Well hello and thanks for this mod, I like your shipsdesigns and the new graphics alot. Nevertheless, there are some quite problematic features.
First off, negative bonuses in the "abilities" tab when setting up a new game don't work in GC2. Because, unlike MoO2, GC2 will allow you negative points. Which means that a player could select all major negative techs initially giving him a boatload of distribution points, then allocating them to all important abilities, and once 0 point is reached, simply deselcting all remaining negative distributions. In other words, you can start a game with more than 40 points allocated.
Ofc, the AI won't do this, but there are quite some areas in which negative values don't bring a malus, one example would be Luck: a combatroll @ -50 luck will roll the same as with 0 Luck. So picking that malus for extra points seems not like a tradeoff to me, and the AI can choose that selection, too (they always choose randomly). Not to mention that there are alot of abilities to which that example does apply as well.
Another thing is with your superbuildings - most of them are limited by 3 per planet. This limitation can be easily circumvented by a player (queue 3, unqueue 1, queue another 3, unqueue 1, repeat endlessly...) so a player can build them endlessly on all planets. And because they are completely overpowered, this gives the player a tremendous + unfair advantage over all AI. They also render all other buildings completely irrelevant, except for economic structures, because your super buildings incorporate so much industrial capacity that it's hard to pay for all of it...
NOTE:Why Superbuildings?Superbuildings fix all the bugs the AI can't use or incorporate.They fix MoraleThey fix EconomyThey make it so the AI can compete with player Colony Ship building(in fact if you don't make mass colony ships they beat you even on Normal)
Even the weakest Superbuilding can be built on every resource square.This does make the game very easy for the player if the AI can't build them, Howeverwith them on you won't be able to beat the Korath, Drengin, or Humans with them on.
In Fact with Superbuildings on Good Luck beatings the Humans near Endgame. Races that are suppose to be a threat are.
MOD NOTE:I did not make this mod to be eaiser many will ignore the Superbuildings and say I made it too easy. I made this mod to be hard. You will lose, you will be invaded.Your homeworld will be lost. Which is why I release the mod with Xtreme difficulty enabled.Want an easy game go ahead disable the cheap cheating Superbuildings and dominate.You will have a game where you expand and all other races do not and you win everytime.I made the buildings to get around the AI shortcomings everyone complains about.
If you find the to be not challenging enough simply increase the difficulty level. Pick Masochistic as normal level, Obscene as challenging and suicidal as hard. From obscene on, you will NOT be able to outproduce/-tech, outcolonize/-militarize etc any AI, you can only compete in one region while having to neglect other regions for this. Just like setting sliders to 100% military and being able to compete in producing colony ships, but you'll fall in behind in social and technological development fastly.
However, the idea behind your superbuildings is correct, the AI can handle buildings which incorporate multiple bonuses much better into his gameplay. If we were to give the AI simply a single building which would increase prod, research and economics harmonically, then the AI wouldn't fall sometimes into unbalanced traps like overkill production or moral drains through high pop etc pp. The power of his game would simply reflect the amount of available planetary tiles. However, such a game would be quite boring from a player standpoint.
XML Example Planet Mega Cities(Starting Tech All Races)
<Industry>24</Industry>
<Food>1</Food>
<Research>24</Research>
<ManufactureBonus>24</ManufactureBonus>
<PopulationGrowthBonus>50</PopulationGrowthBonus>
<MoraleBonus>20</MoraleBonus>
<EconomicBonus>20</EconomicBonus>
<PlanetaryDefenseBonus>1</PlanetaryDefenseBonus>
<PrestigeBonus>20</PrestigeBonus>
<ResearchBonus>24</ResearchBonus>
<PlanetaryQualityBonus>25</PlanetaryQualityBonus>
<AbilityType>5</AbilityType>
<AbilityAmount>20</AbilityAmount>
VERSUS Industrial Mega Facility(Industrial Sector End of Tech Tree)
<Industry>42</Industry>
<Food>1</Food>
<Research>24</Research>
<ShipMoveBonus>3</ShipMoveBonus>
<StarshipQualityBonus>20</StarshipQualityBonus>
<StarshipHPBonus>20</StarshipHPBonus>
<ManufactureBonus>42</ManufactureBonus>
<ShipSpeedBonus>3</ShipSpeedBonus>
<PlanetaryDefenseBonus>4</PlanetaryDefenseBonus>
<ResistanceBonus>2</ResistanceBonus>
<PrestigeBonus>30</PrestigeBonus>
<ResearchBonus>24</ResearchBonus>
<PlanetaryQualityBonus>35</PlanetaryQualityBonus>
<F_MightMultiplier>0.020000</F_MightMultiplier>
<AbilityType>7</AbilityType>
<AbilityAmount>20</AbilityAmount>
You might wanna re-check the correctness of these bonuses again, because I'm pretty confident some of them aren't working.
First off, you cannot increase racial (empire-wide) stats by spamable buildings such as this <AbilityType>7</AbilityType>
<AbilityAmount>20</AbilityAmount>. They have to be Galactic Achievements, Super Projects or Trade Goods (although as far as I remember creating additional trade goods can get clunky).
I haven't noticed my planet quality going up when building these improvements. I think the tag <PlanetaryQualityBonus> doesn't even exist.
IIRC <F_MightMultiplier>0.020000</F_MightMultiplier> can only be given by the SCC - hardcoded.
It should be noted Superbuildings Stack with Superprojects but do NOT Stack with each other although you can build 3 per planet.
So you only get <ShipSpeedBonus>3 once. You do not get 9 for example.
This is wrong, they DO stack. And because you can build them endlessly you only need a PQ20 world which you'll fill up with the Industrial Mega Fac and use as your prime ship constructing site which all have a base speed of +65 (!).
Finally, by looking through your techs I've think I've seen you're using the Government-bonus. I thought that this one is void, in my tests it didn't do anything (like influencing elections or else...)
EDIT:
the FAQ.txt mentioned newly introduced anomalies. However, none of them seem to work.
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