This mod alters several play aspects of Space Empires 5. To install, extract the GidMod directory to your SE5\GameTypes folder. I make no guarantee as to how well any of these will work on your computer. I doubt they will slow you down, but anything could happen. This mod is NOT compatible with any other mod. The AI changes alone are too extensive and too specialized. GidMod logo by Pkoko. Gameplay Notes: 1). To colonize a planet, you need to research the appropriate device technology. These are named Rock Colony Device, Ice Colony Device, and Gas Colony Device. Each component is unlocked by the old colony research techs. You start with level zero in whatever colony type you can initally create. Be sure to research at least one level in the appropriate tech. These techs are cheap and have 100 levels each. At each level, the component gains cargo capacity and structure points, and becomes less expensive to build. 2). If you use the AI to manage things like "Construction - Units", then you should turn the "Empire Goals" minister ON. This gives the best results. If you don't want the AI to clear all ship orders periodically while the "Empire Goals" minister is ON then switch the "Clear Orders" minister to OFF. Switching the "Clear Orders" minister to ON is useful if you want to fully automate your empire, otherwise it gets in the way. 3). The "Construction - Units" minister is meant to work along side the "Planets - Mine Launching" and "Planets - Satellite Launching" ministers. Use it with both of these ministers along with the "Empire Goals" and "Planets - Unit Scrapping" ministers for the most complete effect in unit automation. The existance of these ministers means the AI can utilize Units much more than the stock AI. 4). Each race has a primary resource that it uses. For the most part, this resource is Minerals. If the race has the Crystallurgy ability, then its primary resource is Radioactives. If the race has the Organic Manipulation ability, then its primary resource is Organics. If a race has both of these, then its primary resources are generally split between Organics and Radioactives. Take this in to account when planning what planets you want to colonize and what resource generators you want to build. v5.0.0b - AI will not accept or propose any treaty or alliance that prevents it from performing Research, Intel, Alliance/Treaty with Others, or Planet Bombardments. This is temporary until a way is devised to have the AI renegotiate treaties. - AI mood can never be better than a certain point without a treay in place. - To aid the player in judging the mood of an AI empire, the mood labels have been expanded. The complete list, from best to worst: ---Brotherly ---Welcoming ---Amiable ---Friendly ---Receptive ---Tolerant ---Indifferent ---Wary ---Displeased ---Aggravated ---Angry ---Venemous ---Murderous - AI now analyzes its own military, economic, and technological strength. - AI now analyzes other empires' military, economic, and technological strength. - AI uses comparisons of the two as a modifier of its mood towards other empires. - AI mood includes a modifier from trade. The more trade, the better an AI empire's mood. The amount of this varies by empire. - Some races dislike each other, and so have a mood penalty towards each other. (NOTE: I did not say they automatically hate each other,or that they cannot form treaties/alliances with each other.) - Espionage acts once again affect mood, though not as much as in stock. Before, these alone could push an empire to near-Murderous. - Each empire has had its treaty likes/dislikes tweaked. - Each empire has modifiers for how important military, economic, and technological comparisons are, and how they apply - Each empire research priorities have been tweaked to better represent them. - New research groups have been created to better guide AI research. - Each empire has had its colony type distribution tweaked. - AI determines whether it will attack a location based on its anger towards the location's owner, NOT its treaty status. - AI determines its intel actions based on its anger towards each entity, NOT its treaty status. - AI will spend points on Cooperative Intelligence, if it feels so inclined. - Split organic and crystalline armor in to their own tech trees, and expanded them to 100 levels. - AI no longer builds Military Colonies, at least, until I can find a use for them. - AI now reinforces a fleet when that fleet runs low on ships. - Corrected an error in my AI satellite designs. They should use heavy weapons now. - Recoding of the treaty proposal function. The new system shouldn't appear to behave differently to the player, but it should be easier for me to tweak in the future. v4.9.2b - Corrected typo in tech tree for getting Applied Political technology. - More fixes to satellite design to insure they have weapons. - Additional refinements to various AI designs. - AI no longer assigns fleets to Patrol when in Attack or Defend modes. - Fleets should restock fighters and troops when they run low. v4.9.1b - Made sure all vehicles have a resource cost of at least 1 in all resources, in order to allow scripting to work. This is a workaround until a fix is published by MM. v4.9.0b - Increased rate of fire and reduced size for Flak Cannons and Bomblet Missiles. - Increased Bomblet Missile max range. - Corrected my stats for the Wave - Motion Gun (Note: It is still not as powerful as the stock version). - As an experiment, adjusted the appearance of the Meson Blaster bolt to be longer than normal. - Changed population density calculations in Intel defense drag to use percentage of planet capacity filled rather than raw population numbers. - Increased overall effect of Intel defense drag factors. - Added an Organic Tech version of the Medical Bay component. - Added a Temporal Tech version of the Space Yard component. - Added a new tech called Crew Support Systems. This tech is used to increase your Life Support and Crew Quarters component levels. - Further increases to AI research point distribution efficiency to deal with special racial technologies. - Refined AI to deal with having all tech, and No Intel games. - Increased rate of gain for each level of Combat Sensors and Small Combat Sensors. - Double the size of engine components on ships, so that fewer are nessesary for effective speeds. - Tweaked AI Fighter and Troop designs. - Added Small Crystalline Torpedo and Small Seeking Parasite components. -Major change to how engines work: ---There are no longer any limits on how many engines may be on a vehicle. ---All types and categories of engines research out to 61 levels. ---Research costs reduced to take in to account the new research levels. ---All engine and all hulls (including units) have newly recalculated interactions. As hull size goes up, the max speed it can reach goes down, and the more engines you will need to make it go fast. ---Modified the AI research and design systems to take in to account the new engine speed progression. ---All engines provide the same base thrust (10 for ships/drones, 6 for fighters, 1 for troops). ---Each type of engine has a different max thrust it can provide (example of ships/drones): ------14 for Ion Engines ------16 for Contra-Terrene Engines ------18 for Jacketed-Photon Engines ------20 for Quantum Engines ---The thrust from each type of engine maxes out at a different level (example of ships/drones): ------15 for Ion Engines ------25 for Contra-Terrene Engines ------38 for Jacketed-Photon Engines ------53 for Quantum Engines ---The progression rates are such that you will need to decide whether you want to switch to a new tech as soon as possible, or stick with an old tech for a reliable upgrade in speed. ---For instance: The Contra-Terrene Engine provides more thrust than the same level Ion Engine at level 17. Before this point, it provides LESS. ---All engines still gain Supply Storage and Structure through all levels of tech, and all Engine types start at the same base values at tech level 1. ---At maximum tech levels, ships (particularly small ones) can go faster when compaired to stock. ------For example, Frigates go at a speed of about 16 with 3 level 15+ Ion Engines. - Added boarding defense points to the Master Computer to simulate mechanical defenses rather than crew. - Changed the Security Station to provide a percent bonus to defenders rather than boarding defense points. - Extended Emissive, Scattering, and Stealth armors out to the max level of Armor research. - Rebalanced Emissive, Scattering, Stealth, Organic, and Crystalline armor HPs. - Added Small Crystalline and Small Organic armors. - Added the Small Graviton Hellbore weapon. - Changed Small Rocket Pods to be allowed on Troops. - Changed Small Cluster Bombs to be useable against Ships and Bases - Rebalanced Small Shield Generators and Small Phased Shield Generators. - Added a Heavy Vehicle Mount, for really big guns on troops. - Implemented three distinct design types for fighters for the AI: Fighters, Bombers, and Interceptors. v0.48b - Spent many more hours tweaking and testing the early game build queue AI. - Corrected error in supply ship design. AI now chooses a Small Freighter type ship.(oops) - Loosened up retrofit cost difference restriction from 20% to 40%. - Eliminated AI anger from espionage, but not sabotage. Will be rebalanced at a later date. - Added a bonus when judging the importance of Space Yard planets for the Population Transport AI. - Planets have a max happyness rating of 95%, for intel defense purposes. - Increased ground combat map size from 40 to 80 and city size from 20 to 40. - Reduced cost of researching Cultural Achievments to make them more relevant. - Enacted more size limitations on several AI designs. - Set the "Don't Get Hurt" strategy back to retreating immediatly. - Reduced the cost of the Spaceport to return balance to the Natural Merchants racial ability. - Tweaks to the AI research queue. - Important change to how colonization tech works: ---Gas Giant Colonization, Ice Planet Colonization, Rock Planet Colonization are now theoretical sciences. ---These three theoretical sciences each unlocks the ability to research one kind of colonization technology. ---The colonization technology research governs the tech level of the colonizer components. This tech is much less expensive to research than the theoretical that unlocks it. ---As colony creation components advance in level, their cargo capacity and durability increases, and their resource cost decreases. - This change allows research of a new kind of planet colony to be expensive, while making the tech level of the colony creation device to be made valuable. - AI does not sent colony ships to any system occupied by another empire if that empire is at war with AI. - Added new tech areas in order to have better control over AI research spending. Used this to lay some groundwork for differing AI research priorities in a later version. - Increased resource generation by facilities to compensate for upkeep costs of units. - Reverted AI treaty acceptance thresholds to default levels. This will be changed at a much later date, with politics. v0.47b - Several refinements to how the AI chooses a new colony type. - Colonization list prioritizes by the presence of a race's primary resource. - Added minimum resource checking for ship refits and unit construction. - Added prioritization for facility construction on primary resource colonies. - Modified the colonization list to switch priorities in the case of the AI having a low number of primary resources in storage. - Recalculated construction costs of Mineral Miner, Organics Farm, and Radioactives Extraction facilities to better mesh with new population bonuses. - Slight increase to the rate of fire on the Flak Cannon and Bomblet Missile weapons. - Increased effectivness of Intel defense points against sabotage type attacks. - Modified the AI which builds Base Space Yards. - Rescaled the number of systems in a quadrant. Small is 10 - 50, Medium is 60 - 150, Large is 160 - 255 v0.461b - Corrected the omission of the "Crystalline Small Fighter" vehicle size from the GlobalConstants_VehicleSizes and GlobalSettings Script_AI files. - Added a minister named "Clear Orders". Deactivating this minister prevents orders from being cleared on AI state change. v0.46b - Compatability with SE5 v1.58 - Refinement to AI Unit construction on planets to be a random chance, with an increasing chance as structure space is filled. - Added master computer-like components for troops and fighters, and included AI for design creation. - Added a small base repair rate to planets for ships (5kT per turn). - Implemented workaround so that units in orbit of a planet in a unit group are now counted correctly. - Implemented workaround so that planets will recall obsolete units from an orbiting unit group so that they can be scrapped. - Minor optimizations to unit scrapping AI. - Increased explosive damage type's shield penetration. - Increased ordnance cost of seeker weapons, while decreasing supply cost. - Increased the rate of advancement of capacity in the Ordnance Storage component. - Revamped Satellite size growth rate to make it useful. - Rebalanced Satellite Launcher to take the new Satellite sizes in to account. - Increased domed planet cargo capacity slightly to accomodate new satellite sizes. - Revamped Mines so that tech level-up is useful within each size. - Rebalanced Mine Warhead costs and strength for new sizes. - Adjusted Mine Layer cargo capacity for new mine sizes. - Reduced cargo bay capacity for a better Troop Transport vs Planet ratio. - Increased base number of Troop Transports desired by the AI. - Reverted shield percentage on ships designed by the AI to use base value in race file. - Adjusted AI design creation to add a number of Shield Regenerators, depending on ship size (important for large ship survivability). - Increased effectivness of the Shield Regenerator. - Recalculated population bonuses to production and shipyards. This REALLY needs to be expressed as a formula, not a table. - Doubled the bonus provided by each level of Cultural Achievements over previous versions of this mod. - Heavily modified the Tractor Beam. One per ship, has a minimum range before it pulls targets in. - Limited the Repulser Beam, Tractor Beam, and Wormhole Beam to one per ship, and tweaked them for balance. Adjusted AI designs for this limit. - Resized fighter engines, and refactored designs so that 6 provide the same speed and take up the same space as 18. Fighter engine max is now 6. - Tweaked Drone designs to need 6 engines for the same speed as the previous 12. - Crystalline and Organic tech races can build only their special ship types. - Crystalline and Organic tech races start with the ability to build their special ship types. - Set most facilities and many components to cost different resource combinations depending if you have Crystalline and/or Organic tech traits. - AI automatically adjusts its percentage of desired resource structures based on whether or not it has Crystalline and/or Orcanic tech traits. - Additional tweaks to AI research. - Changed cost factoring of intel actions to use a math formula with reduced logic instead of nested logic. - Major change to how intel success is calculated. The following act as a reduction to defense success: ----Number of races (past the first) ----Average Happiness rating of colonies ----Number of colonies that are rioting ----Total number of colonies (domed colonies reduce defense less than undomed colonies) ----Population desity (higher density reduces defense) - Maximum chance to defend against intel actions is 95%. - Minimum chance to defend against intel actions is 5%. - Tweaked the Population Transport AI. - Added the ability to make Supply Ships out of Transport class ships. Supply Ships are ships which are mostly Supply Storage and/or Ordnance Storage. - Added player ship type "Supply Ship". - Added AI for the design, construction, and utilization of Supply Ships. v0.322a - Compatability patch with SE5 v1.35 - Players can now self-destruct satellites and mines. AI does not do this because there is no script command for this. v0.321a - Corrected invisible Crystalline Torpedo bug. - Increase in population growth rate. Faster than previous versions, but still slower than the base game. - Corrected typo in description of weapon mount size requirements. v0.32a - Fixed rounding typo for unit construction. - Added Satellite Layer as a design type players can select. - Removed upkeep modifier from units, as this does not function as I intended. - Moved Satellites to being higher build priority than Recon Satellites. - Further reduction in Culture Tech research cost, to make it more viable in the early game. - Fighters can not be killed by mines now. - Increased supply count from ground thrusters to account for troop mass increase (balance to occure later with troop redesign). - Extended the base and maximum range of all ground weapons (balance to occure later with troop redesign). - Tweaked research rate of the AI for units. - Further changes to Task Force strategy to insure troop invasions. - Adjusted research rate for AI for Psychology. - Adjusted percentage of planets as research colonies for AI. - Added player design type: "Repair Ship". AI version to follow later. - Moved Troops to be a higher priority in the unit construction list. - Corrected additional various design errors in Organic and Crystalline Satellites. (A lot of errors in these AI designs, it seems...) v0.311a - Ships using Optimal Firing Range (the only strategy I can get a task force to use) now break formation, allowing for special ships (like troop transports) to be governed by their own specific orders (like capturing planets). - Tweak to unit build in relation to planet structures. - Non-weapon components can now take 75% damage before becoming inoperable. - Corrected typo in DamageTypes.txt which prevented missiles from doing damage to shields (oops). v0.31a - Further tweaking to unit build logic. - Tweaked certain ship build numbers and priorities. - Corrected error in unit construction when counting the number of units in a unitgroup. - Added check to medical ship orders, so that they only go to planets they can cure. - Moved Recon Satellites and Satellites to the first and second priorities for unit building, as these are both cheap and useful. - AI does not count units in orbit of planets towards the totals it builds. This function is bugged, and so temporarily suspended. - AI now builds space units (satellites, recon satellites, and mines) based on the number on the target planet. v0.3a - First Release - All ships require differing ammounts of engines for full speed. See the ship description in the Ship Design interface for details. - All combat ships have updated crew and life support requirements. - All ships increase in size and cost at a rate depending on their hull. - All weapons have been initially balanced. Damage falls off at an even rate at all weapon levels, as appropriate. - AI has been adjusted to design ships more intelligently, and to use the new engine, crew, and life support rates. - All races start with Intelligence and Medicine technology, as this seems logical to me. - AI adjusted to build resupply depots, medical labs, and urban pacification centers more consistantly. - Natural plagues now occure in varieties up to 12. Espionage plagues are unaffected. - Ship/base spaceyards now available at tech level 1, as this seems logical to me. - Various errors, bugs, and oversights to AI ship designs are corrected. AI now designs ships much better. - AI now constructs ships more competativly. - AI requires a less hostile state to propose treaties. - AI loss of anger over time slowed significantly. - AI now remembers actions that make it angry longer. - Generic AI races now build ships/units with a random selection of weapons. - Added Plasma and Null Space shields. - Shields now interact with weapons differently. Projectile weapons do 75% damage to basic and phased shields, energy pulse weapons do 75% damage to plasma shields, energy beams do 75% damage to null space shields, and explosive weapons have 25% penetration on all shields. - AI now has a separate build logic for units (troops, weapons platforms, fighters, satellites, and mines). - AI now scraps old units on planets. - AI now optimizes planet population by atmosphere. - Players can activate these features for themselves through new ministers. NOTE: Construction - Units Minister does not function properly UNLESS you also turn on Empire Goals Minister. Empire Goals Minister manages the "state" of the AI, and this greatly affects how the AI builds units. - Fixed Jraenar Starbase/Baseship hitbox. - Population growth slowed greatly, in keeping with real-world data. This renders Homeworlds much more important. - AI now seeks out breathable planet atmospheres more agressivly. - Planets visible in a system as soon as you enter (as we can detect some planets in other star systems TODAY...from EARTH...). Asteroid fields, nebulas, and warp points have to be located through surveying. - Redesign to the Basic Sensor, Long - Range Scanner, Tachyon Sensor, Psychic Receptor, Temporal Sensor line of components. - Troop mass increased, and engine requirement rebalanced. - Troops, satellites, and mines have a reduction in upkeep cost. - Tweak to Population resource requirements. - Tweaks and error corrections to AI research charts. - AI now uses medical ships. - Implemented the first of more specialized AI ship designs: Scout Ships. Design to be further tweaked later. - Ships no longer stop to turn in combat. - AI now applies basic tactic templates to designs it creates. - Point defense weapons can now shoot at anything except planets (too small to be used effectivly for orbital bombardment). - Weapon mounts now upgrade more consistantly across levels. - Weapon mounts now include range bonuses. - Weapon mount size requirements re-evaluated and balanced. - Population scrapping now yields a small organic resource return (It's made of people!). - New map type - Web. Systems have a complex interconnection of Warp Points. - Implemented Science Lab ship component. Status: Not currently functioning due to bug(?) in base game engine. - AI randomly selects between Phased, Plasma, and Null-Space shields for which one it favors useing, per game. Each race selects their own. - Some AI races make use of Master Computers now. - Some AI races favor Heavy Weapons more than Weapons now. - Various tweaks to research requirements for several components. - Planet size distribution tweaked. - Planet max population levels for un-domed colonies increased. - Added a bunch more system names, in anticipation to increasing maximum system numbers to 255, when the game no longer kills itself with that many. - Reduced cost of colony type (Gas, Ice, Rock) research. - AI will not try to colonize in an allied system, to avoid having it just hover at uncolonizable planets, wasting time. - slight increase in base sensor radius for planets. - Added defensive bonuses to ships smaller than cruisers. - Reduced the research cost on Cultural Achievments. Increased the number of levels and reduced the bonus per level on the same.