Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51 Release 05-10-13

Tolmekian

Join Date 08/2007

+24

Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51 Release 05-10-13

Purpose of the mod:

This mod addresses widespread errors in the TotA TechTree.xml files. These errors pretty much broke many of the unique TechTrees, causing the AI to pursue a deeply flawed research strategy and outright preventing the research of many techs. Part of the fix included rearranging a number of the TechTrees to fix the seemingly random arrangement of some techs and reduce the number of branches for the AI to get sidetracked on. Along the way, I ended up fixing many UP issues, planetary improvements, starbase modules, and did some general improvement and balancing on individual techs.

This mod is a direct result of MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod, which provided the inspiration. A lot of my development commentary and good input from other modders working on their own fixes is in that topic. Thanks MarvinKosh, Quaternus, deweyjohn, TOV, foxthree, qrtxian and all others for input and support.

05-10-13: v3.51 release

Update to fix some errors in v3.5.

Because I forgot to mention for the 3.5 release: The Hyperion improvements (shipyard, shrinker, logistics, resupply) are now all Galactic Achievements instead of Super Projects. No more collecting shrinkers , it really matters who builds these things.
I would also like to add a special thanks to Gaunathor for extensive proofreading, playtesting, and feedback. His contributions have played a big part in me continuing the work, fixing/improving even more than I originally intended, and finally putting out a (more or less) finished product after all this time. It's fair to say that without him, this mod wouldn't be nearly what it is. Thanks.

04-28-13: v3.5 release

Here it is, the more or less finished product after all this time. It's been about a year since I put this project down, so I'm a bit fuzzy on what exactly I did before coming back to finish it up. I'm pretty sure I've got the major things nailed down, though. Let's see:

Fixed those minor but embarrassing typos that made it into v3.0
Standardized the cost vs maintenance vs output ratios for the various improvement. Now every race can be content with their own improvements and not shop around for the obvious best. You can now upgrade to Industrial Sectors without fretting about the inefficiencies.

In general, costs went down, sometimes a lot. Maintenance costs were also reduced or eliminated on many improvements. No more taking years upon years to develop a planet only to have the game end immediately thereafter.

Made starting techs that allow a bottom-tier improvement for many of the improvement lines. The idea being to allow the AI access to each type of improvement and allow balanced planet development - no filling up planets before researching basic improvements.

eg. Races that use the "normal" economic structures (banks, stock markets, etc) now start with Market Economics, which allows construction of the Market Center.
If you make a custom tech tree, this allows you to select the base techs for your tree without needing conflicting "history" techs to unlock basic improvements.

Rounded out the Temple morale improvements, so Altarians and Drath have a progression of decent improvements unlocked by various techs, starting with Spiritual Happiness.
Did away entirely with farms, charging stalks, etc. Replaced them with a universal, one-per-planet improvement that gives a bonus to pop growth and %food.
Did away with Advanced Extreme Colonization techs. Now only one tech is required for each type of extreme planets.
Now every tech tree includes the Government techs and Planetary Defense Techs. No good reason for some races to go without.
Omega Research Center: Now with more awesome. No longer just a watered down tech capital, the Omega Research Center is a Galactic Achievement worthy of the title.

Speaking of watered down Tech Capital . . . I watered down the Tech Capital. Kind of. Bonus from 100% to 50%, but it now generates 14tp on its own. Which leads to the next point . . .

All improvements that give a bonus to manufacturing or research now also generate their own mp or tp proportional to the bonus. This is to counteract the sometimes painful misplacement of these improvements by the AI.
The evil races (Drengin, Korath, Yor) got a lot of attention during 3.5 development due to general lack of competitiveness.

Now have access to all 4 types of capitals (economic, technological, political, manufacturing) or an equivalent structure.
Drengin got a couple new unique techs - Superior Warships and Fleet Domination - which boost stats and unlock Galactic Achievements to speed their conquest of the galaxy.
Korath have a new Galactic Achievement - the Aul Incinerator. Out with the one-per-planet suckfest and in with something that you'll actually want.
Don't think the Yor got any new stuff, but some stuff is easier to get and the Manufacturing Vortex and Distributed Energy Matrix got pretty big buffs.

Sprinkled a couple speed bonuses in the basic techs to speed things up a bit. Basically, the AI never designs ships with engines and ends up late game with ships that move 3 or 4 per turn. Now we're looking at 6 or 7.
Uuuuuh . . . I think that's the major stuff.
Enjoy!

TechTree Fix v3.51 with Dumb Old Minors: I did nothing to the minor races here. If you want the same dumb minors you've always known and loved, this is the mod for you.

TechTree Fix v3.51 with Smart Old Minors: Same old minors that still won't colonize, but I added code to make them play to the best of the AI's ability. I gave them respectable descriptions, modest bonuses, and changed out the silly race images to reflect their upgrade. Since they can't colonize, they'll send out a bunch of freighters and actually send constructors to grab up a lot of the resources while the majors are still colonizing. They still get slaughtered when it comes down to it, but I've had fun watching them. It's also interesting to see the majors make a ton of regular starbases since there are fewer resources to grab.

TechTree Fix v3.51 with MoOII Minors: The MoOII minors in this mod will colonize and behave pretty much like weak majors. Much larger than the other mods due to the RaceImage and RaceLogo files. If you try this mod, remember to use the "quick save fix". That is, the minors won't start behaving like majors until you save and reload. So, start your game, quicksave, reload, and enjoy.

TechTree Fix v3.51 with MoOII and Smart Old Minors: Why not? If you want a little variety, I packaged up both versions of the minors in one mod. Your minors could be one, the other, or a mix of both. Still be sure to use the quick-save fix, or your MoOII minors won't play nice. I haven't tested this arrangement, but I can't see why it won't work. (famous last words.)

03-04-12: v3.0 Release

v3.0 continues the work, this time focusing on starbase modules and planetary improvements, particularly Galactic Achievements, Super Projects, and Trade Goods. Also included is a wonderful conversation mod, kindly contributed by qrtxian. His mod fixes the errors in the GC2_Conversations.xml, so now you can enjoy all the unique dialogue as intended.

Highlights

All fleet modules that were removed in v2.0 are restored. That's the fleet attack/defense and fleet warp bubbles, etc.
Entire Starbase Fortification branch removed. The attack, defense, and assist modules were spread uniformly among the appropriate weapons and defense techs.
Enhanced Battle Stations starbase modules and added equivalent Starbase Defenses modules.
No more easy pickings, expect to see some well armed starbases.
Addressed a limitation where the AI will only use the first 100 starbase modules in the xml file. Rearranged, removed, and edited starbase modules to ensure the most basic and useful modules are AI accessible.
Evil weapons and good defenses are now available at every weapon/defense level, instead of only at the end.
Extensive changes to Galactic Achievements, Super Projects, and Trade Goods. I went after them with the idea that every one should be a "must have". Costs reduced and AI values increased to ensure the AIs actually have a chance to build them, given their inability to plan planetary improvements.
Edit to add - All the trade goods now have a unique icon rather than a stack of boxes. Except the Xinathium Hull Plating. I figured that would still come in boxes. I chose from among the unused icons that come with the game, so they may not be perfect. They are, in my opinion, better than the boxes.
Two previously unused Galactic Achievements brought into play: the Life Force Extractor and Historical Preserve. Two new GAs introduced: the Benevolent Research Center and Trade Nexus. All four new GAs are unlocked by ethics techs.
Introduced new ethics techs to split up the multiple GAs and SPs unlocked by them. Ethics techs now also provide a small bonus, so those who don't get the GAs don't waste their research.
Further optimizing and balancing. My last playtests were some of the most balanced I've ever seen. Sure, sometimes there are runaway monsters and pitiful also-rans, but overall it's pretty good.
All races are still set to AIPersonality 11, or Generic. The Altarians, Arceans, and Korx default to their unique AIP when set to 11. You can still use AIP 8 (Thalan, Human, Drath, Krynn) and 7 (Drengin, Korath, and Yor) if you want to mix things up, but there are special considerations. First, AIP 7 is flawed in that it won't colonize outside of its influence sphere. In order to stand a chance, you need to use Abundant Planets, Abundant Habitables, Abundant or Common Stars, and Tight of Loose Clusters. Then, you need to Ctrl-n until you get a galaxy where the AIP 7s have enough stars within their influence. Other than that, AIP 7 and 8 will perform pretty well. Their research is somewhat flawed (no Xeno Ethics, for example) and they're hyper militant, but they seem to compete well.
Edit to add - While trying to improve the Arceans, I tested their TechTree with regular engines instead of their unique navigation techs. I kept the navigation techs in the standard Arcean TechTree, but also left the Arcean-Eng tree in.

I think that's most of it. Without further ado, here it is:

TechTree Fix v3.0 with Dumb Old Minors: I did nothing to the minor races here. If you want the same dumb minors you've always known and loved, this is the mod for you.

TechTree Fix v3.0 with Smart Old Minors: Same old minors that still won't colonize, but I added code to make them play to the best of the AI's ability. I gave them respectable descriptions, modest bonuses, and changed out the silly race images to reflect their upgrade. Since they can't colonize, they'll send out a bunch of freighters and actually send constructors to grab up a lot of the resources while the majors are still colonizing. They still get slaughtered when it comes down to it, but I've had fun watching them. It's also interesting to see the majors make a ton of regular starbases since there are fewer resources to grab.

TechTree Fix v3.0 with MoOII Minors: The MoOII minors in this mod will colonize and behave pretty much like weak majors. Much larger than the other mods due to the RaceImage and RaceLogo files. If you try this mod, remember to use the "quick save fix". That is, the minors won't start behaving like majors until you save and reload. So, start your game, quicksave, reload, and enjoy.

TechTree Fix v3.0 with MoOII and Smart Old Minors: Why not? If you want a little variety, I packaged up both versions of the minors in one mod. Your minors could be one, the other, or a mix of both. Still be sure to use the quick-save fix, or your MoOII minors won't play nice. I haven't tested this arrangement, but I can't see why it won't work. (famous last words.)

Update 01-07-12: v2 Release

After nearly a year, here it finally is. Details can be found in this post.

v1.1 Notes:

Extract the zipped folders into: C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\GalCiv2\Twilight\mods This is the pathway for my Impule-downloaded version. In any case, put it into the mods folder in the Twilight folder.
The TechTree Fix is optimized for AIPersonality 11 (Altarian, Arcean, Korx, and Generic). AIPs 7 and 10 are pretty much broken, and AIP 8 has certain issues that require me to do another round of optimization and testing for any race that I want to set as 8. I set all races to AIP 11 in the mod. You can change the setting, but it will change the way the AI pursues research.
My detailed change log is included in the folder. I'd include it here for everyone to see, but it's a 15 page Word file. It lists all the changes that I made to the techs, improvements, modules and issues. It also includes every iteration of AIValue for each tech, so you can see just how many times I had to tweak some of them.
Additonal Highlights:
- Fixes broken UP Issue "Add two trade routes". It proposed 2 trade routes, then called for a vote on 0,1,2,3, or 4. That vote was broken and didn't work. It's now yes/no for 2 trade routes.
- Restores 3 Galactic Achievements by fixing Tech Requirements: The Galactic Stock Exchange, Galactic Monument, and Hyper-Distribution Center are once again available with the proper techs.
- Fixes error in some starbase modules that caused attack bonus to be misstated in the starbase summary.
- Fixes Temple of Neutrality, which was a cut-and-paste of Temple of Righteousness. That means the tourism penalty affected good races. Now it affects neutral civs and not good ones.
- Fixes Planetary Defense improvement so it now actually gives +25% Planetary Defense.
- Fixes a number of errors in descriptions of techs and improvements. Unfortunately, I didn't fix the error in the Temple of Righteousness/Neutrality/Evil descriptions. They don't affect trade income, only tourism.
- Fixes a number of errors in the TechTree xml that prevented the entire TechTree from being displayed in the xml viewer.
- There's a few more in there.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

Yep, Terran AI is 8.

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The Drengin AI (which is 7) is also used by the Yor which many times do quite well for themselves. A few times they emerged as the dominating race actually. The Korath, which is the other race that uses AI 7, are usually not so fortunate. But if they get their spore ships going they become a real threat.

EDIT: I did a play-test with the Drengin AI set to 8 and it behaved pretty much the same. The problem is when good and neutral races gang up on them. Sometimes the Korath join in to help them but they still get crushed.

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The goods ganging up on the evils has always been the cause since GC 1. Since in GC 1 there only were 5 opponent races and you could not change their alignment, it was way easier to just go good yourself.

I think in GC2 it's the same to some degree.

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Perhaps I could ameliorate the problem by making the Yor and the Korx slightly more evil (with 10 points perhaps). Maybe then they'll more readily intervene to help the Drengin and the Korath.

EDIT: The Korx are actually as evil as the Drengin... There's an equal number of good and evil races actually. I'll make the Drath neutral and the Iconians slightly less good

On an urelated note, has anyone seen the AI actually use influence starbases efficiently? I've seen them constructing them, sometimes near other races' planets, sometimes in their own territory with literally nothing in range. They build them and let them like that, I haven't seen them improving them. And other races still complain about them building them. I must mention that in my mod I have reintroduced the costs for the starbase modules, and the first influence modules cost 500bc. But the costs doesn't stop them from building weapons and defenses on them. Also in my mod there are only 100 starbase modoules available, so the AI can see and use them all (100 is the AI's limit). I will further investigate.

EDIT: After some testing I saw the AI build some influence starbases, but only one upgraded with an influence module, and that only when tested with free modules. Reading through the forums, I see other people also reported the AI building influence starbases, but not upgrading them. I wonder if there's any way to encourage the AI to upgrade its influence starbases. I'm open to suggestions.

Also, I believe the AI behaves differently when actually playing a real game, with actual pauses in between turns, than when play-testing and quickly ending turns. Because I know GalCiv's AI uses the time during the player's moves to do its thinking, I believe that quickly ending turns in play-tests hinders the AI abilities a little and may not make the best choices. I shall therefore play an actual game... with the Iconians I think

EDIT: So I finished a game on a huge map, with 9 tough opponents and 8 minors. The minors were the only ones building and upgrading influence starbases. I've only seen one influence starbase built by a major, but wasn't upgraded at all. In other plays I've seen more influence starbases built by majors but not upgrading them. This is definitely an issue.

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Just some general comments and obseravations

First of all-overall this is great mod. The fixes to the tech tree really make the game play much better than vanilla. It goes a long way to fixing a lot of the issues that plague vanilla that SD could never be bothered to fix. I always play immense 8-9 opponents at top 3 difficulty levels

The good

Starbases! Can actually defend themselves now!, and fairly early on in the game. In Vanilla, even at max buildout-which took way too long, they were always sitting ducks, unless you send 2/3 of your fleet to watch over them. You still have to to defend them, but in Tols mod, they have at least stand a fighting chance and much much more durable. The improvements to Star-bases alone make this mod well worth it.

Like the new icons and the new, fixed up, SP, and GA, add more depth that has long been missing form the game.

The tech tree itself is much longer and involved. This makes the AI less able to zerg you with Doom Ray equipped, 250 hp warships 30 turned into the game, while your still struggle to put togther a Missle 1 orbital fighter. The AI still out-researches you early on, but not near as outrageously as vanilla. In vanilla it took no time at all, or effort to max the tech trees. Now, not so easy, or as fast.

Your fleet will change. No more 150-200 atk beam or missile cruisers, but the AI doesn't get them either so it balances surprisingly well all things considered. The new scale takes some getting used to if youve never modded or only played vanilla, but its superior over all. My strongest ships(base) with 3x shrinkers are bascically at the 70atk level. Though I have one design with 77. All more than capable of destroying the strongest AI ships with insulting ease.

Money seems a little harder to make, which is good. Too easy to make loads of cash in vanilla with relatively little commerical worlds. Not hard in Tols either, but you cant cruise quite along quite like you could in vanilla. More trade and commerce options in Mod assist in this regard. I find I build more economy buildings in Tols than I did in vanilla.

AI seems to prefer bee-lining to ethics-and they seem to prefer evil.-neither good or bad

AI worlds are much better filled out now -the AI is still pretty 'dumb' but its night and day compared to vanilla.

The AI seems overall to play a little better, though TBH, they can still be fairly dumb when it comes to grand strategy, even if various sub-aspects of its play have improved. I realize this is not really the Mods fault-any improvements small or large are always welcome.

Making all the ultimate weapons same weight and strength was probably a good idea.

Droping Stellar drive makes for more interesting games as the sense of vast scale on the large maps is somewhat restored. No more 37+base speed warships crossing the map in a few turns. Even with multiple shrinkers and max tech, it still takes a while to cross an immense map.

Not so good.

AI does not seem to really build influence like they do in vanilla, or when they do, still does nothing to build them up.

They build few other bases, economy or military and again, do not build them up or use them effectively from the games Ive run.

The AI seems to have a preference for research, which is fine, but they dont seem to make much progress beyond a certain point in the game, and of course, since there research seems to be ineffective, they dont switch over to production or commerce that well either.

If this makes any sense, the AI does not seem all that aggressive with invading my worlds, though to me, it looks like they attack each others worlds fine. What few invasions I do face, again are un-escorted trans easily shot down 99% of time.

Good tech tree does not really seem to offer much in the way of unique techs ,just like Vanilla. Evil really seems to be best way to go, even if good does have some interesting GA's. Im not clear how the defensive bonuses really help. Though to be fair, I still need to run thro one of my epic games as good. Neutral im not even sure if its worth pursueing? YMMV.

If I would change anything I might consider upping ultimates to 8 strength. I think that would be something to consider.

But if you find vanilla to be an exercise in frustration, and want a longer, more in-depth game, and a lot of annoying bug fixes addressed, this is a great mod.

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i wasn't sure if this had been asked or not, though i have googled and googled, and oh yea GOOGLED the fudge out of trying to find a mod with minor races that expand. this is the only thing i've ever seen show up. I'm playing TA 2.03 and i was curious if the minor races mod here is able to be installed seperate of the tech tree mod(i have no problem with the vanilla). I absolutely love gal civ 2, the whole influence thing is awesome, always wanted a strategy game based on eve and GC2 is as close as it gets. If i can get minor races to expand by this mod i'd be pumped as i'm sure it'd add a lot more gameplay and enjoyment. thanks!

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I'll tell you how to make minors expand by yourself so you can tweak this as you wish.

Go to your /Twilight/Data/English folder and you will see a file called RaceConfig.xml. Open it with Notepad, although Notepad++ is preferable, and you will see each race in the game listed there, with its attributes. The minor races are listed after the major ones, and you will notice they all have the attribute <AIPersonality>5</AIPersonality>.

Change this value to 11, 7, 8 or whatever value you see the majors use. AIPersonality 5 is the minor race personality which prevents them from expanding, changing it to a value used by major races will let them expand. Note that minors will still not have zones of influence, like major races.

If you have any questions, ask.

Also, why are you playing 2.03?

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Hello folks, LZ back and curious.

Two things:

1) Tolmekian, if you are still around, may I use your mod for the basis for my polish mod? I'm going through and giving the game a facelift, both the graphics (not via resolution but with better shaders and textures) and the text (oh go the writing...). Mostly for me, because I'm bad at finishing these things, but it is coming along nicely and who knows, maybe there are a few people left who are interested in a six year old game.

2) Somehow my major races have lost their fight; they don't colonize any more than their first colony ship and they blow that on their Mars type. There is a report of such a "Dead AI" bug that basically sets the AIs to "Fool" regardless of what you set in the GUI, but I am worried something I changed had an undocumented side effect. I only edited cosmetic text, no internal names or anything, so I am perplexed. Does anyone who tested this or worked on this have a suggestion?

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

If you customise the personality for a race in-game then it can end up being useless again. I don't know what else would cause that. By default the mod sets them to 11, I think. You can fix this by resetting the race on the customise opponent screen or, by just removing any raceconfig file that has been created for that race in your saved data folder.

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Nah, no vanilla race was customized; no matter what I do to the custom map settings, they always are "dumb". They colonize their Mars, produce mining bases on all the asteroid fields in their influence, collect all the anomalies they can, then just sit there and research.

And it has to be something I changed: I had been altering the display names and descriptions of techs before and everything was fine. When I got back into my polish work, I started getting into other files, and somewhere in there is when it went haywire. I didn't test often enough to catch it, because it seemed cosmetics like this didn't need much testing. I just switched to a fresh copy of the latest (I was a whole version out of date on the mod, apparently) and they colonize just fine.

Basically, there is either a typo in my cosmetics modifications that altered something vital, or there are an unknown number of either Ship Components or Techs that when aesthetically altered make the AIs act, essentially, like Fools. Alterations to strings.txt and English.txt have no effect, I checked that.

I have made extensive cosmetic changes to Conversations, UPIssues, TechTree (universal and a few racial), Improvements, Abilities, and GC2Types, and a few changes in FlavorText. I also did a total overhaul of terminology and GUI text in strings.txt and English.txt to make all the GUI elements agree on what the hell things are called (Gun, Mass, Mass Drivers, and in one place Projectile are now all "Kinetics" or "KN").

I am iteratively copying my changes over to the latest version to see where it gets weird; I'm sure I'll be surprised, but if you've got any ideas that'd be great.

P.S. Damn, I always seem to blather on too much. I don't want to hijack this thread, though I suppose it is relevant. I should really make a topic for this mod, I guess.

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qrtxian

Join Date 03/2010

+30

Possibly a stupid question, but are you sure that you didn't somehow actually set the AIs to Fool?

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Quoting LordZorinthrox,

reply 486

I should really make a topic for this mod, I guess.

Yes you should. And you should also post screenshots there because I'm interested in your mod

I have also built my own little mod based on Tolmekian's. It combines HRG 2.0 and other modifications I made. Maybe you can get LogicSequence to allow you to also include his mod in your own, it has great textures. See here: https://forums.stardock.com/316741

Please make a post about your mod and we'll talk, maybe I can help you. I'm always interested in improving my GalCiv experience. I'm playing Endless Space on Steam's free weekend now and it has no soul, no personality...

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Quoting qrtxian,

reply 487

Possibly a stupid question, but are you sure that you didn't somehow actually set the AIs to Fool?

Nope, far as I can tell. I double-checked to the best of my ability; checked in the map opponents settings screen, and checked in-game in the foreign stats. If I knew how I'd check the save-file too. Furthermore, when I switched to the fresh, new version, there are no problems; the Korx snatched up a planet in about around dozen or two turns on Normal with a fresh copy of v3.0.

Quoting bbr91,

reply 488

Yes you should. And you should also post screenshots there because I'm interested in your mod

I have also built my own little mod based on Tolmekian's. It combines HRG 2.0 and other modifications I made. Maybe you can get LogicSequence to allow you to also include his mod in your own, it has great textures. See here: https://forums.stardock.com/316741

Please make a post about your mod and we'll talk, maybe I can help you. I'm always interested in improving my GalCiv experience. I'm playing Endless Space on Steam's free weekend now and it has no soul, no personality...

Well that is good to know; I was worried "I changed all the text because it sounded silly" might land badly. Will do, but my modifications extend into the shaders themselves, that is, the programs that run on the graphics card to draw things, and it needs special textures purpose-made to work with the techniques I have used.

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Quoting LordZorinthrox,

reply 489

Please leave a link here when you open a thread. The text is not of much interest to me, but I'm curious about what you changed. Some people find it revolting that the game tries to be funny but I don't particularly mind.

What I really am interested in is the graphics changes. I don't know what shaders are and how they work, perhaps you can explain in detail what you did in your own thread. I've personally hijacked this thread too many times now Looking forward to your own.

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Quoting bbr91,

reply 483

Also, why are you playing 2.03?

What is wrong with 2.03?

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

2.04 introduced a newer game activation and Metaverse login.

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I tried this mod and am loving it. I like to use star bases and the fact they can hold their own is great

Only problem is that it seems they can become pretty much invincible if the player researches defenses against whatever computer players use. In my game EVERYBODY used missiles so it was trivial to adjust to it - does it happen every time? Some variety would be nice. If they used different things then the game would be much more difficult (I am playing on tough since I like even playing field).

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Which weapon tech they research should in theory be random. It's possible somebody researched missile tech, then traded it away to the others. BUT I don't know if the AI trade among themselves, and even then, weapon techs are highly valued and hard to trade. The interesting thing is that this mod makes every weapon tech identical, while in vanilla there were differences in cost, damage etc, and yet the AI still didn't always choose one tech.

I modified this mod to give some very basic and useless weapons with the Space Weapons tech, so that the arms race is triggered faster, and people like the Altarians don't get left behind. I also modified the starbase modules, made them far fewer, so less annoying to improve a starbase, and more powerful, but balanced so that you can't really make an invincible starbase late game. The problem with invincible starbases is that if you build one between you and your enemy, the AI will just throw everything at that starbase and lose all its fleet.

I'm thinking about releasing this mod of mine, based on Tolmekian's, but I need his approval, and LogicSequence's approval for his HRG 2.0 mod. It combines the two, plus some other minor additions of my own. Is it worth it?

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The massive chore that is improving the starbases is indeed boring and best would be to make it so the cost of constructor is proportional to the benefit and then make fewer constructors with better benefits per constructor.

For example, the first constructor and the economic ones should be current category of constructors, and any weapon improvements should be a second costlier category.

I am not sure if it is possible to make that distinction, so another way is to make "weaponized bases" techs expensive to research but make the bases tough to kill (as they are in this mod). Techs would be similar to current battle stations (+ to all branches).

The bases are invincible now only if it is easy to specialize into one defensive branch, I maxed out antimissile branch and did not even touch the other two because everybody used the same weapons (I used lasers and steamrolled everybody).

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Everything you said is possible. But starbase modules are approached on a per module basis, not per type. You just need patience to modify each module.

Part of what you suggested I implemented in my mod: economic modules are left as they were, many but free, military and influence ones are fewer, more powerful but more expensive. Fully upgrading an influence starbase along with its defense modules will cost you ~4000bc I think. Economic ones are still free, but require many constructors to upgrade. It seems balanced to me.

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DMF

Join Date 09/2002

+13

You say that this mod is based on MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod. Does this mod include that mod? If not, can they easily be merged?

Why the blank nebula .PNGs? I play with paths enabled and a black background makes the paths invisible. (Thank goodness that they changed the range circle display.)

I've been playing Yor for a while now, and I notice a couple things in the Yor tech tree. Were they intentional?

* Economy starbase has extremely limited bonus modules available unless I can trade into another tech tree. There seem to be only two bonus modules. No Collective bonuses like for Resource starbases. (Unless there's a bug somewhere - it seems to me that some ESBs act differently from others.)

* Terror Drones can give decent Soldier bonuses, but Tir-Quan Training is not available? (I believe it; I just miss it.)

* I don't see any planetary defense (e.g. OFM) improvements at all

* Galactic Privateer is missing from Master Trade <boo hiss!>

* There is no analog to the Power Plant tree branch

* The Charging Stalk graphic seems gratuitously suggestive for a race without naughty bits. Are we to infer that humans designed the graphics?

One thing I've never been able to figure out: Do the AIs have a Sensor range limit? They seem totally uninterested in researching Sensor tech, and it's hard to tell if they're limited tactically by the ability to see ships in the middle distance. Sometimes I think they can't, then an AI ship will take off after something that is clearly out of Sensor range...

I officially hate the 5-square speed limit. My whole tactical game is based on "I'm faster than you". Maneuver to a point of decision, not just a slug-fest.

Dennis

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

You say that this mod is based on MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod. Does this mod include that mod? If not, can they easily be merged?

Tolmekian's mod is inspired by MarvinKosh's mod, but does not include it. They both edit the same files, so merging them is impossible (except if you want only certain parts, but even then it is a lot of work).

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

Why the blank nebula .PNGs? I play with paths enabled and a black background makes the paths invisible. (Thank goodness that they changed the range circle display.)

I don't know why he added them, but if you don't like them you can remove them. They are in the Gfx\Space sub-folder of his mod.

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

Well, when the Yor were re-implemented during the TotA-betas, they had no bonus-modules at all (same with the Drengin). This got rectified later, but the new modules were never on par with what the factory-users got. Tolmekian didn't fix this, but I did it in my own mod (which I haven't released yet).

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

* Terror Drones can give decent Soldier bonuses, but Tir-Quan Training is not available? (I believe it; I just miss it.)

Tir-Quan Training requires Stellar Marines, which the Yor don't have.

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

* I don't see any planetary defense (e.g. OFM) improvements at all

The Yor have the Orbital Command Center (like every race), but they don't have the Planetary Defense techs.

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

* Galactic Privateer is missing from Master Trade <boo hiss!>

The Galactic Privateer was removed in vanilla TotA (and rightfully so, in my opinion), so you can't blame Tolmekian for this.

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

* There is no analog to the Power Plant tree branch

They have the Manufacturing Vortex improvement and the Distributed Energy Matrix Super Project.

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

As far as I know, the AIs Sensor-range is limited. They get a bonus on the higher difficulty-levels, but otherwise, they are just as limited as we are.

Quoting DMF,

reply 497

I officially hate the 5-square speed limit. My whole tactical game is based on "I'm faster than you". Maneuver to a point of decision, not just a slug-fest.

You can disable Mega Events in the Game Options when starting a new game, if you don't like it, or try to refrain from using too many engines. This event seems to be triggered by using very high speeds. I only use one or two engines in my games and haven't seen it since then.

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DMF

Join Date 09/2002

+13

Too bad Tolmekian's doesn't include the space weapon fix. I haven't played deep into TA (always seem to Ascend) but I don't see the AIs researching past mid-level. (I do use Slow tech, though.)

Already fixed the nebula .PNGs. I wonder whether I could just remove the GFX folder (and the other empty folders in the mod)?

"The Yor have the Orbital Command Center (like every race), "

Nowhere do I see an OCC in my tech tree. What is the required tech?

Speed limit: I'd rather root it out and leave the other events. What file is it in?

I have a few (dozen?) ships with three engines. All others have one or two. AIs might not even be using three anywhere.

Bug: Torian declared war on me, but the conversation box was blank.

As to the AIs behaving "better" with the mod, I think they do. Torian and Terran are doing well - better than I expected at Painful. Iconian not so much, so the observations about its AI I believe. Old dumb minors are annoying seizing resources and asteroids, and seem to be holding their own against the majors so far. So that seems better too.

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

Quoting DMF,

reply 499

Already fixed the nebula .PNGs. I wonder whether I could just remove the GFX folder (and the other empty folders in the mod)?

You can remove the empty folders, but there is not much point in doing so, because the game will recreate them.

Quoting DMF,

reply 499

Nowhere do I see an OCC in my tech tree. What is the required tech?

It requires Interstellar Construction. The OCC works similar to the Hyperion Fleet Defense, but empire-wide, and it has some additional bonuses.

Quoting DMF,

reply 499

Speed limit: I'd rather root it out and leave the other events. What file is it in?

You can't edit Mega Events, they are hardcoded.

Quoting DMF,

reply 499

I have a few (dozen?) ships with three engines. All others have one or two. AIs might not even be using three anywhere.

It is weird, that this event is happening then. The exact triggering conditions are still unknown, but it depends heavily on playstyle. If I'm not modding, I play primarily on immense-size maps and I haven't seen this event in years. I also never saw the Mega Pirates, while the Peace Keepers only happened once. The Dread Lords, on the other hand, appear quite regularly.

Quoting DMF,

reply 499

Bug: Torian declared war on me, but the conversation box was blank.

I've seen this in the vanilla game too. It's a bug in the GC2_Conversations.xml, but I don't know what exactly is wrong yet. I still need to get familiar with that file, because, over the last years, I've been too busy with the planetary improvements, techs and starbase and ship modules.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

I think Tolmekian did address the core problem with ship weapons, which was that the AI would not research them.

I took an escalation approach to weapons, making the end-game weapons more powerful but require larger ships to run (or ridiculous miniaturisation, take your pick) and more research time on both the last tier and end tier, and I tuned the progression of the weapons so there were fewer of them that you just wanted to skip over. I also balanced some of the things which cause disastrous power imbalances, like all the free Arnorian Rangers. They still pop up, but they're a bit less insane in the weapons department.

But there is something to be said for balancing by culling the end-game weapons and standardising weapons across tech trees, which is the approach Tolmekian took.

I'm not saying that you couldn't just merge in the weapons rebalance, you could, it would just be a lot of work.

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