This week I uploaded three new mods to the Library. One was published for just a few minutes before I found a bug, the others have yet to make it up. It seems that new mods like to go up on Monday, but I won't have much time this week, so I am pre-announcing the mods now. I wish I could take credit for these, but all three are updates and expansions of other people's mods. I hope the folks involved will forgive my rampaging through their work (I have credited everyone involved).
MOD 1: MORE LIGHTS:
This mod implements the green, orange, and purple (or pink, if you prefer) lights that remain unimplemented in the game. The actual work was done by the great Kryo himself, but until now you had to plough through his hull mod to get them. Not that you wouldn't want to, mind you. Anyway, I will be forever grateful to Kryo for resurrecting these jewels.
MOD 2: ACCESS ALL RACIAL ABILITIES:
A development of Mr Korx's fantastic miniaturization and logistics mod, this implements government, interest rates, and all five exotic colonization abilities as Bonus POint options as well. I have tried to tweak the values to where they are more-or-less reasonable. In other words, don't get too excited... getting 50% colonization ability costs 10 points! I did not add any new abilities options for the standard abilities. Feedback on the ability costs would be great.
MOD 3: POLITICAL PARTY PROLIFERATION
Adds 28 (yes, seven times four) new political parties, including the excellent parties previously posted by ShadowHawk, Nakhir, and Tremo. I spent a LONG time balancing these parties, so there shouldn't be any game breakers. I also tested their AI-desireability using the race-selection screen, which I assume suggests parties using the same engine the AI uses to select them for itself. The AI seems to like the Social Darwinists, the Moral Majority, the Labor Party, the LongShoreman's Union, the Nationalists, the Frequentists, the XenoSociologists (formerly one of the Ecologist parties), the Intellectuals, the Security Party, and the Big Party. It still, however, happily chose all of the original parties except the Populists. I'm not sure it liked them before, though.
I assume the AI likes these because they are focused on weapons/ defense/ influence/ dipomacy bonuses. The other parties may actually be more powerful, but the AI probably won't ever pick them because they give bonuses like Loyalty, Luck, and Creativity, which seem to be undervalued by the AI. I actually don't think the Labor Party gets enough hitpoints, but if you go much over 25%, EVERY AI picks them EVERY time. Honestly, HPs just don't do as much as the AI seems to think they do. Most of these parties give you about 4 bonus points worth of benefit, and take about 9 away if they lose power.
One thing to watch out for: there are some seemingly very powerful parties, like the Legitimate Businessmen who get +2 trade routes, or the Longshoremen's +25% trade. However, I picked the penalties and opposition parties to even out the value of each party... if the the Lonshoremen fall out of power, they lose a -30 Trade hit from themselves, and a -20 hit from their opposition party (the Mercantilists). Basically, the longshoreman go on strike and stop unloading freighters!
As a bonus, this mod includes workup charts of racial bonuses, ability costs, and party bonuses and penalties for DA. I cannot guaruntee that all of the math is correct, but the raw data on the parties, races, and abilities were drawn from the .xml files (note, the wiki has may have some incorrect values!).
Only a few of these parties have purpose-designed logos. I don't have the time or effort to make same myself, so I downloaded some from the Library (all credited, of course). If anyone were to, say, feel like custom-making logos for them, that would be cool.
Anyone having comments or suggestions for these mods is welcome to contact me. I'd really like to hear what people think.
Enjoy,
General Pants
