Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[MisterBenn]

Yes, thanks for the continuing effort poured into the mod.

I have comments from my current game in progress: it was started with 1.08/0.94 and is now 1.13/0.95 -

1) My Weapon Platforms with L2 APBs are drawn wrongly during space combat. When enemies attack my planets, they fire once the enemy fleet is appropriately close to the planet as they should, but the green beams are not drawn as originating from the planet, instead they emerge downwards from out in space somewhere and hit the ships! Obviously only a cosmetic issue, and could well be a vanilla issue rather than for the Balance Mod.

2) I still have troubles with the lack of expansion of the AI. I'm playing this game with Hard AI / no bonus. About 50 turns in, I have APBs, High Energy Weapons 3 and counting, and Extraction level 3 in all resources for robo-mining, and light carriers. I've seen level 2 DUCs, but apart from that I have seen no technological advances of any kind from the AI players - I've killed 2 minor races and am at war with the Eee. I realise that this is a previously known topic, and could also be caused by my upgrading SE5 and Balance during the progress of my game too... but that's my experience.

Still watching this mod avidly though!

[Raapys]

I suggest starting a fresh game, MisterBenn. There has been *significant* updates to AI research etc. in the latest versions, and they probably wont work optimally in a save game from the older versions, even though the patches are 'savegame compatible'.

I also suggest putting computer bonus up to low or medium; there's still some issues, like fog of war, that handicaps the AI far more than the player.

Kwok, it's great he's getting rid of exessive combats, but is there any chance he'll also try to optimize the AI vs AI combat code itself? It appears to be running, at best, no faster than 8x speed, probably not even half that at times.

[Captain Kwok]

Faster strategic combats is probably on the to-do list with reducing combat replay file sizes.

MisterBenn: What are the scores of the AI players like? For 50-turns in on what I imagine is a low-tech cost game they should have at least 10 planets and 50-60 ships.

[PDF]

Hi
Cpt Kwok,
Can we upgrade the Balance mod version during a (solo) game with no ill effect ?

And kudos for the good work !

[neofit]

Great job Captain Kwok. My last save that took 6m50s to compute with 0.95 is now resolved in 30s in 0.96. I'm a bit wary of reducing the combat length to 150s though.

[Captain Kwok]

It's sort of a temporary measure until the next SE:V patch is out and the attack order gets cleared properly. When that happens I'll probably bump up the space combat radius to 2000 and see how that works with the 3 minute max combats.

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Any Balance Mod releases with the same first digit in the tenths column (ie 0.9x) is saved-game compatible. Although if you updated from v0.94 to v0.95/v0.96, you might need to update your designs to take advantage of the extra space that was made by a few changes.

[Raapys]

Nah, shouldn't be a problem. Any real combat is resolved in under a couple of minutes; it's just the 'chasing combats' that lasts for more, from my experience.

[MisterBenn]

I thought maybe upgrading was my trouble. It's a good excuse to start a new game!

I'll try 1.13/0.96 from tonight.

Regarding the Strategic Combat changes: in that last game, I could pursue a colony ship with my frigate, and in a pursuit my ship would chase and get the first shot in right as the colony ship escaped the border. I found that it would consistently take two combat sessions running to kill one unguarded colony ship, and that is with the instant hit APB and a full set of engines. With the reduced combat time and new retreat circle, will it be possible to catch these craft at all?

[Captain Kwok]

I agree and I want (and already had) to increase the map radius size - but I dropped it a bit to reduce the AI processing times since they might enter such a scenario a half-dozen times per turn etc. Anyhow brief testing seem to work well with 2000 for the size in a frigate vs colony type scenario. In the meantime you could use fighters to chase down enemy colonizers faster. Even a early freighter-carrier can carry a small complement of fighters for such a purpose.

[Raapys]

How about greatly decreasing the speed of colony ships? You'd think a colony ship would be large and slow, far more so than a warship which also has speed in mind. It would also increase the necessity of scouts in the early stages and hinder setting up colony ships many systems away in just a few turns; with how fast colonies become operational and all( i.e. 8 turns for space yard + supply facility = fully working military base).

I'd suggest a starting colony ship speed of 6 or 7, while the frigate speed could remain what it is( assuming maximum engines). Would help alot on those AI processing times to have the 'Chase the colony ship!' fights over sooner, and in one go instead of many seperate battles.

Processing times have decreased enough to make it playable again with 0.96, nice fix. Will see if there's any real disadvantages with it as I play.