, or saturated with them. Reducing the number of gas giants actually gets fairly complex, due to how the data files are generated.