Babylon 5 Mod

[Fyron]

To upload, go to the main Intel Forums page. Go into the first Category (mods scenarios uploads), and pick the appropriate thread.

3. I think jump gates should be bases, not ships. The explorer class ships, BTW, were construction ships for the EA jump gates, and the jump gates were immobile once constructed.

You have to have a movement point available to open or close a WP, so bases can not use them. So, they must be on ships.

10. It is peculiar that the cargo hold component size is so big (75 kt), given that a cargo hold is the most easily resized component there could be: it is just space, in essence. Recommend that all sizes, costs, and capacities be divided by five, to make the cargo versus speed payoff more interesting. Troop, fighter, satellite, and mine capacities would be unchanged.

Val had a very good reason for making them so large. Perhaps someone else will remember.

[ June 22, 2003, 06:53: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Timstone]

Grumbler: Tjeez, you've been busy. Too much time on your hands? Rest assured most of the thingies you've found will be taken care of. The strange things you've found in the facilities did escape me. So I've changed them accordingly.The reason for the large amount of open tech levels is (very surprisingly): The Mod isn't finished yet.
Because of my busy schedule at the moment I can't take care of all the bugs, but Posts like this really help track them all down. When I'm ready to release a test Version of the 2.0 Version, hope to get as many Posts with good advise and bug locations. Keep up the good work!

[grumbler]

IF: Good point about the movement. I had forgotten (never actually built any, meself, in all the games that I have played! )

Timstone: I know that the mod isn't finished yet, and that's why "delete" for the time being should consist just of adding a racial area to the tech, such as 2 (deeply religious). You have to do this for the nonce anyway, since the AI still calls for those techs and if you simply erase them you will get an error message.

I did find out why you cannot have aggressive mining at tech level 1, though: if you do, all the mining stations on the homeworld are aggressive in the setup! That might be kinda cool for a "we have to get off the homeworld before we choke on our own excesses" scenario, but that's not B5's canon.

So, while I still think the tradeoff should be there, it cannot start at Mining Tech 1. Perhaps the AMC I should be deleted and the tradeoffs just be between MC II and AMC II and MC III and AMC III.

And, TS, I didn't do this all in a day. I actually started the tech-tracing before my computer went down in the early spring, and I finally got the couple hours needed to finish it.

[Timstone]

Good digging Grumbler. And good thing you are on the net again.
I've done some digging and numbercrunching of my own and I decided to swap the costs of the Agressive Mining and normal Mining buildings. I also modified the tech levels a bit. Though, I'm not sure what to do with the excess levels (Val gave 9 levels of minerals extraction, rads extraction and organics extraction). Ah well, maybe a good idea will come to me (probably in the middle of the night).
Again, excellent work my good man.

Edit: Oh shoot I forgot, could someone upload his (or her) settings.txt? I really need it to verify some things.

[ June 22, 2003, 18:24: Message edited by: Timstone ]

[grumbler]

Thanks, Tim,

Another bit of data I grubbed out but never got to post, on Education Centers and Arch Sites:

Comparing the Archaeological Site with the Educational Center we find that we have some problems.

The following rations help explain the problem ratios are the AS number divided by the EC number:

AS I to EC I:
Cost Minerals: 0.41
Planet - Shield Generation: 2.00
Point Generation – Research: 0.67

AS II to EC II:
Cost Minerals: 0.44
Planet - Shield Generation: 2.00
Point Generation – Research: 0.75

AS II to EC II:
Cost Minerals: 0.45
Planet - Shield Generation: 2.00
Point Generation – Research: 0.80

Each has a unique ability usable by only one per planet, but these I will ignore for the nonce, because as I will show, the AI will build a single AS on each research planet anyway, and the Ship Training capability is not generally applicable.

The problem with the current setup is that the AI follows a very inefficient path on its research planets. To give an example of how profound this can be, I will use the following case:

Assume a small planet. Assume that the population of the planet is 250 million (though this assumption is only for illustrative purposes, it isn’t too far off from what you typically find). Ignoring for the nonce population growth, you have 380 construction points per turn. Assume Research tech level I.

The AI will follow the following pattern when it builds up the planet:
Build EC I
Build AS I
Build three more EC I
Build Medical Center I
Build two Covert Ops Center I
Build two EC I

I, as a human player, on the other hand, build more rationally and never use the EC as follows (I will build the MC I and CoC I even though I probably wouldn’t myself, as otherwise the comparison becomes impossible):

Build five AS I
Build Medical Center I
Build two Covert Ops Center I
Build two AS I

Now, the AI will spend 286 turns to complete the planet, while I will spend 172 turns. True, at the end of it the IA has a planet producing 7446 RP per turn and my only produces 5986, but I have had a lot of RP production in the meantime that the AI has not.

After 50 turns, the AI has totaled 19,710 RP, and I have 44,530.

After 100 turns, the AI has totaled 110,960 RP, and I have 201,188

After 200 turns, the AI has totaled 565,969 RP, and I have 670,578

In fact, after 300 turns my method still holds the edge in total accumulated RP, 1,225,378 to 1,155,225. Given especially the disproportionate advantage of early RPs, it is clear that the AI strategy, while logical, give a human player an enormous advantage.

There are two solutions: reduce the cost of the EC, or increase the cost of the AS. As the game already moves so slowly, I think that former is the solution.

If the EC’s price is set to 150% of the AS, it still makes sense to build both of them on a planet. While building an all-AS planet still provides an early edge, by turn 100 of the planet’s history the AI strategy will be 16% better than the all-AS strategy.

In order for this solution to work though, the ratio of the EC producing 50% more RPs than the AS must be maintained at the higher tech levels. The current methodology simply adds 250 RP per level to both facilities. I think that it would be better to just increase production by 33% for each facility, thus yielding the following RPs at levels I/II/III (rounding a bit for ease of comprehension):

Archaeological Site: 500/665/885
Educational Center: 750/1000/1325

Thoughts?

[grumbler]

And I think everybody has realized that the costs for Covert Ops Center and Listening Post sould be reversed? Otherwise, no one should ever build a CoC, as they are twice the cost but not as good.

One LP is the most any system needs.

[grumbler]

Another somewhat trivial question: was it deliberate that the scout ship and fast courier do not obey the Newtonian rules (i.e. have one engine per move vice what should be 2 and 3 respectively)? Would it not be better to simply not require life support or crew quarters under the assumption that the bridge was big enough to include all that for the small crew?

My problem is that I guess I have a hard time making seclected ship typres violate the laws of physics to make the game work!

As it is, the scouts are no big deal, but the advantage the FC has is so enormous as to make it generally unwise to build any other transport type.

[grumbler]

Still having problems getting the AI to build spaceports properly. I thought the "scammer jammer" dodge would work, but since SJ isn't a system-wide phenomena, every planet builds a trading post if you give the SJ ability to the TP. But if you don't, then no system builds a spaceport-type facility.

If you actually call for the "spaceport" ability, then the AI choses the most advanced facility with that capability - the Homeworld Hub!

If we use an unused system-wide capability to get the spaceport ability, then all of the AI construction_facility files need to be redone. If we just use the SP ability (and just not make the HH a spaceport), then this will still require rewriting the c_f files.

The easiest thing to do would be to just make all the races "natural merchants" (or whatever that trait is called that eliminates the need for spaceports) and get rid of the SP ability for homeworld hubs (else you will not start with one), but it seems a shame to get rid of a concept that is so inherent to the original game and which makes so much sense.

Thoughts? Alternative suggestions?

[Fyron]

Those ships are supposed to be really really fast.

If you require no CQ or LS, then the ship will get penalties to it's movement when you build it, as it will not have at least one CQ and one LS on it. You can add the abilities to the hull to get around this though.

[Timstone]

Grumbler: I already saw the mistake with the Covert ops Center and the Listening Post. But very sharp of you.
I didn't crunch that many numbers (I hate testing, besides I have more fun things to do...) on research. The only thing I can say is: GREAT WORK. Really I mean it, your approach is good. The most logical thing for me to do is to addapt your recomendations. So, I will.
Nice work.