IRM V 0.7a

My 0.6 game is going pretty well, but I think I'll start fresh with this one. Even with improved AI's, and even though I still make stupid newbie mistakes on account of not having tried all the features/techs/components yet, it still becomes basically a management game, with the other empires just a few bumps in the road. So I hope the 0.7 AI will be able to threaten my homeworld.

To be honest, I have yet to get past 80 turns in any game of SE:V because it just gets uninteresting. So thanks again for your efforts.

Edit: Peeked at the Design Types, and you're missing "Satellite Layer" and "Ship - Support" (for Supply/Ordinance ships, etc). I would also change "Archer" to "Missile Boat", a more recognizable term.

I made a fleet of 1 Colony and 1 Escort and gave them the order to Colonize a planet. They did create a colony, but to my surprise, which ship is left in the fleet afterwards? The Colony ship, with its population. The colony has 0 pop, and the escort (Type: Ship - Attack) is gone. Other colonies worked normally, but they weren't sent out in fleet.

I wrote a post about the ship speeds, but I guess I hit Preview and then shut the window.... Anyway, I think making the smaller hulls faster is good. It makes it worthwhile to keep up-to-date Frigate/Destroyer designs even in late game. And it might solve the Kamikaze problem, since you could just build them on small hulls, allowing them to overtake larger ships. I'm not sure how the "directional damage" mechanism works, but you'd want Kamikaze warhead damage to be super-directional, and if possible to target bridge/life support or maybe just engines.

Edit: By Fenser I think you mean Fencer, right? Otherwise I'm not familiar with the term. I would avoid going too overboard on the Design Types available to the player, since those names are really just for convenience in the Build screen (right?), and having too many just gets confusing. But I think it's cool to give the AI ships all kinds of special classes.

I don't think I tried your autocomplete except for a transport. Will do.

I think fighter nukes make it too easy to wipe out population. I think either 1) the component should be too big to fit on a Small fighter, but require Medium or higher instead, or 2) the component should only be available at a higher TL of Fighter Weapons.

I gave the AI a tech headstart and High bonus, and I'm currently in last place, as I should be. Not far enough in yet to have fought with them much.

Any way to prevent them from repeatedly sending lone ships through WP's where they've already taken many losses, and group the ships instead? (That was in 0.6.)

I think Kamikazes with enough warheads ought to be able to pierce the outer hull and specifically hit the Bridge/Life support rather than damaging normally. That's what I'd train them to aim for... Edit: Is there any way to have a Kamikaze crew's skill level affect the amount of damage the warhead does? Probably not, but it would make sense. (Of course, all their experience would have to come from a facility...)

I think I used 5 small fighters w/ nukes to empty a colony with 120M. Don't remember the exact number, but at any rate I used them in very small numbers but they still never failed to wipe out a target. Didn't try them against a homeworld or huge colony.

What they allow you to do in early game is create one colony in any enemy system, immediately start producing small nuke fighters at 4 per turn, along with a few PD fighters to take out defenses, then just send the fighter group around depopulating enemy planets in the system. The AI can't do much about it.

The units coming one by one through WPs were scout frigates -- but they came through the same defended point 3-4-5 times, sometimes two in the same turn. As long as it doesn't happen later with warships, then no big problem. I haven't been attacked in force yet.

As for Kamikazes, I think you're thinking too much in terms of earth history, which isn't really right for SE and its many alien cultures. I'd like to be able to train up kamikazes and see what they could do. After all this is a Tyranny, and they'll do what I tell them or else.

It was in the last version. I didn't know you made fighter changes for 0.7. Good, I'm glad. I was avoiding researching them so as not to overuse them.

Right, it would only make sense if you could tie an increase to only the k. warhead and not all weapons.

I am next door to Abiddon again, and they've already declared war.

One month is enough time to annialate a population from orbit.

I think that there may have an AI bug stopping all of them from expanding beyond their home world had two cases of this one was a neutral empire which I over ran early on but the other was the Urktral and as a major AI I would have expected them to have expanded well beyond their home world after 90 turns.

On the plus side both planets had ground troops and put up quite a fight and I won by superior numbers as much as any thing else.

Update its not that the empires are not building colony ships it would seem that they are not using them I have manualy set the second major power to colonise the rest of his home system around turn 95 and will see what happens

Further update they have now got to the point where they have all bancrupted themselves so even helping them dose not work

I have been trying to track down the bug I described in more detail and have tracked it down a bit though I have not looked at the code.

The problem seems to be related to the movement of ships by the AI and Ministers all of them are affected not just the colony ships. Scout ships are built but don’t scout as are transports but they sit in orbit of the home world. It also effects players if you turn over the control of the player empire to ministers ships are designed and built and even refitted its just that they don’t move unless the player does it manually at which point the ministers will run any further colonies made.

Left un toughed the AI will eventually bankrupt itself as it will build a reasonable fleet but this is much bigger than it can support form its home world alone. That it refits ships as it researches new technologies serving to speed this up

Other than this things seem to be good, the AI designs sensible ships does sensible research and seems to carry on as if it was a competent player. If you can get it to expand and fight again then you are on to a real winner here.

Simulators. I said in my post it would have to come from facilities. You train them to dodge incoming fire and home in full speed on a particular part of the enemy ship. Why would they need training for the "point of impact"? Just one thing to do there: die. (Ok, so the simulator cockpit can shake and say "You're dead!") But it's a moot point because apparently it can't be modded that way.

I'm about 30 turns in and every AI that I have seen scores for in 0.7a owns several worlds, 5-6, about the same number as me. How could they be that seriously broken in one person's game, and not in mine? In fact, here's what I was about to report...

Good news/bad news:

Good news is that a fleet of 7 Abiddon ships (at war with me), including a troop transport, showed up and attacked one of my brand new colonies which had no defenses. I confirmed that the transport did have troops in it at the time of attack. The transport did as it's supposed to do, touch down on the surface and then retreat--so I think it dropped the troops. But the bad news: no ground combat happened and the troops didn't show up in the Occupying box. It's too bad, because he would have taken it without a fight.

The other little flaw was that none of the 6 Abiddon frigates had any PD whatsoever, only regular DU cannons, so if I'd had a few satellites he would have been toast.

Can confirm the ship movement bug in all the games I have tried last night both Quick start ones and standard games. AI & ministers are unable to move ships. Also tried stock and that’s fine and BM1.02 just in case and that works ok.

Had no problem with .054 & 0.6

So I am really puzzled

I do have saved games demonstrating this if that helps

Rraagh!!!!!

I spent all night hunting that Blasted bug

Rraagh!!!!!

It takes real effort to really annoy me so don’t worry I am not annoyed. I think it’s a great Mod otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to the lengths I did trying to localise the problem. I will just have to go and have a strong cup of coffee and continue with the new version.

WHO NEEDS SLEEP ?

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

-Seems like the treaties bug might still be present, as I have yet to have any treaty last longer than 2 turns before they cancel it on me.

-I am getting hammered every turn by intelligence attacks! (Not complaining.)

-I'm playing with the normal visibility/ sensor rules this time, but I can still see a Mine Group around an enemy planet, just as if it were a fighter or sat group. My sensors are still the basic kind and very low level. Did you change the cloaking of mines at all?

I'm about 10 turns into colonizing the Abbidon home system, and just at the very minute that I was thinking how easily he could stop me if he would just take a chance and attack instead of just guarding his homeworld--he attacked. Unfortunately for him he had no troop transport this time, and also once again no PD at all, despite having 13 frigates of different classes. (Lucky him, my sat group ran out of ordnance, and the planet has no resupply, so it was a stalemate.) At any rate, seems like your AI can make some bold moves at unpredictable times. Now he's moved the fleet off, but is keeping it in easy striking distance. Well done.

It has mines and fighters, which I think are in the same level. Plus, I haven't researched PD yet, but I still have your Railgun to fire at fighters/sats. He's using DU weapons, so he should have the DU Autocannon (or is that gone now? -- I'm not using that research path). But I have yet to see any of his ship designs include the Autocannon, only regular DUC.

PD should probably be in MS L1, since otherwise Sats are unkillable for a while. And maybe the Railgun/Autocannon should require PD L1?

There is still a DU auto cannon and the AI does use them but not all AI's use the same weapon setups. I think that aggressive races will go for attack over defence and so favour the heavier gun of the two.

I realized I guess I'm using the old SE:IV definition of PD, which includes the ability to fire on Fighters/Sats as well as seekers/drones. But that's different now with the autocannon/railgun. So the real problem is just that the autocannons aren't showing up in Abiddon designs. Maybe you're right eg and that is specific to their personality. FH?

And with missiles coming later in the tech tree, PD later is fine, too.

I always thought it was strange that it cost a ship 1 movement point regardless of whether a sector contained a planet, asteroid field, or just empty space. Maybe the cost for moving through non-empty sectors should be raised, especially for the larger hulls.

1) I design a satellite. I go to edit or upgrade it, but no matter how many ordnance/supply storage components I add or remove, the sat's ordnance/supply number always stays the same.

2) Gauss weapons aren't available to put on a satellite, but when I use Autocomplete, it puts on a Railgun. (This one killed me early on - forced me to get Nuclear missiles to have a sat weapon.)

Upgrading any design will not update its supply/ordnance counts until the next turn. You should also be able to use the ~recalc~ cheat to force it to update these values, but it recalculates ALL formulas in the whole game, so it takes a while.

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

Please consider the size of those hexes...
any size hull is a flea - even the planets are shown as FAR too large on the graphics- they have to be or we'd be looking at dots...
Anyone who wants power; by definition, cannot be trusted with it...

downloaded the game again and I am still geting the AI ship movement problem

I keep running into those...but I have to post them here because if I mention it anywhere else and it's new people will want to blame it on your mod...

I can't put a railgun on a satellite manually... only by using Autocomplete. The component doesn't show up in the available list.

Yes, you're right. I never looked at what the actual scale of a sector was. Was just thinking that large planets would have gravitational effects to compensate for (never mind actually decelerating and going into orbit, the cost of which should be immense) and the extra caution and maneuvering that would be needed in asteroid fields. But if the hexes represent a large enough space, correct, it wouldn't matter.

FH, just to help you track things down: with two of the empires, I don't even know where their home systems are yet and can't see any of their colonies. And the Ukra-Tal broke a treaty with me even though they were Receptive and stayed Receptive.

This might still be a factor. My first builds always include a sat layer and cheap unarmed satellites that I scatter behind me as I explore to keep an eye on things. Will your AI's attack ships/units that invade their space without actually declaring war? I don't think any of them have ever destroyed my lonely unarmed spysats.

Edit: Just want to tell you that your AI (and High bonus) is giving me my first good fight of SE:V while I try to establish 2 colonies in the Abbidon (At War) home system. The one and only thing that prevents him from slaughtering me is his lack of autocannons to target my sats (which are out of ammo and not yet being resupplied). He wiped out almost every frigate I owned. And to make things even better/worse, 13 Sergetti (untreatied, Displeased) frigates are circling around in my home system, and somehow I don't think they're scouts.

eg, did you start a new game or load your old one?

I made an empire from scratch. In the 4-5 new games I've started with your mod, I've never seen Railgun available for satellite. I thought it was intentional until I tried making one by Autocomplete and RG showed up in the design.

No, in fact if I set the filter to show only Weapons, I see just the missile. I noticed something else is missing, too: regular supply/ord storage. I only get small, but Auto uses both.

Still had the zipped file with the bugged version of 0.7a which WinZip was helpfully re unzipping every time not the non bugged version I thought it was. Fixed it as soon as I worked that out.

Now have an unarmed scout trapped in a neutral empires system being chased by five slightly slower frigates whilst I build up a big enough fleet to force the warp point and rescue it. I like the AI its making me work.

sorry cant delete

EXACTLY the same thing his neutral did to me last version. Fortunately, his system had 3 breathables which made it a prime target for invasion anyway. Park the scout in an asteroid field or ion storm, where you'll be invisible.

I tried to make a repair ship using small freighter, but cant make because of 40% hull dedication requirement to cargo bays,...etc. It seems the repair bay isnt counted somehow in this requirement(altough its in the list). I encountered with the same problem in two different games (in one of them I had researched lvl9 light hull, so the final small freigther is 630kt, two repair bays (150kt each) should make the 40% requirement. I didnt test it with medium or large freighter.
Other than that, I liked how AI expands and defends his colonies, however I still outresearch it (only played two games with medium bonus to AI), maybe just luck.
Thanks for the mod again.

Colony ships show a strange bug:
They get the order to colonize a certain planet and then to return to the homeworld.
When they arrive at the target planet, which should be colonized, they skip the colonize order and return to the homeplanet. After that cycle they then get the correct colonizing order without return order and can successfully colonize the planet.

I've made a brand new folder for every version to avoid that. And I only customized two things:
1) My own systemnames.txt
2) Change the default speed in your settings.txt to 8.0x so the turns process faster.

Weird, nothing I can do will get me the railguns. But I can work around it by using autocomplete and then holding down shift to make as many copies as needed. Can everyone else put autocannons/railguns on sats in IRM? Hum.

In this case it’s not worth the effort one tiny habitable world I know I got to survey it whilst running away from the AI frigates. There was also absolutely no where to hide (typical) Am in a decent war with the Xianti which is not fun in a good way, I have better ships but not by enough and they have a lot more. At the moment it’s a bloody stalemate.

At least one of his AI's (on High bonus) has 2x my research points. It may just be that you tend to build more research facilities than others might.

IMO, it doesn't make sense to require a non-combat sensor on a weapons platform. What's it got to sense in peacetime except all the other cargo stored around it?

Just got a fun surprise. I've been at war with Abbidon since almost the beginning. I have 2 colonies in his home system (next door to mine) at which I can't even build facilities or mass ships because he shows up with a raiding fleet every 4-5 turns. My pop is on the verge of rioting there. The only thing he hasn't done yet is send a fleet next door to hit me where it hurts.

In my mind, they're winning. So just for fun I started making one-way ceasefire proposals offering my tech, repair, no treaties for me, and giving a 10% tariff to them. They countered with everything else the same, but with the tariff changed to a 40% one in MY favor.

It's great (fantastic in fact) if the AI can recognize when it's losing (even if I'd disagree) and offer concessions, if only the combination of elements could be kept logical.

You're definitely doing something right with the diplomacy, though, so keep it up.

I noticed that I was in first place so I demanded the first neutral race I had met and which had been at war with me since my scout got trapped in its system. Which I had now surrounded but with whom I had not fought in years and even then not much forcing the warp point and allowing my trapped ship to escape was about it. They wouldn’t make peace nor did their mood improve being stuck at Murderous. I marked the system to avoid and got on with things since I did not need the system any way when I noticed I had hit first place I sent a message demanding their surrender and they did.

This is not the first surrender I have had with this mod but that one was after a bloody and long war and they surrendered with my invasion force approaching orbit of their last major world. This time it was to all intents and purposes a peaceful annexation. I got their fleet intact which is great even if they are by the standards of my fleet obsolete. I think I can still refit some of them. And I get a scattering of colony ships ready built

I really like this mod it does the game credit

Hmm, but say I build 15 WP's on a colony. That's 15 Sensors sitting in cargo all doing exactly the same job at 15x the cost. Maybe some want to make that part of their WP design, but I just think it's just inefficient. To give the planet vision I can build 1 small sat with a sensor. And I didn't mean combat sensors should be required; that would just be less wasteful than requiring a regular one, since at least they all provide a benefit instead of overlapping in the same job.

If you're requiring them for the AI's benefit, can't you have it give priority to Sensors without making them required?

Edit of edit: Posted about a ship movement path issue, but I think I found the cause.

Did you fix it so the AI will use secondary weapons in the next version? I've seen maybe 20 different classes of ship from multiple empires, and every one just has 3 DU cannons. I'm having to promise myself not to use fighters against them. I feel sorry for them not even being able to get past 1 satellite sitting on a warp point.

i think the designers assumed poor ai and made the duc and csm a sort of fools-proof(or so they thought) research path...

notice the duc isn't helpless against fighters...
its range may be a joke but it hits hard

theAnyone who wants power; by definition, cannot be trusted with it...

Badger Just to note that the IRM works completely differently from the stock or balance mod when it comes to weapons. The easiest weapon to get is indeed a DU cannon but apart from its name it has little in common with the stock or BM version and missiles of any sort are several years down the research track at which point you will find yourself at a disadvantage if you rely on them alone. Especially as the DU cannon comes with a light rapid fire weapon well able to double as a PD weapon and be many tL's better than the missiles you first get.

I think leaving that choice to the player makes sense, but I was really only talking about the Weapons Platforms. I do understand requiring sensors on ships--they move, while the platforms are stationary.

Edit: About PD, your AI uses large numbers of "Light Gunships" which also seem not to have any PD. Of the 20+ designs I can see, only 3 are classed as "Scout" so I hope its fleets won't depend only on the Scout type for PD. I do see some ships with missiles, which is good.

Edit: AI wise, I've been Pearl Harbored by the Sergetti (Displeased) without any declaration of war--nice. And I've had offers of trade pacts with various additional elements. Not far enough yet to tell you whether it will build larger ships, but some of the empires have 100+ TL's and still no destroyers, so it doesn't seem like a research priority.

I have met and fought ships up to Light cruiser sized in my current game, including an organic light cruiser. The best I can manage is also a light cruiser and a heavy carrier. Most of what I have met have been scouts or light gun ships some of which had quick fire guns some of which did not mostly either cannon and an quick fire gun. Or three cannon typically. I have met a few archers but my two major opponents don’t favour them as a class it would seem (Xainti and Norak). I have had two wars with the Xianti the first ended in a stale mate and no systems changed hands. This war was entirely fought by frigates on both sides though I did get destroyers towards the end of it I did not use any. In the second they have been more of a walk over but checking that I discovered most of there fleet elements are else where they are at war with about four other major AI's and I have not attacked any of their core systems.

Planets invaded had weapons platforms small and Medium and sensible defence’s satellites drone (up to medium) though most of the ground troops I have fought have been Militia though, all large units how ever and no walk over.

I think I will win unless the AI's gang up on me but I have had to work at getting where I am and that’s fun.

This is sounding good for the next version, I'll have to give it a whirl and see how it runs when the next version comes out.