Babylon 5 Mod

[pathfinder]

Well I was thinking of mass drivers in Wing Commander style not planet-killer


BTW: What are main weapons of each race? So far all I can figger out is the EA Ballistic (missiles); do they have a beam or projectile-type weapon also?

EDIT: Still can't get the buggers to use reactors. They also put huge engines in escorts and then no room for anything else...DOH!

Guess I'll have to enable tech tree visible in-game, eh?

[ 07 April 2002: Message edited by: pathfinder ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Reactors will have to be called for via a useless ability, just like the engines. Don't ask for supply storage, or you'll just get the biggest thing around.

What you might be able to do is time your reactor/engine research to follow your ship construction, so you'll always have room for it when you get the next bigger size of reactor/engine.

[pathfinder]

Trying that but the only ship design that the EA & Narn "listen" to are the colony ships and for soem reason they insist on put an external cargo pod on them.

One thing that seems to help the early game is an increase in movement in the light fission & light fusion engines. I upped them to 3 per and that seems to give enough "umph" until the medium fission engine is developed; otherwise they either run out of space or reach max number engines before getting movement 1.

What would kick them into designing attack ships? The seem to forget them for some reason.

[ 07 April 2002: Message edited by: pathfinder ]

[ 07 April 2002: Message edited by: pathfinder ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Why is there a max # of engines?
That defeats the point of QNP!

If you want to design a ship that looks like a can of people on top of a great big pile of engines, go ahead! You'll find that it costs a king's ransom in radioactives for all those engines, but if you want or need something like that (for scouting, say), then go ahead.

[pathfinder]

Dunno on the max # engines, that is way some of the smaller ships are setup. I'll change that and see what happens.

Edit: doesn't seem to matter, all they do is increase or decrease the number of external cargo pods (for some reason that is the "choice" cargo unit)

[ 07 April 2002: Message edited by: pathfinder ]

[Suicide Junkie]

I mean the hull shouldn't be restricted as to the number of engines.
The AIs should only be told to add a reasonable number, but that is a completely different thing.

[pathfinder]

Gonna take a break from this, all I do is go in circles..

[Val]

Wow, very surprised to see so much activity after missing the weekend. Sorry guys!

PF - Didn't know we could add the Reactor := True bit, that is pretty cool! I had been getting them to add the reactor by requiring the generic AI to put supplies or solar generation on the ships (which only reactors and solar panels have). But, as SJ said this only gets the biggest reactor. The useless abil thing will need to be added as work on the AI progresses.


Some answers:

Web Site - Sent Spaceports an E*Mail about the site, once reactivated I am posting the mod in it's entirety as a single zip file. I will then post updates as the AI is fixed and new races are added.

Max # of Engines - the only places I put a max number of engines are on things like the Colony ship, Transports and Carriers. If you look closely on most of these ships the max number of engines IS the most engines you can put on the ship do to requirements in Colony/Cargo/FighterBay modules and in LifeSupport/Bridge/CrewQuarters. The AI was not building the ships until I changed this. It worked, so I left it as is.

External Cargo Pods v. Internal - In the show most ships seemed to use the external pods, so I stuck with that theame. You can change it around if you like.

Slow Move Early in the Game - The only reason everything is so slow at the beggining of the game is because of the fission engines, they are meant to be slow to make the begining of the game a slow expansion, which will pick up speed as you research better technology. If you want to make the game speed a bit faster, go into the TechArea.txt file and find "Fusion Utilization", change "Start Level :=" from 0 to 1. Then change "Tech Level Req 1 :=" from 3 to 1. This will start all races with Fusion Engines. Now you will need to do a FIND and REPLACE in the "Default_AI_Research.txt" file and replace Fission with Fusion to allow the AI's to research the higher levels as well.

Shag'Toth - They are (as BM said) are the SoulHunters. There should be a pic in their directory. The AI that is currently in the ShagToth folder looks for the Psychic tree, but this is for a game of standard SE IV. Instead of the Physic Racial ability they should be given "ShagToth Race" (Use caps as shown). This will give them access to their special racial techs (those that have been added as of yet.

AI - Weapon not "whatever" not found. This is because you still have AI in whichever race directory. Go into C:\Program Files\Shrapnel Games\Malfador Machinations\Space Empires IV\B5Mod(or whatever folder you put it in)\Pictures\Races\
Then go into each race folder and make sure the only "Race_AI_" files are the Anger, Fleets, General, Settings and Speech files. Then make sure you have the AI files I posted (further down this list) in an AI folder at the root of the B5Mod.

Individual races using their own weapons - Working on this now, I just wanted to focus on the generic AI first so it would be easier to convert at the end. I'll upload some specific racial AIs some time this week. If you want to do it yourselves, there are three main things you have to do:
1) Go to the Race_AI_General.txt file and change the "Race Opt # Num Advanced Traits :=" to one higher for each of the 3 (Race Opt 1, Opt 2, Opt 3). Then add a new Adv Trait line under each with the name of the race and the word race. So for the NarnRegime you would Up "Race Opt 1 Num Advanced Traits :=" from 2 to 3. Then go down 3 lines and add "Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 3 := Narn Race" then go down to "Race Opt 2 Num Advanced Traits :=" and raise it from 3 to 4. Go down 4 lines and add "Race Opt 2 Adv Trait 4 := Narn Race" then go down to "Race Opt 3 Num Advanced Traits :=" and raise it from 5 to 6, then go down 6 lines and add "Race Opt 3 Adv Trait 6 := Narn Race".

2)Now copy the "Default_AI_Research" file from the AI folder to the specific race folder and then do a find and replace for "General". So, far the NarnRegime, we would copy "Default_AI_Research" into the NarnRegime Race folder and rename it "Narn_AI_Research" then we would open it and do a FIND for General. Then replace the word general with the word "Narn", repeat this throughout the file. Now the AI will reserach Narn weapons. I would actually recommend copying the lines where they reserach the general weapons and pasting them right underneath and just change that to the "Narn" weapons, this way the race researches both types of weapons.

3) Now the hard part: Copy "Default_AI_DesignCreation" to the individual racial AI folder and edit the weapon types. Narn again - Copy file to the Narn folder and rename to "Narn_AI_DesignCreation". Go down to the various ships to the lines that say "Majority Weapon family Pick # :=" and change the numbers to Narn weapon numbers - this will require you to check the Components file and find out what Weapon Family each weapon belongs to. This can take a LOT of time.

No Weapons at start - This should not be the case if you are using the new Data and AI files. You should start with a few basic weapons.

Reactor Output - yeah, have to raise that!

Colony Mod issue - haven't seen the AI drop in 2 colony modueles, the colony ships were my first priority when I started to redo the AI, and if you are using the AI I posted (not the AI designs that came

Mass Drivers - These are pretty easy weapons to make and are pretty simply technology (occording to B5 tech material). The down side is they are Banned in most major treaties, so in a game between humans on a PBW it would be an atrocity, would love to have some major ANGER reaction in the game to when this weapon is used.

(Edit - Spelling)

[ 08 April 2002: Message edited by: Val ]

[pathfinder]

" Didn't know we could add the Reactor := True bit, that is pretty cool! ... "

Not sure it is working But I did add a requirement of reactor=true and requirement reactor minimum=1 ...transports, sat layers (escorts) still did't equip the reactors though.

"Web Site - Sent Spaceports an E*Mail about the site, once reactivated I am posting the mod in it's entirety as a single zip file. I will then post updates as the AI is fixed and new races are added." Kewl, looking forward to some good stuff, not my "hacking" with a dull axe

"Max # of Engines - the only places I put a max number of engines are on things like the Colony ship, Transports and Carriers. If you look closely on most of these ships the max number of engines IS the most engines you can put on the ship do to requirements in Colony / Cargo / ighterBay modules and in LifeSupport/ Bridge/ CrewQuarters. The AI was not building the ships until I changed this. It worked, so I left it as is."

Did not matter in my setup (wonder if I botched something?!)

"External Cargo Pods v. Internal - In the show most ships seemed to use the external pods, so I stuck with that theame. You can change it around if you like."

Naw, s'ok. I haven't watched much B5, so it ok. Big problem I have is how much cargo they hold. This ends up with a single pod on a colony ship allowing the colony ship to something like 200+ million. Ya know fast a homeworld depletes with the AI colonizing like mad? hehe....too darn fast IMHO anyways

Slow Move Early in the Game - The only reason everything is so slow at the beggining of the game is because of the fission engines, they are meant to be slow to make the begining of the game a slow expansion, which will pick up speed as you research better technology. If you want to make the game speed a bit faster, go into the TechArea.txt file and find "Fusion Utilization", change "Start Level :=" from 0 to 1. Then change "Tech Level Req 1 :=" from 3 to 1. This will start all races with Fusion Engines. Now you will need to do a FIND and REPLACE in the "Default_AI_Research.txt" file and replace Fission with Fusion to allow the AI's to research the higher levels as well.

Naw, fission at start is fine, what I was concerned about was AI filling up with engines and no reactors, just get to 1 space/sector movement per turn. I upped the movement for each small fission and small fusion to 3...which maybe too much. I agree slow in beginnning is more "realistic". This is sorta similar to the colony ship/engine size thingy I pointed out earlier.

"Shag'Toth - They are (as BM said) are the SoulHunters. There should be a pic in their directory. The AI that is currently in the ShagToth folder looks for the Psychic tree, but this is for a game of standard SE IV. Instead of the Physic Racial ability they should be given "ShagToth Race" (Use caps as shown). This will give them access to their special racial techs (those that have been added as of yet."

Yeah....mehtinks I'll work on this one. Nice challenge

"AI - Weapon not "whatever" not found. This is because you still have AI in whichever race directory. Go into C:\Program Files\Shrapnel Games\Malfador Machinations\Space Empires IV\B5Mod(or whatever folder you put it in)\Pictures\Races\
Then go into each race folder and make sure the only "Race_AI_" files are the Anger, Fleets, General, Settings and Speech files. Then make sure you have the AI files I posted (further down this list) in an AI folder at the root of the B5Mod."

Okies....

"Individual races using their own weapons - Working on this now, I just wanted to focus on the generic AI first so it would be easier to convert at the end. I'll upload some specific racial AIs some time this week. If you want to do it yourselves, there are three main things you have to do:
1) Go to the Race_AI_General.txt file and change the "Race Opt # Num Advanced Traits :=" to one higher for each of the 3 (Race Opt 1, Opt 2, Opt 3). Then add a new Adv Trait line under each with the name of the race and the word race. So for the NarnRegime you would Up "Race Opt 1 Num Advanced Traits :=" from 2 to 3. Then go down 3 lines and add "Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 3 := Narn Race" then go down to "Race Opt 2 Num Advanced Traits :=" and raise it from 3 to 4. Go down 4 lines and add "Race Opt 2 Adv Trait 4 := Narn Race" then go down to "Race Opt 3 Num Advanced Traits :=" and raise it from 5 to 6, then go down 6 lines and add "Race Opt 3 Adv Trait 6 := Narn Race"."

Hmmm...okies...

2)Now copy the "Default_AI_Research" file from the AI folder to the specific race folder and then do a find and replace for "General". So, far the NarnRegime, we would copy "Default_AI_Research" into the NarnRegime Race folder and rename it "Narn_AI_Research" then we would open it and do a FIND for General. Then replace the word general with the word "Narn", repeat this throughout the file. Now the AI will reserach Narn weapons. I would actually recommend copying the lines where they reserach the general weapons and pasting them right underneath and just change that to the "Narn" weapons, this way the race researches both types of weapons."

Okies...

"3) Now the hard part: Copy "Default_AI_DesignCreation" to the individual racial AI folder and edit the weapon types. Narn again - Copy file to the Narn folder and rename to "Narn_AI_DesignCreation". Go down to the various ships to the lines that say "Majority Weapon family Pick # :=" and change the numbers to Narn weapon numbers - this will require you to check the Components file and find out what Weapon Family each weapon belongs to. This can take a LOT of time."

*Eyes glaze over, mumble to self* I see.....oh, mah achin' haid!

"No Weapons at start - This should not be the case if you are using the new Data and AI files. You should start with a few basic weapons."

Yeah,, methinks I may be using some older Version....DOH!

[Val]

Reactors := True
Haven't had time to test either, but would be nice if it does work. Opens possibilities to title the engines as "Light Engine", "Medium Engine", etc.

Web Site :
Hoping to get this done by tomorrow.

Max # Engines:
If you botched something and it works, all the better! Make sure to save those Data & Vehicle files to compare.

External Cargo Pod Space:
Population is meant to take up more cargo space and was changed early on. Apparently we lost that at some point when making a revision. Will add it back in.

Slow Ships:
In most of the test games I have played, the AI is making progress - though at a slower pace than a human. Reactors have been appearing on ships, but not quite as many as I would like. Maybe I will give all Engines some extra storage space to help balance that out. Though only the reactors can 'regenerate' the supplies (or a layover at a supply base).

ShagToth:
One minor issue you'll have with the Shag'Toth is that all their special EM weapons haven't been added yet (same with the Vorlons). I had stopped short of finishing all the weapons when reports of the AI not working surfaced, now that the AI is on track I will get the Last two weapon areas completed (ElectroMagnetic and Gravitic).

Individual Racial AIs:
If y'all can wait till the weekend, I'll put together some basic racial AIs. They will change as I improve the base AI, but they will at least use their individual racial techs.

Data/AI Files:
Go to your B5Mod directory and rename the Data folder to DataOld, do the same with the AI directory. Then go back a few pages in this thread and download the most recent Data/AI zip and install in your directory. You should notice a few differences. Also, you need to make sure that the AI in the Pictures/Races/"whatever Race" and the Pictures/RaceNeutral/"whatever Race" folders only include the following 5 AI files, otherwise it will not work: "Race_AI_Anger, Race_AI_Fleets, Race_AI_General, Race_AI_Settings, Race_AI_Speech" (though it is ok if they do NOT have all these files - they will then use the defaults).