This mod contains a number of changes which I feel improve the game balance and fix some bugs. This description is for version 1.0.16-04 (note serial 04) released August 24, 2012.



(EDIT: No further updates are planned to this mod. A lot of the changes, in particular the AI changes, have been rolled into the base game with 1.0.25. The corporate hero mod was popular, and it is merged into my racial diversity mod.)



Disclaimer

• USE WITH VERSION 1.0.19 ONLY.
• This content is not Amplitude's, so this mod is installed at your own risk.
• Text changes are for English language only. The mod will work in other languages but the English text will be present.
  
  

Contents

• General
  
  
  • Correct several tooltips for battle cards which do not match the implementation (notably Short Circuit and Adaptive Strategy) (new)
  • Previous version attempted to replace AI ship template names such as MEDIUM1HISSHOTEMPLATES with the race specific name such as FALCON, but this oddly caused some races to never update their schematics. (removed)
  • If a system improvement will never be relevant for a system, hide it from the improvement picklist (credits: by grubnik)
  • Remove bushido bonus for Hissho on science; for F,I,D it is still 20%
  • Decrease research income earned as part of trade; was 2x dust, now 0.5x dust
  • Nerf craver by increasing FIDS penalty on depleted planets. After 60 turns, the FIDS penalty becomes -50% (was -25%).
  • Change colors of players, so that the colors are easier to distinguish. No more "three shades of green".
    
    
• AI improvements (credits: this section by Ail)
  
  
  • Force heroes to choose fleet abilities, since AI heroes are almost always found on fleets (changed)
  • Change implementation of tonnage: instead of increasing ship size, decreases all module sizes. This works around a bug, where the AI never used the extra space
  • Adds ship templates which allow the AI to use all three defense types. Previously it would always have one or two weak spots.
  • Improve choice of exploits and expansion to additional planets
  • Raises priority of Magnetic Shields (+40 sci) and Planetary Institute (+6 FIDS) improvements
  • Details in this thread: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/15776-ai-modding
    
    
• Corporate hero
  
  
  • These changes attempt to make the corporate hero more useful in the early game, so people who don't get an initial admin hero won't feel bad.
  • Add Deal Closer: requires Negotiator 1, gives -50% buyout bonus on system (great for early game!)
  • Reduce Savvy Business chain to a single ability, requires Negotiator 2, gives +5% per wit to trade bonuses
  • Change prerequisite of Industrial-Academic Partnership (+20% science). It was buried under Dust Wielder, move it under Negotiator 1. Change effect to flat +25 science on empire.
  • Add I-A Partnership 2, requires IA1, gives +20% science on system
  • Change prerequisite of Value Creator 1 from Negotiator 3 to Negotiator 2.
  • Change prerequisite of Efficient Schooling from Director 1 to Director 2. This is a minor decrease in power for the admin hero.
    
    
• Rebalance custom traits
  
  
  • Nerf Diplomats I,II: Interestingly, the description "increases duration of positive diplomacy effects" does not match the actual effect "+25% trade bonus". Instead of +25% and +50%, it is now +10% and +20%. It affects amoeba affinity as well; I don't think this nerf will kill them.
  • Nerf Merchant I,II: currently provide +1, +2 trade routes per system. I have deleted level 2, and doubled the cost of level 1 from +6 to +12. For 1v1 maps, this seems like a huge nerf, but on 8-player maps it seems reasonable.
  • Delete Sloppy Sawbones I,II: this is a primary example of a point bonus with a negligable effect.
  • Add restriction pair: Endless War prevents Blockade Breakers, and vice-versa.
  • Discussion and more details in this thread: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9084-suggestions-needed-rebalance-custom-traits
    
    
• AI system improvements
  
  
  • These changes attempt to keep the AI from building so many system improvements. This makes the AI waste less dust on maintenance, so it has more to spend on retrofits, so it can kill you faster.
  • Fix several bugs in AI prerequisites for food improvements
  • For a number of industry and shipbuilding improvements, only build them once the system has over 50 industry. This attempts to focus on "forge" systems.
  • Defense improvements such as bunkers are only built once the system population is more than 5.
  • Information improvements such as cis-oort satellites are never built. (I would prefer something less dramatic, but I rarely build these myself.)
  • Discussion and more details in this thread: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9289-suggestions-requested-rules-for-ai-to-not-build-something
    
    
  
  
  

Installation

• Download this zip file: community-mod-04.zip
• Unzip into (my documents)\Endless Space\Modding. This will create a new directory (my documents)\Endless Space\Modding\community-mod containing a file index.xml and several subdirectories.
• In the main game menu, click the MODS button, find the mod "Community Mod", select it and click load.
• To keep the mod loaded: find "Endless Space" in the Steam Library, right click, select properties, and click the "set launch options" button. Add "+mod community-mod" to the game launch command line.
  
  

Giving it a shot now...why not

If anybody is interested to try an experiment in MP, I am curious to know what happens if some, but not all of the players in an MP game have this installed. I highly doubt the game itself detects any problem. But, what do different players see for the bushido bonus which I have changed? Suppose there are two hissho players in the same MP game, one has this mod installed but the other does not. Then the two players "should" see different bushido bonus values. But, what actually happens in the game? Does one player get the new value and one get the old value? Do other non-hissho players see the new value or the old value?



I am sure the dev team could *state* what is the behavior, once they are ready to actually support modding. But, it would be interesting to figure out.

Sadly it's rather late here but I am also curious about that.



Oh and I am happy to see people really doing mods



Cheers!

Oh my, such simple fixes but yet so helpful. Cheers

I will consult my MP friends and see if they will agree to try and answer your question.

Hey there! Really happy to see the modding community begin to bloom- I came here from the +25 industry topic.

davea wrote:
Here is what I propose. It will boost the corporate hero and slightly nerf the admin.



1. Change Savvy Business 1,2 to give +25 dust (pretty powerful!) and +20% dust on system respectively

2. Redo Savvy Business 3: rename to Industrial-Academic Partnership 1, change prereq to Negotiator 1, change to +25 science (pretty powerful)

3. Rename Industrial-Academic Partnership to I-A P 2, change prereq from Dust Wielder 1 to I-A 1, leave effect (+20% science) the same

4. Change prereq of Value Creator 1 from Negotiator 3 to Negotiator 2 (small buff for midlevel corporate)

5. Change prereq of Efficient Schooling from Director 1 to Director 2 (small nerf to admin)

Just thought I'd mention that I really like this idea, and was wondering what the planned release date for this is?

This might be bugging, haven't checked. I leave it for OP but here is code for those changes he wants: (I still wonder why he couldn't ask me to put this to heromod but wanted to put it here... oh well)





































HeroAbilityCorporate05



HeroAbilityCommon06





%HeroAbilityCorporate06Description



























HeroAbilityCorporate12



HeroAbilityCorporate06





%HeroAbilityCorporate12Description













HeroAbilityCorporate10



HeroAbilityCommon10





%HeroAbilityCorporate10Description













HeroAbilityAdministrator07



HeroAbilityCommon07





%HeroAbilityAdministrator07Description











But seriously, instead of adding things like this (which are so far from bug fixes and balances as possible basically you ruin game balance AND step to my feets) you might want to help people with fleet sizes and things like that.

Hupailija wrote:
But seriously, instead of adding things like this (which are so far from bug fixes and balances as possible basically you ruin game balance AND step to my feets) you might want to help people with fleet sizes and things like that.

Thanks for this code. However, please use [code] tags when you post code, otherwise the white space is lost. As you know, this is guaranteed to cause a crash. Also, for the mod to actually be usable, the localization files need to be changed.



I am not sure what you mean by stepping on your feet. I am sure you will agree that anybody can make these changes.



My goal with this particular thread is to do several different experiments with balance. Some of them may be helpful, some may not. If there is consensus that a particular experiment works, then I will include it in future versions of the mod. Once the dev team actually releases modding tools, we can see how multiple mods fit into that. Perhaps each experiment can be a different mod, if multiple mods can be combined. I rather doubt that will be possible; how to manage two mods which change the same xml file, or the localization file?



It is possible that I will finish the corporate hero mod tonight, but it may not be till Friday night.

I was thinking... maybe we should put together a convenient time, and maybe even a separate Steam group so we can work through the various balance mod suggestions that have been provided. It might be kind of hard to tell what's happening when you're playing against AIs who have no guarantee of cooperating with you.



My availability is after 8pm Pacific (GMT-9 right now) on weekdays, and is better in the afternoon (say, noon-5) on weekends. So... 4:00 GMT to 8:00 GMT on weeknights for me and 20:00 GMT to 1:00 GMT on weekends. (I know davea is also Pacific, but I don't know about anyone else...)

I have bad habit to get bit too over protective to my works.. one of those reasons I don't really do that much mods.



I apologize if I have acted like I usually do when I get bit tempered (hey, last time I managed in Eve Online leave guild where I was leader just because someone had dared to try to become CeO when I was absent couple weeks)



I'm sorry if this has caused anything.





Now then why I said that you are stepping to my feet was because I am doing heromod but we basically have quite different viewpoint.



What you want to do is just try to get this game working

What I want to do is completly change game idea (aka from small scale stuff to really epic scale stuff)



When it comes to balance it's bit worrying me, is +25 happiness really worth same than +25 production and +25 money same than both of those?

I think that thats the reason why developers didn't put those skills, someone should calculate how balanced those are. (and reason why I would hesitate put changes like that to balance mod, but then again I rarely do balance mods :P)







Bit more serious thing, what I would wish from every modder (me included):

Share your code!



We are not some company where source code is secret production not to be shared. Instead we are here trying to help each other.



Soon someone is going to add new buildings to game and thats the thing what EVERYONE of us wants to know.

Bit after that someone realizes way to alter race traits (actually I am just trying to do that) and if he doesn't share it thats big blow to all bigger mods.





So please everyone: Share your code! (I will start to do from next version of heromod)

Hupailija wrote:
I apologize if I have acted like I usually do when I get bit tempered

No problem.

Bit more serious thing, what I would wish from every modder (me included): Share your code!

Well, the assets file *is* the code, we cannot help sharing it.



I have written for my personal use, a utility which can change the strings in the binary file as long as the length is the same. This "should" make it easier for me to re-apply the same changes for each patch the dev team releases. However, I am not going to release the source code of this utility. It is written in tcl, which is a language probably nobody else uses, and I would rather not spend the time in supporting people in learning this language and/or answering their questions about the utility code. Programmers can write their own utility just as good as mine, and non-programmers will probably not be able to use it.



As the programmers here probably know, undertaking to write a GUI tool which non-programmers can use to make any kind of change is quite time-consuming. I don't plan to do that, but I encourage anybody who is interested, to go for it. I would be pleasantly surprised if the dev team is working on this. Probably what the dev team will release is a feature to manage multiple directories, containing xml changed by users.

Uhm, you got me wrong.



Let me show what I exactly meant:



My heromod in all it's simpleness is right now following (yeah, it's bit halfway and I should really fix couple things):



[code]







1

0

Administrator;Corporate

Labor=3;Wit=3;Melee=3;Offense=3;Defense=3



[/code]



(this change for all heroes)

and

(this change for all hero skills)



[code]







HeroAbilityAdministrator01



HeroAbilityCommon06





%HeroAbilityAdministrator01Description







[/code]



also following changes to tech trees



[code]













































[/code]





After this it's easier (hopefully) for future modders to see what kind of changes they have to make to deny or access to same things I have made. Say for example someone wants to set all starting values for heroes to 0. He can now easily see what values he has to change. Same for amount of heroes too.

Wow, this forum really needs spoiler tags, which it is lacking, if you are going to post long code segments.



I think we are agreeing. My point is that all the source code is available in a published mod. Your point is that it would also be nice, to explain and highlight exactly what is done. That will certainly help others learn.

Yeah I'm basically doing the same thing in my thread on combat modding - just adding notes on what works and why

Updated to version 1.0.8. Changed link in OP from file comm-mod-001.zip (1.0.5 version) to comm-mod-003.zip (1.0.8 version)



EDIT: updated to 1.0.9, file comm-mod-005.zip

davea wrote:
...

• Replace generic AI ship names like Medium1HisshoTemplate with the actual ship names, such as Falcon.
  
  

May it be that this is not necessary anymore, because I do not have these generic ship names and I am not using your mod?

May be. In each release, the release note says "fixed various text issues" without giving any details.

I'm using Xiskio's pimp galaxy and still have template names for ships. I wish there could be way to implement actual names in new galaxies. or such version relased.

As far as I can tell, the base game has not fixed this and neither has Xiskio's mod. In the base game, the small ships (transport, scout, corvette) have "real" names but all the larger ships (destroyer, cruiser, battleship, dreadnought) have generic names like "medium1swarmtemplate12".



Today, it is not convenient to merge mods, since each one makes different changes to the same binary file. Once the "loose xml" support for mods is released in ES, and assuming both modders take certain precautions such as putting localization strings into separate files, then it will be relatively easy for a player to combine mods on their own.