Devnull Mod Gold: updates and discussion

[Rollo]

Well, good news. I have made fine progress. Here are the latest changes:

* removed small emissive armor
* removed abilities from small organic and crytalline armors, since they aren't working for units anyways. Reduced their sizes to 1 to make better fit on units
* reduced cost for small shield generators
* restricted Solar Sails to one per vehicle
* added Balanced System Mod as another selection for different quadrant styles
* removed Master Computer I and II, made Master Computer III a ruins tech (#10)
* increased cost and size for Allegiance Subverter by 100 and reduced range by 2
* added Psychic Weapon Mount that brings back Allegiance Subverter back to its original size and cost, effectively making AS an unmountable weapon, except for its own mount
* reduced minerals cost for Allegiance Subverter but increased rad cost and largely increased its organic cost. reasoning: it needs manpower (psychics) to operate. for the same reason AS can no longer be placed on satellites or drones.
* added boarding defense to Allegiance Subverter and Boarding Parties
* added Death Ray (ancient ruins tech) that kills boarding defense only (can be used against Allegiance Subverter, Boarding Parties, Security Stations, Telepathic Armor, and Monster Immune System)
* added Death Ray as requirement for the Sci-Fi Cannon
* made Monitors (baseships) and Starbases immune to crew conversion
* added Master Computer tech area. MC has to be researched after finding it in a ruin and getting to Computers level 3.
* added Advanced Master Computer that combines a MC with a neural combat net, if both ruins were found and MC tech researched
* revised a lot of the CueCappa/Abbidon construction, research and designs
* revised some of the Sonne research and designs
* added the Quadrant Style Selector.exe that allows a player to switch between different quadrant mods, Classic, FQM, and Balanced mod
* added /data/Classic Systems, /Data/FQM Systems and /data/Balanced Systems folders and appropriate files. These folders act as source for the Quadrant Mod Selector
* updated /Data/FQM Systems with the FQM v1.23 files
* cut away unneeded images for component and planet minis and moved/renumbered some planets to make file smaller (components are still image mod compliant)
* revised (generally increased) fleet sizes for all AI races
* added Ancient Technology tech group and moved/reordered all ruin tech areas
* reduced costs for seekers (for some of them greatly reduced costs)
* increased damage resistance for ionic pulse missile and tweaked damage, range and speed a bit
* tweaked fighter offense and defense bonus
* set to-hit bonus for AFM to 70 for all sizes
* raised to-hit bonus for PDC to 90
* raised to-hit bonus for mini-PDC to 80
* raised Seeker Combat Defense Modifier to 110
* reduced Planet Combat Offense Modifier to 10
* reduced bonus for Accelerated Psychic Sensors to 10/20/30
* added Equal Systems from Balance Mod to Classic Quadrant SystemTypes.txt
* added Asteroid Belt with Planets to Classic Quadrant SystemTypes.txt
* added AI Friendly Quadrant to Classic Quadrant QuadrantTypes.txt (no hazard systems, some equal systems, no storms or 'useless' systems, asteroid belts have one planet of each type, systems have few warp points and quadrant layout is string-like)
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Apart from cleaning up some stuff, my todo list is done. I am going to test the mod a bit now and see if made any big and easy to catch mistakes.

So ETA has moved from 'soon' to 'very soon' .

[Rollo]

Ta-daaa!
And here it is, no teaser or April fool's joke this time. This is the real thing:

DevnullMod Gold version 1.80

very short summary of changes and new features:
* New AIs: Xiati and Sallega, and updates to all other races.
* New graphics: Asteroids, Taera shipset, monster drone, new buttons and intro screen.
* Quadrant Style Selector: allows easy switching between different quadrant mods
* many more revisions, features and fixes: better weapon balance, new ruins techs, revised mounts and to hit chances, Master Computer is now a ruins tech, single satellite tube, Puke's infamous Sci-Fi Canon Cannon and much much more... please refer to readme for more details.

Have fun ,
Rollo

[henk brouwer]

*pushes download button*

[Rollo]

Hey, Henk!
good to see you are still around =).

[henk brouwer]

Yes, I still lurk here occasionally while waiting for the release of SeV . Good to see you still around as well, I guess we are the only people here that actually link to dungeon odyssey related stuff in their sigs..

Anyhow, Judging by the lists of changes a lot of work was put into this version, I probably won't have time to play the new version of Devnull until somewhere next week but I'll try and give some more usefull comments when I do.

[se5a]

have the normal shield and phased shields been fixed so the normal sheilds don't upgrade to the phased?

and can you add a phased shield regen?
AFAIK the normal one doesn not work on phased shields.

[Ed Kolis]

There is only one shield regeneration ability. AFAIK it works on both types of shields...

[oleg]

After a long distraction by normal life I want to start
playing SEIV again.
I never tried latest Devnull. One think I don't like
in unmoded sEIv is fast pace of research.
I often play with "high cost" and also reduced output
of research centers by 1/2.
I wonder what effect would it have on Devnull mod ?
Will it make game too slow ??
I'm planning to play large galaxy ~200 system with
~15 AI on low or medium bonus.

[Rollo]

Devnull Mod Gold plays at the same pace as stock SE4. So lowering the research output will have the same effects.
I can not think of any mod specific reasons that speak against it.

Will it make the game too slow? Yes, IMHO it will. But to each his own. If you like slower research, go for it.

[Dizzy]

Rollo, in the devnull mod Im doing, the Sonne race freaked out somehow and went on a mad rampage... Their research and resources are 5x that of any other empire cept mine... and I'm consistently ranking half they are in everything else... despite me capturing several early enemy race's HW's. Only thing I'm leading in is population.

What the hell happened? They are going nuts... You do anything special with their AI scripts or did they just get lucky this game? I'm especially impressed with their research and tech levels. Super impressive. When I got word they created a planet... I felt like a third world country at the advent of the atomic age...