skumlen wrote:
I simple had to make a user for this. I'm encountering a lot of bugs with these current versions of fair fight. They came with patch 1.23 and have persisted into 1.24.

Have you started a new game or are you continuing an old one? Many of the changes i do in my new versions are prone to break save games; to avoid issues, always start anew (or finish the old game before updating). Lots of the reported bugs can be explained by messed up saves.



Also, for the best effect, shut down ES and restart it before starting a new game, this should minimize the chance any save get corrupted.

4. Engine and repair tools cannot be added to a ship, if added as the last thing. It would seem the required weight to add them are not reduced, but when the module has been added, the weight of the module is correctly reduced. Only Engine and repair tools are giving me this problem.

That's because those modules also remove a % of space as well as normal module tonnage. I admit it's not self evident.

5. The AI seems to be fond of making ships, so fond I've seen it make 16+ fleets of what I presumed was 8/8 fleet of scouts... I've not seen this many times, but it has happened more than once.

There is a bug with the AI spamming starting ships for no apparent reasons. AI that upgrade their designs at least once don't have that issue. Once i get back home i will try a different approach to fix it once and for all. Maybe forcing the AI to create new designs at the start of the game can fix the issue.

A few Balance issues I've come across:

1. Missiles in general. Swarm missiles, combined with 2 firings of missile batteries are just insanely imbalanced - Or at least the AI is too stupid to notice. But I'm taking down fleets twice my MP strength using that tactic.

Does the AI has any flaks? If not it is a deadly card to use. Now, if even heavily flak protected ships easily fall to them, i should rework the card.

2. Kinetic weapons are even more of a joke compared to the original game. In the Short Range Phase they do incredible damage, but after the early rounds, there's a greater chance you'd be granted a unicorn in-game than reaching the Short Range Phase.

Kinetics start kicking ass at medium range; you don't need to be that close to rack kills. However, i had to neft them a few versions ago, they were so good there was no point in using anything else by late game. Now i feel they are more balanced. Kinetics in FF are way better than their vanilla counterparts, especially using Metal Storm or Radar Link.

..- I think they major problem with kinetics weapons lies with missiles being too effective.

That's subjective. But i don't claim the balance is perfect, getting it right is quite difficult due to how each weapon type work and are blocked.

And lastly, I'm not sure if this is a bug or a balance issue, but the AI seem to be rather fond of declaring war very early, before they even manage to populate their constellation - In fact they seem more interested in populating other constellations. It wouldn't be a problem if the AI didn't sacrifice too much in the war - But they seem to do. I've two times struggled with very early aggression. I manage to survive just fine, but the AI ends up overrun or outrun by another AI, because it goes all out war from round ~30.

I know, i did make a few extra ''go to war'' routines that makes them go to war much sooner. Unfortunately, they don't include parameters to help it decide if they can afford the war. Right they only check if they hate you enough and if they have a bigger fleet than you.

I know this is a long rant, but I hope this is useful information. I know it is not very constructive criticism regarding the balance issues, but I don't consider myself a good enough Endless Space player to actually know 100% what I'm talking about. So instead I'll let those who are more skillful to determine whether or not those issues are a problem.



Keep up the good work!! It's a delightful mod you've mad

Don't worry, i much rather read a long rant than being the only one post in my thread . Besides, i really do care about making this mod work right so i welcome any feedback (so long as it is not a flame).

Kolaris wrote:
I'm not sure if it was this mod or a vanilla problem, but a combination of Permanent Perennials and Advanced Industrial Systems managed to kill off most of my empire in a single turn. Upgrade order was AIS > Permanent Perennials, which basically turned Perennials bonus into a negative.



Sitting at 0 Food with AIS, Perennials bonus was 850 and net food becomes -1700.

I think i know what went wrong. Some food upgrades increase food production by a %; i allowed planets to have negative food production, that mean the bonus increase the negative output! Will fix that for the next version, no more negative food production.

Foraven wrote:
Have you started a new game or are you continuing an old one? Many of the changes i do in my new versions are prone to break save games; to avoid issues, always start anew (or finish the old game before updating). Lots of the reported bugs can be explained by messed up saves.

Also, for the best effect, shut down ES and restart it before starting a new game, this should minimize the chance any save get corrupted.

I did restart ES, and I've played with both corrupted saves and purely 1.24 saves. And planet bugs are still present. I can't colonize any gas planets, and now also asteroids(1.24 game), even so one of my ambassadors still managed to colonize a Helium Gas Planet. Unfortunately I can't tell you if the bug only regards Hydrogen and Methane, since I have no other Helium Gas Planet around in my current game.

I've yet to replicate the bug where I can't colonize a barren from a colonization ship, maybe that was a corrupted save.

Foraven wrote:
That's because those modules also remove a % of space as well as normal module tonnage. I admit it's not self evident.

My mistake. It seems to work as intended then .

Foraven wrote:
There is a bug with the AI spamming starting ships for no apparent reasons. AI that upgrade their designs at least once don't have that issue. Once i get back home i will try a different approach to fix it once and for all. Maybe forcing the AI to create new designs at the start of the game can fix the issue.

You know that better than I do. A little note here, you might want to look at the cost between a transporter and the first warship, both equipped with a seed module.

Foraven wrote:
Does the AI has any flaks? If not it is a deadly card to use. Now, if even heavily flak protected ships easily fall to them, i should rework the card.

Yes it does, but it's very hard to determine how much flak though. But I've bested a large warship with 160 flak with one barrage with the Missile Swarm Card and I only have around ~15 missiles. But I will try to look more into the matter. Maybe I can gather a bit more useful data.

Foraven wrote:
Kinetics start kicking ass at medium range; you don't need to be that close to rack kills. However, i had to neft them a few versions ago, they were so good there was no point in using anything else by late game. Now i feel they are more balanced. Kinetics in FF are way better than their vanilla counterparts, especially using Metal Storm or Radar Link.

As I said, I rarely reach the Short Range Phase, and even in the Medium Range Phase, with a very low kinetic protection my ships come out unharmed. My standard ratio are something like this: 3 missiles, 2 flaks, 1 shield, ½-1 armor, ½-1 deflect.

The setup varies a bit, depending on my research and opponent, but the missile to flak ratio are always the same, if not higher. I just looked at my current ship designs in my save.

skumlen wrote:
I did restart ES, and I've played with both corrupted saves and purely 1.24 saves. And planet bugs are still present. I can't colonize any gas planets, and now also asteroids(1.24 game), even so one of my ambassadors still managed to colonize a Helium Gas Planet. Unfortunately I can't tell you if the bug only regards Hydrogen and Methane, since I have no other Helium Gas Planet around in my current game.

I've yet to replicate the bug where I can't colonize a barren from a colonization ship, maybe that was a corrupted save.

What i can suggest then is to delete all your old saves and start anew. Anyway, later tonight i will post a new version that hopefully will fix all that. Not home right now unfortunately.

You know that better than I do. A little note here, you might want to look at the cost between a transporter and the first warship, both equipped with a seed module.

You noticed the extra seed module cost? That's voluntary .

Yes it does, but it's very hard to determine how much flak though. But I've bested a large warship with 160 flak with one barrage with the Missile Swarm Card and I only have around ~15 missiles. But I will try to look more into the matter. Maybe I can gather a bit more useful data.

Yeah, hard to balance as the flak mechanics are not well explained .

As I said, I rarely reach the Short Range Phase, and even in the Medium Range Phase, with a very low kinetic protection my ships come out unharmed. My standard ratio are something like this: 3 missiles, 2 flaks, 1 shield, ½-1 armor, ½-1 deflect.

What difficulty are you playing at? If you play bellow normal, AI ships have malus to their weapons and defenses. Also if you fight enemies bellow your tech levels, it's perfectly normal that they do little to no damage back. MP don't tell the whole thing as one high level gun is worth several low level ones.

New version 1.25 up. Fixes numerous bugs (thanks for the feedback guys), implement a few balance changes and make another set of tweaks and fixes to the AI. Enjoy!

Foraven wrote:
You noticed the extra seed module cost? That's voluntary .

Yes the tonnage required is higher on a warship, but the warship with a seeding module and a transporter costs the same industry. Yet the transporter is slower... by 33% to be exact(Without any improvement).

Foraven wrote:
Yeah, hard to balance as the flak mechanics are not well explained .

Speaking of flak I pondered a bit about the balance of swarm missiles. If I'm not mistaken the intention of it was to be able to penetrate defense of a heavily defended ship? Instead of increasing the damage of your missile barrage by 10%, maybe reduce the damage of the whole barrage. After all just firing twice as many missiles, means A LOT more hits that would have otherwise missed, when adding flak to the calculation. That way you don't want to swarm, unless necessary. Swarm Missile would end up more of a utility card, than an actual offense card.

Foraven wrote:
What difficulty are you playing at? If you play bellow normal, AI ships have malus to their weapons and defenses. Also if you fight enemies bellow your tech levels, it's perfectly normal that they do little to no damage back. MP don't tell the whole thing as one high level gun is worth several low level ones.

I play on hard. I wasn't familiar with an AI malus though.



And many thanks for the quick updates these past few days .

skumlen wrote:
Yes the tonnage required is higher on a warship, but the warship with a seeding module and a transporter costs the same industry. Yet the transporter is slower... by 33% to be exact(Without any improvement).

Hum, seed module is supposed to cost 10% more if used on any other ship than a transporter. The advantage, as you note, is that a warship hull is faster, thougher and can be better armed/armored. The advantage of the transporter is that you can fit more seed modules on it at no extra cost.

Speaking of flak I pondered a bit about the balance of swarm missiles. If I'm not mistaken the intention of it was to be able to penetrate defense of a heavily defended ship? Instead of increasing the damage of your missile barrage by 10%, maybe reduce the damage of the whole barrage. After all just firing twice as many missiles, means A LOT more hits that would have otherwise missed, when adding flak to the calculation. That way you don't want to swarm, unless necessary. Swarm Missile would end up more of a utility card, than an actual offense card.

I think i will remove the accuracy bonus and put an evasion malus instead; you will be able to overload defenses but you won't get any extra chance to hit.

I play on hard. I wasn't familiar with an AI malus though.

Playing on hard gives a few bonuses to the AI, so normally their weapons should be more effective while yours less.

And many thanks for the quick updates these past few days .

I'm a fast worker .

Foraven wrote:
Hum, seed module is supposed to cost 10% more if used on any other ship than a transporter. The advantage, as you note, is that a warship hull is faster, thougher and can be better armed/armored. The advantage of the transporter is that you can fit more seed modules on it at no extra cost.

No my point is: Why would I want to use a class Transport ship, when it's more expensive(Just took a look in the game) and slower. The only advantage the transport ship has is the tonnage to carry two seeding modules in the beginning of the game.

Price difference is 175 industry-thingies(warship equipped with seeding module) vs 195 industry-thingies(transporter equipped with seeding module).

Foraven wrote:
I think i will remove the accuracy bonus and put an evasion malus instead; you will be able to overload defenses but you won't get any extra chance to hit.

Sounds like a good start

Foraven wrote:
New version 1.25 up. Fixes numerous bugs (thanks for the feedback guys), implement a few balance changes and make another set of tweaks and fixes to the AI. Enjoy!

Thanks man!

1.25 with new game - getting some bugs with population display around planets, especially ones that were given more or less population than vanilla. They display twice, once with the modded population and once with vanilla.



I also got the first error that I couldn't keep playing through, when I clicked on a Gas Helium to colonize it in my home system (as Sowers). Couldn't back out of the planet display, there was some text overlap where the moon was supposed to be, and the colonize button was missing.

skumlen wrote:
No my point is: Why would I want to use a class Transport ship, when it's more expensive(Just took a look in the game) and slower. The only advantage the transport ship has is the tonnage to carry two seeding modules in the beginning of the game.

Price difference is 175 industry-thingies(warship equipped with seeding module) vs 195 industry-thingies(transporter equipped with seeding module).

You are right, i overlooked that when i changed hull prices and stuff. I have to rethink the civilian hull as it has no real advantages besides being able to cram more seed modules on (feature i'm sure not many players use). I will probably change colony module size or something so we can't use corvettes for the job. Well, i could just forbid it and allow it only on cruisers and up. Will think about it.

Sounds like a good start

Yeah, missiles do need some balance; either they are worthless or they just tear everything appart. I will thinker something about them as i'm not satisfied with how things turn out right now.

Maybe missiles fire less.... missiles while dealing a good amount of damage (aka current amount)

stasik28 wrote:
Maybe missiles fire less.... missiles while dealing a good amount of damage (aka current amount)

Nah, missiles already fire 1 per tube (exept when using the barrage card). The problem is in the nature of the interception; the mechanic is obscure and seem to only result in everything going through or everything gets blocked (until flaks run out of shots). I'm currently trying using percents rather than raw numbers for the interception/evasion; maybe the evasion/interception works like accuracy and changing it so will produce the effect i seek, ie not all missiles intercepted or getting through but something in between (more random effect).

Kolaris wrote:
1.25 with new game - getting some bugs with population display around planets, especially ones that were given more or less population than vanilla. They display twice, once with the modded population and once with vanilla.



I also got the first error that I couldn't keep playing through, when I clicked on a Gas Helium to colonize it in my home system (as Sowers). Couldn't back out of the planet display, there was some text overlap where the moon was supposed to be, and the colonize button was missing.

Sorry, i overlooked your post earlier. Sound like a savegame corruption to me; did it happen after running an older game or is it one started from scratch in 1.25? I suggest strongly to get rid of older savegames when using a new version of FF; that way game corruption are less likely (if ever) to happen.

I found a few more bugs



Here's a missing text reference... 0x Trade Route Cap From %DiplomaticStatusTitle





And just to show a... weird terraforming bug that is still occuring.





This was a clean save and all . So far 1.25 looks pretty good. I'm not having issues with planets or anomalies.

skumlen wrote:
I found a few more bugs

Thanks . I will check them out.



Edit: Strange about the terraformation bug... Does it happen to all planets? How is the galaxy generated in that game? My new T-tech is tied to the planet size, the only reason all 5 can show up at once would be that the planet don't have any size defined, something that shouldn't happen...





I'm currently currently revamping AI's templates so they use more ship types at the same time. They do have a lot of possible designs but they switch between them as they upgrade so they don't always have a good variety of ships in their fleets. Next version they will.



I also found out to my dismay there are still Pirates spawning without weapons... I'm really clueless as to why this happen, i can't find a bug in the designs themselves so it's caused by something else...

Foraven wrote:
Edit: Strange about the terraformation bug... Does it happen to all planets? How is the galaxy generated in that game? My new T-tech is tied to the planet size, the only reason all 5 can show up at once would be that the planet don't have any size defined, something that shouldn't happen...

It only happens to tundra. All others seems to work fine(Haven't tested jungle, ocean, terran).

I don't know if this has any affect, but I am playing with a galaxy generator made by mindkirkz for the Imperium Aeterna mod. However each planet does have a size, and your population changes does have effect, so the planet size should be defined... Or am I mistaken?

Foraven wrote:
I also found out to my dismay there are still Pirates spawning without weapons... I'm really clueless as to why this happen, i can't find a bug in the designs themselves so it's caused by something else...

Actually thought I told you that. Cutlas, Broadsword and Mace don't have weapons - Infact they don't have anything. From what I recall it's actually only the first pirate ships I encountered that had weapons, all others had none.

skumlen wrote:
It only happens to tundra. All others seems to work fine(Haven't tested jungle, ocean, terran).

I don't know if this has any affect, but I am playing with a galaxy generator made by mindkirkz for the Imperium Aeterna mod. However each planet does have a size, and your population changes does have effect, so the planet size should be defined... Or am I mistaken?

It should work normally, maybe there are something outdated in the generator that cause that issue. Might take a look at it if i have the time, but i'm quite busy fixing my own mod right now .

Actually thought I told you that. Cutlas, Broadsword and Mace don't have weapons - Infact they don't have anything. From what I recall it's actually only the first pirate ships I encountered that had weapons, all others had none.

I know, it's just that every time i think it's fixed it happen again. I just don't know what is causing this. The weapon named ships are all designs generated by the pirate difficulty (they upgrade over time), the others are designs spawned by random events (they have fixed loadouts). I have seen the weaponless pirates have defense/armor, but also seen them with weapons (that's why i thought it was fixed). I PMed the devs, i hope i can get some help figuring this out.

For those interested, i found how to increase the number of ship designs we can have at once. Unfortunately, the scroll bar doesn't seem to function so we can't have a huge number of designs (until this is fixed). Still could increase it to 18 (the lowest row is only half displayed but accessible), almost twice what we are normally limited to. This will also allow me to increase the number of active designs the AI can use, so expect more variety in AI fleets in the next version .

I'm having issues with colonizing asteroids and gas giants.



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