Hi SpardaSon21,

Its a pleasant thought. However, I don't intend to include Dreadnoughts in E & D. The reason for this is that it would require 4 new models and I have hit the max number of sounds files (2000). For 6 Dreadnoughts, at 12 sound files etc, I need about 70 files which I would have to delete from other ships/structure/effects.

An easy compromise would be to make the current battle capitals (for the 6 races) a Dreadnought class, move some of the abilities/research over (from Maelstrom Expansion) and increase firepower/hull/shields appropriately.

Hi Quiet_Man,

Ok, I'll leave the starbase function but they will be able to leave the gravity well.

I'm sure that you have some repeats, no?

If you don't, lower the total number of sound effects on each ship or get rid of a few weapon effect files. (Just replace the name in the sound file directory with the same name of another sound effect.)

Hi Syneptus,

Bottom line - 4 new models are 4 too many. I don't see the advantage of adding a 6th capital ship to E & D.

I plan to revisit all the models and textures for the Maelstrom mod in release 3, i.e 130 meshes and 130x3 (or 4), textures. That's a lot of work, I'm not adding to the load without good reason.

Because fleet-destroying supercapitals are awesome?

Good reason!

I think that he came up with a good reason.

Also, because we like your mod and the work that you put into it...

and I already hoped I don't need to upgrade

PS: did you see me remark on the capital ship cost? Did you ever tried it yourself?

I have no intention of removing the Dreadnoughts from the Maelstrom Expansion mod. If we can re-balance them well (which you have been attempting to do) I will remove Maelstrom for Original Sins and just use the Expansion Mod. After that the question is whether to include them in E & D. Re-balance first though.

I read all your comments closely! Thanks.

I was just trying out the lower capital ship cost when I run into an interesting problem. I had opened a game on a small medium 4 player system. I took major part of the system the replicators couldn't really take of being stuck on some pure worlds between the Norlamins and the Alliance which incidently had very crystal rich worlds and the Norlmains I had setup as Researchers. Just after 2 hours the game started to slow down and final came to an hold. No minidump, just frozen.

I had an autosave just about 30 seconds before the game stopped and it was repeatable. I used the record and watch function to take a look what was going on. There was not too much ships and buildings, so clearly the slow down was not because of system load.

the Norlamins and Alliance had ~10000 crystal. I struck me that the Norlmains had no weapons research running. I wonder if the AI was stuck for whatever reason and that this was the reason for the slow down and final stop.

I made a test game with two norlamins AI and a special system, lots of resources but limited phase lanes. They maxed out their research after one hours but not problems. So it was not that. Will look again at the save game that had the issue.

Hi Quiet_Man,

Suspicion its abilities ...

Going back to the Dreadnoughts. Here is a interesting scenario for you

1. All players get 1 Dreadnought factory at the start of the game. The factory is super-tough so the player would only loose it if the home world was in serious trouble. The player can not build Dreadnought factories, so if they lose it then that is it.

2. The factory spawns Dreadnoughts regularly every 0.5-1 hour.

3. The credit/resource cost of a Dreadnought is 0.

4. The fleet logistics of the Dreadnought is 0.

5. The Dreadnought could be a capital or possibly a 'super' cruiser

Any suggestions/ideas?

i haven't played the original sins versions of this so ive never used a dread But what about making the free capital ship a dread so every one has that as a starter capital like a flag ship.

And if possible make an ability on the home planet or dread factory that spawns 1 after the old one dies after about 10-20 mins so everybody has one and only 1 and if they loss it they have a disadvantage but they can get it back if they have the factory/home planet. this would also stop people from stockpiling loads by waiting every 30-60 mins

I'm heavily testing an thinking how  to balance player and AI. The main problem of the AI is that it spend resources to fast. I have reduced the cost for capitals and they seamed to build more but far less than their capital support. I checked via "watch" game and they had queues >10 frigates and cruisers in their ships yards. So as soon as they have upgraded fleet support they queue ships and never come on the capital limits because of fleet support.

I will try to remove fleet support completely from capitals and see how the AI reacts. Capitals are already limited by capital support points. Why not have them completely separated? Give the capital ships support research a resource drain and they will act like fleet support for capitals.

Will report how it works.

did another test with two Alliance AIs in a resource rich system. The game got problems after ~2h play.

Some things I learned when checking the AI play by "watch" function:

1. The AI does not build more than 4 capitals

They had lot's resource, capital support points maxed out. I had removed fleet support from capitals but still they would not build more than 4.

It looks to me that the AI does not recognize ship class at all beside colonizer. It sends any ship, including high ranking capitals, on all sorts of mission. So maybe they simply limited the number of capitals to stop the AI wasting resource on them?

The spawn function does not look for capital support points. What I'm thinking now is to have capital shipyard spawning all sort of capitals, and have more and improved spawn functions by capital (and maybe fleet) support research?

2. The game had problems when a ~200 ship fleet activated gravity entrapment. About 100 frigates and some cruisers had this ability. The game would freeze for some seconds and run purely for some time after it. Either the graphical effect or something in the game implementation of this makes problems.

Hi Volgun,

Yes, a Dread factory which spawns would do just that.

Don't think this is possible. The AI can spawn using 2 triggers, antimatter or resources. Rather limited.

The problem with the spawn ability is that you can only trigger it via antimatter or resources.

Yes, the "entrapment" can operate on unlimited number of frigates. Its on my list of abilities to fix.

First of all: great work! All looking good and smooth to me.

Just got 1 question tho. Been playing some with replicators last few days on Diplomacy and afaik none of the ships 'replicated', even tho i got the ability researsched...

Is this a known issue?

Hi du4l,

You have to generate antimatter for replication. And here is how

1. Visit a star or

2. Build a planet production center or

3. Research the antimatter converter, it converts damage to antimatter, so in battle your ships will replicate.

Note, your ships autocast the replication ability only when they are taking damage i.e in battle

Of course you can manually replicate them, provided they have enough antimatter, and one of the best times to do this is when you first build them.

This is how I expected it to work, but so far I ahvent replicated any ship. I will test again tonight when im back from work. Thanks for the quick response!

You shouldn't have any problems.

So when is your next update for this mod coming out? Oh and for a balance the alliance gets money and metal way to fast! I was playing with them for about 20-40min or so and I already had in money-62.4, metal-45.6, Cristal-34.5. I only had 5 planets...unless that is how they are suppose to be? oh and also no crash for 4hr game so far yeah!

Hi Bearussr,

At the tail-end of the next release. So will be releasing issue 2 of the mod in the next week or two.

It sounds like you colonized a Mineral World or something similar.

Apart from Graphic's card problems or RAM (2GB) overload the only bugs with the mods was a beta release of Entrenchment.

Replication works, I'm an idiot, thx

I did another test game with six systems, one for each race. I took the alliance to have control over that nasty gravity ability

There is no much battling going on, as the AI seams to have trouble fighting over long distances and I have no issues/slow downs so far. The one time I had problems with Norlamins I assume they had captured many ships from alliance.

All AI have plenty resources but still not more than 4 capitals while having big building queues of frigates and cruisers. I'm heavily thinking to find a trick to get this solved without  breaking the game.

The single one time start building could solve the problem. But it is no "elegant" solution. (but the problem isn't elegant also)

Is there a possibility to scale an ability by the number of buildings (so ship yards) that have them? So to reduce the number of ships spawn when more buildings are there?

Or what about just let them spawn and have everyone rush to build ship yards? Increase the slot count and cost for ship yard so the player has a negative impact when building many?