Ail wrote:
Your Trade-Route-Check is bugged. It was fine before. It's only the first building where it wouldn't work (and now works neither 0-0 is still 0.).

I know, i just can't figure out what's wrong with it. If you can make the check for the number of extra traderoutes works, go ahead. I wasted hours on it and it never worked as intended. I just gave up. As for being fine before, the stock code was buggy as well, it never actually worked (that's why i tried to make my own). But maybe i should have left in the friend check though...

TradeRoutes = the amount of active trade-routes your system has

MaxTradeRoutes = the amount of trade-routes your system can have (before building trade buildings that's: 2 for home-systems, and 0 for non-home-systems)



Now what you do is: NeededTradeRoutes = TradeRoutes-MaxTradeRoutes



And that is either 0 or -2. So it will never ever be gt 0 and thus will never build any Trade-Buildings.



The original check is: Is TradeRoutes equal to MaxTradeRoutes?

If it's not equal, then there is no need to build more TradeRoutes.



And since 0 is always equal to 0, the unmodded AI will always build the first trade-building on any system. That's why there's an extra-check for friends, so it at least only does so if it has someone it is at peace-with.



This change just doesn't have much of an impact since trading was overnerfed and so isn't really worth it anyways.

Ail wrote:
And that is either 0 or -2. So it will never ever be gt 0 and thus will never build any Trade-Buildings.

Strange, in my test it was always building them... That's why i gave up, i could not make the check do what i wanted it to do... Well, i guess i should revisit it...

Ail wrote:
And that is either 0 or -2. So it will never ever be gt 0 and thus will never build any Trade-Buildings.

You are aware trade routes can be greater than max trade routes? Meaning there are more potential trade routes than it is possible with the current max?

If TradeRoutes would hold the value of potential TradeRoutes instead of currently existing ones, I would be surprised.

Alright, i have been mistaken about how trade works; I wanted to prevent the governors to build trade buildings if there was no need for them, but doing so prevented AI's from creating trade routes as they would not build them before others offred them more trade than they could handle... So i scrapped that and returned it to stock code besides adding a condition for not building them while blocaded (save for blocade breakers).



Now i'm looking at how blocades works and will attempt to change them so they don't prevent all research; it's way too crippling, especially for the AI and it makes little sense. Why does research stops completely because a fleet is in orbit? Makes more sense that it would affect other things like trade and production... Anyway, i'm looking into that...



Edit: Would help if i knew where to look for blocades... For all i know it may be hardcoded and impossible to tweak .

Ail wrote:
If TradeRoutes would hold the value of potential TradeRoutes instead of currently existing ones, I would be surprised.

I've seen it happen; had a new friendly empire wanting to trade and my traderoutes jumped up before i could build trade buildings. But for that to happen, the other empire must have extra traderoutes to spare, thus must have built some trade buildings...

New version up! This time i tweaked some AI parameters (thanks to Ail) that should make AIs much more eager to go to war, especially if you are ahead of them. This should spice up the game while not making it impossible for roleplayers to keep AIs happy and cooperative. Just be more wary of who you decide to be in alliance with. Also fixed a few minor bugs and made some tweaks to AI colonization priorities.



Note: this time around the new version don't break saves, so you can continue your game started in 1.14.



Next version will probably have revamp of heroes abilities and possibly other rules changes.

My rebalance of the Heroes abilities is well on it's way and i found some clever means to make each classes desirable. First i did restore most skills to their rightful classes (like all tactics/command skills back to the commander and the thinkering to the pilot, while rogue and ground combat now rest with the adventurer). Now, the 3rd variant of common skills are only reachable by specific class, like Director 3 by Admins and negociator 3 by Corporate. That way it flesh out more what each classes stand for and what synergy there can be between the classes. I also added some skills that were not in the game but could be found in the localisation files, thus increased the amount of skills available. I will probably look for possible new skills to add, but for now i'm balancing the ones already implemented...

has something been changed with the Intercept stance? I have a weird issue in which opposing fleets bypass my Intercept and make their way into my space.



in my current game I'm in peace with the Automatons but I have no open-borders agreement. I'm using your mod with a custom race and the only addition of an entry in the empiredescriptor in which I have reduced the warp speeds

You can't Intercept someone when you are at peace with him. If they don't know that you have borders there, they can pass into your territory. That has nothing to do with the mod.

Foraven wrote:
So, anyone has any comment about the last version of this mod?

I am playing Sophons (standard) against Pilgrims, huge, fast, and hard. At present, (turn 69) I'm so far ahead it's a joke (they have about 10 systems, I have about 60). Will finish it very soon.

I like most of what you have done, it's a well thought out mod... have you, by any chance, increased the time it takes to terraform? It just seems to take quite a bit longer, especially Gas Giant to Barren or Lava.

Will jump to Impossible for my next game with the mod.

Well done, there are many things, like different colours, that make the game easier to see and plan. It was nice to see Pirates with all three weapons too, but once you're aware of that, it's not hard to beat them.

Altogether a mod to recommend!

The_Quasar wrote:
I am playing Sophons (standard) against Pilgrims, huge, fast, and hard. At present, (turn 69) I'm so far ahead it's a joke (they have about 10 systems, I have about 60). Will finish it very soon.

Yeah, i'm working on making the AI spread faster, or at least be more aggressive when the player is spreading fast. I assume you started that game in 1.14? The 1.15 version has a few tweaks that help the AI wake up sooner and be more aggressive when you are outstripping them. I also did try to make it colonize in-system planets faster in 1.15, but can't make it colonize new systems faster though.

I like most of what you have done, it's a well thought out mod... have you, by any chance, increased the time it takes to terraform? It just seems to take quite a bit longer, especially Gas Giant to Barren or Lava.

Right on, i did increase it by 10.

Will jump to Impossible for my next game with the mod.

Good luck .

Well done, there are many things, like different colours, that make the game easier to see and plan. It was nice to see Pirates with all three weapons too, but once you're aware of that, it's not hard to beat them.

Well, the idea wasn't to make them unbeatable, but the rightful annoyance they should be. They can cripple you if left unchecked, but they no longer roflstomp the unlucky player who has them on their back.



Glad you like the mod, i'm sure you will enjoy the next version with the revamp of the Heroes. Should make all heroes interesting to have, not just Pilot and Admins.

New version is almost ready. The new feature is Heroes rebalance; had to make the mod a standalone to make it work, but doing so also made my card reordering work as well. Should not be long to make a few tests to make sure everything works and no stupid bugs are left...

New version up. Heroes are revamped (may still need some work) and card are again reordered. The mod is now standalone, that mean it's bigger and that music need to be added to the mod to work. This version requires a new game, but it should be worth it .

Okay, i'm trying it. Will probably disable the yield changes, though.

First try: Hissho mineral rich\strong alloys, disk, medium, endless.



Did you have a look at the table of damage for your weapons? i've got a script to extract it if you want.



Did you look at integrating Thiax's anomaly mod? it adds a really nice touch.

Aureon wrote:
Okay, i'm trying it. Will probably disable the yield changes, though.

First try: Hissho mineral rich\strong alloys, disk, medium, endless.

Hum, what do you mean by yield changes?

Did you have a look at the table of damage for your weapons? i've got a script to extract it if you want.

That might be useful. No, i haven't seen it.

Did you look at integrating Thiax's anomaly mod? it adds a really nice touch.

I did take a look, but don't consider merging it just yet. I think my mod is growing quite large and it may become a pain to maintain, especially now that i turned it into a Standalone (need all the files in). When i'm confident my mod is bug free and all my features work, i may look into adding other more-than-one-file mod in...

Okay, kinetic is just ridicolous, again.

[code]Damage table:WEIGHT5

Damage table:WEIGHT5

LongRangePhase:

Kin Las Mis

14 - -

20 - 93

36 45 127

49 62 179

66 84 339

96 123 456

132 173 598

204 232 842

277 312 1180



MediumRangePhase:

Kin Las Mis

42 - -

62 - 70

110 102 96

147 140 135

198 189 256

289 276 344

396 389 451

612 523 636

833 702 891



ShortRangePhase:

Kin Las Mis

127 - -

187 - 50

331 95 69

442 131 97

595 176 184

867 258 248

1190 363 325

1837 489 458

2500 655 642





[/code]



That's before defenses, weighted against weight (not industry).

The rows are the tech levels.

I'd suggest flat-out scrapping the crit bonus in medium/melee for kin in the battle descriptor. Then perhaps we can talk.

Currently, if you're building anything meant to survive a beating, kinetic is just king.

Laser is completely worthless, it even gets outscaled in it's own main phase by BOTH the other weapons! AND it's the easiest to counter.



Additionally, i don't have a full table but:

Missiles are still pretty counterable, albeit not at vanilla levels.

Shields are useful for something.

Kinetic plating is so useless that it won't even deflect 100% at same-weight, before we even get in the +number of projectiles bonuses which are more or less everywhere on hulls.



For reference, before bonuses: Note: Defenses get much better in reality, due to accuracy. Laser accuracy is (50%, 90%, 70%), while kinetic is (20%, 40%, 90%), but kinetic's accuracy must be weighted when making averages, since medium and melee have a 25% and 50% bonuses to crit: This gives 70% for Laser and 55% for kinetic. This means that against the tables, Laser defense is 1/0.7 = 133% efficient, and kinetic is 1/0.55 180% efficient)

Additionally, peak phase has the same accuracy, so if we want to negate completely the damage, the efficiency talk goes out of the window.

a T1 laser, 8 weight, does ~15 damage per round. A shield (6 weight) parries 30. So, same-weight and adjusting for efficiency, 10 weight of shielding parries out ~30 weight of lasers. For 100% parry, it's roughly 10 shield \ 23 lasers.

Kinetic 10 weight, fires 6 projectiles. A plating, 6 weight, parries 3. Same-weight and adjusting for efficiency, 10 weight of plating parries 18 weight of kinetic. For 100% parry, it's roughly 10 plating \ 10 guns.



This, honestly speaking, means that plating is completely and utterly worthless. I can't do missile math, due to not having the flak formula, but it seems to be nearer to kinetic's than to laser's.

To get this more easily balanced, i'd completely remove any modifiers to damage and go with only modifiers to amount of projectiles fired, to prevent shields being outscaled.



Defense is a counter, in that it's only useful at anything if the enemy has the appropriate weapon. It NEEDS to outscale, and outscale easily, the weapon it counters, otherwise it's best to just bring more guns to the table.

Also, the math is too easily tipped by scaling of +number of projectiles bonuses and a lack of +defense bonuses, especially in the early game.



This means that a defense needs to provide a 100% parry of, the very least, same-weight: Probably more.

And with accuracy efficiency counted, probably between 2.0 and 3.0 (Not going too over 3.0 side, otherwise it'd become a good idea to build ships with counters for everything).



We can easily say that some weapons should be more easily countered in respect to others, but that means those weapons need to have more downsides than just "Hey, it shines in melee phase only(welcome to 5k hp cruisers!)"

Aureon wrote:


That's before defenses, weighted against weight (not industry).

The rows are the tech levels.

I'd suggest flat-out scrapping the crit bonus in medium/melee for kin in the battle descriptor. Then perhaps we can talk.

Currently, if you're building anything meant to survive a beating, kinetic is just king.

Laser is completely worthless, it even gets outscaled in it's own main phase by BOTH the other weapons! AND it's the easiest to counter.

I guess i did get overboard with damage upgrades for the kinetics. I can scale them down. Missile may increase in damage a bit too fast as well. But laser i did that on purpose; i want them easier to counter because otherwise it's the weapon of choice. And you forget one BIG thing about lasers; to beat the shields, you only need to increase damage (cards, power modules, cruiser/battleship hulls), the other two increasing damage does not beat the defense (but more shots does the trick). In my experience, despite being the lower damage per weight, lasers always work if you bring enough of them. Anyway, i'll consider toning down the damage of the other two weapons.

Kinetic plating is so useless that it won't even deflect 100% at same-weight, before we even get in the +number of projectiles bonuses which are more or less everywhere on hulls.

That's on purpose, i want kinetics to be hard to stop if it gets to melee range. However, damage done may be too much.

This, honestly speaking, means that plating is completely and utterly worthless. I can't do missile math, due to not having the flak formula, but it seems to be nearer to kinetic's than to laser's.

One thing you should note though, all kinetic shots deflected does NO damage at all. Shields on other hand can be overloaded by the amount of damage done so exess damage bleed to the hull. I meant the kinetics to beat it's counter at close range. I hate the idea that ships can be immune to damage, so i purposely made sure that at equal level, each weapons can overload it's counter when at it's sweet spot range. But unlike you i don't consider it useless; each attack blocked is one less doing damage to the hull; if you block enough, self repair may prevent the ship demise.

To get this more easily balanced, i'd completely remove any modifiers to damage and go with only modifiers to amount of projectiles fired, to prevent shields being outscaled.

I plan on toning down damage first. As for the crit thing, Kinetics have the lowest crits and also do the least bonus when they do (x2, while the others are x3). Also, the 50% increase of 5% just up it to 7.5%, barelly noticable.

Defense is a counter, in that it's only useful at anything if the enemy has the appropriate weapon. It NEEDS to outscale, and outscale easily, the weapon it counters, otherwise it's best to just bring more guns to the table.

That's not how i see it. Defense are a buffer, they block a number of shots before the armor take the rest. I intended them to not fully counter same level weapon, i don't want unbeatable counter designs (unless there is a large tech gap). I don't like the concept of having to change my designs all the time, nor i want the AI to have to (retrofit means going back home, don't think the AI is that smart with it's fleet). I like how my balance changed the gameplay; no longer can we beat 10 fleets in a row without taking damage just because we have slightly better designs or hero.



Here an updated weapon xml with toned down kinetics: WeaponModule.zip

Ok, still on old version (will update before next game)... now playing Impossible, normal, fast, Sophons. Still not spreading fast enough. Going to be another whitewash. Will play the new version on Endless.



I have NullReference Exception: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. This comes up when clicking on a planet. Note: this planet is one of 2 Medium Jungle planets in the system.



Maybe it's a coincidence, but I've had a good balance between good and poor systems in your mod, too.