IRM V 0.6b

There are definately things i like about this mod. Questions, Does the AI know the proper path to the tech advances, I played quite a few turns, (not knowing what I needed for what) and finally managed to get destroyers, bombs, and quite a few other things. AI, however was still just sending out lvl 3 frigates with lvl 2 Weapons.

Also, what is the path to get better engines? I went to Ion Lvl 7 and saw only a 2 MP benefit.

Hi FH.

I have continued playing your mod. Since it seems like much has changed now, I think I'll be starting a new game using .6. I only had 3 AI players in the last one, so it was a bit lonely. I also (being new to SEV and not having played IV in a long time) made some stupid mistakes unrelated to your mod, such as getting into a major minerals crunch that made me start mothballing whole fleets.

I came across one possible bug. I was unable to mothball a Space Station (1200kt). It just sat there with Mothball orders turn after turn, taking up maintenance. I tried jettisoning its ordinance, scrapping it, firing on it, but nothing worked. It just sat there taking up minerals. I can't recall for sure, but I think I was able to mothball bases in Balance Mod.

About the AI ship designs: It seems they pick just the DU Cannon path (at least for frigates -- no destroyers yet) and no other weapons. The lack of variety in their ships made it a little too easy to know exactly what I needed to beat them. Of course these were what you called "Scouts" and "Light Gunships" so my guess is later on the designs get more varied.

I like what you did with planetary bombardment. It makes much more sense.

One little mistake in the Tech Tree under an area description: "particules" = particles.

Please keep up the good work. Looking forward to getting raided by the Abbidon.

The typical problem with aggressive AI's is that they tend to commit suicide by fighting too many wars against too many opponents. Maybe there's something you can do to counter that, such as whatever you did to make your AI able to maintain such big fleets, make the Aggro's even 10% better at it to make up for their higher casualties.

make a limit so that it will only declare war on an empire if it isnt at war with another. unless the other empire is really askin for it.

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Now get the hell out of our galaxy! -Captn Sherridan

0.54d
Research track for Applied Research continues but the last facility seems to be at TL20
0.54d
I am getting a lot of resource problems when I don’t think I should they occur when I am using a lot of one resource more than I am producing but have in no ways run out of it (I have a save game for this)

The AI is much better they surrender as previously discussed and I can fight limited war because they will make peace when they are thoroughly beaten. Have not tried O.6 yet as I was enjoying the 0.54d frankly I am

Is 0.6 backward Compatible with 0.54d saves By the way?

I am having problems with unpacking 0.6a & b and get an error message when I start a new game. Might be an idea to post the files some where lese dodgy then Rogepost.

evilginger,

I had the same error at first, if you mean "cannot find mod definition.txt." It's because inside the folder called "IRM V 0.6b" there are two subfolders, one for the mod and one for his source scripts. But the actual mod folder has to be directly underneath GameTypes, without any subfolders. In other words, unzip it, and then move the "Inter-related Mod" folder manually.

Edit: Has the mothballing bug been reported? It's pretty inconvenient considering how expensive bases are to maintain!

In 0.6b. While creating a Small freighter, after adding the basic crew requirements plus 12 engines, just 4 small supply modules (20kt) is enough to cause the "40% of hull space must be for cargo" warning to vanish. Then you can put anything you want on it.

Related: I don't like that Cargo Modules are now 60kt instead of 40. It makes them hard to fit on Frigate hulls for things like Sat/Mine Layers. Maybe there could be a Small version at 30kt?

thanks and that the source code is with it is also interesting

Your tweaks to the AI already caused me trouble (of the good kind): I have an unarmed scout trapped in a dead-end system owned by a Neutral. The 1 WP is guarded, and and he won't answer my treaty request because the intrusion made him Angry. Abiddon are Displeased and also almost trapped my ship in their system.

The AI's no longer send treaty requests the minute you meet them, but once they do send one, they repeat it without waiting for an answer first. I think Kwok solved that in Balance Mod by having them wait a random number of turns (3-5?) between requests.

Hope you can get the research working the way you want it, cause it sounds great. I have faith.

Great so far. I did launch right into #1 position, but as we know the overall score doesn't seem to mean much. It's hard to make friends with the AI's, which is as it should be. The neutral that trapped my ship finally attacked it, and then declared war.

Can't tell yet if this is a recurring quirk, but a few times now I have accepted a NI treaty request, only to have the offerer break it 1-2 turns later for no apparent cause, with no mood change, then ask for an NI again soon after.

To make up for their tech tree problems I think I'll start handing out weapons techs to them. I look forward to seeing what they do with fighters.

So you changed how the score is calculated? Even though I'm only ahead (slightly) in population and number of ships, and behind in all else, I'm way ahead in overall points. Tech levels don't seem to count for much, because I gave all the AI's a 30 TL advantage over me to start, but I still went to the #1 spot with no difficulty. Seems (to me) like tech should be a pretty big factor in judging an empire's strength. And ship count is deceptive, since quality is much more important than quantity. So what if I have 200 frigates and transports and 500M more population if he can just blow them all away with 20 cruisers? Just food for thought as you develop.

IMO one of the best indicators of empire strength would be Victories/Defeats. One of my favorite 4x games, SPARTAN, tracks this, but I doubt there's a mechanism for it in SE:V.

The Ai's are defiantly different than they where when it comes to treaties but I am not sure that they are exactly better since I now need to deal with a lot more AI messages altogether. The AI seems to break treaties and declare war on you very quickly and for no readily apparent reason. It then does nothing for a few turns and then makes peace. This cycle of behaviour has repeated itself since I made first contact in the test game. At the same time I have only fought one battle with one of the empires I was at war with and I initiated that. I have built some fearsome planetary defences as a result of these war scares and a small but tough fleet but not much more. I also have never been offered more than a very basic treaty and since they break them so quickly not had a chance to build on them beyond that.

That said I really like this mod and the fact that every direct fire weapon tech has a weapon which can do point defence makes the AI so much more resistant to missiles is nothing short of inspired

Sweet. I really liked the earlier versions.

I hope this one is a good challenge

Can't wait. I like that the AI's are hard to get along with, but single turn treaties is a little too hard.

I also found that they might not be marking Systems to Avoid wisely. An empire I was at war with tried to send a Colony Ship straight through my home system. Nice try.

This will be low on your to-do list, if at all (lots of work to make the AI use it) but I'd like to see the following tech that would diversify the game's economy. I don't like that it's so focused on Minerals that the other two almost don't matter.

Theoretical: Physics
Applied: Matter Conversion - The science of converting one form of matter to another.

Ship Component: Matter Converter - Converts XX% (increases w/ TL) of a ship's Mineral maintenance cost to Radioactives. One per ship effective. (Would let you run fleets primarily on Radioactives, with the price that the ships need this component.)

Facility: Mineral Replicator - Converts XXX (increases w/ TL) Radioactives from storage per turn into Minerals.

Just a thought because one of my favorite SEIV mods was Pirates & Nomads, which made Rads much more important. It makes more sense to me, too, to run ships on Radioactives.

Keep up the great work, I'll keep using it.

I'm at war with one (or maybe 2) of your neutrals. They get really pissed when you enter their system!

Thanks for the Rad increase. I seem to always end up in a rad rich system and they just go to waste...

The repair rate might be too fast. I've never had to wait more than 1 turn for any repairs. Even when I parked 5 damaged ships, one of them 97%, at a L3 Spaceyard, all of them were completely fixed in 1 turn. Not sure if it's just your mod, since I didn't pay close enough attention before. (I only have L1 in Repair tech.)

I create a Light Carrier w/ 12 engines. In the design screen and when I build one, its movement is 14. Then when I mothball it and unmothball it, its movement becomes 7.

Edit: I'm asking this here rather than in the general forum because I don't know if it's the result of your mod or not. When you have occupying troops on a planet, and ground combat is ongoing, can you add more troops with another invasion? No matter what I do (they have Capture Planet orders, of course) my second transport wave runs away without dropping troops. On the ground, my only occupying troops have no anti-fighter weapons, making them helpless while one damaged fighter is mopping them all up. Meanwhile I have troops in orbit that could finish the job. Do they have to sit and wait for the original force to be destroyed?

On a related note, conquered populations tend to be Jubliant and give 100% loyalty immediately, even with very few troops on the ground.

Check the crew if it has no crew a ship will have half movement I havent mothballed any ships but I suspect the crew is lost when you mothball it.

The Movement bug is because you spaced all it's crew for some reason so it has no-one to crew it. Yay Mothballing

Couple of minor ones

1 Emergency reordinace and resuply pods are mutually exclusive try to put both on a design and you get an error beep on placing the second as if you had tried to place two of the same.

2 ordinance factories and supply factories are not distributing supplies to ships in system as I understand they are supposed to. (Cleaver idea by the way to include these)

3 might be me and not a bug but I cant get planetary improvement facilities I have researched what I think are the relevant techs but no luck, so either its not there or I am missing something

one I missed also Minor

AI sending mesages breaking treaties that they dont have, might be due to me Lanching an INTEL attack on them but cant be sure of that.

It was the no crew thing. But when the ship arrived at another planet in the same system, it recrewed automatically and got movement back. Yay mothballing indeed. I use it a lot actually, good way to keep reserves on hand without maintenance.

Logically, your penalty makes sense. The crews disperse and go to other postings. You could put the penalty back, or at least split the difference and make it -20. If I'm going to save on all that maintenance, I should have to pay a price in crew experience.

Again not sure if this is your mod or the fact that I play with "Whole system is visible when you have presence," but I can see enemy mine groups (even tell how many there are) as if they were fighter/sat groups.

If it's because of the game setting, I guess that's a bug that should be reported. I play that way because it's what I was used to in SE:IV and because exploring with sensors (Civ-style) is just tedious to me. But I don't think that setting should remove mines from the game as an effective unit.

Although I haven't played IRM yet (I'm waiting for the next patch + new mod version), this is probably because your sensors are higher than the cloak level of the mines. Look at the mines' abilities and check to see if they have a cloak level below your sensor level.

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Watch for my mod - codename: Dimensions - coming by Summer, 2007!

I thought of this, but even L2 mines are supposed to resist L7 scans. This is early game and my sensors scan at 1.2. To top it off, my unit (an unarmed satellite) in the system doesn't even have a sensor. So it seems like (unless it's the mod, which I'm thinking it can't be) all mines just must be visible when "Whole System Visible" is turned on. Can anyone verify that?