IRM v 0.54d is released.

Nice young girls.

Thank you I hope it works for me this time as I need a change form both stock & BM

Stock
The AI marine took cover behind the building and took aim with his M16 as the advancing Alien warrior and fired The Advancing Klargon warrior became aware of the attack even as it was made and levelled his obliterator carbine there was a flash and the marine his platoon the supporting tank as well as the building where gone. The Warrior walked on wondering if there would have to be another Klargon civil war for it to get a good fight.

BM
The Klargon warrior dropped to his knee before the enthroned warlord and spoke "Dread lord we have the colony of the terrains in sight and it is ringed by mines, shall I order in the pathfinder fleet lord"

On his throne the dread Warlord of Klarg picked his fangs and thought why must the Terrains cower behind their floating bombs why will they not fight like warriors

Of to try it

Just to confirm the Zip format works and it plays well there are some odd little issues I picked up but they are minor and I am playing it for fun not QA at the present.

Why is it scary

1 I lost a frigate level fight with a neutral empire. The enemy frigate had better weapons and armour than I did by two tech levels and beat me in a one on one fight this was a couple of years in

2 I arranged a treaty expanding and not ready for a war which developed to include a technology transfer clause in it nothing major but I was after scavenging a few TL’s in useful stuff that I didn’t have the research pool to research. Didn’t pay much attention till my To in projectile weapons started to rocket 11 years in I have tl25 in projectile weapons thanks to this neutral empire which also has ten times more ships than I do and all the colony techs. Not to mention three times my research pool

I think we have a runner here fallen haven.

I did max out the AI bonus as usual but feel that I need not have done. I have not met a major empire yet so I don’t know what will happen then.

Sounds like a contender. My current game is a love-fest with everyone "Amiable" or "Receptive" so I think I'll can it and try this instead. I'll let you know how it goes, FH.

(I know I could just attack them, but to make it fun I'd have to do it before I was ready. And condemning your outer worlds to certain death is a hard step to take...)

Edit: Ack! I set up a new game using your mod, did ship designs and everything, and was looking forward to it -- then the game crashed on trying to Save. I tried a few more times, and same thing. I know others have complained of this problem before, but I never had any crashes while using Balance. I'm playing 1.20. Any ideas?

I'm not mixing anything with it. It was a clean extraction of your folder and then I select your mod at startup.

It turns out it crashes when choosing any item from the Game menu -- Options, New, Load, etc. Going to try a reboot for starters.

Strangely enough it was a sound issue. I had modified my stock Settings.txt file to disable sound/music (since I play with them off anyway). Your mod's Settings.txt has a setting of TRUE where mine had FALSE. And I guess the conflict somehow caused a crash when the game switched between the two files (i.e. when temporarily leaving your mod via the Game menu). I just switched FALSE back to TRUE in the global Settings.txt, and now it runs fine.

Summary: it wasn't your mod--it was mine!

This mod sounds very promising, I'll give it a try for sure after I finish my current BM game

In each empire dir you have hidden file named thumbs.db. Removing it before making zip file would cut it's size down more than half.

Go into explorer and turn on "show hidden files" in the View tab of folder options.

When you take out the binary Thumbs.db files, the entire folder of ascii-based script files can compress down to 2MB rather than the current 4MB. If you use WinRAR, you can pack the entire mod into a 350KB file.

Also, since this mod is in beta. Is there anything in particular you want us to test out or keep a look out for?

You can always delete the thumbnail files directly from the .zip file itself. Just do a sort by filetype and all your thumbs.db will be neatly ordered and ready to be deleted.

When you zip a folder, it adds both visible and hidden files automatically.

-----

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

When using window's file explorer, you can set your system to display hidden files Under Tools - Folder Options - View. Thumbs.db files are only created by Windows for showing the little thumbnail images of pictures when using file explorer to view folders.

-----

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Playing with the Mod and picked up a few bugs or possible bugs which I am confirming and noting down most of which are very minor.

There is one glaring problem I have at the moment is how do you develop shield tech as I know its in the game but starting from the bottom of the tech tree I have no idea how to get it. I don’t know if this is me or a bug

Other ones of note are

The colonising minister does not work and the ships do not automatically stock up on population when a colonization order is given resulting in me making a lot of empty colonies (this seems to be an intermitant bug as I am now playing a game where the auto fill function is working after two where it did not)

The population transfer minister does not work which is a particular pain because of the above manually backfilling empty colonise is a real pain ( I am aware of this being a problem in stock but it might be fixable by Moding )

Suggestions
Mines are too big or the warheads are too small my I suggest making extra components available for mines as well as I can see a role for armour and for detonators so that they shouldn’t always work and perhaps mine stealth technology which would make them harder to sweep. At present Mines are far too powerful

Introducing an energy weapons tech for lasers et al

Introducing advanced hull tech to give an extra ten tech levels of each ship hull which

Colony minister thing is intermittent and has not happened since the first two games I played with the mod when it happened later on as I manually colonised the initial colonies. It happened when I acquired an other form of colonization and wanted to automate back filling these worlds. I am going to have to keep trying it out as there may be certain conditions in which it doesn’t work for some reason but it otherwise works (hate tracking down that sort of error)

Thanks for the mine change I loathe mines with a passion thanks to the balance mod and you can get a stupid number of warheads even in a small nine at the moment

Suggestions
Advanced hulls
Advanced hulls would not under any circumstances make the hulls any bigger I was thinking more in terms of bonuses to structure and other advances but not tonnage indeed a tl 10 hull is plenty big enough for what it needs to have in it without being too small

Lasers
This was just a suggestion I only thought of it as I was typing my post

Any way I am thoroughly enjoying your mod and look forward to its further development

AI's should have personality but an initial minimal treaty isn’t over friendly it’s a cheap way of ensuring some sort of peace whilst the first contact is evaluated. I have no objection to an AI offering such a treaty and then when it’s worked out it can take you on repudiating it and attacking you. The AI in Medieval total war and Rome total war does this all the time but historically dodgy empires will back stab you if they think they can get away with it. That they never do is testament to my personal skill as a cavalry general.

A note with the mines - they're rampant for two reasons. One is that the 100 per sector limit is being ignored and two is that a script function is not working in v1.20 (but fixed in v1.21) that is preventing planets from keeping some in cargo for mine layers to use on WPs instead of planets.

-----

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Have spent all night playing the game to check this out and I can confirm that the Ministers seem to be working fine for the AI when they are all on together. However I can confirm that the population transfer minister does not work neither does the colonization minister for a human player, unless you turn all the ministers on perhaps but I can’t confirm that. The problem seems to be something to do with the ships not loading population at the planet they are built and having too little population at any other planet for them to pick up. I don’t know but I suspect there might be some limit to stop planets being depopulated this way. I have seen colony ships built at planet A go to planet B to pick up population before going of and colonizing stuff.

The repeat orders instruction is also intermittently turning itself off and I have no idea why. Perhaps this game needs the facility to set up simple macros for repetitive tasks

Sorry to bug people with this and I will stop if its being a nuisance.

After 40 turns or so, I'm liking it. Some misc comments:

1) I noticed the Pop Transport minister bug as well. I don't use the others, but when PT min is turned on alone, ships under its control just sit there.

2) Planets are tougher, and I'm glad. In SEIV, and SEV Balance (I haven't played stock), one early frigate can exterminate 50M people, which is unrealistic. I attacked a defenseless (undomed) colony in your mod and did 0 damage. That got me thinking: is there a defensive difference between domed colonies and undomed? Logically, other defenses notwithstanding, a domed colony should be easily exterminated by a few holes in the dome. But I think it should be impossible to kill undomed population in significant numbers without true planetary bombardment weapons. Possible? Already the case?

3) The tech tree frustrated me at first because (I peeked at the txt file) there are sometimes 3-4 requirements for a component. I went to construct a Baseyard and then learned I wouldn't be able to until L10. Frustrating at first--but in retrospect I like it. Same with other items coming later. It makes the game more interesting that everyone doesn't quickly have identical weapons. When you get to differentiating races, you should def. have them focus on widely different areas.

4) Mines. They are too powerful, and plain aggravating in great numbers, but I'd like to see your AI use them a little more. I haven't encountered a minefield yet. As for countering it, is it possible to create a hull component that specifically absorbs mine damage and ONLY mine damage? Anti-Mine Plating or such?

5) Ship designs. Frigate vs Frigate, I mostly lose. I did give the AI's a starting tech boost, but the designs also seem to be a factor. (Heavy armor and a few weapons, whereas I tend toward the opposite.) I started sending small fighter groups after Frigates instead. That worked at first, then another class popped up which also died, but hammered my fighters in the process. And how surprised was I to descend on a "defenseless" lone Colony Ship only to take 57% damage killing it? Well armed colony ships - great. Often colony ships can outrun me and escape.

6) 2 of 3 AI's are outexpanding me, and all have many many more ships than I do.

7) I don't like the sensor requirement in ship design because I play "Whole System Visible" (SEIV style)--but then it's only 5K of space. Still, in late game when everything is fleet-based, doesn't that kill the idea of using a "Sensor Ship" with each fleet, rather than putting a sensor on every ship?

8: You should add the Design Type "Support Ship" to account for Supply/Ordinance Ships and such.

9) I keep bringing this up, and it's not specific to your mod, but I can't wait for better diplomacy / AI attitudes. I like to feel like the galaxy is a hostile place, but at the moment unless you do something mean, everyone will like you. Even if you do attack them repeatedly without declaring war, they're happy again if a year passes without incident. At least their default state should be Indifferent.

Minor errors:

-Point Defense Cannons L1 & L2 both showed up for me when I researched PD L2--L1 gave nothing.
-Misspellings in Tech tree: In description of Gauss Tech "magnetic" is (I think) "maniatic"; and tech area "Conventional Weapons" has an extra "n" in the first word.

Good work, please keep it up.

Forgot to mention this. Happened twice, but can't recreate it.

Turn 1: Fighters launch from planet, get 1/1 movement (as normal)
Turn 2: Fighters get 1/18 movement (abnormal)
Turn 3: Fighters get 18/18 movement (back to normal)

Edit: moved this post over to "AI and Treaties" thread!

Need to clear one thing up I have seen no problem with build ques the repeat orders issue is ship related

Noticed it when I was setting up a population transport

Load at planet A go to planet B unload repeat

This was set up Manually using the orders buttons on the bottom RHS of the UI when the ship was selected

I am aware that this is supposed to stop when planet B is full but some times it would do so well before that and as planet A was my home world and on all but full population I don’t think that was it either.

Quick one which ministers do you think I need on to effect population transport?

I have the colonization minister on and the population minister and have given minister control off all ships new and existing. This was enough to get the colonization minister to work in stock as I recall

Re: Anti-Mine Plating: Sweeping works fine, but this would be an alternative approach. A ship with mine armor could brute force its way through a minefield, leaving behind all mines that don't detonate instead of clearing the path for other ships. A bulldozer approach, for when you can't wait for the sweeper to arrive. It should not be 100% effective, and the space used would reduce weapon tonnage. Just a thought, anyone can use if they like it.

Re: Armed Colony: I don't have access to the enemy design, and I use Strategic combat. So all I know is I came away from a fight with a lone colony ship with 1 of my 2 frigates heavily damaged, so it had something. Colonies can outrun me I think because I'm a few levels behind in engines.

Edit: I checked out the colony ship design and no weapons... so how did I take 50% damage? Friendly fire?

Is it possible that one of your frigates rammed the colony ship? I have seen collisions occur in tactical combat like that.

Check that the militia is working properly as I invaded three AI worlds owned by a Neutral AI and after a stiff fight with the defending squadron I landed troops and there was no one to fight with I thought at first that there was some recurrence of the old troop movement bug, but as my troops just sat there and milled about in place Then I noticed that there was no enemy just before the battle ended and I won. On the look out for this I spotted the same thing every other time I invaded a planet.

In all cases the planets population was full and as one of them was the neutrals home world that had a healthy population. Neither did I bombard any of them before landing

I have not tried this on a major empire as there is only one in the game so I don’t know if it’s exclusive to Neutral AI’s

Did it have any point defence weapons at all as I have used PD equipped colony ships myself as blockade runners and some PD weapons will give a chasing ship the Proverbial bloody nose. PD being useful to assist in escaping missile boats and I have seen PD on freighters done by the AI before so why not colony ships.

Ramming is normally fatal for the smaller ship from my experience so I am not sure on that

Not sure if this one is just your mod or others too, but with a Fleet consisting of colony ship, transport, and 2 escorts, no arrangement I make in the Fleet screen can cause the escorts to become #'s 1 and 2 in Transit Order under WP Transit. It always wants to send the unarmed ships through first.

Or does the transit order not matter during combat at a WP?

That’s odd because when I have invaded worlds in balance mod and Stock there has almost always been at least one unit of militia except in cases where I bombarded the place extensively before landing. I am glad it’s not your mod that’s done this

I will have to invade a major empire world and see what happens then

Edit: Ekim's post reminded me, and I know what happened now. I was frustrated with the Colony Ship escaping with its faster engines, and with only 1 movement point left I set my frigates to Kamikaze to be sure they'd chase it down... I guess they took the order very literally.

Too bad Strategic Combat is only tiny dots. It would be nice if you could watch rendered combat as in (GASP) MOO3.

Not trying to force the matter or anything, and I haven't reached your Emissive Armor yet, but you could always say AM plating has a special coating that prevents mines from adhering to the hull, or repels them on approach. It could have the same effect against ramming attacks.

Thats good as inexplicable behavior is always worying when you are bug hunting

Sorry to get excited but whilst play testing this Mod I actually had an AI surrender ok so they where well and truly beaten but they surrendered

Does little jig

AN AI SURENCERED!!!!!!

I did demand they do so though if it makes any difference

I have used the larger life support on bigger ships especially as I tend to forget to research and upgrade them quite a lot so it’s nice to avoid filling up space with multiple components. I have no objection to crew sizes increasing as such but feel that doing so will make the large life support components more rather than less necessary.

on the subject of surrender its nice to get an AI which is prepared to be reasonable and I very much appreciate the hard work you are doing getting the Mod to the point it is now.

Solved: I stumbled across a Transit Order setting in Empire options. Default says "All ships transit simultaneously" = TRUE. Clicking toggles it to FALSE and you set the preferred order. But believe it or not, I don't have 2 ships in the same system to stack up and test if it works. This is the point in the game, when I'm a paper tiger, ignoring defenses, that I'd love for an AI to send a fleet or two at me instead of begging for treaties!

I second evilginger's thanks to you FH. And eg, congrats on the surrender!

FH, your Gauss weapons as they stand are just slightly larger DU cannons. They do slightly more damage, but have proportionally higher cost and tonnage. Plus, I built two identical frigates, one with DU and one with Gauss, same level, and the Gauss gets slaughtered. (Smaller DU size also means 1 extra armor) I like the idea, but to be worthwhile the Gauss should be different in a real way. For example, you could have it do lower damage than a DU but with much higher accuracy. Like the M16 (hi accuracy/low penetration) vs an AK47 (low accuracy/hi penetration).

-Just ran into an AI ship with a Class name different from its ship name, so AI is upgrading its ships -- great.

-I'm hiding mine-protected satellite groups in enemy systems, inside opaque sectors, to keep an eye on their movements. Is it possible to have the AI send a ship that isn't busy into storm/asteroid sectors at random intervals to check for things like that? It would be nice to get caught. (Of course, I'm only assuming they really can't see me -- maybe they just aren't attacking.)

-AI doesn't seem to be building defense bases in decent numbers. Most planets have none, and a homeworld I can see only has 1.

-While you're working on the AI diplomacy, I hope you consider preventing its mood from drifting toward Amiable for no reason. If we've barely met, why should they like me so much? Maybe some races should be naturally friendly, but by far my biggest gripe about the game right now is having complete control over where and when I fight. I've been bullying the last place AI for 30 turns now, and he never declares war or even sends me a warning. If I leave him alone for a few turns, he starts liking me again.

I just noticed there had been a slight level difference in my test. Even so, I can never see any cause to research both, and with DUC a multiple of 10kt they are easier to fit in designs, so I'd tend to pick them. On the other hand if the trade-off between accuracy & damage were more pronounced, there might be a case for using both. Just a nitpick really--keep on the bigger stuff like getting the AI to attack me, whatever weapon he uses.

Re: hiding in a storm/asteroid sector. But isn't what's inside the hex invisible to the patrol's sensors? They would have to move straight into it, and I would know if that had happened since there would have been combat. No state of war between us, but untreatied and Angry. Is there a way you can instruct AI patrols to go directly into storms? Again, assuming they really are "opaque" to most sensors like it says they are. I imagine I'm not the only player who'd hide stuff in there.

Edit: Sorry to sound "opaque" myself, but what's the difference between sensors and scanners?

i think scanners can show the components of a ship while sensors only show that its there

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.