Proportions mod Version 2.2 released

PvK · #1 May 7th, 2002, 12:36 AM

Download it from the Proportions mod web page.

I thought this was going to be a small release a week or more ago, but it turned out to be a lot more. The basics are more or less unchanged, and old 2.0-2.1 games should be upgradable without particular weirdness, but there are several extensions and additions in a number of areas (see below).

Players wanting acceleration to planetary development will I think find that a lot more speed is possible now with research into Cargo & new Starliner modules, and use of the new lower-level urban facilities.

The AI has been improved in a number of ways. John Sullivan has started helping me test and tweak the AI, and has been spending a lot of time figuring out how to get the AI to handle Proportions better. His Abbidon weren't quite ready for this release, but they are getting close and I expect they will be quite good in 2.3, which will appear as soon as they are ready.

Version 2.2:

---------
Gameplay:
---------
* Changed drone Anti-Ship Warheads to only be usable against ships and
bases (not fighters/satellites/planets/etc).
* Extended Temporal Shifters three tech levels with diminishing results,
to fall in with null space boost to adapt to Proportions armor. Note
that Temporal Shifters are easier to research and to build but shorter
ranged and somewhat less destructive than null space projectors.
* Control and life support components will no longer upgrade to more
expensive types when a design is upgraded.
* Adjusted speed of Light Missile System IV to originally intended speed.
* Increased research cost of Neural Computer Interface and added several
levels of development to it with different cost/size shifts and new
side-effects.
* Decreased research cost of Massive ancient techs, and increased their
maximums so they could actually be developed.
* Extended Massive Shield Depleting Weapons to tech level 6.
* Increased cargo & supply storage tech branch to level 5, and added
a new cargo component type, Starliner Module, that makes some larger
population transport capacities possible with advanced research, and
makes population transports a little easier to design and also to
maintain. Starliner modules require both Cargo and their own Starliner
tech area to be researched. This was done mainly to make it possible
to adjust the AI to build transport hulls without using Starliner
modules.
* Doubled organics costs of (racial tech) Organic Generation Facilities.
* Rearranged (racial tech) Solar Generator facilities. The more advanced
ones now cost more to build, and they now produce more rads, fewer
organics, and fewer still minerals.
* Added new non-racial-tech Solar Power Plant facilities. These are
inexpensive but produce only rads, not organics or minerals.
* Increased costs of higher-level Monolith facilities.
* Added four new cultural facilities below the previous "City" facility,
and re-named "City" to "Major City". See Major City, City, Minor City,
Colonial Community, and Settlement.
* Cultural facilities are now broken into four families to limit abuses
of the current SE4 facility upgrade mechanic: Settlement/Community,
Cities/Metro/Megalopoli, Arcology, and Cultural Centers. Upgrades are
allowed within but not between these Groups.
* Added Psychic Intelligence Centers.
* Increased size and cost of high-tech combat sensors and ECM, to make
smaller Versions a more viable alternative on larger ships.
* Added Ionic Shield Generators (provide protection against ionic
engine-destroying weapons.
---------
Cosmetic:
---------
* Expanded descriptions of cultural facilities to better explain what
these represent.
* Corrected cosmetic typo in "Spatial Rupture 2".
* Fixed cosmetic duplicate Rad Storage III.
* Removed some bogus warnings for system-wide ability duplication from
some urban facilities.
* Separated small combat sensors and ECM from large Versions when "only
latest" is selected, instead of only offering small ones.
---
AI:
---
* Added ability to have AI use efficient engines.
* Added ability to have AI choose between light and capital missiles.
* Added ability of AI to deploy Mental Flailers after Allegiance
Subverters have been developed.
* Implemented planned method for AI to build intel centers.
* Implemented planned method for AI to build system happiness facilities.
* Stopped AI loading some AFV weapons on fighters.
* Enhanced Amon'krie AI.
* Enhanced Neutral AI's.
* Modified Drushocka AI.
* Enhanced Terran AI.
* Enhanced some default AI files that will improve all AI's.

PvK

PvK · #2 May 7th, 2002, 12:53 AM

Oh, I forgot - the Norak AI got tweaked somewhat, as well.

pathfinder · #3 May 7th, 2002, 03:09 AM

I like

ZeroAdunn · #4 May 7th, 2002, 04:43 AM

Let me be the first to say:

Wahooooooooo!

oleg · #5 May 7th, 2002, 03:14 PM

PvK, please either move Organic generation into a separate group or at least put them below Organic farms in facility.txt.

I think 99.9% people play SE IV with "show only latest" on in constraction window. As it is now, organig generation facilities are invisible, being override by organic farms. To build them, I must to uncheck "latest only", put them in queue and swith "latest only" back. Extremely inconvinient.

Even worse, every time I research, for example, space yards II and press "upgrade facilities", SE IV tries to replace organig generation V with organic farms III

I still do not like the lack of research requirements for Major city. The fact that several cultural facilities are available from start gives me headache: I must to switch off and switch on "onlly latest" if I want to build cheap town and constantly monitor construction every time I hit "upgrade facilities".
Worst of all, it makes impossible to programm AI to build cheap cultural facilities first and upgrade them later (it always build th latest available). PVK, please assign some research requirements to low-level facilities. IMHO, it will make this mod even more flexible and interesting.

I am rather confused with "unresearcheable tech."
It is only to make older save games compatible with 2.2, right ? Can I delete all these dummy facilities if I want to start a new game ?

I think there is a type in "researcheable" Archology (one in the bottom of the list). It is assign to a wrong facility group than city-megapolice-metropolice facilities. I am pretty sure it is a type, but please check it.

wr8th · #6 May 7th, 2002, 04:46 PM

PvK,
As always, your effort in this endeavor is appreciated.
This is the only mod my wife and I play. Looking forward to the AI tweaks so that I can port them over to Atrocities' Star Trek races (another excellent magnum opus).

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: wr8th ]

PvK · #7 May 7th, 2002, 09:54 PM

quote:
Originally posted by oleg:
PvK, please either move Organic generation into a separate group or at least put them below Organic farms in facility.txt.

I think 99.9% people play SE IV with "show only latest" on in constraction window. As it is now, organig generation facilities are invisible, being override by organic farms. To build them, I must to uncheck "latest only", put them in queue and swith "latest only" back. Extremely inconvinient. Even worse, every time I research, for example, space yards II and press "upgrade facilities", SE IV tries to replace organig generation V with organic farms III

Heh, sorry about that. Yes, I'll make org generators a separate family. I never rely on the automatic "upgrade facilities" function, so I never noticed this.

quote:

I still do not like the lack of research requirements for Major city. The fact that several cultural facilities are available from start gives me headache: I must to switch off and switch on "onlly latest" if I want to build cheap town and constantly monitor construction every time I hit "upgrade facilities".
Worst of all, it makes impossible to programm AI to build cheap cultural facilities first and upgrade them later (it always build th latest available). PVK, please assign some research requirements to low-level facilities. IMHO, it will make this mod even more flexible and interesting.

Ya, I see how that could help - I'll add an extremely cheap tech requirement so this can be controlled. Thanks for the suggestion.

quote:

I am rather confused with "unresearcheable tech."
It is only to make older save games compatible with 2.2, right ? Can I delete all these dummy facilities if I want to start a new game ?

Yes, that is an invisible and unattainable racial tech, that hides some items from selection without removing them, to allow older games to be upgraded to 2.2 without problems. It's only visible when browsing the data files or if you have "show all tech" on and are studying the tech tree database in Help. If you are starting a new game from scratch and playing by yourself, you can hack those out of the mod and it will work fine.

quote:

I think there is a type in "researcheable" Archology (one in the bottom of the list). It is assign to a wrong facility group than city-megapolice-metropolice facilities. I am pretty sure it is a type, but please check it.

I think you mean "typo" and "facility family", rather than "type" and "facility group". Assuming you mean that the facility family is "62," while the cities before it are "61," that isn't a typo. As the readme says, there are four categories of cultural facilities, and they are in different families in order to prevent abusive upgrades. That is, you can't upgrade a city to an Arcology; you have to start from scratch. There are two reasons for this. The first is that SE4 has a lame way of calculating the cost in cases like this (I put in a request to change this), so it would be a cheat that would undermine the hierarchy. The other reason is that an Arcology is defined as a completely different kind of city, which wouldn't save construction time by having an old-style city to start from.

PvK

oleg · #8 May 7th, 2002, 11:14 PM

"I think you mean "typo" and "facility family", rather than "type" and "facility group". Assuming you mean that the facility family is "62," while the cities before it are "61," that isn't a typo."

Yes, it is me who makes typos !

Thanks for clarification. They have been in the same group before, that's why my question. I was also puzzled why the very first item in the facility family 62 has a roman numerical 8, just like an extention of the Last item in family 61, which has the roman numerical 7.

I want to make my own small modifications to facilities, but get lost with "unresearcheble tech." facilities. Deleting them would greatly help me, thanks a lot !

I also had a funny experience with Proportion' AI:
Xi'Chung started in next system to me and become extremely agitated from the very start. At the moment I founded the first colony, we have been already at war. Xi'chung send a fleet of 8 ships to attack my colony, which had only 1 weapon platform. I thought it was doomed, but during the battle Xi'chung ships (all with direct fire weapons) did not attack planet but run into corners ! Glory to the divine wind that protect our people

!!!

Tenryu · #9 May 8th, 2002, 01:10 AM

Thanks again, PVK.

PvK · #10 May 8th, 2002, 01:55 AM

Ya, the Roman numerals are left over from the original idea to be able to upgrade all of them, before I realized that it would create a cheat and make the middle levels nearly pointless.

The unresearchable urban facilities are all at the top of the facs file. The enabled ones are all together near the bottom of the facs file.

I'll have to investigate the Xi'Chung - I think the default AI is not actually not genocidal, unlike in the standard set. Since glassing and rebuilding a planet is a lot more wasteful than it is in the current game, and in general I think only genocidal races should exterminate millions of civillians, I changed the default for most races. Of course, the Xi'Chung should be an exception to this, according to their description. So, you have until 2.3 before they get mean...

PvK