GidMod 5.0.0.beta...

Nice, I am a fan of this mod.

i didnt get on too well with this mod when i last played it, but that was quite some time ago, a lots changed, lots of patches and such, so im gonna give this a try again. i cant remember what i didnt like before, but the idea of the mod itself sounds good, heres hoping for the best, and i'll point out anything screwy i find. tho i doubt i'll be able to try it untill monday, an that wont be for long anyway.
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

I'd just like to declare that you and your mod win 5 boxes of cookies, 20 gallons of soda (that you choose) and Sweden. The mod is that great

I have one question though: is there some ability you can add to a government type or racial trait that makes it able to breathe anywhere?

...

Make that 6 boxes of cookies

awwww shucks!

Oh well :/

Btw, could I make one tiny suggestion? Include a warning in the settings file that if you have over 117 systems in a game, the grid quadrant type gets horribly messed up with tons of systems sitting in the exact same spot on the map as well as *huge* clusters of warp points leading to these systems. Thought guarding 1 wp was problematic? Try having 80 wp leading into the system and you could be attacked from any dir.

Anyways, thanks again for a great mod. Also, I know not of this mythical golden banana, but I do know of banana grenades. Are those the same?

Morning Gid, when i said last time, i ment a rather old version of the mod, i've no idea what i didnt like.. was probly the ai.. but then most ai's sucked at that point

anyway i'm here to report back on my current playing around with GidMod5; I'm still playing it so thats a gd sign ^_^ i love the web quadrant type, tis exaclty my sorta style. I've not played very much so cant comment much on the AI, ive only met 2 neutrals, and 'just' found 1 empire.
i do love the engine system, i've got my scouts speeding around at 29points a turn with only tech 2 ions
also just remembered the fleet i got hit with by a neutral, was good seeing that they defend their territory... but i was having a fit of laughter as my scout shot away from them... hehe. i'm also really liking the tech tree, especially the colony module research system.

now that i've finished running through everything i love.. i have found a couple of bugs;
-small organic armour not available on fighters/troops
-satallite and mine layers keep filling up with population
-scout ships occasionly 'attack' a nearby warp point... not sure what they do after that as i just send em through and keep on exploring

also how have you setup the unit scrapping minister? im thinking it might want to scrap more often as its only done so once so far. i've set it up exactly as your readme said ^_^

keep up the good work
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

Is it possible to create a Picket ship with "Point Defense" only that will not retreat?

Oh, did you correct the components.txt file in your main download, so that if I download the latest version it has the fixs?

SE5 Files hosted on Filefront (Patches, Mods, Races, etc)

After a lot of poking around and bitching, I finally managed to port the Balance Mod Logarithmic Spiral maps into GidMod (basically copy the QuadrantsTypes, SystemTypes, and one of the Stellars I think into the GidMod data folder and then tweaking the algorithm until I was happy with a map; I like them looking like a spiral arm galaxy and most of them end up connecting the end of one arm to the core systems which makes it look bad).

Now I get to fool around.

cheers for the quick fix, also i found another bug, its probly something related to stock tho as it occasionly happens there too; when i upgraded my scout to 'Scout X' the speed was halfed, a few turns later i decided to double check my designs, but as i thought i hadnt changed anything... then they were working again..

also, any tips on how to get the ai to accept non agression treatys? i can sometimes get them to accept neutral system pacts, but not full... they seem fine with other stuff
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

Is why I consider it an obstacle to have Crew Quarters and Life Support be upgradeable at all - performance/cost/etc benefits from higher tech levels being applied directly by formulae to a Lv 1 Crew Quarters/Life Support would alleviate this aggravation (though it's not so realistic).

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

I was running simulations last night and based on some commentary here on the web on player strategies to easily defeat the AI it dawned on me that each race typically reacts the same way. Personally, I go into my setting to adjust my targeting profiles for "Max Weapon Range," "Point Blank," etc. But, all the AI Empires pretty much have the generic settings loaded with the game. ie...ALL the SAME. It makes it easy for you to get a ship set up or option that allows you to roll over the AI forces.

Is it possible to Mod in changes to the system so that AI Empires use more distinct strategies tailored to there racial options and fluff? Maybe scripts to rotate the options throughout the game?

This would be a great addition to stock and all mods....IMHO.

SE5 Files hosted on Filefront (Patches, Mods, Races, etc)

I think there's a bug with task force creation when a fleet is created... but it also might be a script error. But in theory, races do have specific task force strategies or formations they use with fleets. There's no capability yet to set/update fleet or task force strategies via the scripts after the fleet has been created, which limits functionality. I have my strategies set to automatically break formation so that ships follow their design strategies, which helps a bit.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Played through 30 turns so far. The AI was rather slow to start off but now they seem to be catching up. I decided to expand rather slowly (about 1/4 what I could be doing) but I still outpaced the AI by quite a considerable margin so far. The AI seems to have a whole lot of units (80-90) but only a couple dozen ships so far.

One extreme oddity...I checked the score for the Drushocka and saw only one planet so decided to log in and check on them. They have 30 ships in their home system and 2 colony ships 7 systems away. The colony ships are now out of supplies and still limping towards their targets another 10-12 systems away. This will occur in 187 turns, although that doesn't really matter for one considering it'll hit a black hole in 140 turns. The targets planets both have ruins and are breathable.

The AI does seem to use units better. Saw one satellite even dropped on a warp point, although I believe this was due to combat occurring with a frigate carrying satellites and not a choice by the AI.

Not sure if this is a mod issue or a game issue but the 'survey' command is just about useless and probably slows the AI a bit. Even giving a scout ship 25 movement it'll take around 10 turns to scout a system using 'survey' whereas a manual route can scout the entire system in 3 turns. The AI just seems to survey on the assumption it can only see 1 hex rather than taking into account scanner range and plotting an efficient course.

Doesn't even take into account scanner range 1 (which is what a ship with no sensors has) it assume a scanner range of 0, as it will fly along the outside edge of explored territory (i.e. if you have a range of 4, it'll see that border and fly around it on the 5th hex).

Now you know why I play with "player can see all hexes of any system they have units in."

Is there a known situation where the AI empires are spending more intel points as shown by the intelligence screen than what the scores screen suggests they have?

According to the scores screen the combined intelligence points for empires that I have contact with is no more than 20k. In the intelligence screen it says that the enemy empires have more than 120k points total with roughly 60k of that against me.

I have more than twice the intelligence points of any given empire I am up aganst according to scores. But according to the intel screen my intel defences are being overrun by up to six times. Needless to say I'm getting rocked pretty hard by some serious sabotage every turn which doesn't even seem possible.

The AI is high difficulty with high bonus and playing this mod (Gid's). I've never seen this anywhere else.

cheers for the explanation Gid, i remembered that i'd read about the trade treaties thing so i've started working on that, i'm happy to announce i finally have 1 proper non-agression treaty and a couple of migrations ^_^ (i dont touch the colonize systems treaty)

also to let you know i've just been hit by the intel processing bug, just as i was getting ready to leave my flat it hit the blue processing bar stopped at about 40%, i've seen this before on another mod, i believe the cause then was the intel sabotage that causes planets to change owner.
edit: err i think we can ignore this one, just reread the 1.64 patch notes and it mentions about the game hanging upon new empire creation.

all in all i'm loving the mod itself, but the diplomacy isnt really my style, not saying its bad, its actually bloody amazing, best ive ever seen and very realistic... just not my style... im too defencive
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Personally I view it useless to have "Cannot see Warp Points at any distance" when the System Map gives away where they are anyway - I liked IRM's approach of "you can see Warp Points and Planets as soon as you enter a new system regardless of your sight range". The planets part is interesting as if you can even see planets then you get tempted to not bother with surveying... and hence get lazy about checking for enemies, etc. But the Warp Points thing is merely an inconvenience for a human player who knows to look at the System Map.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Hmmm...I wonder if we could re-define sensors, at least how they work.

Such as...
On_Enter_System:
- Sensor range 0:
- View Sun and Huge sized gas giant planets
- Sensor range 1:
- View Sun and Huge sized rock and large and huge sized gas giant planets
- Sensor range 2:
- View Sun, all Huge planets and large rock + gas giants, and warp points

etc.

Based on the assumption that rock planets are probably larger than ice ones. Gas giants are notably HUGE suckers iRL and we can even detect them currently in systems very very far away with planet-side scopes (watching the wobble of star) and if you're in a solar system you could probably see them by looking out the window.
Warp points shouldn't be an automatic thing, but require a little tech (they are notably strange astral anomalies), as well as needing fine instruments to imediately see smaller and smaller planets without having to be "right on top of them."

Now, if planets n' such actually orbited their stars, I'd make note of where in a system things beyond that could get detected, i.e. you could see a tiny ice-ball 1 hex away even with no sensors ("Oh god oh god oh god, we're gonna crash!")
I guess it'd be something like (sensor_range + 1) * (planet size) where planet size is 1 for tiny and 5(?) for huge. Maybe a * (planet type), which is a float denoting relative size between ice, rock, and gas giants of equal "size" (i.e. 2 for gas giants, and 1 for rock and 0.5 for ice), round up to the nearest whole number).

I assume we cant mod warppoints themselves to give them a weak cloaking ability. If we could then you could make something similiar to the three tiered sensor system, with having some items cloaked (like warppoints) with fairly weak cloak. Then you would need to be in closer to them with your tachyon sensors or whatever rather than just the basic scanners.

Also completely agree about the litte lines (though allowing warppoints anywhere in the system on game selection helps make finding them a little more of a challenge).

-Unnamed

Unnamed Mod

Makes it more challenging to find them, but it provides a slight "speed boost" as warp points tend to be closer together (I once had a trinary system with three warp points in it and all 6 were clustered in the middle of the system, I think the farthest distance between any two was 6 hexes, system was otherwise empty).

Not sure if this is a game bug or a change you made but self-destruct doesn't seem to work with boarding. In the description it says the device will activate when a ship is successfully boarded, destroying both ships. I was curious how this works (never seen the AI use em before and I'm playing a pirate game) so I tried capturing one and nothing happened. Ship was captured, sent back home, and analyzed.

I have just played a game to the point (turn 125) where it looks like the AI won't be able to catch up to me. There was a simple yet glaring problem in AI research that allowed me to beat their fleets in spite of them having the advantage in tech and numbers.

Cargo.

They simply did not do enough research into cargo for ordinance storage. They had the ordinance storage components in their designs but at lvl 1 tech they do not hold enough whereas I had level 3 cargo. With ships cruising around with over 2000 armor and hull points they did not carry enough ammo to finish the fight. After 1-2 minutes into the fight they chronically ran out of ammo. My ships only had two things over the their ships, speed (my 4 engines to their 3) and ordinance storage.

Some other things I noticed are:

-Satellite bays are more efficient to use as cargo space than the first few tech levels of cargo bay. 30 for 80 vs 20 for 40-52.
-I am also not sure why but the AI was particularly loathe to form any relations with me. Except the neutral empires, they were pretty friendly.
-The AI hit me with decent sized fleets while I was on the offensive in their space but did little to take the fight to my space when there was the opportunity.

Still a fun game though. Thanks for the work on the mod, Gid.

I've noticed that the AI currently pretty much loathe everyone. None of them have formed treaties of any type in my current game. So far the Sergetti declared war after I sent a drone scouting their space, and the Ukra-Tal have started suggesting treaties after I set up a repair ship and capture ship in one of their systems and started stealing population transports/colony ships. Other then that everyone just seems to do their own thing.