Aureon wrote:
Multi-weapons as in multiple types on the same ship or multiple ships with different types?

Most ships larger than a destroyer can mount 2 type of weapons, but the AI is still free to mount just one (i wanted to avoid the ALL MISSILES designs). Only some of the Dreads designs can mount all 3.

As a fyi, proper weapon designs in MP work that way:

One ship, one weapon type.

One fleet, multiple ship types.

A whole fleet having the same weapon is bad; and so are multiple weapons on the same ship.

Aureon wrote:
As a fyi, proper weapon designs in MP work that way:

One ship, one weapon type.

One fleet, multiple ship types.

A whole fleet having the same weapon is bad; and so are multiple weapons on the same ship.

The way i set them, one weapon is primary and one is secondary (primary fill a larger share of tonnage than the secondary one); the secondary is just there so the design can do some damage if the primary gets blocked. That also ensure it's next to impossible to do a one type defense to beat the AI. I have no way to ensure the AI will mix single weapon designs so i think the way i set the designs is the next best thing.



BTW i hope is the AI is capable of deleting it's unused designs; i noticed it has a tendency to create new ones rather than upgrade existing designs (even though they are the same branch). I haven't played a full game yet, i don't know what happen when it does reach the 18 design limit...

Aureon wrote:
Multi-weapons as in multiple types on the same ship or multiple ships with different types?

Both, fleets tend to have vessels with single weapons alongside vessels with main and secondary weapons as per Foraven's description below. I tend to like the multi-weapon per ship approach.

Hi Foraven

Regarding your AI, I find that when AI players manage to get going properly, they're quite challenging

But sometimes, they seem to get themselves stuck for some reason

Most recent game I've been playing, was with a small, 4-arm spiral, with 4 players (me and 3 random Normal AIs)

All the settings normal, I'm playing Fair Fight 1.0.27, on master 1.0.67

The Cravers have done quite well, populating their arm, then challenging me for the systems in the middle

However the other 2 AI empires for some reason have just camped in their own spiral arm, I've never even seen a scout come over the wormhole into the central systems

One of them, Sheredyn, has about 20 fleets of basic Defender ships stacked up on their system, but seems unwilling to join the party. No sign of research, or offensive action

The other, Pilgrims, seems to have become overrun by pirates - again, perhaps no research? I have seen some small Pilgrim fleets operating in his spiral arm, but nothing mig enough to take out the pirate fleets with ~4000MP



I do love what you're trying to do with Endless Space - many of your changes make the game more fun and easier to use. The 2 things I think need some work, are more reliable AIs, and reducing the productivity of systems a bit - I find that within a few dozen turns, I'm producing so much research, dust etc, it just feels too easy to create big fleets, loads of tech breakthroughs, and the whole second half of the game just feels like a pile of methodical planet clearing and improvement micromanagement. I'd prefer to have to fight for each ship, and each step on the technology tree, so that each decision, each discovery, each resource, feels more important



Keep up the good work, really impressed by your effort and the nice crowd of folk on this thread

--Steaker--



p.s. Just setting up with your new 1.0.30 version, will try a few different settings and let you know how it goes

Steaker wrote:
I do love what you're trying to do with Endless Space - many of your changes make the game more fun and easier to use. The 2 things I think need some work, are more reliable AIs, and reducing the productivity of systems a bit - I find that within a few dozen turns, I'm producing so much research, dust etc, it just feels too easy to create big fleets, loads of tech breakthroughs, and the whole second half of the game just feels like a pile of methodical planet clearing and improvement micromanagement. I'd prefer to have to fight for each ship, and each step on the technology tree, so that each decision, each discovery, each resource, feels more important



Keep up the good work, really impressed by your effort and the nice crowd of folk on this thread

--Steaker--



p.s. Just setting up with your new 1.0.30 version, will try a few different settings and let you know how it goes

Thanks for the feedback. There has been a few improvements/fixes since 1.27 so your issues with the AI should be gone. As for ressource (read FIDS), it's a bit difficult to balance as there are many possible settings and many ways to min-max production with some micro management. If possible, i plan on making some cost adjustment variables so i can (or anyone else wanting to test it out) mess with research and construction cost. Anyway, you gave me a few ideas for my next update.

I think the first change i will implement for my next version will be to double research cost. Since i increased fids a lot in my mod, i need to slow down research a bit. I can increase it further, it's rather easy to change research values in batches. Not sure if i should mess with ship/improvements cost though, or increase buyout cost further... Need some feedback about that.

Steaker: For the game flowing more slowly, get a smaller galaxy, with less and/or smaller planets. It'll be what you seek.



PS: The changes to basic planet yields in Save the Sowers kind of rock, you should consider implementing them.

Aureon wrote:
Steaker: For the game flowing more slowly, get a smaller galaxy, with less and/or smaller planets. It'll be what you seek.



PS: The changes to basic planet yields in Save the Sowers kind of rock, you should consider implementing them.

Yeah, i know, and i kind of did a similar thing in my mod (seen that mod before it was released so...). I may have forgot a few changes though.



Btw Aureon, did you read your PMs?

Aureon wrote:
Steaker: For the game flowing more slowly, get a smaller galaxy, with less and/or smaller planets. It'll be what you seek.

Thanks for the tip Aureon, will try that

Steaker wrote:
Thanks for the tip Aureon, will try that

Next version will have more expensive tech, that should also slow down the game progression.

I've been playing with more expensive tech for a while, and something to consider would be increasing later-tier costs by a greater percentage than early-tier costs.



It can get a bit stagnant early on waiting for key techs like wormhole travel. But maybe that's only an issue on the galaxy's I use...



Later in the game tech really seems to snowball though. Those could be increased by quite a bit imo.

Version 1.31 is up. The major feature is new research cost increase; each new level is 2.5 times more expensive (vanilla values are inconsistent in that regard, the increase can vary a lot). Then there are a few fixes to bugs i found, and some improvements to how AI updated it's designs (there should be less duplicates now). Have fun .



Edit: The Research changes requires a new game, the other fixes shouldn't break saves (but we never knows).

Thanks Foraven. Is this breaking 1.30 saved games?

Greyborea wrote:
Thanks Foraven. Is this breaking 1.30 saved games?

You should be able to finish your game, but you won't see the research changes until you start a new game.

I guess i may have increased tech cost too much. I will readjust cost for next version. Well, any feedback on this will be appreciated.

Will post a new version soon. The latest changes i made aren't working as intended. Planned changes so far are rework/revert of terraforming cost, planet yields and tech cost. This should fix a lot of issues and bring back some of the balance lost in my latest changes.

I don't know, I'm warming up to the planet tier changes. It has some interesting dynamics.



Early game, Tier 1's most important thanks to no approval penalty.

Mid game once you have a couple approval upgrades, higher-tier planets are more useful thanks to higher base FIDS

Late game once you have max population, terraforming to Tier 1's again makes more sense thanks to supporting larger populations

Kolaris wrote:
I don't know, I'm warming up to the planet tier changes. It has some interesting dynamics.



Early game, Tier 1's most important thanks to no approval penalty.

Mid game once you have a couple approval upgrades, higher-tier planets are more useful thanks to higher base FIDS

Late game once you have max population, terraforming to Tier 1's again makes more sense thanks to supporting larger populations

Currently i'm changing it to a Save The Sowers like fids distribution. I had some cool ideas with my changes, but i increased fids a bit too much and we end up with so much fids flowing we no longer need to prioritize things. Anyway, while i plan on changing it in my next version (most likely out today), i'm keeping backups of my old changes and see how i can salvage it.

Backups make sense, you never know.

The Higher-Tier Higher-FIDS is an interesting concept, but will need literally the whole game rebalanced around it. We can do some tests and plan out FIDS output curves somewhat down the road.



Also, i think some Trade buffs are long overdue. Building Spaceports nets 10~40 dust.

Building Extreme Options Exchange nets 0 for a long, long time, since it has a 2 upkeep against a yield that's often 2d 1s.

I think Trade should be buffed back up, and buffed back up greatly, especially if we want lasting peace to actually have benefits, and trade buildings/traits/coop agreements to matter at all.