Sometimes I stumble across things within the game that I consider a bug/design-flaw.

In many cases those can be fixed via modding.



Of course I include these into my personal mod.

But not everybody might like everything I've done in my personal mod. (like AIs actually declaring war, when you don't want it ^^)

And probably other modders have similar findings.



So my idea was to gather small fixes that improve the game without changing something significant enough to call it an actual mod.



Those then could be used by other modders aswell in order to fix these issues without the user having to figure out how to merge mods himself.



I'll start by uploading a few files, for some different issues.



Here are the issues:



1. AI-Wonder-Victory:

Many players consider the Wonder-Victory kinda "cheap" and have disabled it or decide to continue playing after it's been achieved. However, the AI isn't made for this. They don't know that they only need 5 of those and will build them on every single system even if the victory-type is disabled. That's why I made a change to "AIParametersBuilding.xml" in order to tell the AI to not even consider building it.

This will make it much more competent in the lategame for other victory-types.

This change is recommended for everyone who doesn't like the Wonder-Victory.



2. AI-Hero-Usage:

The AI does not really make a difference between system or fleet heros. They will randomly put them on systems or fleets and will distribute skill-points according to the classes. If the hero has mixed classes it might end up terribly misskilled for either option.

That's why I've made changes to "AIParametersHeroAbility.xml" in order to force the AI to skill all heros for the role of fleet-captains.

This will slightly increase the danger of their fleets and prevent them from throwing away high-level system-heros with them.

Depending on what happens in the game this might also slightly weaken the AI as long as there's no war.

So this change is only recommended for war-mongers.



3. Starting-Ship-Designs:

As you may have noticed the starting "Defender"-designs all only use 65/100 tonnage or so. It is annoying for the player as you are always forced to redesign those and it can be a huge problem for the AI, if they decide to build those and then go into their first engagement with these crap-ships.

That's why I've made changes to "ShipDesign.xml" in order to make the starting-ships at least use their full tonnage. (And yes, I have considered the starting-techs of Craver/Hissho and the Pilgrim-tonnage-malus.)

This is recommended for absolutely everyone.

These mini-mods are really useful, thank you. In fact I've already downloaded your Diplomacy Mod just to find out what to change in AIParametersBuilding.xml for the AI not to build those stupid and very expensive Invulnerable Empires.

Thanks very much for the mini-mods.



I have been playing Diplomacy mod (and the prior Ail mods) but I wasnt fond of the latest changes (removing some of the trade options and Alliances). I dont exploit the AI so I prefer having all of the trading in and I like the possibility of actual alliance, even if it can be screwy some times.



I merged the mini-mods with the colored anomalies and I'm going to give it a go to see how the AI does.



Thanks again!

That's exactly why I made this thread. I think I will even do some balance-changes and I'm pretty sure that many players don't like player-made balance-changes. And I don't want to deny those general improvements from anyone who doesn't want the other stuff in my Mod.



If you like most of the changes from Diplomacy Mod (including the aggressive AI) but don't want to lose the ability to trade and ally replace the file "Term.xml" by the one of the previous version, as it contains all of these changes.

The problem I had was that the AI was not Tech-trading with themselves, only with the player. I asked Meedoc about it. That behaviour is caused by something I don't really understand and which I believe is hard-coded.

So even if one didn't want to exploit anything, the advantage of being able to tech-trade as the only one with all the AI why they can't is a massive advantage for the player.

/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/15931-micro-mod-outpost-defence



The micro mod from my post here changes the system defense per population for both: No-mans land and an opponents influence to be considerably lower.



Making influence a key part of your empires defense, and attack when possible.



And of course, observing how the change I made from the original affects the game can allow people to learn the way that the games code works, assisting them in learning how to mod endless space.

This one changes the "Diplomatic Governor" in the way that he behaves like the "Balanced Governor" with the difference that he won't build Military-Buildings like Shipyards or Defense-Buildings.



It resulted from this Discussion: /#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9927-do-you-use-the-ai-governors

As I found it to be a very valid point by someone who said he doesn't use the governors because of this exact reason.



I think it is unlikely that the AI will get troubles with that as they mostly use the Governors "Balanced" , "Approval" or "Industry" and I've never actually seen them use "Diplomatic".
StarSystemAssignation.zip

Excellent! Can a modder separate those two things, and build shipyards but no defensive buildings? I basically never build defensive buildings, even on forge planets.

There's these categories:

















I'm pretty sure they are hardcoded.

But I don't see much need for "Diplomacy". So if one moved one of the building-types to the Diplomacy-Category one could make it so.

And you could always give those buildings a very low priority anyways. I think they already have quite a low priority.

This one changes tech-priority for the AI as follows:



Double priority for N-Way-Fusion-Plants (Heavy Isotope-Refineries)

Double priority for Neural Robotics (prerequisite of nonbaryonic particles)

Triple priority for Nonbaryionic Particles (Magnetic Field Generator)

Double priority for Botanical Scanning (Infinite Supermarkets)

Hexal priority for Graviton Manipulation (Planetary Institute) (I only wanted to double it but it was extremely low to begin with and should have been at least 3 times as high as it is unmodded)



The purpose is pretty clear: Have the AI rush the important core-techs to prevent them falling behind by neglecting them for too long. This mod will likely make the game a little harder.
AIParametersTechnology.zip

Ail wrote:


The purpose is pretty clear: Have the AI rush the important core-techs to prevent them falling behind by neglecting them for too long. This mod will likely make the game a little harder.

Sounds good! I'll try it on my next game!