Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Captain Kwok]

It's not a bad suggestion, but the problem is that almost everyone will go with the Quantum engines right away because they know that they will be the best engines and easiest to manage from a ship design perspective.

The current system does capture a bit of the choice presented below. Often when a new engine tech becomes available, the older one has a few levels to improve to make it comparable to a mid-level next generation engine.

[Captain Kwok]

I've posted the v1.14a patch for the Balance Mod to be used with the new SE5 v1.71 patch released today.

It's savegame compatible with v1.10+ games. You need to have v1.14 installed before applying the v1.14a patch.

You can find the patch here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

Besides a couple of small script compatibility issues, I threw in a couple of items from the pending Balance Mod v1.15 as a bonus.

Here's the details:

Code:

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Version 1.14a on 26-March-2008:



    1.  Fixed   - Damage types Only Engines, Only Weapons, and Only Shield Generators were not set to skip armor properly

    2.  Changed - Increased shield points for Small Shield Generator

    3.  Changed - Damage amount for Shield Disrupter

    4.  Changed - Damage amounts for most warhead weapons and reduced their cost

    5.  Fixed   - Error in the amount of crew Boarding Parties could overcome

    6.  Fixed   - Some engine details were described incorrectly for Carriers

    7.  Changed - Reduced the number of engines on Carrier hulls to 15

    8.  Changed - Updated the maximum allowed unit settings in VehicleUnitTypes.txt

    9.  Changed - Reduced seeker supply usage

    10. Changed - Increased seeker defense bonus from Defense Systems tech area

    11. Changed - Increased range and effect amounts for Tractor, Repulser, and Wormhole Beams

    12. Changed - Increased cost for Anti-Proton Beams

    13. Changed - Removed to hit penalty form High-Energy Magnifier

    14. Changed - Energy Refractor can only be placed in armor slots

    15. Fixed   - AI was unable to add Energy Refractor to their ship designs

    16. Fixed   - Some AIs were not adding weapons to Fighter Bomber design types

    17. Fixed   - Sometimes a player's design type did not have the correct internal design type and ministers wouldn't work properly

    18. Changed - Updated event and intel scripts for planet conditions event/intel project

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[Captain Kwok]

If you downloaded the v1.14a .RAR download between now and last night, you might want to download it again. The link was pointed at the wrong file!!!

[Arralen]

Did several testgames (SP/simu move/no tac combat// 1.71 and 114a) and encoutered several issues .. and as I don't know if they're from Kwoks or SE5, I'll start with posting them here (though I guess some might be well-known SE5 flaws ...) :

1. AI (attack) ships are running out of supplies regularly and become sitting ducks in enemy territory.
2. supply distribution to allies does not work. Depots themselves are sometimes recognized by the "resupply at nearest" order, but, oddly enough, of some ships in the the same and just beyond the WH to the neighbouring system one would target the allies colony, the other would chose to go all they way back to the next "own" depot .. on the very same turn, even! (Might be the code does not look for allied depots in neighbouring systems ?!)
3. had 4 colony ships mothballed by marking them all and choosing "mothball". Reversing the procedure didn't work for all of them. I couldn't even scrap the lowest number unless after I scrapped the other three and waited another turn.
4. AI pop minister tries repeatedly to drop pop on an already full colony. I even toggled the minister "off", canceled the ships orders, turned the minister "on" again, got the "ship without orders" end turn message - and on the next turn the ship was back trying to drop the pop again ... could be because it's actually the "Moon" of an asteroid field - and the only time when a "moon" and it parent object share the same map location. Possibly the code checks for pop numbers on the wrong object?
5. asteroids values/conditions are not listed on the "known planets" screen
6. crystalline armor shield generation stacks: getting hit 2x in a salvo on +6 shield armor gave me 12 shield points: Either the 2 armor slabs stacked or the shield generation from the 2 shot stacked and was applied after all damage calculation from the salvo.
7. crystal weapons should be rebalanced .. maybe "armor piercing" instead of "armor negating" (50% penetration or something). They're base tech for any race with that tech path yet utterly devastating unless everybody has shields ..
8. After getting ionic weapons 1, I was able to deploy ionic mine warheads - despite its description says I would need warhead level 6 (only had "1" in mines, warheads and ionics)
9. "general" tech fields and tech advances need rebalancing: it's easier to research the starting techs to rediculous highs than to open a new tech field. That's making for dumb tech races with human players .. and the AIs research "plans" are way off anyway ..

[Captain Kwok]

There is a current bug in SE5 that is effecting the selection of resupply locations using the "go to nearest resupply" function. It affects both the manual order and AI script function. I can make a workaround for the AI, but the order itself needs to be fixed by a SE5 patch.

Does that colony have the lowest population in your empire or close to it?

The Skip Armor damage type used to have only partial armor penetration, but doing so makes it trigger each and every armor's special effect (emissive etc.) as it passes through. This can seriously handicaps the skip armor type.

Yes, Crystalline Armor is intended to stack.

Many of the special warhead entries in Components.txt have an error in their requirements formula. Unfortunately I caught it after posting 1.14a.

Not sure what you mean exactly by the last item. Can you elaborate a bit?

[se5a]

does he mean that DUC is too cheep?

[Captain Kwok]

I figured he was talking about DUCs or CSMs etc., but while they are cheap enough to be enticing, ultimately they end up underpowered versus the second tier weapons.

[Arralen]

There is a current bug in SE5 that is effecting the selection of resupply locations using the "go to nearest resupply" function. It affects both the manual order and AI script function. I can make a workaround for the AI, but the order itself needs to be fixed by a SE5 patch.

Should have made 2 entries from this:
A) supplies are not distributed to allied ships in a system
B) "goto nearest resupply" - an AI fix/workaround would be great as it gets seriously crippled by this bug

Does that colony have the lowest population in your empire or close to it?

Nope, it was (IIRC) 100/100 while there where 25/1000 planets as well.

Yes, Crystalline Armor is intended to stack.

Ouch. Sure?

The Skip Armor damage type used to have only partial armor penetration, but doing so makes it trigger each and every armor's special effect (emissive etc.) as it passes through. This can seriously handicaps the skip armor type.

Maybe tone down their damage somewhat?

Not sure what you mean exactly by the last item. Can you elaborate a bit?

Will come backt to that later .. no time now. Maybe do another test game and make some notes ..

[capnq]

How is supply distribution divided and prioritized? Maybe your own ships are using up the system's supply capacity and there's nothing left for your allies?

[Captain Kwok]

Allied ships are very low on the distribution list for supplies, so it's likely any remote resources are being used up the generating empire's ships/units.

Ships will resupply at allied worlds assuming their in orbit during end turn processing.