Does an active Mod community slow official patches?

In only one case will I agree.

The AI seems to be the EXACT same as the vanilla SE IV .

It does almost all the same mistakes.

Thus making me belive he has done nothing on the AI, and probably exepct the community to help him with that as they did with SE IV.

For the rest of the game, nah.

Janster

I don't think the AI is exactly the same... if only because, from what little I understand, he totally rewrote the base code that parses the AI files.

In other words, it may act the same (which I disagree with), but the way it gets told to do stuff is totally differen't.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Is this not a Death Knell for those (like myself) that never play online, but solely buy games for the Single Player component?

The AI should be Number One Issue as it is the AI that will allow players to keep playing a game long into the future if it can put up an excellent fight.

I would have though the game breaking bugs (ordance) would be a bigger issue, because they effect everyone (multiplayers, modders, and soloists), not just those who only play singleplayer.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Yes, Rilbur, but the AI should not have been forgotten and the game published without an AI that can put up a fight.

The bugs (from what everyone says) will be fixed, but will the AI be corrected to really function? If not will it really be that much of a game anyway?

A developer should not leave a major part of his project up to modders to "fix" for him.

Well being what, one man, I would rather him work on the issue that modders can't fix than issues we can. I mean if this was some big business, then sure fix everythign, but hell, lets all help him make this game great. I have no qualms with that.

Yours in gaming,
~Elucidus

he has provided the tools, but had no time to find the right params. Modders will do that. The other point of view would be to wait one more year so that he does what the modders will do better in 3 months. Malfador is still a very small company, don't forget that. See how the AI in RTW sucks, and they have a team of 50+ people.

What everyone seems to forget that this game is built by 'one' guy!

Peoples expectations have been tainted by games that have full production teams and 100's thousands of dollars backing it up.

Lets see this situation objectivly here. Kwok isn't fixing the game, he's creating workarounds within the boundaries of the released game which is currently in the process of being 'fixed'. These workaround arn't solutions, they don't do the things that they are supposed to for real. They however do make it playable in the meantime.

What i'm trying to say is, Kwok is doing a great job. And Aaron is also doing a great job. Aaron is lucky to have picked such a great beta tester who can devote his time into this project for us fans.

Oh and Kwok, something strange is going on with your level 1 space yard componant. Mine seems to construct at 4913 units per turn. I think it's something to do with the racial traits. I've already checked the componant code and it's fine. So it's gotta be the racials.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Lets see where MM go with the patching. Remember that SEIV is up to 1.95. That's 95 versions from release 1.00

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

It *might* influence what Aaron gives priority to fixing first, but I don't think you'd see any pure neglect.

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AI fixes are time consuming versus some of the other needed fixes like the ordnance bug or combat bugs and so on. There's lots of functions in the AI scripts that are in place but haven't been activated yet. I'd imagine they will be scripted in a future patch.

Anyways try a game of the Balance Mod v0.93 with low bonus to AI - they should be somewhat better.

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The high SY rates are from a bug with Hardy Industrialists - anyhow it was fixed in 1.06 but got broken again in 1.08.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

I tried a balance mod 0.93 game with high bonus to the AI... it wasn't pretty. The AI outnumbered me tremendously... and once it put PD on its ships (which it eventually did), then my missiles became useless and I could no longer overcome the numberical disadvantage... I had to restart. I'm trying again with the bonus set to low.

The balance mod has definately made the AI far more challenging.

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The goggles... they do nothing!

Ack. The AI should be putting at least one PD cannon on each frigate in addition to its point-defense ships but I made a quick change right before v0.93 was released that killed it. Thanks for pointing my addition to it.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

LordHavoc, ... but.. but that logic, wouldn't if follow if the game's development didn't take the full production team, and the 100's of thousands of dollars to back it up that I would get to pay LESS for it?

I'm sure that over time I will come to feel as defensive of this nich product as you, (I'm already developing a strong since of that now... I read posts that are similar in nature to 'my' first post here, and I get irritated, and want to scream, "GIVE IT A CHANCE!")

But, I'm not there yet... I still have hostile feelings for having to pay the full 40.

here's the one saving grace, there have been SEVERAL games, that I have bought and paid full price for, that were just as buggy on release that DID have full production teams, and publishers to back them, and then to add insult to injury, as soon as the game goes gold, (in some cases before it even hit's the store shelfs,) the Developers get laid off!

holy cow, ouch!

but for instance, Pool of Radiance didn't even have an option to install to some place other than C: wich sucks if you did system partitions like you ought to have for your OS. heh.

Dungeon Lords - Don't even get me started on that one...

Temple of Elemental evil - evil incarnate.

and those are just the first few I can think of. anyway, long post of mine just to say that I disagree with the price point being as high as it is, if the investment in the product was significantly lower.

zWolf -out.

In all fairness $40 is cheap for a new game usually. Most bigger corperations jack the price up to $50 at least and give you far worse support and about 20 minutes of entertainment.

Drat, you have a point there... I guess that gets me to thinking that there was even a way to buy it for 30$ (which included shipping...) if I would have had the patience to wait for it to ship vs the insta gratification of my local game stop.

heh, and 30$ is pretty close to the lowest you could possibly expect to pay to some one that had a publisher, a box a manual etc...

Grarg, I stand in the wrong yet again!

zWolf.

My question is does MM ever take some of the best mods and incorporate them into the standard game. For example the Balance mod.

The first modder-based change that comes to mind was changing the damage data for anti-proton beams in SEIV (I think it was SEIV), based on input from one of the modders; the history file even mentioned the modder by name (and I'm too lazy to look it up right now). I'd also say that the production modifiers for population in SEV look very similar to the ones created by one of the modders for SEIV (again, can't remember which one).

Yeah after Fyron made those much more detailed population modifiers they quickly became standard in alot of mods and then into the next game patch.