Ok, a stupid question: which mods?

[Beorne]

I've played vanilla seiv for some time, then I have looked for some mods. I'm overwhelmed on how much work on modding has been done, I'm lost, no time to try them all.
then I ask you which are the most popular and supported mods, so to start from some expert opinions. Up to now I've only tried the very good TDM.

Thank you.

[Fyron]

Pirates and Nomads, Devnull, Proportions (the 2.x line for AI play, or the AI Campaign derivative), Carrier Battles, Adamant, Star Trek Mod and FQM (this one just changes maps, no new techs or anything) are probably a good start.

[Cipher7071]

Okay. I'm thinking about trying something different myself. Which of these mods would you say are most in vogue right now? In other words, which would I have the easiest time getting into a PBW game with?

[Ragnarok-X]

Adamant is pretty good.

[Fyron]

All of them? Well, maybe not so many P&N games anymore, not sure. There should be games of all of them running; it's just a matter of finding one with slots. Of course, you can always start your own.

[rdouglass]

I like the TDM mod myself. Not far from the original but the AI's are much better.

[scJazz]

I finished pummeling the TDM mod and moved on to try Carrier Battles. TDM was great the new techs/setup/everything is bloody different nature of Carrier Battles has me intrigued right now.

[Atrocities]

Personally all mods are grossely under rated in my opinion. If you ask me, and no one has, I would tell you that people don't buy SEIV for the stock game, they buy it so that they can play the mods. Specifically the Star Trek Mod. , J/K.

Seriously, with the level of quality that many of these mods have its no wonder that the game is still somewhat popular and still enjoyable to play six years after its Demo release in 2000.

My God has it really been that LONG? Six YEARS? OMG!

With all that has changed in my life over the last six years, its nice to know that at least one thing has remained semi stable, this community and this game.

[Cipher7071]

I've played the TDM: the one that worked with version 1.49 (I haven't downloaded the updated version yet). Aside from that, I now hear Adamant, Carrier Battles, Star Trek...

The reason I ask is that I'd like to familiarize myself with a mod before I jump into a game that uses it, especially if I take over an empire. But I don't want to spend a whole bunch of time evaluating half a dozen mods before I do it.

I suppose everyone has their personal favorite.

Another question (which I will probably regret asking) is why is a particular mod your favorite?

[Fyron]

Discounting mods I made, I'd have to say that P&N is probably still my favorite mod. It has a lot of little fixes and tweaks to stock items to improve balance, has QNP, pirates and nomads (of course!), was one of the first mods to implement crossover racial techs (Devnull was the other one way back when, Dark Nova is working on adding some), a bunch of minor, but cool, racial traits, balanced resource costs, and so on. It's a very enhanced stock, and was my inspiration to get into SE4 modding. Note that SJ made an AI Patcher tool that can convert stock compatible AIs (including TDM!) to work in P&N, which can really give you a run for your money if you play as a pirate or nomad (and still challenging otherwise).

Devnull is another stock-enhancer, but strays much less farther from the tree than P&N does. It is primarily a "fixer" mod, but with some added features (space monsters!, some more missiles, other stuff I forget). Similar to TDM, it also has some killer AIs. Not all of the AIs are so highly tweaked though, if I recall correctly.

STM, though hindered by the restrictive Star Trek universe, is still a well thought out, fun mod. Each race has some special facilities and components to branch out from the core ST-flavored tech tree.

Proportions places great importance upon the homeworld, making it much more powerful than in stock. Colonies are small, weak and slow. They take a huge investment to get going, and never approach the HW (unless you are obsessive and play a few thousand turns ). There are lots of other features I forget these days. Definitely makes for a very different experience. AIC is a derivative, though with numerous added features of it's own, whose main goal is to provide killer AI in a similar universe.

I'll have to let someone else cover Carrier Battles, as I haven't played it much. One of the few things I do know is that Rollo recently made some reportedly stellar AI for it.

Well, I might as well say something about the other two:

FQM greatly expands map options and features. It is generally compatible with most mods, and can be combined with them if you so choose.

For Adamant, I'll just direct you to the features page. It has some working AI, but nothing to write home about. The focus was definitely on multiplayer gaming.

I'm sure I've missed some important things about these mods, so feel free to add more!