Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Captain Kwok]

It's just the way the stock sets were made.

[Captain Kwok]

Here's the latest scoop on v1.15:

Added a new minister of ship naming. Players can use this guy to auto rename ships after retrofit. For example, if the ship "Tiger 0005" of the "Tiger" design is upgraded to a "Tiger II" design, it will be re-named "Tiger II 0005" etc.

Worked out a number of bugs in the new AI anger scheme. There's a SE5 bug with log dating that cuts off some combats in sequential turn games, so they are missed for anger items, but I'm hoping that will be fixed for the next SE5 patch.

I started to debug the AI's setup routine as I have suspected its had problems for some time. Uncovered a few issues! One of them was sometimes the AI would sometimes add a negative racial trait when they shouldn't have. Uncovered another SE5 bug where the starting tech levels of technologies were not being considered during the AI's starting tech selection, so they were wasting starting tech points on items they have by default. That needs a MM fix.

Still looking to tweak some racial trait costs as per recent discussions here. I did add back the extra facility space for "Advanced Storage Techniques" so you will gain 20% more facility space for 2000 racial trait points.

You can find out more v1.15 changes in this thread at SE.net:
http://home.spaceempires.net/ftopict-4254.html

Overall, there are a few big changes. The biggest one is that racial technology traits are available right from the start. A related change is that Organic and Crystalline only have their respective hull types available and not both their racial and normal hulls.

The new version should be posted with the next SE5 update.

[Captain Kwok]

Here's the current v1.15 changelog...

Code:

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Version 1.15 (xx June 2008)

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xx. Changed - Slight revision to Small Shield Generator tech area requirements

xx. Changed - Decreased Organic Armor and Crystalline Armor to 10kT

xx. Changed - Reduced Organic Armor and Crystalline Armor to 16 tech levels

xx. Changed - Decreased Small Organic Armor and Small Crystalline Armor to 1kT

xx. Changed - Reduced Small Organic Armor and Small Crystalline Armor to 6 tech levels

xx. Changed - Reduced Energy Refractor to 5 tech levels

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

xx. Changed - Adjusted tech level requirements for Ordnance Vat and Small Ordnance Vat components

xx. Changed - Adjusted tech level requirements for Genetic Recoding Lab facility

xx. Changed - Increased Wormhole Beam effect

xx. Removed - Anti-Ship Neutrino, Anti-Ship Ionic, and Anti-Ship Tachyon Warheads

xx. Changed - Only Shield Generators damage type skips armor and shields

xx. Changed - Adjusted damage amount of Shield Disrupter

xx. Changed - Increased the rate that population loyalty is gained and lost

xx. Changed - Adjusted happiness modifiers to make it a bit more challenging to obtain jubliant populations

xx. Changed - Modified engine requirements for Carrier and Dreadnought vehicle types

xx. Changed - Increased the size of Dreadnought hulls

xx. Changed - Small decrease to the size of Satellites

xx. Changed - Increased the bonus/penalty amounts for the Organics and Radioactives racial traits

xx. Changed - Increased the bonus/penalty amounts for boarding parties in the Brave and Cowardly racial traits

xx. Changed - Increased the cost of the Ancient Race Trait to 1500 points

xx. Added   - The Advanced Storage Techniques racial trait will now provide 20% more facility space

xx. Changed - Increased the cost of Advanced Storage Techniques racial trait to 2000 points

xx. Changed - Players will now start with level 1 in their racial tech areas

xx. Changed - Organic and Crystalline races with only have access to their racial trait hulls

xx. Changed - Revised Crystalline weapons

xx. Changed - Revised Organic weapons

xx. Changed - Revised Psychic weapons

xx. Changed - Revised Temporal weapons

xx. Fixed   - Error in displayed ranges for warhead components

xx. Changed - Clarified the bonuses from racial traits, government types, and society types

xx. Changed - Clarified the bonuses from the cultural tech areas

xx. Changed - Clarified the description for items that cured plagues

xx. Changed - Small increase to ship experience bonuses to attack and defense

xx. Changed - Reduced score calculation by a factor of 10

xx. Fixed   - A number of errors in maximum tech levels



xx. Added   - AI will consider a player's government and society type as a factor in relations

xx. Changed - Enhanced the AI's anger system

xx. Changed - The AI will examine treaty elements for their relevance

xx. Changed - The AI will be more aggressive in addressing a low resource condition

xx. Fixed   - There will still instances where a player's design type wouldn't match the internal AI design type

xx. Added   - AI will consider ordnance levels as part of its resupply criteria

xx. Added   - The AI will evaluate each of its ship's orders to see if they are still valid

xx. Added   - AI will use stellar manipulation technologies (In progress)

xx. Added   - New minister, Ships (All) - Naming, to update ship names after retrofitting

xx. Fixed   - The AI was sometimes choosing negative racial traits when it wasn't intended

xx. Fixed   - The AI was spending starting tech points on tech area levels that are provided by default

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[Q]

Sounds very promising Kwok!

[Captain Kwok]

The latest SE5 patch is up:
http://www.malfador.com/se5patch.html

I'm not sure if BM v1.14a will work correctly with the new patch, so I'll try and post a v1.14b this evening.

v1.15 is not quite ready yet. I've been working on a new scheme to give the AI some adaptability to their strategy choices.

[se5a]

that's unusual, he didn't give us any warning...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Looks like a nice list of fixes.

[Captain Kwok]

I've posted the v1.14b batch for the Balance Mod for use with the new v1.74 SE5 patch. I threw in a number of AI additions from the forthcoming BM v1.15 update as a bonus.

You MUST have v1.14a installed prior to applying this patch!

Find it here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

The details:
Code:

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 1. Fixed   - Error in the AI's starting tech selection

 2. Changed - Improvements to the AI's retrofit and scrapping routine

 3. Changed - Improve the AI's definition of low and high resource states

 4. Added   - The AI will evaluate each of its ship's orders to see if they are still valid

 5. Changed - The AI will check if a colonization destination is valid based on its treaty status

 6. Changed - AI will check ordnance levels as part of its resupply routine

 7. Added   - AI will use its resource converters

 8. Fixed   - Errors in the AI's scrap routine for replacing facilities with needed ones

 9. Fixed   - There will still instances where a player's design type wouldn't match the internal AI design type

10. Updated - AI Scripts

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[Ed Kolis]

5. Changed - The AI will check if a colonization destination is valid based on its treaty status

Hmm, something like that might be handy for human players too... I suppose you couldn't do anything to actually warn players when they issue the order, but maybe a minister that checked all colonizers' orders every turn and warned the player with a log message if they're headed to restricted systems might be handy!

And speaking of restricted systems, there isn't any way to get a list of marked "systems to avoid" via the script code, is there? If so, maybe said minister should check for colony ships headed there, too?

[Sardia]

I can still use the FQM mod with the 1.14b right?