Hmm.. I like that,  but it's too clinical.

Lets say that there's this guide,  we can call it Koenig's Intergalactic Lance Leaflet (homage to Walter Koenig,  who I believe played a weapons officer in ST:TOS at one point,  or maybe one of the movies,  its been a while),  and it publishes a ranking of all known weapons (much like Jane's).   The player doesn't have to know exactly how a weapon gets its KILL rating,  they only have to believe that someone knowledgable has taken all relevant factors into consideration.

We can present each weapons's "rating" in this ficticious-but-still-useful guide as part of the short weapons blurb,  and sneak in a few references in the long blurbs to flesh it out.  e.g. "Koenig's notes that,  'This is the loudest weapon in known space.  It might be true that in a vacuum,  nobody can hear you scream,  but this one will leave your ears ringing for days!'"

Stuff like that.  Sound good?

I disagree with some things about the yor in the vanilla game they were nerfed to much. Please make them stronger this time around. I would like to see a stronger ai. Probably the weakest on the game were the dominion of korx, arceans, drengin, and the yor. According to game lor  the drengin should be the strongest. Maybe not tested against the krynn. Then the terrains. Then the yor. Then the altarians at least really good defensively.

One thingI never understood about the korath is if they were annilators why did they have slaves. Wouldn't they have regular researcnt foldersh and factories, or needed ones. Unlike the drengins who tried to anniliate every non drengin keep captives alive for slaves. 

I noticed that there were a number of races that didn't have enough techs, super projects, galactic achievements, or  one per planets. Let's try to make this more fair. The altarians are missing one of their one per planet speed techs I think. We should change the thalan star base tech tree. To multiple techs to make this more fair with all the other races. If you have one ai  that doesn't like one kind of planetary invasion techs because of where they are located, and one that does. Why don't you make two paths and place them in two different places. Giving one to most people, and the other to the other ai. A one per planet bug that was mentioned is that if the ai  builds it it doesn't destroy it, even when a better building becomes available. Here is my idea can you make it upgradeable, and can multiple buildings upgrade to one buildings. If the latter is possible then you could make a building, and a one per planet upgrade to a better building if you are able to skip a couple of upgrades with this one per planet building, otherwise you could make a special upgrade for the one per planet building. 

Well.. here's an easy test.  Play a game against the vanilla Twilight AI,  then play a game with the same settings against the most recent Community Mod AI (make sure you delete all the .raceconfigxml files when you switch!)   If you find any deficiencies,  let us know and we'll have a look.    At this point the mod has been tested pretty thoroughly,  and my personal experience is that it is light years more competetive.

As for your other suggestions,  I agree that the Korath buildings don't quite match the lore;  we generally left stuff like that alone though.   The 1PP bug has frustrated the most experienced modders and we're pretty much stuck with what we've got for that.

Hmm.   Perhaps a compromise is in order.   It is true that the beginning CU/Weapon Cycle player is no worse off than the AI,  which does not pick a specific weapon line based on an overall weapons analysis as far as we can tell.   But if we give them hints that not all weapons nor tiers are equal,  they may take it upon themselves to do a straight-up comparison and discover each tier and weapon line's strengths and weaknesses for themselves.   If we don't give them hints,  we are going to end up with a lot of hate and confusion over "unbalanced" weaponry.  I'd prefer to nip that in the bud.

Will give this a day or two to sit;  since it will only affect tech descriptions,  it won't affect any testing.   Anyone else have opinions on the subject?  I'd love to hear 'em.

AdmiralWillyWillber, we appreciate suggestions, but have you actually played the CU mod?

 

I don't think replacing whole diplomacy tree for Korath/Drengin/Yor is a good idea, as this would require all diplomacy techs to be made untradeable, and I think most of us would not want to reduce tech trading anymore. Only thing that could be changed is the name and descriptions for them (Basic Diplomacy and Alliances could be redone, I think rest of the techs should stay as they are), so feel free to write up some replacements, and if rest of the crew working on CU likes them I'm sure they will be implemented. 

That would make them behave just like any other race, which I don't think is a good choice. Yor economy is unique to them, and it should stay unique. To help with their economy they now have access to government techs, also bonuses from Efficiency Studies has been almost doubled. They also get morale bonus from Charging Stalks techs. They lost Efficiency Center, but overall their economy is better then what they had in vanilla.

Yor and Korx mostly got buffed in CU, they are in good position and I do not think they need any additional techs or bonuses. We do not hate Yor, on the contrary, at least me and Maiden like Yor more then other races Not sure about Drath, as I don't play them, but they have been tested thoroughly when they had big changes in one of the earlier versions and no one noticed them being weaker compared to other races. They just rely on their Super Ability a bit more.

While there are still some civs that are stronger then others (Thalan for sure, probably Iconian and Torian), any nerfs to them could easily make them "coinflippy", playing very good in one and totally bad in another game. From my experience, Thalan are really hard to play early as they are, especially on galaxies with fewer worlds and slower research speed. Their economy is hard to handle initially, but they shine on larger galaxies with higher number of planets. Iconians are more or less the same. That's why I don't think anyone want to go down this road and fiddle with balance again

Those techs only provide really small bonuses to research. Espionage bonus was removed because it has negative impact on AI economy management. Maybe it should be brought back in some way. Krynn's racial Espionage bonus can go down from 50 to 25, and the remaining 25 Espionage could be distributed between Superior Espionage and Master Spies (or the SPs/GAs provided by these techs). It will help AI with economy management, while at the same time make those techs do what description suggests.

Mabus mentioned he is working on a new manual, so you can safely mention new weapon system there :>

What's the deal with the premade combat ship templates? (Defender is the name of one of them).  They all list components that aren't actually on the ship (and there wouldn't be room for them.  This isn't a problem for a human player.  They can avoid using those templates.  The AI uses them though.

 

I'm about 20 months into a game and all the AI's have made fleets using those templates.  Most of the AI's have no weapons on those ships.  Only one or two have armed fleets using those templates.  Another AI has half a fleet of unarmed template "Defender" ships and half a fleet of heavy fighters they made later that are armed.  Hopefully they all will start making their own ships rather than use those templates but considering we keep getting more versions of those broken templates throughout the game it seems like it could be a real problem.

 

It seems like it would be a good thing if all those broken templates could be erased from the AI's so they have to make new versions that are armed.  Is this possible?

Isn't it better to avoid direct comparisons with different kind of weapons in the tech descriptions? The one for T1 mass drivers implies that you have knowledge of missiles and lasers, which is possibly (and probably) not true. 

Weapons Cycle V1.0.2 is now available. 

It contains no functional changes,  only changes to tech descriptions.   So if you already have Weapons Cycle 1.0.1,  you do not need to clear out any race configs or save files or ship designs.  Just overwrite it with the new version.

One thing I noticed while reviewing weapons tech descriptions is that some of the racial techs were just cut&pasted.   So I took some creative liberties with the racial specials,  as well as smoothing out some of the rougher tech descriptions.  I know enough physics to gag/wince/barf at some of the cheesier descriptions,  which is not to say I gutted them entirely,  just corrected some of the worst offenders.

I should amend "not seeing a starbase defense upgrade anywhere in the Yor tech tree" to "not seeing a defense upgrade that defends against all three weapon types."  I see what looks like single weapon type defense upgrades half way up the defense trees but nothing that performs basic defense any time before that.  Perhaps the overall defense upgrades I'm remembering were from a particular mod?  I've played all the main ones and might be blending the memories together.

SilasOfBorg, cool on the generic defenses.  I wasn't sure if it was as intended since the upgrades listed for Starbase Militarization aren't present.  Currently that tech gives a generic defense bonus but not the upgrades listed for it.  That makes it meaningless as a starbase tech and maybe should have it's name changed since any form of starbase defense only appears to come from the defense lines now (assuming those listed upgrades are really avilable).  The defenses listed in the tech descriptions that aren't really there might be worth taking out of the tech descriptions.

I'm playing in a Gigantic universe (the largest) with 10 of us in it.  Normal game speed.  I don't remember so many AI's making so many weaponless ships since unmodded vanilla so it stood out.

I'm not sure I've seen the executable you mention.  Maybe not using that is the problem.  Is it the GC2TwilightOfTheArnor-011515.zip found at the external link?  If not where can I find it?  My current game version is 2.04, not 2.042.

Update:  The zip on the external link lists as 2.0.4.1.  Is there somewhere else to get 2.0.4.2?

Speaking of which,  whats our target date for having the Weapon Cycle mod tested/tweaked to our communal satisfaction?  I think everyone's been pretty busy lately and I know *I* haven't done anywhere near enough testing yet to call it "ready".  My target is at least a few different map sizes all the way to endgame,  trying each branch out myself to see how it feels,  and spying on the AI every 25 turns or so to see what they're up to.   I'm at around 10% of that so far.   

On the bright side,  the 10% is looking pretty good.

Ok, thanks.  I didn't phrase my question quite how I wanted, either -- I'm not expecting anyone aside from myself to test the thing (though it would be great and very helpful to have other peoples' input!),  I just wanted to know what kind of deadline I'm working with.   I do honestly think it's more interesting than what we've got in CU so far,  but I also know I'm biased.    

And,  sleep is important.  

Some typos that might be corrected:

 

Tech "Communites":

weath --> wealth

intelect --> intellect

observation's --> observations

the last sentence sounds as if something is missing, maybe some native english speaker would be so nice to check it?

 

Tech "Cooperative Society"

appart --> apart

 

Tech "Decentralized Governing"

lose --> loose

politicials, is this a regular english word?

amoungst --> amongst

intrests --> interests

 

Tech "Egalitarian Principles"

dispite --> despite

 

Improvement "DreamConclaveII"

source source --> source

 

Improvement "Shrine of the Mithrilar"

the description is wrong

 

Improvement "Shrine of Tandis"

happyness --> happiness

 

Invasion technique "Intimidation"

propraganda --> propaganda

BTW Mabus I see you got the icon for new invasion techs working. Could you do so likewise on the Thalan/Yor invasions Mecha/TerrorD, because the icons don't show...

 

The Drengin tech "Slaveling Research" says it will "optimize research" but the tech doesn't do/give anything at all (?)