0utlaw wrote:
I hear you man. Initially I was an early adopter of the game and went straight to modding but there wasn't any support and the community wasn't really there. It's odd that I've come back to it but for some reason I'm really loving the game again.

Yeah, this game has potential, i find it much better than many other 4x i tried.

I personally like a saga, long low tech games that usually stretch into the 250+ turns. While I like the concept of Pirates, I typically turn them off as I personally view they should be nuisance but not a major player themselves, when I get locked into a stalemate between tough hard2 opponent then all of a sudden I crack their defense, only to realize it wasn't me it was a massive pirate fleet with top tier tech that just destroyed their main battle fleet and proceeded to take over their systems. Or conversely they do the same thing to me..

I'm not sure what they had in mind when they coded the Pirates, but they hardly act like pirates. They should be something that raid your undefended systems, not something that can stand up to your fleets or conquer your systems. Real world pirates are cowards; they only attack what they can subdue with ease, not what can put up a fight. This should be true for our pirates.

When I think of Pirates two options come to mind.

1. small scale unorganized antagonistic attacks against random targets. Keeping all parties off balance by blockading random systems and forcing you or the AI to react to smaller events on the other side of your controlled space. How the AI will deal with that I'm not entirely sure. Im rusty and haven't spent the time looking into it.

Or.

2. Like they are now and just a text name change to some new faction that is some huge monolithic roving nomadic fleet like Genghis Khan or the race from Mass effect Tali belongs to. Or some religious zealot Word of Blake Jihad faction from Battletech. Just something with more style and flavor than "Oh nos, it's Pirates..."



I slowed down ship production and beefed up the ships greatly. I didn't like the original game implementation of spamming ships a couple of turns to spit out your top "ship of the line" and I wanted to make it hurt if you lost that flagship.

I much prefer them as raiders, that's what i had in mind when i tried to fix them. What make them OP is that they are uber glass cannons; they have lots of fire power and they don't care about their losses (they don't retreat). Ai's ships are never that strong...

But in any case hopefully you stay with it man. I know it's a thankless job but you have a great piece here, this project might be polished and nearly done but don't quit the community maybe look for new inspiration or something new and innovative.

I did take a break from it, but i guess i'll have another go at it thanks to your post .

Right on man, I understand the need to charge the batteries (I left for what 8 months, hah) . Glad to see you stick it out.



On my own side I'm trying to tinker with the Craver right now. I want to see if I can remake them to really act like a swarm half hull points but half ship cost. I really need to figure out more about the AI to see if it would achieve the desired effect. Or if the AI just says queue up x amount of ships of y type and wait for the attack or if it says i've budgeted x amount of money to spend on ships and go at y time. The later would have the desired effect.



Ultimately I think I'm trying to remake the Zerg from star craft.

0utlaw wrote:
I really need to figure out more about the AI to see if it would achieve the desired effect. Or if the AI just says queue up x amount of ships of y type and wait for the attack or if it says i've budgeted x amount of money to spend on ships and go at y time. The later would have the desired effect.

From what i understand it works by weight, ie portion of the fleet is dedicated to a type of ships or another. Look in the ShipDesignTemplates.Xml, you can adjust the weighting to what you like as well as create new ship templates, you are not limited to the ones already there. Currently all the factions use similar templates, but we can change this to make each factions different. There is a lot of room for modding there...

Can't dowload FairFight106.zip forum says "You Must Sign In" >.<

Danphil wrote:
Can't dowload FairFight106.zip forum says "You Must Sign In" >.<

It's a forum bug (well known of), if you want to download try other browsers like chrome. Personally i use Torch and never had problems downloading.

I'm currently working on an update. The new version will have a revamped Pirates (that hopefully aren't OP), new designs for the AI that account for their strength and weaknesses and a few minor tweaks here and there. If all goes well, i may have that version out in the next 48 hours.

Foraven wrote:
I'm currently working on an update. The new version will have a revamped Pirates (that hopefully aren't OP), new designs for the AI that account for their strength and weaknesses and a few minor tweaks here and there. If all goes well, i may have that version out in the next 48 hours.

Beauty, looking forward to it. I'm basically using your mod a shell for my own changes. I love the balance.



Oh and I have tested it enough yesterday but I mucked with the hulls, hps & cost on the Craver last night and dropping their ship sizes down to around .65 (this is after I had already multiplied all by 2.5 AND on a slow game speed) I reduced command point value as well flagships were now 3pts vs. 5. They were cranking out ships of the line really fast and I guess inadvertently related to their racial bonus of gaining science pts for battles won, they were actually out tech'ing everyone as well. For much of the mid game a single Craver held off 3 AI and myself really well. They didn't have enough push to finish anyone off, but it was literally 4 against one.

Now i'm looking for the image assets, I'd like to try my hand a replacing a race. I've got in my head some Cthulhu'ish, babylon 5 shadows idea I'd like to try maybe replace the Sowers or something with.



--- Ahh found the Mass Effect mod, that gave me decent idea after backtracking through their work. Tree hugging hippy Sowers out, evil Cthulu/Shadows in...

New version up. Fixed the pirates, updated the AI's ship designs, did some gameplay changes. You will notice i did rebalance the effects of range on each weapons, it's not just accuracy anymore. Missiles are the most accurate now (guided missiles), but they are still at their best at range, they are less deadly up close (ie less damage). Lasers do less damage at long range but the most up close (accuracy still the same). Kinetics gets increased critical damage chance as they get closer. This change the combat dynamic a bit, and might warrant combat cards changes when i get to it. Meanwhile, have fun with it and hopefully, some challenge from the AI.

good stuff man, i'll dl it and give it a shot!



edit..

I"m really eager to see the terraform changes. I've actually been thinking of really making these more difficult to attain also.

0utlaw wrote:
good stuff man, i'll dl it and give it a shot!



edit..

I"m really eager to see the terraform changes. I've actually been thinking of really making these more difficult to attain also.

The funny thing is, what did increase the challenge the most is the economic change; the AI isn't as much broke, it's fleets are more up to date. The changes to the ship designs should spice things up, but it's still too early to tell if i did it right (should be better than stock though). In my tests i didn't get to start terraforming, but it should take much more time before every systems get converted to better planets.



On a side note, i can't wait for the next patch, seem the AI will get a huge buff by using it's heroes; right now they suck big time. I have to take a look at the Aggressive AI to see what improvements have been made to the Heroes management...

Already in the work for the next version... And the first changes will be to tweak how the AI's pick planet infrastructure and when it colonize certain worlds. This should make the governors more reliable and also help the AI keep up with the players without requiring huge bonuses. All this to get more fleet fights .

Oh great, now i have to update in an hurry... Well, can't say i'm not thrilled about the new update though .

New version coming soon, just need a bit of testing before releasing it. This will update the mod to 1.0.65 and add a few improvements to the AI as well as a new combat card (maybe more).

Things are going well, i may release a new version today.

Could you please sum up all of the AI-only related changes? I'd like to review those in particular.

Ail wrote:
Could you please sum up all of the AI-only related changes? I'd like to review those in particular.

Well, several of those changes are related to the rebalance i made in my mod (so the AI make use of them). But there are still the governor change that make the AI switch planet purpose before max population (have set it to 80%) and did tweak the planet colonizing so the governors check approval before colonizing a new planet (Empire approval first, then to a lesser extent local one). Also tweaked ship building priorities (build more when at war/preparing for it, less when not) and planet preferences (so they are not as eager to colonize planets that will hit approval hard, like jovians/asteroids; i believe that part only affect new system colonizing, if it works. I also tweaked battle cards choice, but a lot of it is tied to the new cards i added.



Edit: Oh yeah, the changes i speak of are only in my current build (ie at home).

I'm particularly interested in the governor-change.

I hearby threaten to take it, modify it slightly, tell you what I modified, include it in my own mod, test it, and if it feels to be better try to convince Meedoc to implement it as default.

New version up! This new version has a lot of content: 3 new combat cards (more to comes). It is updated to 1.0.65, and has a lot of tweaks and improvements.



Now, have fun beating (or being beaten by) the AI (and pirates if you dare face them).





The Cards:



-Hit and run (Tactics)

It's a revamped aggressive retreat (aggresive retreat has changed but still there), shoot twice and bail out. It can be countered by offense cards (the new aggressive retreat does not). On counter you get 2 free shots.



-Defensive Approach (Tactics)

It's a tactic variant of sabotage, you are harder to hit because you are cautious. Counter Defense cards.



-Capacitor Overcharge (Offence)

An early game card for the beams; 30% more damage at the cost of 25% shield defense. Counter Tactics cards.

I took the PlanetInfrastructure.xml, changed EnoughPop to 0.7*MaxSystemPopulation but instead allowed to continue building food on planet-types that get a bonus of at least 66% to food-production. Also I once again prohibited food-exploits at all for the Sowers. It once was this way. Then we figured it hurts them when they can't make food-improvements. But somehow Meedoc must've also allowed them to make food-exploits. Which makes no sense.



So here's the changes in the code:



[CODE]







PlanetaryImprovementFood1

$(PlanetStatusColonized)

(($(../ClassStarSystem:Population) lt $(../ClassStarSystem:EnoughPop)) or $(../ClassStarSystem:FoodSurplusToProductionBonus) gt 0 or ($(../ClassStarSystem:Population) lt $(../ClassStarSystem:MaxSystemPopulation) and $(PlanetTypeTerran))) and !$(.../AffinitySower)





%PlanetaryImprovementFood1Description









PlanetaryImprovementFood2

$(PlanetStatusColonized)

(($(../ClassStarSystem:Population) lt $(../ClassStarSystem:EnoughPop)) or $(../ClassStarSystem:FoodSurplusToProductionBonus) gt 0 or ($(../ClassStarSystem:Population) lt $(../ClassStarSystem:MaxSystemPopulation) and $(PlanetTypeTerran) or ($(PlanetTypeJungle) or $(PlanetTypeOcean)))) and !$(.../AffinitySower)





%PlanetaryImprovementFood2Description









PlanetaryImprovementFood3

$(PlanetStatusColonized)

(($(../ClassStarSystem:Population) lt $(../ClassStarSystem:EnoughPop)) or $(../ClassStarSystem:FoodSurplusToProductionBonus) gt 0 or ($(../ClassStarSystem:Population) lt $(../ClassStarSystem:MaxSystemPopulation) and ($(PlanetTypeTerran) or $(PlanetTypeJungle) or $(PlanetTypeOcean)))) and !$(.../AffinitySower)





%PlanetaryImprovementFood3Description





[/CODE]



The way to test it will be doing a save at turn 0, and run it one time with the changes and one time without and at the end compare FIDS of the lone AI, that is going to be in. Random events will be off, of course.