Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Suicide Junkie]

The same problem also occurs with non-combat ships.
You also end up with a stupidly large combat map.

I would like to see the option for a combat border. Prevent these infinite combat chases, and keep the map sane.
Steel Cage matches between fleets: no wussing out

[Raapys]

Yah, but the non-combat ships have the option to move away from that grid sector. The AI is wasting like half his fleet on capturing those ever-fleeing ships and fighters though. It's also sort of silly that one can go to combat with someone at a warp point, 'flee' until the fight is over, then continue through the warp point in the system view.

The game mechanics definitely need *alot* of programming work before they're acceptable. And the AI needs fixing and adjusting to the new features like fog of war.

[Shadowstar]

Actually it would be interesting if ships would start to slow down after going a certain distance at full speed. Say thier engines start to lose charge and have to slow down to maintain power to the rest of the ship's systems. This would keep combat more or less contained without imposing unrealistic borders in space, and still allow for faster ships to retreat if they need to.

Though in retrospect, what might work better and simpler is to mod the ship sizes and component levels so that there is more variety in ship speeds during combat. It seems like just about every ship of the same vehicle size goes the same speed because everyone just maxes the engines out.

Another thing that would be interesting is if warp points could act like "instant escapes" in combat. Instead of fleeing into infinty, ships could make a bee-line for the warp point, but only if they already had orders to go through the warp point. Would add an interesting "blockade running" aspect to combat.

[Tim_Ward]

Okay, some notes/suggestions.

1) This is a great improvement. Again.

2) The Space Foreigner's setup files may some changing/optimising, or whichever one is the one where they decide what their heavy/primary weapons etc are for designs. A lot of them aren't building designs with anything other than DU cannons lvl 1 and armour lvl 1. Have you got the AIs researching more exotic weapons, but left some of them with the primary weapon as the DU cannons?

Or have I missed something?

3) Was it your intention to make level one destroyers actually less effective than level 3 frigates? With the increased space needed for another life support and crew quaters, and two extra engines (60kt) you actually have 10kt less effective space on a 350kt destroyer than you do on a 300kt frigate. If so, fair enough - but it might be an idea that the AI research to level 2 medium hulls at whatever age you've got the AIs currently researching the level 1 medium hull in.

4) Your changes to diplomacy work well. However, I'd be cool if they were a little more aggressive in declaring war.

5) AI should research sensors earlier. Level 1 combat sensors just don't cut it.

6) The AI builds ships with point defence on them, and even dedicated point defence ships. Which is cool. But, at least in the early game, unless they come across a human player that uses cap ship missles, the point defence cannons are wasted. How about the AI also uses a missle boat design, that lurks at the back hurling missiles while the attack ships get stuck in?

[Captain Kwok]

For low tech, the only weapons that are available are the DUC and CSMs, so that's why their use is prevalent with the AI. However, the AIs will use other weapons if available depending on their race, but they're just not getting to that point yet with a low tech start. You will notice though that AIs with racial traits will use their racial weapons etc. as they become available.

At the same time I'm building new infrastructure in the AI data files to support a new weapon distribution scheme. Currently the AI is setup to have a primary, heavy, and special weapons at various percentages. I've added a secondary category for flexibility. I'm also working out what weapons each of the major empires will use, particular the combinations for the races without a dedicated racial tech area. For example, I'll probably have the Terrans start out as DUC/CSM mix leading into an APB-Torp combo, complemented by specialized ships with WMGs and perhaps ionic dispersers or something.

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The PD ships are not built in too large a quantity and they do have some offensive capability as well and it's better to have a few rather than none as a preventative measure. I'll also be adding specialized Explorer/Surveyor ships in the next version - essentially unarmed ships with lots of supplies for peaceful races, and single-weapon armed ships with supplies for more aggressive empires.

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I'm currently organizing the research pathway to alleviate most of the noted problems with tardy research in important areas. The layout of the original file was not very good, particularly after the balance mod changes. I've actually got the file opened right now and I'm hoping for a v0.93 tomorrow with the changes.

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I did some work with the attack algorithm. I increased the attack chance for the more aggressive empires. One problem I still need to work out a solution for in the code is the fact that the AI will does not want to enter the attack state when there are still unexplored systems.

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Originally I had Destroyers coming in at level 2 of frigates (like the staggered arrangement for all larger ship sizes) but many said it was available too early - even though I personally thought it was good because each ship hull had its own qualities (and I still might change it back that way). I guess the redeeming feature of the current layout is that the destroyer can be retrofit to the larger size and more useful size.

[Tim_Ward]

Unfortunately, I lost my game to a crash so I can't give you concrete examples, but these AIs had destroyers and still only had level one armour and level one DU cannons. They were all ahead of my in terms of tech levels, yet I was producing far better designs. The only AI with anything else was the phong, who employed their racial tech.

For what it's worth, I agree with you about destroyers at level 2 frigates. Bigger ships give you more design options, which means more fun. There's very little you can do with frigates in balance mod, and the increased tech costs means you're stuck with them for a while.

[Shadowstar]

It seems AI's will research war technologies even when they are focusing on exploration/colonization, but won't actually build any war ships to take advantage of thier advances until they actually go into attack state -- even if they're being attacked. There should be something in the code that ensures that the AI's will start building up-to-date warships when they get attacked, if they aren't already.

How about letting the AI's go to attack state based on thier personality traits and whether they have explored systems belonging to a nearby empire that is relatively small and would be an easy target (based on available information). Obviously, peaceful AI's wouldn't attack at all unless they were being attacked but the agressive ones would naturally want to focus on weaker empires, and the really agressive ones would prioritize this over exploration at the earliest opportunity.

[Raapys]

Yah, there definitely needs to be some AI agression change. All 4 empires I've discovered just wants to make deals with me; I had to be the one to declear war. And when I reject the deal they offer they will spam me with different treaty proposals every one or two turns.

At turn 123, all the 9 empires, except those 4 who had crystalline/organic technology, were using Level 1 Armor, Shields, DUCs and Sensors. In other words, they're not doing so well in combat.

The Organic and Crystalline races on the other hand, were actually doing really well, one guy having level 8 Organic Weapons and level 10 Organic Armor.

So it appears empires wont actually research weapons and armor unless they've got Org/Cryst technology, and even then they're still not researching sensors and shields.

[Captain Kwok]

Don't worry, research will be fixed soon. Just a minor issue with the arrangement of techs. The new file I'm building and hope to be finished today will be a lot better.

For AI aggression, it depends on what races you encounter as well. Certain races like the Abbidon, EEE, Phong are friendly and peaceful and less likely to attack. Others like the Jraenar, Sithrak, Xiati, Xi'Chung are in theory more aggressive - but I will make some more tweaks though so they are more aggressive and get angry over your ships and planets more. That should help with them declaring war.

Has anyone seen the AI proposing treaties with dentrimental conditions? What about stellar manipulation conditions? I made a quick change so that they should only propose those later on when they have the tech.

[Shadowstar]

It might be cool to have the agressive empires differ in outrightly declaring war and alternatively making tribute demands and subjugation-style treaty proposals. This would give them more variety. You'd have some who just want to wipe you out of existence, while others who would rather dominate you through sheer power. On this vein, you could have genocidal empires who seek to destroy a specific race, irregardless of any specific empire. Every planet that contains that race would be a target, regardless of who owns it, unless its one of thier planets (in which case it would be something akin to a concentration camp). Another empire might want a specific race as a member and would pursue conquest or treaty options to that end. Not sure how much of that is possible in the AI files, but it would be a very interesting way to give the empires personality.