I tried it out by copying the scout replication ability and using it on the capital ship factory to spawn dread. It worked better than expected cause it does not take capital ship limits into account

So for a test game I had removed fleet support (to make sure they are build) for dreads and started small system with two AI replicators. At the end each had ~50 dreads with support fleets. One AI had ~450 horde frigates. When two AI fleets with ~15 dreads each clashed and the same time I had upgraded my 48 dreads to level 6 and started spawning ~750 squads strike craft the game became shaky 

I think it could be a good solution. The max number of dreads can be limited by an high fleet support cost. The spawn cost and cool down period of the ability needs to be balanced so that the dreads get only created when there are many resource and capacity free. Other than that the AI can build what it likes. Just when it runs out of ideas but swimming in resources (late in game) the automatic spawn for the dread will kick in to fill the ranks.

It was a new experience having AI fleets with many dreads

Sounds like you have been having fun.

Can you build other capital ships i.e does the spawned Dreadnoughts take up capital ship logistic slots?

I like the idea of having a Dreadnought Factory to build Dreadnoughts exclusively.

Maybe you can try some re-balancing ... another thing to try is to make the cooldown times very long. Of course a human player can build a lot of "Dreadnought Factories" and still be swimming in Dreadnoughts.

Isn't it at this stage of the game that you don't have fleet and capitalship logistic slots?

Also, with regards resources and logistics, an AI will make a decision to build a Capitalship and save appropriately, whereas it knows nothing about the Dreadnought. A human player on the other hand will/can attempt to save for a Dreadnought.

It was the first time the AI had a fleet capable to counter a late game dread fleet and the first time I saw major dread fleets fighting. It is quite a view. Just the formations get messed up as dreads a much larger than normal ships. If you would balance the game for many dreads, you would need to increase default weapon range. At the beginning the dreads fleets would create a big bulk like wrestling. Only when the range extensions of the replicators kicked in the battles looked more like fleets fighting.

The dreads take up capital ship slots. So with many dreads it will go into the reds. But with the 200 fleet support I had initially used to balance dreads and if you make the ability dependent on having maxed out capital support research that would be no issue, as you would run out of fleet support before capital ship support (at least on normal fleet size settings)

The problem with AI is that they don't seam to use up capital ship slots. I made fleet support dependent on capital ship support levels and they researched but still build small ships even when they seam to swim in resources. I need to do some more testing. The first test clearly showed that the AI is able to handle many capital ships.

I had set fleet support to 0 and had set low resource requirements for testing. Setting the resource and fleet support cost to reasonable levels would make many ship yard useless. It works just like building normal ships, with the difference that you get the ship immediately and have then to wait for cool down of the ability.

spawning is dependent on FleetPoints not capitalship FleetPoints. Spawning Dreads will mostly likely mean you won't be able to build other capitals, or at least for the AI.

 

And the problem as you noted is getting the AI to build more, getting the AI to build cap's and not frigates or encouraging them to build a specific type. These 3 constraints limits our useful options.

 

Agreed

Question: I had a quick diplomacy game and I played as Replicators. Call me ignorant or what, but I can't seem to find out how to make a dreadnaught. I do not know if they are not included, they don't have one or I just plain missed it.

help?

I am currently working on the frigate factory build effects for each race.

I know, WHAT?!?!? WE DIDN'T WANT YOU TO DO THOSE!!!!!!

I thought I could do a good job, so here are the threesome:

http://www.filefront.com/17389623/MaelstromParticle.7z

They do not use any non-sins files, and I deleted the reference path. You can enable them by attaching them to the center of each frigate factory and getting rid of the previous effect linkages...

Hopefully you know how to implement effects.

Tell me what you think.

The Dreadnoughts are only in the mod SoaSE Maelstrom Expansion v1.191 (Original SoaSE)

OOOOHHHH

That's why...

thanks

They look good. Thanks.

PS: have you had a chance to look at the particle effects for the new planets in the (Entrenchment) beta I sent you?

Yup.

Though I am still trying to figure out what some of them look like, as I cannot see what they look like.

Also I do not know if I have found all of them. If you could post exactly which ones you are talking about, that would be very helpful.

 

Question: Do you want me to look at them or remake them? From what I can see so far you are doing a good job.

I've being playing around chiefly with mesh particle effects. The main ones are

1. Ancient's planet

2. Fortified plaent

3. Aura planet

4. Binary

5. Stellar Anomaly

also particle effects for

Dark Star and White Star

Any suggestions and improvements welcome.

ok!

I see them now.

I shall get to work.

correct, but if you make fleet support dependent on capital ship support (so you need to have certain capital ship support available to increase fleet support) and set the fleet support requirement for dreads so "very" high this is no issues. You will always run out of fleet support before capital.


if you set the resource requirement for the ability higher than the cost for a normal capital, the AI will still have the option to build a normal capital. Target would be to only fill holes the AI might leaf in the fleet. Even in my test game they had build their first normal capital before they got swamped with dreads. Of course the question is how the AI will react to having some dreads, maybe they stop building capitals of that class, but this could be countered by giving other capitals a different class. I don't now how many classes are available.

Limitation of the dreads is speed and agility. They tend to collide with other ships and if you have more then one it becomes ugly. I think you should extend their default weapons range to avoid the mess in battle. Then you could also move them back in formation e.g. by giving them carrier class. This would further reduce the formation mess and at the moment other ships are overtaking the dreads who at the destination then push through the other ships to come to the front. The current carriers could become a support class, so the AI would still build them eventually.

What just comes to my mind: alternatively another ability could be added to the ship yard to spawn normal capital ships. This way you would take "control" of ship building, but the capital ship support limit would be useless then. Makes no sense, just written as thought.

and a very stupid request: Can you change the direction the Advent dread is moving? It is so irritating when manuvering.

Hi Quiet_Man,

Are you referring to the main-screen icon or the model?

This level of control is not available to the modders.

The AI does not make the decision. It's a random process based on AI saving trends and available fleet/capital slots.

Yes the AI builds its first capital early.

Your considering change the TEC, Advent and Varsari capital ship lineup ... don't wont to change the original races, they have been optimized by the original developers.

Good points. The Dreadnoughts were meant to be the equivalent of a starbase for original Sins (similar to starbases in E & D), hence the size of the models.

Unless you make the abilities kick-in mid to late game.

 

I'm still not seeing a clear implementable solution that does not give a human player an unfair advantage.

 

 

You can, if I'm understanding Quiet_Man's original comment correctly.  It is just research after all.  If you set the fleet supply upgrade prerequisite to include certain levels of capital ship crew upgrades (such as not being able to research 5th level supply without having completed third level crew), then you force players and AI's alike into researching more cap crews if they want to increase fleet capacity beyond the point where the extra prerequisite is listed.

That's excellent ... but is that for original Sins too?

Yes.  There's 8 individual research subjects for both fleet supply and cap crews for each race.  For example:

RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTSPHASE4.entity

This file is for the 5th fleet supply upgrade for Vasari factions, taken straight out of the vanilla sins folder.  Inside the file it's just like every other research file (for those new to modding or are curious and have no idea what it looks like, here it is so you can follow along):

TXT
entityType "ResearchSubject"
hudIcon "HUDICON_RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTSPHASE4"
smallHudIcon "HUDICON_RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTSPHASE4"
infoCardIcon ""
NameStringID "IDS_RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTSPHASE4_NAME"
DescriptionStringID "IDS_RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTSPHASE4_DESCRIPTION"
researchWindowLocation
    block 1
    pos [ 4 , 0 ]
ResearchField "Fleet"
Prerequisites
    NumResearchPrerequisites 1
    ResearchPrerequisite
        Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTSPHASE3"
        Level 1
MinimumArtifactLevel -1
BaseUpgradeTime 75.000000
PerLevelUpgradeTime 10.000000
BaseCost
    credits 1200.000000
    metal 200.000000
    crystal 325.000000
PerLevelCostIncrease
    credits 100.000000
    metal 25.000000
    crystal 25.000000
Tier 4
onlyWorksIfTierLabsExist FALSE
MaxNumResearchLevels 1
priority 0.000000
researchBoolModifiers 0
researchFloatModifiers 3
researchModifier
    modifierType "ShipMaxSlots"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue 270.000000
researchModifier
    modifierType "IncomePercLost"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue 0.093750
researchModifier
    modifierType "ShipMaxSlotLevel"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue 1.000000
artifactPicture ""

 

The red section shows that if you change the prereqs to 2 and add in another research prereq, like RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXCAPITALSHIPSPHASE2 then you force everyone into researching both, 3 levels of cap crews and 4 levels of fleet supply in order to unlock the 5th level of fleet supply.  It also works the opposite way, you can force certain upgrades of fleet supply before cap ship crews can be unlocked by adding the prereq to the other file.

 

Even crazier application of the use of prereqs is like how in entrenchoplomacy on the TEC's defense tab, the trade port upgrade for the star base requires you to complete orbital commerce research from the industry portion of the civilian tree, thus illustrating that you don't even need to have a prereq from the same window.  So in a sense, you could make it mandatory that if there's research needed to be able to build dreads that one has to have completed that research before you can advance in cap or fleet supply past a certain point.

Hello Stant123, thank you for pointing it out. I tried it and made all fleet support research dependent on having the same level capital ship crew research. The AI does indeed research capital ship crew then and I saw much more capital ships in their fleets. Indeed had most races one dread in their fleet.

I also gave the dread spawn ability to all capital ship yards and set the cost for the ability to 6000/600/600 with the dreads requiring 200 fleet support. A little bug is that always two dreads got spawn (not sure if I did anything wrong).

Then I did a test game with large system 6 players. But beside the normal fleets (with the increased number of capitals) it never seamed to kick in. The AI seamed to had always used up it's resources or fleet support before the it could get more dreads. The only time dreads where spawn was when the replicators where nearly wiped out and I gave them lots resources. But the two level 1 dreads had no chance against the attacking fleet.

Beside a little problem that you get always two dreads, there is no potential for human player to misuse it. You still have to pay for your dreads, you just get them little earlier. So that is no problem, but also it is questionable if it is useful at all as the AI seams to be faster at wasting fleet support and resources on small ships.

maybe I need to reduce the fleet support cost for dreads again. But from ship balance 200 seams just fine. Have to do some more games to see if there is a situation where this could help the AI.

During the test game I had again slow down after 3 hours and 50 minutes. It really looks like a systematic issue. Have to do some more testing.

I think it is the model. When you zoom to a planet and move your ships there. They seam to move sideways.

Hi Quiet_Man,

Just a quick note,

What I meant is preferences ... a human would prefer to build a Dreadnought, an AI not so. Unless you can get the AI to choose a particular capital over another there will be a 1/6 chance of building a Dreadnought i.e if you get the AI to build many capital it would build 2 -3 out of 16. Also once it becomes a starbase (for the AI) it would be useless as the battle moves to other planets ... the AI would never destroy its own capital. The original idea behind the Dreadnought was to emulate a starbases from E & D, i.e low fleet logistics and the AI would build many of them and after a while it would become fixed in a gravity well.

Maybe there would be an interesting combination of spawning, low fleet logistic slots, and a quick conversion to a starbase (with the constraint of 1 per gravity well - not sure if it can be done).

Also,

I think I know what you mean ... I'll sort it.

Why not just finish the move to Entrenchment or Diplomacy and leave regular Sins behind?  That way you can remove the starbase function of Dreadnoughts, make them require a Tier 5-7 research as a prerequisite, and then you can figure out how to get the AI to use them properly.

@soase

don't provide the current ability to build dreads in the shipyard the same opportunity to the player to focus on dreads?

If you increase the fleet support cost to high level it becomes a real decision.

 

I just had another test game, I limited it to 4 player on medium size. It run for 6 hours so far without much issues.

The dependency between fleet support and capital ship crew seams to make a difference. The AI fleets had a significant number of capitals and nearly all AI build one Dreadnought. Only one time the ability to spawn dreads kicked in for the replicators. But I pretty much so far to skip the idea. Problem is that it also kicks in when there is no fleet support available and it then just takes the resources

 

What I found more annoying was that the fact that the AI seams to replace destroyed capitals with frigates and cruises.

I checked the statistics and all the AI had researched capital ships and fleet support to the max. But it looked like they build so much frigate factories that they were spending all resources on small ships and never came to build capitals any more.

I think I try next to reduce capital ship cost to cruiser level or even below. The fleet support cost of capitals is a high enough hit. (If I remember right this is might be even historical accurate as battle ships did not cost much more than cruisers to build, they had much higher run & maintain cost from being build more on the limit of current technology)

Is there a possibility to influence the number of ship yards build?

I more or less agree with SpardaSon21, leave the starbase function off for original SOASE. You only need to keep the phase drive activated. The slow down alone will work.

Also I have very seldom seen high level AI capital ships. Sooner or later the AI sends them on stupid scout missions in the middle of an enemy fleet.