Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Arralen]

I'm having a little bit of a problem with a movement point calculation oddity:

(My) Small Fighter, 2x SmallIonEngine I, says (4,10) on the construction screen - and ends up with 8km/s in combat.

Sithrak FF, 5x IonEngine I, says (8) on the construction screen (7 from engines, 1 from racial trait) - and ends up with 11km/s in combat, outpacing the fighters !

Am I overlooking some factor?

[Captain Kwok]

Is this using the small systems mod?

[Arralen]

Originally Posted by Captain Kwok

Is this using the small systems mod?

Ooops, yes, I'm using BalanceModv119f and BalanceModSmallSysv106.
Should have mentioned that I guess ...

[Captain Kwok]

It seems I made the movement amount for the fighter engines too low in Small Systems. A new version of the mod is being posted tonight, and I'll have an update for Small Systems in a day or two with a fix.

[Captain Kwok]

Greetings.

Version 1.19g for the Balance Mod is available. A little late, but better than never!

Hopefully there's no more errors with the vehicle hull modifiers. I also made some tweaks to a few weapons and added a couple new images.

Cooperative intelligence was improved as the points were not always available for the current turn.

The AI got some more attention. I focused on adding more flexibility to the AI's designs and their vehicle distribution, which will be expanded greatly in v1.20.

It's savegame compatible.

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

The changes:

1.  Fixed   - Some vehicle hull modifiers were incorrect
2.  Fixed   - Unit maintenance modifiers for racial trait vehicle hulls were not being applied
3.  Changed - Increased range for Wave-Motion Gun
4.  Fixed   - Damage amount for Stupifier was too low
5.  Changed - Damage amount for Allegiance Subverter was too low
6.  Added   - Descriptive text to note if timed-effect weapons did damage in milliseconds or seconds
7.  Fixed   - One of the portrait images for warp points was incorrect
8.  Added   - New images for Point-Defense Blaster and Point-Defense Beam weapons
9.  Changed - Designated Colony tech areas as unique
10. Changed - Increased cost for Shield Implosion tech area
11. Changed - Increased reload time for Shield Imploder
12. Changed - Made improvements to the AI's use of Shield Regenerators
13. Changed - Improved AI's design response against enemies using long range seekers
14. Changed - The damage amount for planets damaged by intel or random events was too small
15. Changed - AI or Minister designs for the Recon Satellite design type didn't include Basic Sensors
16. Fixed   - Sometimes AI players would add multiple Stealth Totems
17. Added   - Improvements to AI ship distribution based on enemy ship speeds and basic weapon usage
18. Fixed   - AI players in team mode would sometimes accept a treaty from a human player
19. Fixed   - Cooperative intelligence points were not being transferred in some instances
20. Changed - Improved AI's design response to empires heavily using shields or armor
21. Changed - Made some adjustments to how/when AIs mothball or scrap ships
22. Changed - Small tweaks to design type distributions for AI empires
23. Changed - AI's will be more aggressive in obtaining cultural achievements to address empire deficiencies
24. Fixed   - Sometimes ships/bases wouldn't drop their cargo before retrofitting
25. Changed - Improved AI empires use of Resource Converters
26. Fixed   - AI players were often building more than one Ultra-Recycler per system or planet
27. Fixed   - Remotely mined resources were not being considered in AI's resource budgeting
28. Fixed   - AI would sometimes try designing units with multiple Emissive Armors, which is currently restricted
29. Updated - AI Scripts
30. Updated - Event/Intel Scripts

[Arralen]

Yeah, great !

I'm sorry to say, though, that most likely you'll have to do another version

Just tonight I stumbled upon what seems to be a regression to around 1.15 (i vaguely remember reporting such a problem around then):

AI (Norak) offered alliance, with intersettling and complete(!) tech exchange, and all goodies on turn 41.

Thing is: I'm not bordering them, I don't "see" them on the map, I may have shot down one scout 20 turns earlier. No trade, no previous treaty, relations are "unknown".

Either the AI is (again) too fond of intersettling/alliance treaties, or this is that "errenous treaty message in the turn of meeting them" bug, which I had once before as well. Might actually be a indigenous SE5 vanilla bug, don't know... .

Savegame appreciated?

[Arralen]

Nearly forgot - and the forum didn't let me make any more changes to the above posting ...

AI scoutships (e.g. Phong, Norak) use only 1 main gun, but no PD; Layout is essentially the same as the attack ship (at least with minimum-size FF in the beginning), just the PD is exchanged for a large supply store.

I think this layout is unadvisable, as these ship are easily killed by missile sats or gun fighters.

I would suggest reducing the armor (2x heavy, 1x light) to fit a PD gun, especially as it is available to all races from start.

[Arralen]

Upon applying my tweaks to 1.19g, I found you added and removed some values from settings.txt vs. 1.19f, but I don't find that mentioned in the readme!? Deliberate or an editing error?

Added:

All Shipsets Get 360 Degree Center Firing Point                       := TRUE

Removed:

Combat Fighter Group Amount                                           := 20
Combat Mine Group Amount                                              := 20
Combat Satellite Group Amount                                         := 20

Number Of Space Combat Turns                                          := 50

PS: I love Winmerge !!

[Captain Kwok]

I noticed that the Balance Mod settings.txt file was missing the firing point line and was carrying some extra lines versus the stock file. The edit didn't effect the mod in anyway, purely cosmetic so I didn't bother mentioning it.

If you have the turn available where the Norak offer the treaty that would be useful, savegame at captainkwok dot net.

[Captain Kwok]

Forgot to mention that if the AI suspects you're using seeker weapons, then it'll start adding PD to its scout ship designs.