Help I'm sitting on the Fence

I'm playing it now and it seems good so far. Balances things nicely, good tech tree changes. No cons yet.

The A.I is much more active.

He reduces the tech tree. I really enjoy the spread out techs and 100 lvs on some. If he would put out just the AI changes I would probably use it.

The primary con is that the AI will attack your lowly planets or little fleets if you don't protect them. A low bonus helps keep them expanding too, so I'd recommend that setting.

If you download v0.93, grab these updated empire files:
http://www.captainkwok.net/files/Empires.zip

I nerfed the AI's habit of putting a PD cannon on their early frigates, but grab that .zip file and unpack in the Balance Mod directory and it get them back on track.

You might as well try it, nothing to lose.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

That's the spirit. I should have an update for the mod in a couple of days. It will be save-game compatible so you'll be enjoy to continue any game you start.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Definatly use a mod. Try several.

The Balance mod is an excellent mod to use. Give it a try.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod
or there:

Once you play the Balance Mod (or the Unknown mod, or any other mod that improves the AI), Stock will be dead to you.

Once you have to REALLY pay attention, the Stock will be of no interest to you. The game comes alive in Mods like the BM.

unnamed mod. All it does it boost the AI for the STOCK game.
I personally like the Stock layout for techs and ship sizes and everything. except for the weak AI.. but unnamed fixes that very nicely.

This thing is 1 year old can someone lock this pls .

why?

I only play Balance Mod since Stellar Manipulation is impossible to research in Stock... 34 levels or something before opening warp points, ugh. Otherwise, I'd like more tech levels like in stock... I just don't care for techs being made unattainable.

Beside the tech, Balance Mod is definitely the way to go... but I have to admit it is much nicer with added Empires and more custom systemnames. Currently, I am playing it without the small flags... since the small flags zoom too small for me in when I rotate the system map.

ok i lied. i don't like EVERYTHING about stock game...
and actually the only thing i don't like about the Balance mod is the short tech tree. (Sorry Kwok)
It takes hardly any research to max out your weapons and armour so right from the beginning your matched with your oponnents. the way i play is i research until i'm more advanced than everyone else in a particular flield and then i stop researching there. come across someone more advanced than me i quickly boost that tech area (or steal their ship... mwa ha ha ha ha ha). with HUGE empires you produce so many research points that you can gain 5levels in a given tech in 1 turn. ok maybe i'm exaggerating a bit. but you get the point.
anyways.. i like knowing that i can always boost my ships with new techs if the need arises

as for Stock... i don't like how low the stats on population are.
such as damage per 1mil. planets are wiped out way to fast.
and 1 drone... or 30million people??? c'mon... 1 drone = maybe 30 people.... thats one big ass drone. granted 40 people weigh roughly 3.5 tons and a drone is 150,000 tons....
but 30million people weigh roughly 2,500,000 tons so either way it doen't work out

ok.. i'm done

I like the balance mod. I personally think the govt. and social choices don't make much sense... balance mod does improve them somewhat though. I wrote a small mod which basically removes govt. and social and puts all those choices into the racial section so you can customize your race completely by spending racial points. I would like to see the tech tree expanded slightly in the bal mod although not nearly as much as it is in stock.

I have yet to see any mod which really balances out the weapons which is my biggest concern with the game. Balance mod does address this but not enough. For example, weapon mounts are not logically set up... there is simply no advantage to using any weapon mount besides the large. You can get more damage with multiple weapons than you can with a massive mount. The large mount is basically a freebee since there is no space trade off at all which creates a bug to be exploited. I also wrote a small mod to address this problem. Weapon mounts now trade off cost for damage. For example, a massive ship mount doubles the size and triples damage but costs five times the cost to build, maintain, and fire.

If anyone wants to try the couple a small mods I made, post here and I'll email them to you. They are small and are completely compatible with the stock and balance mods.

All in all, the balance mod is great and clearly improves the game. Thanks Kwok!

You can always set research cost to high if you're finding you're going through technologies too fast.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I suppose.
i usually just hit quickstart though and play a random empire... it defaults to medium no?

I think it defaults to the last settings you used to create a new game.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I set research cost acording to size of quadrant. If you are going to have 10 systems, don't be surprised that with low cost tech you will reaserch a lot in one turn.

Currently i'm playing BM11, small quadrant, low cost, low amount of enemies, high dif, high bonus and i have only 50000 RP (and i had to fight for that) and AI is outteching me (so i capture their techs to stay alive).

Mods definately the way to go. Balance mod on unamed mod for me

Groovy Baby Yeah!