Regarding Balance Mod and adding Tech lvls |
Heya,
Overall, I like the balance mod by kwok alot, but one thing I would like different is restoring the high number of tech levels present in the stock version of the game. I don't know much about AI scripting... would it be difficult to modify the balance mod to add the additional tech lvls present in the stock version without totally screwing the balance mod's AI?
Thanks
By any chance is it possible
By any chance is it possible to have level upgrades do different things to ship hulls, but only start at a certain tech level? If anything was extended I'd like to see more variety in the ship hulls by adding more levels. Maybe beyond lvl 3, things besides space can be improved. Maintence costs, propulsion boosts, etc
Levels and stuff...
It's certainly possible to add other bonuses and probably a better fit with the current setup - since the current range of sizes are so tied into the mount system etc.
Overall, I'm not sure how it creates more variety since the range of sizes for ships essentially covers every kT from 250-1500. At some point I'll probably push the larger sizes to 5 levels, since the space per level should still be significant enough to encourage upgrading.
For propulsion improvements, I haven't posted about the new engine system being implemented in v1.00 at this site - but you can learn more about those changes here:
http://www.spaceempires.net/home/ftopic-2115-0.html
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Greater Specialization and More, Smaller Tech steps
You also might want to try a high tech cost game if you feel like you're going too fast through the tree. Although even at medium cost it should take about 350 turns at 200k research per turn to get 50% through. :P
All the tech areas 
.
The primary reasons I would want to restore the additional tech levels is that I would like:
a) The ability to specialize further in each tech area so that I could specialize further in limited techs.
and
b) Smaller gains attained more easily per tech level.
I know how to edit the txt files, its just scripting the AI so it takes advantage of the new tech levels is what trips me up.
Number of tech levels
There are a few problems with smaller steps. One concern is with the AI and frequent retrofitting for little gain, which hurts its overall performance. It's possible to tell the AI not to upgrade for X turns - but what happens if they research a needed tech and then don't employ on it on their designs for a year or so? A second concern is if the gain is small, than the research costs have to be in line with that. Then you have players researching multiple levels in a turn anyway (so why not just 1 in that span?) or the gain isn't enough to justify an upgrade and you're waiting multiple levels anyway.
Overall I think what happens is that the AI isn't strong enough yet so players aren't really being forced to research certain areas that they would definitely invest in if were a MP game - this has the effect of shortening the tree.
But on the good news side, there are a few changes coming up in v1.00 that will see an increase in levels for engines (5 levels per engine, 20 total) and a doubling of overall ship levels.
Check the Balance Mod forum for details:
http://www.spaceempires.net/home/forum-73.html
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Extending levels...
It'd be mostly repetitive work revising the AI research path, but nothing too difficult. Other issues might crop up depending on what levels you wanted to extend. For example, if you only wanted to extend some of the weapon branches, then armor/shields become far less effective and you'll end up with short combats. Extending the ship levels would upset the space ratios on ships for various systems and so on...
Which areas were you interested in extending?
You also might want to try a high tech cost game if you feel like you're going too fast through the tree. Although even at medium cost it should take about 350 turns at 200k research per turn to get 50% through.
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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod