I'd like to have an interface like that:



CombatPhase(ClassShip *Attacker, ClassShip *Defender, enum Phase)



which I could then code however I want. :\



But maybe we should concentrate our modding efforts on things that already are possible. I tried and failed in finding a solution to the A.I.S.-Problem. But I'm alsmost sure it is possible. If we could manage to do it, we can throw it to the devs, say: "here, take, it works as it should" and they will hopefully implement it.



Same things go for balancing with the buildings.

Hey Evil, I stuck a little something silly on the end of your tech tree.

StarSystemOrbital

[CODE]

StarSystemImprovementEntrench5







As technology advanced through supertensile materials and frictionless surfaces, megastructures thought of as hypothetical shift to the realm of possiblity. The sphere consists of a fixed deployment of solar sails, orbiting satellites, and entire planets-worth of populations on space stations designed to maximize photovoltaic production. While not a true metal shell, which would be impractical at best, the system greatly multiplies the amount of energy available for use.







[/CODE]



StarSystemOrbitalDescriptor

[CODE]

























[/CODE]



TechnologyOrbital

[CODE]







TechEntrench4







As technology advanced through supertensile materials and frictionless surfaces, megastructures thought of as hypothetical shift to the realm of possiblity. The sphere consists of a fixed deployment of solar sails, orbiting satellites, and entire planets-worth of populations on space stations designed to maximize photovoltaic production. While not a true metal shell, which would be impractical at best, the system greatly multiplies the amount of energy available for use.





[/CODE]

Heh - nice one. I considered a Dyson Sphere instead of rings - but since a Dyson Sphere is technically build around a Sun (and would change the entire system as a result), I decided against it in the end. It would be nice to have some visuals in-game that relate to system improvements though - even better if we can see them in combat in the engine as well.



This is the best thing about a game like this - people can play it the way they like and improvements are easy to make :-)

v1.4.8 released.

• Made mod compatible with Endless Space v1.0.38.
• Moved all language references to Localization file to create support for other languages.
• Added Dyson Sphere by Tiaximus as 5th Orbital Improvement.
• Included PlanetSize Terraforming by Tiaximus.
  
  

@Tiaximus:

I've made some slight adjustments to the costs of the Terraformations for balance reasons, as I felt they were quite cheap to construct.



For the Dyson Sphere, I've adjusted the bonuses a little (mainly reduced it a tiny bit to fit in with the rest)



I've used the icons you made (thank you so much ) but edited all 3 as I think you were missing the transparent layer the game uses for all vanilla icons. The Tech Icon came out as a white square and the other two had a hard set dark grey background rather than the normal transparent type. I've adjusted that and they look pretty good. The smaller version was re-sampled as the one uploaded above lost a lot of quality compared to its larger brother. They're included in the new mod download, so if you wish to use those in any stand-alone release (if you're so inclined) please go right ahead - they're your icons after all.



Really appreciate your contributions - loving your ideas.

I noticed that non-transparency to the icons the first time I loaded it--I was so happy it worked, that I said, "To HELL with transparency!" and figured I'd get to it some day, heh heh.



Great job on the mod, my absolute favorite mod to play. Thanks for adding my modifications, I didn't really attempt to balance them in earnest--this is just my first foray into modding and wanted to make something interesting. You really made my week!



I was thinking about making cross-anomaly terraforming: for example, allowing a planet that has the reduced irradiated anomaly to change it to a new (easier) anomaly. So, basically, the heavier anomalies take some time to reduce, and then you can change them into easier anomalies that might be able to be reduced further.



Ex: Strong Magnetic Field -> Strong Magnetic Field (--) -> Low Gravity (i.e. the cut magnetic field is later directed, engineered, and effectively turned on itself for a net gain)

Ex: Hostile Fauna -> Hostile Fauna (-) -> Mutated Flora (i.e. the flora was genetically enhanced to reduce the hostile fauna into a further productivity gain)



What do you think? Are there some combinations that make more sense, like these, or is this a little too much for the scope of the typical game?

Personally, I love things that let you modify your planets and systems. Ultimately in the end-game it balances things as all systems become 'good' and it's great fun turning a crappy starting system into a paradise for your people. (Something which only really works in this genre due to the huge technology leap from start to end-game - part of the fun in my opinion)



If you can get it to work in a manner which makes prerequisite anomalies, it could be pretty interesting option to explore.



Currently the game has 2 techs which let you manipulate/remove penalties from existing anomalies - this could be a third one which specifically let's you improve the anomaly to your benefit. The real question is whether or not you can modify anomalies like this, or if they are determined at galaxy generation. If you can outright add them to planets, it opens up different options - such as the Planetary Rings making use of one of the visuals.

On that note, I would love to figure out what determines some of the other visuals orbiting planets (little space stations etc.) as having the other Orbital improvements actually spawn something in orbit would be freaking awesome.



We need to join a Beer2Gether event, get one of the graphics/visual developers drunk and have him agree to implement a couple of things. :P



I also have some ideas about adding another (larger) ship class - but at the present these would have to look the same as existing ships as ship modelling and/or adding new ships isn't something I am really familiar with This is needed to bring something in-game to make use of the increased industrial output at extreme end-game that the mod inadvertently introduces with the terraforming and orbital additions. I also want to create a larger gap between early and end-game technology as the current difference between ships is a bit so-so. There are many things to think about to ensure it's balanced and 'smaller' ships still serve a purpose though..

I am about 99% sure you can mod in a terraforming ability like this. I based my PlanetSize changes on the fact that there are two parts that determine your galaxy in the save file:

Galaxy Generation (these don't ever change)

Empire (where changes to planet type, size, and the anomalies you pick as part of your faction points show up)

The fact is that there is code that adds the anomaly to your planet post-galaxy generation. I would delve into this further but it will have to wait until I have stopped playing the new additions! :-)



If I could figure out how to add information to the actual galaxy generation log AND the empire log, I could theoretically add planets and also add moons to moonless planets. Or take them away--I was hoping this mod would add a planet-busting module/improvement/whatever, so I could reverse-mod that into a planet-creating ability.



Another thought is to make the galaxy generation create planets in every single planet slot, but make a new planet type that is either 'hidden' or 'un-accessible' through a special tag. This way, I could use a tech to remove the 'hidden' tag from the planet (or just terraform it into a tiny barren), and thus have it show up. I can already see a possible problem for this, though--having systems that generate FULL of these 'fake' planets, and then you can't colonize them. Maybe I can make all of the empty slots "space station" slots that have 0 food, 1 industry, 0 money, 1 science, and 1 pop slot. That was you can at least spend dust on the terraformation to create a planet there.

Good thoughts. I also noticed the 'wonders' have some orbiting visuals that are pretty similar to what I was looking for for the Orbital system improvements. I might play with those when I find time :/ So many ideas, so little time.



And since there's still many game changes coming, the more complex this gets the harder it will be to keep it up-to-date/compatible with new game versions.

Released Imperium Aeterna v1.5.0



A major overhaul of the ship classes in-game. After a lot of sessions we came to the conclusion that the minor variations in ship hulls in the small and medium sized classes are totally pointless. You end up using the same hull for the majority of the time, which is a waste of a ton of ship models. With all the additions the mod makes to end-game terraformation we introduced a lot of end-game production potential. Combined with the (way) more interesting weapons and defense systems, going for the ship hulls was a logical next step.



After some initial testing the results have proven pretty awesome. All ship hulls remain useful and the AI files have been updated so the AI makes very good use of these. (Including taking account of the hull bonuses, something that wasn't done incredibly well in vanilla)

The AI will also make positive use of engines - which are a lot more valuable in Imperium Aeterna than they are in vanilla. In the vanilla templates the AI doesn't include engines in their designs at all.



I wasn't sure how to explain the changes in the easiest way - so I made a power point slide instead.

Looking forward to trying this out later and thanks for all the work you have put into this.



A couple of comments: Not sure about the repair bonus to frigates, guess I'm just used to my cruisers doing that. I would have swapped that with the scout bonus on cruisers. I don't think I will have much use for the armor weight bonus on the battleship because I don't use it, it's better to have defenses. I would be nice if armor were more useful/valuable.

Thank you for your feedback Cumberlow



The intention was to make the smaller 1cp class more useful later on by enabling players to use it as a proper support ship - hence the power and repair. With a 50% bonus it's almost silly not to put those modules on.



The cruiser is intended as a patrol and escort vessel - it's a fairly powerful class. It's also possibly to use it as a late-game scout as normal scout ships just get shot down. We found ourselves never using scout modules and we wanted to introduce those back into the game and by adding a bonus on the hull it makes people think about this and potentially utilize the class in a number of different ways. I've had good fun patrolling my borders with cruisers.



I wouldn't underestimate armor though - due to the increased size and health of ships, armor modules with a % bonus on them are actually quite useful, especially when coupled with % repair modules. You'll never completely block all damage if you're playing against good opposition and being able to sustain and repair the damage you do take can be quite helpful. (Especially when dealing with MIRV/Swarm missiles)

Also remember that as ships level, the bonus to health is a lot larger than the bonus to defense modules. The defense bonus caps out at 100% whilst the health bonus caps out at 500%. Armor/health gets more powerful as ships gain experience and you can end up with ships that literally sit there and laugh at your opponents if they haven't kept up with appropriate offensive technology. Whether you avoid taking damage or absorb and repair all of it doesn't really matter, if you have the right combination of the two you can deal with damage very effectively. Last but not least, armor works against all weapon types whilst defense modules don't. So for an experienced Battleship, pure tonnage vs performance wise, Armor is really not such a bad investment.



Note that you can still use the ships in whatever manner you see fit. We just didn't like how the designs were underutilized in vanilla and how little variation there was between early and end-game ships.



We will keep balancing as and where possible. It's a slow process but it's a ton of fun finding things to improve and then finding methods to improve them!

I have decided to stop maintaining my racial diversity mod. However, the UE extension I made might be interesting to you: it is a set of *huge* modules, which can only be put on cruiser or DN size hulls. The modules provide a pretty large fleet repair bonus. This gives you a slow, defenseless fleet tender. I feel this added some (badly needed) variety to ship design. If you are interested, you can easily pull the code from my mod. If you cannot pull it easily, but you are interested, let me know and I'll help.

I'll have a look at it davea when I have some time. Pulling the code is not going to pose a problem but I appreciate the offer for help. It's good to have more people around who actively engage with each other rather than just passively - that's how we get creative ideas not only brought forward but actually implemented as well. This can only benefit everyone as we are able to provide better quality mods to the community.

Please put a direct download link in the first post in this thread or at the top on your website.

prassel wrote:
Please put a direct download link in the first post in this thread or at the top on your website.

I've added a link which takes you straight to the downloads at the top of the official page. The download wasn't particularly hard to find though.



I keep a repository of *all* released versions there for the convenience of other modders.

How is combat balance with all the new modules? Do combats get out of the first phase more often now?

Kareal wrote:
How is combat balance with all the new modules? Do combats get out of the first phase more often now?

Yes. We sometimes even get inconclusive battles.

What are your opinions on the Vannila use of battle cards?



and do you have any plans to modify them?

Igncom1 wrote:
What are your opinions on the Vannila use of battle cards?



and do you have any plans to modify them?

I'm very indifferent about them. I'd rather have seen a tactical system like Birth of the Federation used. I might look into modding the battle cards, but they seem reasonably ok as they are. If someone else does something amazing with them I might ninja that though ;-)



There are a couple of other things I'd be interested in tweaking first (like the tech tree), but we're still going to see so many changes to the base game that it might be counter productive doing anything too drastic at the moment.

Hey, thanks for the mod. I just got the game over the weekend and tried this out, really nice changes/additions. There is one fairly large issue I've run into tho, and that's the AI. It seems they refuse to build up a military (I've only tested at normal difficulty). Mod was still great in the multiplayer game I ran but the AI refusing the build up military is a little disappointing especially as you said you tweaked them to use the new hull designs. I'm wondering if I'm the only one encountering this issue and if so what is it I need to do to get it working correctly?