Igncom1 wrote:




Just started the game as the Horatio, and there seems to a lot of strange redundancy's....why would I pick the more expensive and resource costing alternative when the weight difference is only that small?

The elite versions don't just have a mass difference, they are also a bit better than the original. In the case of armor, it offer 15% more armor. In the case of weapons, it's 3 times the critical hits and 10% more accuracy. Also, the cost difference diminish with the amount of ressource you have; at some point the cost difference may not be much at all. I didn't want to make the difference any higher or else it would have been the mad rush to secure all ressources and the ones without it sure to lose.

The new version is going well. Seem i have found more ideas for cards, but my problem now is fitting them somewhere in the tech tree; there isn't that many places to put them. I'm also considering shuffling a lot of tech around to make room, and also to make the tech match what they offer (but that will be a lot of work and may not do it all for this version). The AI will also receive a few tweaks i hope will make it even better .

What about cards in the other tech trees?



Also so far loving the new combat balance, even when my enemy had beams I didn't feel like my absence of shields would cause me to fully lose a battle.



LOVE THE HEROES, CORPORATE FOR LIFE!



and even the Sowers seem to be doing well this game, all in all rather good.



The elite mods seem strange, but I will give them more time to set in before giving further thoughts on weather I like them or not.

Igncom1 wrote:
What about cards in the other tech trees?

I'm trying to put them somewhere it makes sense and not too far down the tree so they can have uses before end-game. Easier to make the cards than fit them in.

Also so far loving the new combat balance, even when my enemy had beams I didn't feel like my absence of shields would cause me to fully lose a battle.

I'm sure you were still taking substancial damage from them .

LOVE THE HEROES, CORPORATE FOR LIFE!

Converting you to hero worshiping? lol

and even the Sowers seem to be doing well this game, all in all rather good.

Seem to me what was holding them back the most, besides low growth was that they weren't colonizing as soon as they could the rest of their systems. In fact that was a problem for all races, but that crippled the Sowers the most. Now they seem to be a force to reckon with.

The elite mods seem strange, but I will give them more time to set in before giving further thoughts on weather I like them or not.

Well, the elite modules are just an improved version of the normal ones; something to fiddle with when you have the ressources to field them, but not too criplling if you don't have or don't want to use them. With more feedback i will eventually be able to tell if they need further balancing.

New version is here! V 1.22 has a lot of stuff in it. First, 5 new combat cards. Second, further tweaks to the AI. Third, combat cards that have little use for a given fleet are disabled; this reduce the clutter and make it easier to pick the right card (but this also mean those cards are no longer there for counters, but there are plenty of other options anyway). Shuffled some technologies around, don't be surprised if something is no longer where it used to be (had to make some room for new cards). Enjoy!



Note: There shouldn't be any major bugs left, but if you run into one, please report so i can fix it. At the very least, PM me about it.



P.S. This version requires a new game to play it.

This has grown from a mod to basically it's own expansion

I've been toying with the mod and it feels better than vanilla thus far. The only thing that is sort of a peevee is that the terraforming costs feel like they overly hurt the affinities that one of their advantages is earlier terraforming (sowers/automaton). Even if the industry cost is lower for those races it still feels not worth the industry investment unless im seriously missing something.

stasik28 wrote:
This has grown from a mod to basically it's own expansion

Yeah, i like improving what i started, and i have way too much spare time for it lol. But for now i pretty much ran out of ideas, do need to play a full game and see what is still missing .

Scrangos wrote:
I've been toying with the mod and it feels better than vanilla thus far. The only thing that is sort of a peevee is that the terraforming costs feel like they overly hurt the affinities that one of their advantages is earlier terraforming (sowers/automaton). Even if the industry cost is lower for those races it still feels not worth the industry investment unless im seriously missing something.

Hum... Well, some testing is needed. I wanted those to be expansive so it's not a thrivial thing to turn every planets into terran, but maybe i raised the cost too much. Still i found it silly that terraforming a planet could be cheaper than building a Dread, now it should be the cost of a fleet; still cheap enough if you can spare the few turns building the thing. I might consider adding discounted terraforming techs for them or reduce the terraforming cost a bit.

Foraven wrote:
Hum... Well, some testing is needed. I wanted those to be expansive so it's not a thrivial thing to turn every planets into terran, but maybe i raised the cost too much. Still i found it silly that terraforming a planet could be cheaper than building a Dread, now it should be the cost of a fleet; still cheap enough if you can spare the few turns building the thing. I might consider adding discounted terraforming techs for them or reduce the terraforming cost a bit.

The automatons have their own cheaper tech for terran at 1/3d the industry cost. However even though its a third of the default its still 10000 industry on FairFight. For the other races at 30000 thatd be 7500 science or dust down the drain, or more than a few tons of ships that your trading for slightly better fids. For those extra fids per turn to pay off the industry investment itd probly take more than a thousand turns. Just my 2c, its a great mod and if you dont feel terraforming has its place in it then its your call. Keep up the great work.





Ps. Another odd thing I noticed, which isnt all that important unless your sowers or are using tolerant.. which kinda sucks to start with. The pretty much removed approval trait and halved approval buildings coupled with the planets still having their full disapproval modifiers is pretty much suicide to grab anything other than a class 1 or 2 planet. Evens out mid to lategame though.

Scrangos wrote:
The automatons have their own cheaper tech for terran at 1/3d the industry cost. However even though its a third of the default its still 10000 industry on FairFight. For the other races at 30000 thatd be 7500 science or dust down the drain, or more than a few tons of ships that your trading for slightly better fids. For those extra fids per turn to pay off the industry investment itd probly take more than a thousand turns. Just my 2c, its a great mod and if you dont feel terraforming has its place in it then its your call. Keep up the great work.

Don't worry, i'm not adverse to argue about how i set my mod. I did not consider cost-efficiency when i increased the cost, nor really tested it out. I just X10 all cost believing it was a fair price for turning a planet into something better in the long run. I had the same idea when i X10 the cost of victory buildings (but they get discounts with ressources thus are never that expansive). Maybe i should add a few ressource requirements to the terraforming so they get a discount... Hum i think that's the right way to fix it.

Ps. Another odd thing I noticed, which isnt all that important unless your sowers or are using tolerant.. which kinda sucks to start with. The pretty much removed approval trait and halved approval buildings coupled with the planets still having their full disapproval modifiers is pretty much suicide to grab anything other than a class 1 or 2 planet. Evens out mid to lategame though.

Yeah, still room for improvement there. Will further test this and look at how i can change this. I guess i used too much runabout means while implementing my ED changes, probably should return stock values and re-implement it in a different way that don't requires changing so many improvements/traits and all. I guess that's what i will do for my next version.

tbh i think the changes to terraform cost should be reverted, the producing impact isn't that heavy.

Perhaps along with the base yield changes.

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Aureon wrote:
tbh i think the changes to terraform cost should be reverted, the producing impact isn't that heavy.

Perhaps along with the base yield changes.

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Well, i like when things make sense, and terraforming a planet should be a major task, not just a thrivial one. However i agree it may not be very tempting to do in this incarnation as the cost may be too high. Adding ressource requirement may have the impact i seek; ie something to hold back mass terraforming while not making it too prohibitive to do.

If I might ask (I didn't come through your detailed release notes, so pardon me if this is already in your mod)



Have you put in a feature in which ships with engines decrease their opponents accuracy because they can maneuver more? I know some of us were talking about this for the Expansion, but it would be cool.



btw, I'm simply curious: Are you an experienced all-around modder or just in the realm of combat?

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Have you put in a feature in which ships with engines decrease their opponents accuracy because they can maneuver more? I know some of us were talking about this for the Expansion, but it would be cool.

The current game mechanics don't allow such thing right now. There is no way i can set it on an individual ship basis, an engine would affect the whole fleet not just the ship it's on.

btw, I'm simply curious: Are you an experienced all-around modder or just in the realm of combat?

I would say "all-around" as i like to touch a bit of everything when i mod, though what i do best is mess with the code/data and try to get new things out of them. ES isn't my first game i mod, but i think it's the one where my mod has the most change to get somewhere. My Previous modding game was Star Ruler, but i got fed up of it due to engine limitations/bugs that prevented me from making some features of my mod work properly. So far ES seem to have way more potential than SR did and i enjoy the gameplay a lot more as well.

I've seen it several times now, that people don't like the terraforming-changes.



It was also one thing that bothered me a lot when playing the mod.



How about a poll with options like:



How much should terraforming cost:

1: Same as in Vanilla-ES.

2: 50% more than in Vanilla-ES

3. Twice as much as in Vanilla-ES

4. Three times as much as in Vanilla-ES

...

11. 10 times as much as in Vanilla-ES (current value in Fair-Fight)



Having it cost so much really means that it would take like 200 turns to even pay for itself. Given the expected remaining game-time once it is researched, it makes no sense to even think about it.

I wanted to give the mod a chance right now, but it won't load. The game does not reload, it simply terminates. Other mods including my own running fine. Any suggestions?

Have you tried using the "+mod FairFight" starting-option in Steam?

I've always had trouble loading certain mods from within the game.

Ail wrote:
Have you tried using the "+mod FairFight" starting-option in Steam?

I've always had trouble loading certain mods from within the game.

Excellent, thanks alot , that works like a charm!

Ail wrote:
I've seen it several times now, that people don't like the terraforming-changes.



Having it cost so much really means that it would take like 200 turns to even pay for itself. Given the expected remaining game-time once it is researched, it makes no sense to even think about it.

Yeah, i will do something about it. Though i have no idea how to balance the cost with the time it takes. All i wanted to do is make it more expansive, but i did not factor how much dust/research would be lost by having the system terraform a planet instead of converting. In my mind, if it took only a few turns to do, it was alright, did not think beyond that.

The benefit is hard to judge, since the type changes not only its base fids, but the exploitation bonuses. http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Planet terraform costs seem to be wrong for T2 T1, which the public files have 2000 and 3200 respectively. Going from T2 to T1 seems to be annoying since theres no T2 industry planet.

T4->T3 5 approval 2 fids 1 pop (2 huge)

T3->T2 5 approval 3 fids 1 pop (2 huge, large)

T2->T1 5 approval 1 fids 1 pop (2 huge)



For tiny/small/med with the first pop increase improvement T4-> T3 is a 13 fids improvement. At vanilla rates this takes 57 turns to pay off. (Of course if you value each fid differently, then the payoff time changes to better or worse, specially if you only care about 1 fid type. The payofftime also changes if you see it as paying with science or dust from the industry conversion when the system is idle (divide payoff turns by 4)). 15 fids for Large, 22 for huge. At 100 industry this takes about 7.5 turns to terraform.



Tiny/small/med T3->T2 is a 22 fids improvement. At vanilla rates this takes 90 turns to pay off. 35 fids for large, 38 for huge. At 100 industry its about 20 turns to terraform.

Tiny/small/med T2->T1 is a 16 fids improvement. At vanilla rates this takes 200 turns to pay off. 18 fids for large, 30 for huge. At 100 industry its about 32 turns to terraform.





Im starting to think its not even worth terraforming in vanilla. Maybe if you have a t2 planet that you want industry on then move it down to t3. Increases are a bit larger with exploitations counted in, mainly due to the pop increases. I need to do math for those a bit later.



Edit for exploitation:



Not sure if this is looking better or worse for terraforming.

The 3 per pop exploitations are on terran (for food, not useful till super super lategame, your system is gonna be full by the time you terraform that high), class 4's and arid (for dust, which is generally regarded the worst fid).

For industry T3->T2 is probably even on industry, lose ind per pop, more pop.



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhJ-lVtKgFcMdDZNLTc3Y29Fc2xlSl9OMzdVUkpHcEE&usp=sharing

Has the math