There was a Sensors Mk IV module in DL and DA, but it has been curiously dropped in TotA.


Not everything in the modding guide is correct anymore, because it was made for DL.

I've been looking into the AltCost and AltCostPrereq fields now, and they work only with GAs, but not TGs like the guide said. Should have tested that right away, instead of assuming the guide is still right about it. They also only work for sensor modules. There goes my idea of letting the No Mercy Invasion Center drop the cost for troop modules.

Just had a curious one in a game playing V2 with the MOOII minors.

I received a message saying that Mars had left the Terran Alliance to join the I-League, but scrolling over to it saw that it was flying the Sakkra flag. And sure enough, when I opened a dialogue with the Sakkra they had Mars (and were willing to sell it to me, which I'm debating). The I-League haven't appeared either, only the three surviving regular minors are listed.

Has this happened to anyone else?

EDIT: Just to clarify, I like it that this happened - much more interesting than the regular I-League, who just show up and tend not to do all that much.

I vaguely recall something similar, but couldn't provide any details.  Very interesting though.  I love when odd hijinks happen in games.  Unfortunately, they don't seem to happen a lot in my games.

I know.  The I-Mod guide and xml reference is a great companion to CariElf's guide.

In mod news, it's looking like v2.1 is just about ready to roll.  I guess you could say it's in closed beta while I do a couple playtests and make some final tweaks.

While working through the improvements, I decided to tackle Soil Enhancement, etc with the goal of ending the problem where the AI that has researched, say, Soil Enhancement and Habitat Improvement can get stuck having their planets tied up for 12-24 turns while upgrading tiles.  I decided that the ideal would be to do away with build times altogether - free terraforming for all.  A loss for neutrality and the Orbital Terraformer, but a win for gameplay and AI competitiveness.

1. First attempt - Set the improvement cost to 0.  Instant build?  No, just 0 week completion time (actually takes 1 week).  The old costs were 50-30-50, so a new colony could get stuck spending 4-8 weeks per tile depending on how the sliders are set.  Not the ideal, but a huge improvement if all else fails.
2. Second Attempt - How is neutral instant terraforming coded?  No clue.  How about the Orbital Terraformer?  Looks hard coded to the improvement ID.  I was thinking to transfer that ability to the Civ Capital or something, but no dice.  Next best thought was to make the OT a Super Project and make it available through some earlier tech that everyone has.  Make it dirt cheap with a high AI and everyone will build one before researching Soil Enhancement.  The approach would work, but isn't terribly elegant.  Well, no such tech volunteered itself (remember elegance, I didn't want to explain tacking the OT onto Hyperdrive).  Not wanting to invest major effort into a kludge, I gave up on this line.
3. The Orbital Terraformer - Settling on the 0 cost solution, I went after the OT as part of both my GA/SP/TG and terraforming goals.  I decided no more instant-terraforming improvement.  Now it's an exclusively neutral bonus.  Deciding to leave the OT as a GA unlocked by Terraforming, I needed to put the super into the Super Project, so to speak.  Now, the Orbital Terraformer greatly improves the planet it orbits, improving planet quality by 3 (originally 5), along with granting 25% morale, population growth, and food production bonuses.  It directs weather and moisture, atmospheric composition, solar radiation incidence - pretty much everything that gets considered in the context of terraforming.  Simply put, it can turn a hunk of rock into one of the nicest places in the galaxy.

That's the sneak peek for today.  Any ideas for solving the SE/HI/TF issue? 

Also, just for funsies, I'll take suggestions for an additional Good alignment Super Project or Galactic Achievement.  I improved the Empathic Tactical Center and Hall of Empathy, but Evil got the Life force Extractor and Neutral got the Historical Preserve, so Good could use something of their own.  We're down to original ideas only; everything in the PlanetaryImprovements.xml has been addressed as far as I know.

Setting their value to 1 or 0 would lead to the AI disregarding them until more "valuable" improvements have been build. But this is more of a crutch than a true solution.


How about a Hospital SP? Increasing the pop growth civ-wide, by curing the sick and fighting disease outbreaks, plus providing a small morale and economic boost to the planet, because of the "donations" of the cured and "happy" patients.


PS: Did you change the Galactic Guide Book back to a GA? I'm not sure if I was clear enough, but the cost reducing effect of the Guide only works if it is a GA.

I've seen planets defect to the regular I-League once or twice, but I've never seen this before.

I did set AI to 1, maybe I'll go back and do 0.

I like the hospital suggestion.  I'll think about how to make it work.  I do have the Hall of Empathy giving a 25% civ-wide population growth bonus, and I don't want to overdo it.

I didn't get the hint about the GGB.  Not sure how I'll go.  Does anyone really care whether survey modules are free?  Hmmm . . .

 

And finally, for another peek, here's something I just found:

  A nice improvement unlocked by the Drengin/Korath Xeno Brain Washing.  It was unavailable due to a simple typo in the TechRequirement - XenoBrainwashing instead of XenoBrainWashing.

It's funny, I previously changed the Icon and Query for it, but didn't notice that it wasn't available.  Sigh.

*facepalm*

Capitalization: The difference between "I helped my uncle Jack off a horse" and "I helped my uncle jack off a horse."

Good eye.

Whatever caused it, it saved the Sakkra from extinction - only a few turns later both their other planets were conquered by the Yor. And curiously, the Terrans left them alone despite having conquered all their neighboring minors.

I've played a couple of games with V2 now and love it, eagerly awaiting V2.1. The AI races are playing much more competently than before and researching more widely in the tech tree. The Yor have been the smartest about this, building strong ships, invasion forces and the Evil improvements, the Iconians have also shown their competence, and the Terrans too (although they're still very slow to research weapons and build warships, once they get going they can be pretty lethal - which I've come to consider part of their personality). Even the Drath are performing adequately.

The Drengin and Korath refused to research any invasion techs at all in the last game, but otherwise were quite dangerous - the Drengin completely wrecked my empire early on and the Korath were at war with the Terrans and Altarians practically the entire game and winning almost every engagement.

And the MOOII minors are fun. Early on I fought wars with the Bulrathi and the Klackons that weren't entirely one-sided and in the late game the Tolmekian Federation actually declared war on the Terrans (my allies) and produced a sizable fleet of frigates to fight me - I had sold them a lot of the techs over the course of the game, but they still did pretty well considering that if they had ever had any colonies at all, these had been taken by the Iconians or Yor by the time I met them.

Glad you like it. I'm sure you come up with something useful to replace the pop growth bonus.


Not really. By the time you get the GGB, free survey modules aren't much of a bonus anyhow.


Actually, that's a Thalan building. XenoBrainwashing is the ID tag of one of their Evil-only techs.

I may just keep it in the end, as it makes a bunch of sense.  I did have an idea, though.  I was thinking about a research hospital or medical research complex.  The idea of a civ-wide research bonus or simply some massive research production is floating around somewhere.  Maybe a planetary pop growth bonus to represent the medical aspect.

Thank you, sir.  I had forgotten about that one.  Good thing I've had more time to post my progress.  Looks like no hasty v2.11 will be necessary, at least for this reason!

Thanks for the feedback.  It's posts like yours that make it worthwhile.

v2.1 is, in my opinion, a significant improvement over v2.0.  I'd go so far as to say it's at least as big a difference as between v1.1 and v2.0.  There will always be room for improvement, but it's actually getting to the point where I'd be comfortable saying I was done.  Not really done, but I wouldn't have been comfortable at all calling v1.1 or v2.0 a finished work.  Hmmm.  Saying it like that makes me think that I do need to increase the version number.  We may actually be looking at v3.0 here.

Duplicate post.  Boo.

Sounds appropriate. Plus, this reminds me of the Omega Research Center. It is still pretty weak compared to the Tech Capital. I already changed the research bonus to a civ-wide 25%, but it still seems off somehow.


Looks like my year-long study of the PlanetaryImprovement.xml had some use after all.

[quote who="Gaunathor" reply="285" id="3090702"

Heh, I got all excited about that and made that one change myself, before starting a game as evil Thalans and realising a ) that it was missing and b ) that Thalans don't get the regular ethics techs. So one of my evil allies is going to get a nice bonus at my expense...

Speaking of which, I swapped the Korath to AI7 and went for all abundant/tight clusters and they're performing amazingly well - only the Altarians out-colonised them and they've been starting & winning wars with great enthusiasm (I also upped their aggression and cut their diplomacy, since it always struck me as odd that the guys kicked out of the Drengin Empire for being too evil were represented in game as more reasonable). However they have still been reluctant to research invasion techs or spore ships - I ended up trading them invasions (partly because I needed a trade, partly out of curiosity as to what they would do with it). I'll be watching to see if they continue to do well - they have built a good research and manufacturing base, and economic buildings. The Drengin on AI8 are military top dogs but haven't expanded so well and are suffering from a poor economy, I conquered the Drath early, and everyone else seems to be doing fine so far, with Korx and Altarians the other major powers.

Yeah, that is something I never really understood, so I changed it in my own mod. My guess is, that it was made for balancing reasons or to make them more unique. But at least the Thalans are better off than the Altarians. If you go Good with the Altarians, it's great. You get lots of powerful and useful stuff. If you go Neutral, you only get Neutral Shipping and the Neutrality Learning Center. And if you go Evil, you only get Psionic Beam and Psionic Missile. In other words: you get screwed over, if you don't go Good.


That is the best setting for AIP 7. The more planets it has within its starting influence the better.


I noticed that too. Now the Korath are just as bad at diplomacy, in my mod, as the Drengin.


The Korath AI hates invasion techs. And when I say hate I mean HATE. The Korath will never touch those techs and will never build troop transports, if you give them the techs. My guess is, that the Korath were so fed up with being used as shock troops by the Drengin, that they vowed "Never again!" after the defection.

The "not researching spore weapons" part is easily solvable. Just change the ID of the tech Spore Weapons from Biology to Weapons and reduce the AIValue to 10 or 8. Otherwise, this will be the first tech the Korath research.

Or you could just wait until Tolmekian releases v3.0. I'm certain he fixed that problem in his new version.

In my current game under 2.0 version of mod I see Korath building many transports and actually conquering planets using them very sucessfuly (just wanted to mention). 

Ah, I think I misread the earlier discussion on this and changed the wrong value - the category instead of the ID, or something. I'll go back and try again - I feel bad for abandoning an otherwise good game, but if I've rigged it that one of the two most powerful factions can't actually win it's not really a fair fight...

If I gave the Altarians and Thalans back the regular ethics techs alongside their own would that risk making them overpowered, do you think? They're already both quite strong races.

Evilroc - yes, I think the problem was of my own making!

The Korath in v2.0 use AIP 11 instead of AIP 7, so they behave differently than intended.


It's a shame. It really sounded like a good game. But you're right. What's the point, if the enemy can't fight back?


The Altarians and Thalans are supposed to be quite powerful, especially the Thalans. But then, the GAs and SPs, the ethic techs unlock, are quite weak in the standard game, with the exception of the MCC. Tolmekian is currently rebalancing those, to make them more useful all around, so I would suggest for you, to take a look at those changes and decide afterwards, if they are too powerful for you. He showed some of those in a preview, some posts ago.

I had another look at Tolmekian's files and noticed, that he already gave the Altarians access to all ethic techs. Between his mod, my own and the standard game, I'm slightly losing sight of who made what changes and what is standard. My insomnia isn't helping the case, either. Sorry for any confusion.

Too much to quote, but I'll comment a bit before giving my news.

I did fix Spore Weapons for v3.0 (yup, it's official.)  I set the AIV to 10 and it works perfectly.

I also confirm giving the Altarians the normal ethics techs.  Throughout my playtesting I've never had cause to second-guess it.  The Thalans on the other hand, don't need them at all.  They get a slew of special techs no matter which alignment they choose and they are monsters besides.  It's only in my final round of testing that any of the other races can really keep up with them, which happens to be the subject of my post.

In my final tests I've been bothered by gross under-performaning by the Arceans and Iconians.  The Iconians can sometimes do pretty well if left alone long enough, but develop way too slow and usually get steamrolled before they can recover.  The Arceans, on the other hand, are perpetually pitiful, miserable, pathetic, etc.  I've been trying to fix them by tweaking things here and there, but finally decided that drastic action was necessary.

I've learned that there are a few major things to look for when optimizing a race.  First and foremost is simply making sure they research in a halfway decent manner.  After that it gets considerably more subtle.  The Iconians and Arceans make nice examples.

With the Iconians, I put a lot of work into getting them to research their unique techs, but they never manage to balance their research and especially lag on weapons.  The problem is that their TechTree branches way too early.  They start the game with access to their major culture, manufacturing, and research branches along with their unique miniaturization and hull techs.  Their economic techs are also in a wonky place, after Universal Translator.  After resisting the whole way, I finally had to make their TechTree look more like the others.  Culture techs after Universal Translator, miniaturization and hulls after Interstellar Construction.  I gave them Planetary Improvements like most of the other races and had the manufacturing, research, and economic techs follow that.

Playtest 1 - Bam.  From terminally slow off the blocks to solid performer.  Too many choices too early is simply too hard to balance.  A few major lines of research ensures that all the basics get hit before going off on a tangent.

The Arceans are another problem.  They lag terribly in economy, military, and every other aspect.  I've always been leery of their Navigation techs, but that's just part of the problem.  Their major problem is having too many must-build improvements.  They have Navigation Centers, Weather Control Zeniths, and Space Cannons.  The problem is two fold: they're not researching basic techs well enough and they're having trouble building up their planets.

Two problems, two solutions.

For the techs, I first reduced the Cost and AIValue of Navigation Centers and Subspace Drive.  I always thought getting those two early would be a plus, but the cost is just too high.  Next, I changed Xeno Engineering from Logistics ID to Industry ID.  Don't know why it was like that in their TechTree, but it throws off their research.  Finally, I moved Planetary Fortification and Cathedral of Valor into the Planetary Invasion branch.  Too many branches . . .

Simply fixes for a simple problem.  Next problem.

To deal with their must-build improvements, I took a three step approach.  Space Cannons I left as is, thinking that moving Planetary Fortification would help.  For Weather Control, I just reduced the improvement cost a bit.  For the Navigation Centers, I took drastic action.  I really wanted to see how much of a drag they were, and boy did I.  I attacked the issue two ways.  My first idea was to create a new Arcean TechTree, identical except that the navigation techs were replaced with standard engine techs copied from the Altarians.  While doing this, I thought I'd try something else.  I made the Navigation Center and Adv. Nav. Center into Super Projects that increase overall speed by 1.  Same dynamics without the need to build one on every planet.

Playtest 1 - I set up my Tolmekians with the Arcean-Engines TechTree and my Bulrathi with the standard Arcean TechTree, having changed the Nav centers.  Wow.  Both of them had smashing performances.  The Bulrathi are the top dogs, having fended off a challenge from the powerful Torians, who were #1 when they attacked.  From miserable dog to champion breed just like that.

I'm actually a bit proud of myself.  I sure spent enough time watching the Arceans and Iconians suck, but one shot and now both are contenders.  Actually, pretty much everyone is a contender at this point.  My last playtest is the most balanced and exciting one I've ever seen.  I really wanted to post about the playtest and not just these fixes, but I guess one wall of text at a time is enough.

For those troopers who made it this far, I'll toss out one gem: I'm setting next weekend as a hard date for release.  I'm thrilled with the way v3.0 has turned out and I'm ready to share it.  One last round of minor tweaks and polishing and it's ready to go.

So which one are you planning on going with for the Arceans?

Excellent news! Especially about the Arceans, as they are so consistently mediocre - great ships, great planetary defences, actually quite good military planning sometimes (I have seen them camp all of my starbases, waiting for the inevitable betrayal) but a total failure to expand or research properly, even when I remove their speed penalty.

Tangentially, in my last game as the Arceans I traded their unique PD techs to my struggling allies the Drath, whose last three planets then hung on for the entire game against successive waves of Yor invasions. Drath soldiering + Arcean defences = invulnerability.

 

V3.0 looks amazing and I'm psyched for next weekend - I have a huge load of work on and this will make a nice reward

Two things I noticed under the category of tweaking and polishing - two of the Korath research techs have the same name (Imaginative research, I think) and one of the Altarian? Weapon? techs had TODO as its name. Sorry for the vagueness, I deleted the saved game without remembering to write these down.

 

Woohoo!  Can't wait for v3.0, although I wish I'd taken vacation NEXT week instead of LAST week (pretty sure that's your fault somehow).  Anyway, it's good to hear that the Arceans are getting their balls back.  Those guys always pissed me off because they were supposed to be these honorable warrior types, but they always sucked.  I sorta thought of them like Klingons (only without all the crud), and so would find myself rooting for them just because they're a "non-evil" warrior race. 

 

I think I saw this as well while trading with the Korath, and even mentioned it in this very thread.  In time, Imaginative Research will destroy us all.

Good to hear an official word on this. I was beginning to think I was imagining things.


So, which approach are you taking now?


I can confirm the first one. Imaginative Research and Ultimate Diabolical Research have both the same DisplayName.

Edit: 

Not if Un-Imaginative Research does it first.