Babylon 5 Mod

[Ragnarok-X]

Imperator Fyron said:
I have attached a file with numerous spelling and grammatical errors fixed.

You need to pick either the American spelling of "center" or the British spelling of "centre" for the sake of consistency. Distribution Centre and Medical Center should use the same spelling of the word.

Why do intelligence facilities (especially the "bonus" ones) provide so many intelligence points?

"Agents perform training worth 700 intelligence points per cycle."
Should training really be what is providing the intelligence points?

Distribution Centre (annoying British spelling ) ability tag might be better off saying something like this:
"Distributes resources and makes them available for use throughout the empire."
instead of:
"Distributes resources and makes them available for the empire."

Fuel Dock ability tag might be better as:
"Resupplies all vessels that dock at the planet."
instead of:
"Allows vessels to get resupplied when docking at the planet."

The reference to storing "hard," "soft" and "power" resources in the storage abilities of the resource producing facilities might be confusing.

What is "Restricted Radiationing" supposed to be? It seems that if you reduce the radioactives level, value should decrease.

Descriptions such as these in various facilities are redundant:
"Provides storage space, increases resource storage by 17500 each."
Could possibly be simplified to:
"Increases resource storage by 17500 per resource."

You might want to place the Planetary Outpost at the end of the list for that family. This will cause it to be displayed when "only latest" is enabled (or is it "hide obselete?"), and it will still upgrade properly to the Planetary Settlements and such. Take a gander at the ordering of Space Yard Expansions and the Projects in the latest Adamant files. You should also make a note that it should be built after the Space Yard, since it will not "Increase construction rate with 150 units," it will reduce construction rate to that value if there is no Space Yard on the colony.

Miscellaneous changes I made:

The Medical Center I and II had the Robotoid Factories inbetween them.

Medical Center ability description is awkward. I suggest:
"Improved health of the general population increases the system-wide reproduction rate by 7%."

Shield Generator facilities had discrepencies in the ability tags and ability values. I updated the descriptions to reflect the value of the abilities.

Shield Generator facilities had odd cloaking abilities, which I removed:
Ability 2 Type := Cloak Level
Ability 2 Descr := Increases a planets damage resistance, simulated by adding 75 shield points.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 0
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0

Robotoid Factory ability description had "in the system" added to it.

"Deep Mining Thriller" is now "Deep Mining Driller."

"each 10 cycles" in various descriptions replaced with "every 10 cycles."

Deep Mining Driller, Harvesting Robotics and Thermonuclear Reactors descriptions did not end with a period.

Cargo Warehouse III ability description changed from 17500 to the correct 22500.

"Increases construction rate with 375 units" was replaced with "Increases construction rate by 375 units."

Megalopolis construction abilities were incorrect. Its description was updated to be in line with the Settlements (ie: "units of each resource" instead of "resources each").

Also for Megalopolis, "Allows the storage 5000 resources each." fixed to be "Allows the storage 5000 resources of each type."

Firstly, thanks a bunch for your help. Most of the point you are mentioned are right are correct / will be corrected, especially the grammar and stuff like that.
About your intelligence point question. Well i dont really care about intel, but in all the games/mods i played, weither it be off or Online intel was simply never used. I think by majorly increasing the intel-generation players might actually make one or two planets into intel-centers. Thats the plan

The reference to hard, soft and power ressources will be corrected as well.

About "Restricted Radiationing". Well actually thats one the ideas i really liked. I just didnt know how to proberly explain it.
With it i meant that certain areas (such as area surrounding a powerplant) are artifcially radiated to create a better power output. That what i meant. I was going to explain that in the facility descriptions, of which all are yet to do. If you a suggestion, tell me.


About the Robotoid Factory and the "in the system": Actually it IS in the system, as each planet gets in the increase/decrease in population. So i dont understand it should be removed. Please tell me

Anyway, thanks for your post, it really helped me alot. Most of the things you suggested will be implented/changed that way.

[Fyron]

Ragnarok-X said:
About your intelligence point question. Well i dont really care about intel, but in all the games/mods i played, weither it be off or Online intel was simply never used. I think by majorly increasing the intel-generation players might actually make one or two planets into intel-centers. Thats the plan

I've seen intelligence put to deadly use many times with stock game values of production. A bit overpowering in such cases though, due to the inability to defend against it without scrapping half of your empire and building intelligence facilities. In other cases, everybody had too much counter intelligence, and no intelligence projects could be used. More points per facility won't really balance it out or anything... Perhaps some of the more insane projects should be toned down? I don't recall exactly what the B5 Mod has in it, but projects such as Crew Insurrection and Puppet Political Parties are way to powerful, and should probably be removed entirely. Also, the project that damages planetary cargo is currently useless, since it does points of damage to the cargo. The stock value of 1 means only 1 point of damage is done, so no cargo is ever lost.

Ragnarok-X said:
About "Restricted Radiationing". Well actually thats one the ideas i really liked. I just didnt know how to proberly explain it.
With it i meant that certain areas (such as area surrounding a powerplant) are artifcially radiated to create a better power output. That what i meant. I was going to explain that in the facility descriptions, of which all are yet to do. If you a suggestion, tell me.

Hmm... I think it needs a better sounding name, but I can't think of one at present.

Ragnarok-X said:
About the Robotoid Factory and the "in the system": Actually it IS in the system, as each planet gets in the increase/decrease in population. So i dont understand it should be removed. Please tell me

No, I meant, the ability description did not previously mention that it affected every planet in the system, which it needs to do.

[Ragnarok-X]

Hey Fyron,

i have updated the facilites once again. Added descriptions, changed intel at least a bit (will think about it later) and stuff alike.

If you have spare time, please take a look at it, especially grammar and stuff alike of the descriptions. In addition please take a look at my thread "out of bounce" error. Maybe you can help ?
ty a lot.


Edit: Attached the new file. Sorry, simple forgot it.

[Fyron]

Did you want to attach the new file to a post?

Ragnarok-X said:
In addition please take a look at my thread "out of bounce" error. Maybe you can help ?
ty a lot.

I had no idea what would be causing such a problem, sorry.

[Suicide Junkie]

For intel, why not use the intel sabotage instead of defense?

IE:
- Set project costs proportional to usefulness
- Remove counter intel
- Make intel sabotage relatively cheap

So the key is to actively disrupt your opponent's projects before they complete. On defense, you spam the enemy with sabotage attempts, hoping to prevent the launch of their projects against you. On offense, run a whole bunch of decoy projects to (hopefully) absorb the sabotages while you prepare your real one.

[grumbler]

Do I understand correctly and Ragnorok-X is starting the mod agains from scratch? New facilities means new AI files, etc.

We (Timstone and I) had a complete, stable, B5 mod that was up-to-date on everything except weapons (and even then we had an idea for what space/weight the weapons for the various ship sizes should be). The AI files (modified Pathfinder) worked and produced effective ships and colonies. The existing weapons worked but were not optimized.

I don't undertsnad why this entire effort is being duplicated. Tim, did you lose the files I sent (or did I not send them all)? Frakly, I think if someone is starting over again it is because they don't know how much effort is required to make a mod work. I could never have done it all, nor Path, nor Val, nor Tim.

Having said that, I certainly don't want to dampen anyone's enthusiasm, and since I already have and play a stable effective mod (that has working Ancient ruins, proportional QNP for both ships and fighters, leaky armor, and the stackable sensor/ECM mod) I don't lose anything by others starting again from scratch.

Most of my files I have shared only with Tim, because he was heading up the mod when I was working on it. However, if someone has a place to "hang" all the data, I would be happy to share what I have more widely.

[Ragnarok-X]

grumbler said:
Do I understand correctly and Ragnorok-X is starting the mod agains from scratch? New facilities means new AI files, etc.

We (Timstone and I) had a complete, stable, B5 mod that was up-to-date on everything except weapons (and even then we had an idea for what space/weight the weapons for the various ship sizes should be). The AI files (modified Pathfinder) worked and produced effective ships and colonies. The existing weapons worked but were not optimized.

I don't undertsnad why this entire effort is being duplicated. Tim, did you lose the files I sent (or did I not send them all)? Frakly, I think if someone is starting over again it is because they don't know how much effort is required to make a mod work. I could never have done it all, nor Path, nor Val, nor Tim.

Having said that, I certainly don't want to dampen anyone's enthusiasm, and since I already have and play a stable effective mod (that has working Ancient ruins, proportional QNP for both ships and fighters, leaky armor, and the stackable sensor/ECM mod) I don't lose anything by others starting again from scratch.

Most of my files I have shared only with Tim, because he was heading up the mod when I was working on it. However, if someone has a place to "hang" all the data, I would be happy to share what I have more widely.

grumbler, firstly, no offense.
I dont really know IF you actually played the revised Version of the mod you, timstone and pathfinder created.
If you did, then you should have noticed that it wasnt playable at all. Alright, you could start a game without errors showing up, but still, there was nothing to do except colonizing planets (no reason to do it though) and researching, using your homeworlds research output. Even IF you were able to construct facilities on colonies, they didnt offered any benefit at all, except 500 research points modified by -80%.
So that was the reason i started the mod again. I got in contact with Timstone and we made plan, Timstone is out now, but i hope he will still continue/ready the weapons, at least for major races.
Facilities and the entire colonizing since was not useful, so it simply had to be redone. Colonizing gave you nothing, except waiting and having to protect more. Colonies werent even able to defend themselves, it took 2 turns to construct ONE average satelite, not talking WPs here.

Tweaking AI construction facility files is not hard at all, so that wont be a problem. Basicly you can just keep existing ones, or tweak them slightly.
Tweaking AI designconstruction is not quite as hard as some may believe, i have spent countless hours creating new AIs from SCRATCH for my personal mod.

By now i have completed the facility.txt, at least the basics. I will include racial specific facilites, too, once i have time to spare for that.

I have revised the propulsion system as well, now research progress for the different engine types is more useful, as is the entire reactor thingy. I revised the shiptypes engines per move setting as well and setup a basic NARN ai to play against, it construct scouts and colonyships just fine. Shipset is now about 3 for average colonizers, 4 for combat ships and 5 for scouts, using early game propulsion.
This fits perfectly imho.

Leaky armor and the stackable sensors/ecm system will most probably stay, so no reason to cry about that. About the ancient ruines, they are not hard to setup as well, i plan on including more ancient techs, of which more are useful than the current ones (i.e. Great Machine WP is a nice idea, but was implented...not so well, imho).
The weapons you mentioned are quite nice, but simply not useful at all. Most racial weapons are just not worth researching, as an example, why should a Vree player research Vree Antimatter weapons when he could just stay with the Standart IonBolt until the end ? It is cheaper, more powerful, costs less ressources and research and he can pack even more of those. This majorly sticks. Babylon5 lives of this galaxy and atmosphere, which will be kept with this final revision of the mod.

To sum it up, im sick of the Last years of B5 mod development. 4 Years ago i was regulary lurking the Boards, looking for playable gold Version of b5 mod. I found none. Some month ago i was so happy when i noticed you and several others pumping breath into the mod, but then again i was pretty disappointed once i downloaded the mod. I didnt enjoyed it all, and i actually KNOW many others, weiter be registered or guests, will agree with me.
The B5 will be completed within the next few month, maybe sooner, depending on the amount of time i have and on how many people help me(...).

About your point that i dont know how much time and effort it costs to develope a proper mod. In fact i DO know how much is involved. I spent countless hours playing SE 4, and i spent even MORE hours modding. First adding things to stock game, then modifying existing mods for my needs, finally i created my own mod. You can find a topic about my mod somewhere in this board, search for "Impact mod" or something alike. I definitly now what im up to, and im not going to stop at half the way, THIS time the Babylon 5 will be completed, and it will offer a pretty good time to anyone who gives the mod a chance and plays it.

If you want to help, you are welcome, there is much to do, weither i do it alone, or people help me, the mods development will not be on halt for another 2 years.

Please, dont feel offended. If you do, it was most probably my bad grammar or way to "speak" english. I respect the time you and others put in the mod.

[solops]

Is there a homepage for this "new" Version of the mod?

[Fyron]

grumbler said:
Most of my files I have shared only with Tim, because he was heading up the mod when I was working on it. However, if someone has a place to "hang" all the data, I would be happy to share what I have more widely.

If you can email them to me (I can send you an invitation to get a Gmail account, which has huge file size limits), please do so and I can host them on SpaceEmpires.net. Otherwise, you could possibly create a torrent file of them and upload that to my tracker at http://kazharii.no-ip.com:6969/ and get them to me that way.

Ragnarok-X, since you are doing a more or less complete rewrite of the mod, you should consider using a different name for it, much like the "Atrocities' Star Trek Mod" and the "Star Trek Mod."

[Ragnarok-X]

solops: There is no website. I have not thought about that, but now that you mention it, it is most neccessary to get one. I will ask a few friends of mine if they can spare a bit of webspace, then i need someone to build a least a basic website, i now a bit of html, but not enough to make a homepage.


Fyron: A new name would be fine by me. For now im waiting for grumbers response though, im interested in the rewritten facility file he mentions. Why didnt they published all of the files ? Just like i said above, the mod needs to be finally completed, an on-hold status is not good.