New version 3.1.0 of Proportions Mod for SEIV available!

[PvK]

Check the date posted. Yep, 2012. It's time for... a new version of Proportions Mod for Space Empires IV!



Some folks got me playing PBW, and wanted to start a new game, and I just snapped and went on a modding rampage doing things I had wanted to do for years.

Mainly, fighters are now useful again (I think), and Intelligence has been reworked (and is hopefully useful for intelligence gathering now).

The AI is still very uninformed about all these new changes, though it can sort of play.

Anyway, it is available at: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bwn...nBHSHpkV0dqcUE
Here is my change list since the last released version, which was 3.0.5:

Changes Log:
============

Version 3.1.0:

--------------
New Additions:
--------------
* Added new tech area Light Ship Control Systems, which requires Computers
tech and gives more efficient versions of ship control systems for small
ship classes. This makes smaller ship sizes more proportional and
economically viable.
-----------------
Gameplay Changes:
-----------------
* Moved 20% of defense bonuses from the ship size to the engines, to
increase the effects of losing engines (or omitting engines in designs).
This is also more consistent with to-hit modifiers for bases. The net
effect is zero in almost all cases, unless engines are absent.
* Made Express Transports 5% less easy to hit than they were.
* Halved remote radioactives extraction rates.
* Quartered remote organics extraction rates.
* Seekers are 20% harder to hit.
* Plasma torpedoes are more durable than before.
* Reduced Point Defense Laser mineral costs; added small rad costs.
* Greatly reduced added to-hit bonus from base/planet Fire Control Centers.
* Secondary and Tertiary fire control are fixed size, while Multiplex
Tracking uses a scale mount. This offers a size and resource tradeoff.
* Bridge and Combat Bridge are now scaled to ship size.
* Superior crew quarters are now scaled to ship size.
* Added Long Range Mounts for some long-range ship weapons.
* Reduced research cost of probes.
* Added Photon Jacketing tech area requirement for Jacketed Photon drives.
* Increased research and radioactives cost of Gravitic Drives.
* Upped asteroid damage on ship events.
* Added random events which mimic intelligence operations.
* Reworked intelligence. Missions have very different costs and adjusted
effects, and there are two new research areas: Counter-Intelligence,
and Covert Operations. The general idea is Intelligence should now be
more interesting and useful, and be mostly about actual information-
gathering, while it is still possible (though very very slow) to do
attack missions.
-------------------------
Fighter Gameplay Changes:
-------------------------
* Fighter propulsion reworked.
See "Version 3.1.0 fighter rebalance design notes" above for explanation.
* Fighter engine components redefined as Light, Standard, Heavy, etc.
* Engines/move for larger fighters greatly reduced.
* Fighter engine movement points increased.
* Fighter engines now use scale mounts, with different costs and sizes.
* Fighter engine design space reduced.
* Halved cost of titanium fighter armor, and upped its structure by +1.
* Adjusted emissive fighter armor cost/effect.
* Point Defense Cannon damage roughly halved. Structure of most seekers
equivalently halved.
* Reduced research cost of Fighters technology area.
* Added a Small Craft tech area, representing lower-performance small ships.
* Fighter Combat Sensor and ECM costs divided by 10.
* Fighter weapons improved, generally by extending possible levels a bit
for max damage potential about 50% higher.
* Re-added Small Anti-Proton Beams and Small Meson Blasters.
* Anti-Matter weapon mounts can now be used on some fighter warheads.
---------
Cosmetic:
---------
* Fighter Power Plants categorized as Supply.
* Some spelling corrections.
* Grouped the positions of some similar things together in the mod text files.
* Tidied a few descriptions.


Version 3.0.6:

--------------
New Additions:
--------------
* Added a new tech area for Q-Ships, which appear to be transports or
starliners, but can be nearly fully-equipped warships, though they still
maneuver like transports.
* Added probes, which are small low-tech drones, because any space-faring
nation should be able to deploy simple robot spacecraft. They are inferior
to drones, so one may wish to research Drones and not Probes, so they have
their own tech area which requires Computers at level 1.
-----------------
Gameplay Changes:
-----------------
* Reduced crew and life support requirements for Large Transports from 3 to 2.
* Reduced mineral cost of regular Auxiliary Control from 500 to 100.
------
Fixes:
------
* Corrected supply use for Anti - Proton Beam X.
* Corrected (hopefully no-effect...) double "number or tech req" line in Anti
- Proton Beam XI.
* Added double-tech-req entries to Point - Defense Cannons IV and V, to be
consistent with earlier PD Cannons. (Note: This is an attempt to convince
the AI to prefer these on ship designs.)
* Corrected categorization of Anti-Matter Reactor tech area as Applied Science. (7)
* One can no longer upgrade to Space Port + Supply Depot. This was happening to
Resupply Bases, removing their benefits and sometimes to no good effect (such
as when there was a Space Port City on the planet). (7)
---------
Cosmetic:
---------
* Corrected typo in crew quarters description.
* Adjusted descriptions of Computer Combat and Computer Defense.

((7) Thanks to Edward Kolis for reporting this!)


PvK

[PvK]

I just made a minor correction/improvement, which is available from the same link:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bwn...nBHSHpkV0dqcUE

It's kind of important to use this version thought because it's theoretically possible to get a crash with 3.1.0 (if anyone including the AI ends up making a zero-hitpoint fighter which then gets damaged).

Version 3.1.1:

  -----------------
  Gameplay Changes:
  -----------------
* Reduced research costs for Small Ship Control Systems.
  ---------
  Cosmetic:
  ---------
* Added small/medium/large drone and satellite image names if available 
  in custom shipsets.
  ------
  Fixes:
  ------
* Made it impossible to build fighters with zero hitpoints, because
  this could crash the program when they get damaged.

[Ed Kolis]

Wow, you fixed a bug that I must have reported years ago, then forgot about, as I haven't played SE4 in forever! I actually vaguely remember something about resupply bases being broken, though, now that you mention it...

[PvK]

Hehe, yep! Actually, I fixed it years ago in 3.0.6, but I don't think I ever published version 3.0.6. I was working of 3.0.7 when I stopped doing much of anything with Space Empires.

I did find what I think is sort of a fix for an old problem in Intel missions, too. That is, the "Maintenance Problems" mission for attacking planet cargo has an effect of 1, which does like 1 point of damage to units on planets, and so it should be modded up to a damage amount that might actually destroy a unit or more. Meanwhile, the "Cargo Bomb" mission also has an effect of 1, but any positive amount seems to destroy all cargo on a ship, so that one's description should be changed to say that all cargo on the ship was destroyed.

[Hrothgar]

I still play SEIV--SEV never seemed like a complete game to me. I downloaded the 3.1.0 update from your site, but I don't see the correction file for 3.1.1. Instead, I see a long list of files marked "3.1.1." Do I have to individually download each of these files to have the latest version--without the fighter bug?

[Hrothgar]

Another problem: neither the built-in Windows 7 extractor nor 7-Zip will extract the files from the 3.1.0 zip.

[PvK]

Thanks for letting me know, Hrothgar!

I think something odd happened when I updated it to 3.1.1 on Google Drive, which is where it's hosted.

However, it is also posted now to SpaceEmpires.net:
Try downloading it (3.1.1) from here.

And, I think the Google Docs thing seems to work, although it calls it 3.1.0 yet contains 3.1.1. I was able to download it as a zip file which I can open in Windows 7, by using the "File" menu on the Google Drive page that comes up, in the upper-left.

[Hrothgar]

Still doesn't work. I'm wondering if it's my computer. I'm using my laptop, because my desktop is in the shop. However, as a test, I tried to unzip a copy of the Image Pack, and that worked just fine. So, I don't know what the problem is.

[Hrothgar]

Never mind. I finally got it to extract, altho I'm still not sure what I did.

Now I'll have to give it a try.

[PsiSoldier]

Just kinda dropped in here from the Dominions3 forum sorry if this doesn't relate exactly to your mod but, I haven't played Space Empires V since it first came out and I found out there was basically NO AI.

Does your mod fix that or is there a fix so the AI is halfway intelligent? Or has that already been patched?