http://www.xup.in/dl,19679606/FutureWorlds_v0.65.7z/ Filesize: 68.5 MB
Bugfix for version 0.65:
http://www.xup.in/dl,44779613/FW_Bugfix_for_version_0.65.7z/
1. Mega Homesystems:
All races start out at a system holding 4 habitable planets averageing a total of base PQ40 (moons & rings count as PQ1) with 2 exceptions - Iconian & Thalan. The idea behind this change is that homesystems now do form a considerable stronghold for every race, and that it's also now possible to start out tiny/small all-rare galaxies with reduced risk to not get completely unlucky esp. on higher difficulty settings.
Alot of new graphics with intricate details have been added for this.
2. New Political Parties:
4 new parties are available (Automatists, New Colonists, Explorers, Traditionalists) in order to widen the available bonuses presented while all other conventional parties were slightly altered.
3. Advanced Customization:
The distribution points spending screen now makes all meaningful ratings accessably including: Miniaturization, Logistics, War Profiteering, Purchase Now Reduction and rebalances many conventional choices.
Stock Races do start out with a prefixed selection of these perks - all of those can be undone ingame by a player at the game's setup.
4. Divers Anomalies:
More than 15 new anomalies now bring previous untouched stats to you, even introducing new mechanisms (which may have been forgotten in vanilla...) while many traditional anomalies have been (slightly) buffed. As a compensation a few anomalies bring penalties to its finders!! This will further diversify galactic development and throttle a player going crazy on surveying.
Includes all possible variants of anomalies (Stellar Black Holes, Temporal Rift & Space Junk) with brighter textures to better see them when playing zoomed-in.
[NEW] All 8 anomaly-types have their own texture now.
5. Big Asteroids:
Some races get additional techniques to mine out Asteroids at the end of the Space-Mining branch. Some of these are locked and require that you trade for the unlocking key-technology from another race...
Asteroid-textures/fog have been beefed up to make them less prominent.
6. Strong United Planets:
Selection has been streamlined to 25 options with most being permanent, and their impact have been dramatically increased in force & numbers. Meaningful votes that are going to make the game less easy for the player should now appear more often (Neutral-ground, End-all-wars, Anomaly-ownership etc).
Remember you still have the option to leave the UP!
7. Racial Rework:
To promote more unique play and balance the stock races versus custom race setups. Rule of thumb all races now have a particular weakness while the positive rating & starting technologies suggest the general strengths of that particular races' techtree. So you know what you can expect right at the start of the game.
Furthermore, all Stock Races customization points have been reduced to 5 (which are already preselected) but they've been given some additional -mostly unique- technologies to compensate. In contrast the Custom Race now has 15 points more, so a player has all freedom to generate a faction to his/her own likeing.
8. Specialized Hulls:
4 new hulls to be used for: Sensory Buoys, Planetary Defenders, Military Starbase Swarms & Fleet-support Ships. To use these hulls look under 'Templates' for already completed pre-designs.
The conventional hulls have been slightly rebalanced (Tiny & Small are a little bit boosted).
Cargo Hulls -and its capacity-modules- were greatly revamped to keep Cargo's out of fighting business while still retaining functionality.
The starting ColonyShip has been defunctionalized to a nonmoving prototype so the AI won't establish low-pop planets. It initially helps getting a glance at near neighbouring systems and later could be decommisioned to get 250bc.
[NEW] The Arceans get to build 'Gigantic'-sized starships as part of their Technological Victory.
9. Simplified Range:
This makes the game more territorial - you won't see constructors zipping halfway through the galaxy for a resource that's already been claimed by some neighbour. The AI will also now build more starbases in own territory and have its fleets more guarding own space.
10. Engines Revamp:
The purpose of engines is to deliver speed in order to cut down time to reach a destination. But the high costs of engines only increase the buildtime of a ship to such extremes that paradoxically this happens even LATER! So especially starting engines (in early times when production is still low) has been considerably decreased - but you won't be able to stack them at ships that much than before.
Secondly, the base-speed increases have been ripped out from the engine-modules and collected into their own branch "Slipstream Technology" - which gives the player the option to choose which method to use in order to have faster ships. As well as giving me the option to incite the AI to get rather base speed (which they can use flawlessly...)
11. Resistant Minors:
Strong 1pp buildings: To compensate their starting handicapps.
Early trade: Tradeing is the very best they can do in order to stay alive longer.
Homeplanet PQ increased to 25. This even stays upon conquest.
Severely restriced techtree - because many items are useless for them (like Influence), but many techcosts decreased by approx. 25%.
They're not helpless victims anymore - their weakness is to only have 1 planet. But if they manage to gain more planets via conquest you may loose that game
You could even design a CustomRace using their own techtree - but be warned: You can't colonize anymore: just like a real MinorRace! .
[NEW] Stuff you'll get from Minors:
-Weather Control & Biosphere Modulator.
-All Trade Goods: Minors won't build the improvement themselves but they can still research the technology (which holds some minor bonus for them) and trade that technology away to Major Civs which, in turn, may erect the Trade Good.
12. Real Stars:
About 400 names of the historically most important and also, most visible stars in the northern hemisphere. If you look up in the nightsky you'll see many of them unknowingly. Most bear a latin or arabic name (some english). See README.txt for additional installation-instruction.
13. Enhanced Graphics:
Old DL planetary improvements have been doubled in size and beefed up in coloring/contrast to adapt to the TA standard (also their querries). Many did see completely new artwork.
Much artwork of ColonizationEvents, MegaEvents, RandomEvents and general infopopup-graphics are now better visible, upped in colour-depth to 32bit (formerly 256 colour) and depixilated/decluttered.
Stars now have flares, an add. star-type added (Grey - Dusty Protostar).
Both survey- & sensormodules now have an own texture in unique color distinguishing it from shield-mods.
The CustomRace now uses another logo + dynamic trade sequences [courtesy of Donfield]
14. New Techtrees:
All techtrees underwent drastic changes - to better AI play and give a player more interesting choices. This is an ongoing endeavour so there's more to come with each update!
Every race now has, at least, a single 1pp building which is indestructible - even staying after conquest. This has done to help bringing a conquered planet faster back up (Efficiency Matrix, Food Distribution Silo...), to prevent exploiting (Weather Control Zenith, Gaia Vortex, Biosphere Modulator...) and simply make the mid- to endgame more interesting, showing that each race will still leave a unique imprint on a planet even after they've been banished there.
15. Super-Ability Fixes:
SPY - unlocks 3 additional technologies.
ISOLATIONIST - 'Barren World Col.' has been significantly increased in costs (which they get for free).
ANNIHILATOR - 'Toxic World Col.' has been significantly increased in costs (which they get for free).
ADAPTER - 'Aquatic World Col.' has been increased in cost (which they get for free).
DOMINATOR - the Corvettes got buffed, carrying now 1*Stinger & 1*ArmorPlating.
TRADER - unlocks 2 additional technologies (otherwise unique only to Korx).
There are still some other, kinda weak SA (esp. for the player...) like Manipulator, Organizer, Warrior etc but it's not possible to work on these skills directly. I've therefore changed/boosted some of the racial stats or starting technologies of the races which carry these weak SAs to compensate at least the stock races, and to prevent that a more strong Custom setup is possible. For example, WARRIOR/Arcean - runs on AIP8 now to build all-attack ships, MANIPULATOR/Drath run on AIP10 to make use of their immense defense-bonus....
16. Additional Shipdesigns:
Around 35 shipdesigns - mostly tight to Tiny & Cargo Hulls - are now prefixed and will automatically appear in the selectable buildqueue once all required technologies have been gathered. Some of these designs may hint vaguely at specific gamemechanisms and thereby exemplify what can be done extraordinairily by combining different functionality modules. One example would be to create Colonyships with surveyability (most likely after its cost's been nullified) in order to pick up anomalies while en route to its destination or trying to cut down travel time by using wormholes...
17. Unique Technological Victory:
Every race gets unique bonuses/improvements as it researches down their own TechVic-branch. At the end lies usually something that is so powerful that it should win the map for this race - if used correctly. However, if you plan to use this ie. to "play-out" a technological victory - you'll have to disable that victory condition on mapsetup otherwise you'll just get that boring victory-screen.
The other reason why these bonuses are there is because the AIs still research down this line even if tech-vic is disabled - so without any bonuses they waste a ton of research for nothing artificially gimping their game. In Future Worlds this cannot happen anymore.
[NEW] To sum it up for each race:
-YOR: Miniaturization as a path towards ever smaller robotic sentience.
-TORIAN: Morale & Range in their quest to make the whole universe habitable to their physiology (ie. "fluidic").
-ARCEAN: Weapons & Hitpoints crowned by the Gigantic Hull-size, in an ongoing effort to become a Super Warrior that fights space battles losslessly.
-ALTARIAN: Luck & Creativity as a path to a complete understanding of the universe.
-DRENGIN: MP & Logistics to achieve total space supremacy.
-TERRAN: Speed in order to be faster than ever before.
-KORX: Purchase Now Reduction, under Neutral alignment and/or some more starting bonuses they'll be able to buy anything for free.
-DRATH: WarProfiteering & Diplomacy, plus the ability to weaponize a TerrorStar - this will be the ultimate weapon to sell!
-THALAN: They're able to reassemble their past technology which is based on 'Expert Gravitronics' which will nullify the limitations of some of their improvements.
-ICONIAN: Their Technological Victory gives them the ability to fully colonize all tiles on every planet.
-KORATH: MilitaryProduction at the expense of PlanetaryQuality, plus the ability to construct a very cheap TerrorStar regardless of ethical picks.
-KRYNN: Tremendous cultural bonuses to sway their neigbours to their creed.
18. Easier Techtrade:
In the CU both AIValue- & WillingnessToTrade-tags saw (sometimes) huge increases calling for quadruple costs in order to ensure a tradedeal. I've therefore adjusted many of these values to make techtrade much more easy again.
Some historically untradeably unique technologies are now tradeable as well, although the specific AI will ask for A LOT in compensation.
Many untradeable techs can now be stolen - to ensure that this will happen more frequently many tradeable techs have been rendered unstealably (except Weapons). However, some untradeable techs also remain unstealably most noteably many techs holding buildings.
Creativity is made now more generally available but technologies beyond 2000 base costs cannot be affected anymore - except weapons/defenses where every other tech can still be creatively researched.
19. Events Debugged:
All Colonization- and Random Events do now do exactly what the text states, ie. mechanisms that don't work have been thrown out. Since it's only possible to have negative-good-options and only positive-evil-choices I've nerfed some of the good-penalties & evil-bonuses. To ensure that good isn't always handicapped I've presented them with some additional choices steming from technologies alongside the XenoEthics-techs, which all are also more easier to get than the evil-techs.
20. Spying Finetuned:
Espionage suffered a roundabout penalty of -50% (to help the AI) but to make the Spy-game more interesting all techs which are easy to get through techtrade cannot be stolen anymore - meaning that your invasive forces or spies only bring home technologies which are either rare or significant.
21. Clever Cost-reductions:
Several improvements now reduce specific shipmodules in cost to help the AI:
- Freighter Factory --> Trade module (Korx/ Trader SA)
- Galactic Guide Book --> Survey module (All)
- Stellar Forge --> Constructor module (Arcean)
- Space Trucker's Guild --> Mining module (All)
The reductions may require a reload to be effective (if the corresponding module was already available before the improvement got built...)
22. New Invasion Techniques:
Many additional invasion techniques are now available and the whole field of Invasion/Soldiering/PlanetaryDefense got greatly rebalanced. Every race has now a different mix of techniques at their disposal, some rules of thumb:
- One invasion branch deals in destructive invasion which will incapacitate the defendants defense-roll, the trade-off is a penalty to PQ/buildings/influence. At the end of the branch lies usually an uberstrong technique that will most likely guarantee a successful invasionbut greatly damage the planet. This branch is unavailable/incomplete on some good/neutral-races.
- The second branch deals mainly with techniques enhance the own advantage (through better soldiers etc) oftentimes not damaging the planet. At the end lies the Adv. Troop Module.
- Unique buildings or technologies are placed frontally, usually right after Planetary Invasion so they will have a great impact on that specific race's attitude towards conquest.
Sometimes I did heavily alienate from that general design when it either made thematically sense or because of balance. For example, Torians are Breeder and therefore need a sooner access to the Adv. Troop Module, and also less access to general soldiering-bonuses or planetary defense (they simply try to win by sheer numbers). They're also an aquatic race so their preferred technique is "Tidal Disruption" which they get at decreased costs.
[NEW] 23. Weapons-love:
All weapons now have their own unique animation, be it either differently in colour or texture or both. The original game only uses about ~30% of what's in its internal folders. I've also used much more soundfiles - and together with the animations applied them in order to make out an evolution in sound/effect (ie. rockets get bigger in size or more in numbers, beams get bigger and nastier, slugs faster or more devastating etc).
Further I've applied differently looking explosions (the vanilla game only uses 2 out of 37!). Blue-colored slugs now cause blue explosions and so on...
Several new weapons are available (although not to everyone):
- Multi-Seekers
- Bioforce Thrower
- Overcharge Disruptors
- Nova Torpedo
- Photonic Salvo
- Star Sprinkler
- Tachyon Shockwaves
Additionally, all Defense-tiers got their uniquely colored textures/lights.
[NEW] 24. Further Techtree-Individuation/Extension: :
- Introduced the 'Hyperion Research'-branch to some factions which replaces the (relatively weaker) 'Adv. Laboratories'-branch.
- 'Automated Repair Systems'-branch offers up to 45% Repair-ability boost on most trees.
- 'Xeno Obedience' & 'Thought Manipulation'-branches may offer up to 50% Loyalty to various selected factions.
- 'Secret Service Training' offers up to 40% increased Espionage.
[NEW] 25. Trade-Goods distribution:
Most tradegoods are now only available in 2 or 3 trees, their bonuses/effectiveness slightly buffed and the tech holding the good gets a minor related bonus as well. This should disable a player from leasebuying all goods once they become available (if this is worthwhile is dependant only on the planet-count...). That is, most tradegoods have to be traded for - or their residing planet taken by force.
*. Latest patch:
The mod includes many of the latest (and future) CU patches to Twilight 2.20 - the re-introduction of proper farming, invasionfix, old weapons/defenses and all other bugfixes & changes as well.
No Campaign-compatibility! Play only in Sandbox-mode!
HAVE FUN!
See the included README.txt for installation-instructions!