Balance Mod Available for SE:V

Captain Kwok · #1 October 11th, 2006, 01:39 PM

Greetings.

I've put together a version of the Balance Mod that will work with the SE:V version 1.00 release.

The original purpose of this mod was to supplant the default data files that are provided with Space Empires V with balanced files that retained the spirit of the standard game. A collection of SE:V beta testers participated in its development providing suggestions, comments, and some data files to assist in the development of the Balance Mod. Hopefully the mod addresses most of the issues that take away from the standard SE:V game. And of course, the mod will continue to be updated with SE:V and there is always more work to be done - especially with the AI.

You can find out more about it and download it here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

tmcc · #2 October 11th, 2006, 01:57 PM

Thanks CK

Ironmanbc · #3 October 11th, 2006, 02:10 PM

yes more work on the AI

Uncle_Joe · #4 October 11th, 2006, 03:18 PM

Err, out of curiosity, why wasnt the game 'balanced' to begin with? Is it really that far off? Looking through the list of changes, it appears that quite a bit was changed.

I was really hoping to not have to mod the hell of the game in order to have some semblance of balance. SE4 was pretty awful in its stock form for balance, but I was really hoping that stuff like this would have been a priority for SE5.

Thanks!

Fyron · #5 October 11th, 2006, 03:25 PM

The existence of this balance mod answers such questions, I think. It maintains all of the flavor of SE5 stock, but has had a hammer of balance used on it. Though Kwok did most of the work, there was a lot of discussion with other beta testers going into it.

Elsemeravin · #6 October 11th, 2006, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Uncle_Joe said:
I was really hoping that stuff like this would have been a priority for SE5.

I think the priority was more on the "moddable" aspect o fthe game which went from incredible (in SEIV) to unbelievable (in SEV)...

Fyron · #7 October 11th, 2006, 03:28 PM

Well, to be fair, it actually is down-graded in this day and age compared to games like Civilization 4... SE5 just feels so stunted after pouring over Civ4 for a while.

Suicide Junkie · #8 October 11th, 2006, 03:33 PM

Well, Aaron could have included this AS stock, but didn't.
The betas did encourage balance fixes, but they're impossible to really do piecemeal.

As far as priorities, the stuff we can fix on our own is pretty low. Fixing bugs in the hardcode and making it more flexible and/or useful were the main priorities.

Elsemeravin · #9 October 11th, 2006, 03:34 PM

Is Civ4 very moddable also? I played it but never looked for mod. It actually felt much more boring than SE for me.

Fyron · #10 October 11th, 2006, 03:53 PM

The data is stored in XML files (which you can add new tags to via hooks in the SDK), a lot of the game scripting is done in python files you can change, and much of the core game logic is in a C++ DLL file that there is a SDK for. Almost the entire game can be modified. It's approaching an open source app in terms of how alterable it is.