Balance Mod v1.13 Available! |
Greetings!
The next version of the Balance Mod, v1.13, is available for download. It has a few data file fixes along with more AI improvements.
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php
Note there are two versions you can download. You should download the v1.13 data only archive if you already have v1.11 or v1.12 installed, otherwise download the full version.
I hope to have a v1.14 update shortly, which will focus on making major AI design improvements.
The change log...
Version 1.13 (29 January 2008) ------------------------------ 1. Changed - Tweaked the number of movement points required to move 1 hex for Small and Medium Freighters 2. Added - Organic fighters and troops now have a small hull bonus for Organic Armor regeneration 3. Fixed - Time Distrotion Burst was 30kT instead of 20kT 4. Changed - Increased combat launch rates for fighters, drones, and satellites 5. Changed - Clarified the log text associated with some intelligence projects 6. Changed - Increased unit maintenance to 10% 7. Fixed - It was still possible to add multiple Space Yards to the queue 8. Fixed - Organic and Crystalline Mines did not have 50% maintenance reduction 9. Changed - Matched space combat and ground combat damage for point-defense weapons 10. Changed - Removed Random Personality Group values from Settings.txt 11. Fixed - Error in nearby enemy target selection for fleets 12. Changed - Small improvements to AI wanted design types 13. Changed - AI will build and scrap planet improvement facilities when appropriate 14. Changed - Improved the AI's criteria for scrapping obsolete units 15. Added - Planets will sometimes recover launched units to remove obsolete ones 16. Changed - Customized unit group sizes for each empire 17. Changed - Improvements to the AI's Population Transport minister 18. Added - Additional descriptive text to some AI requests 19. Fixed - Sometimes the AI thought it was in a disconnected state when it wasn't 20. Added - AI will sometimes follow up its demands for enemies to remove their ships or colonies 21. Added - Extra checks for the AI to determine if there is an enemy presence on the other side of warp points 22. Changed - Improved the filtering on the AI's colonizable planet's list 23. Added - Updated AI Scripts 24. Added - Updated Event and Intelligence scripts
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Awesome! 
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Increased unit maintenance to 10%
What was it at to begin with?
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
umm were people just accumulating too many units or something? It seems like this will hurt the AI more than me since they tend to make tons more units than I do. (I don't use fighters) In fact, the only units I make are recon sats and mines basically. Oh, maybe a few WPs here and there but nothing major.
I don't like the micromanagement of carriers so tend to just use specialized ships in my fleets in place of blobbing fighters/drones.
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Not really. There were improvements to how the AI manages units in this update as well, which negated any issues with the increased maintenance of units.
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Does the AI now focus on weapon platforms rather than lots of troops on their planets. At least 50% of the unit space should really be weapon platforms.
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
I have all ministers under AI control except for research
In the game i am playin right now the AI have build 2 space ports on one of my planet , Is this a bug ?
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
So I set up an all-tech game where I chose all of the racial techs and then turned all the ministers on to see what happened. I noticed a few things... oh my ai style was set to "moderate".
1.) The AI hardly ever uses any sensors other than the normal for some reason, even on scouts and patrol ships, which is odd. And when it does use other sensors, given equal tech level, it should choose temporal over psychic over tachyon, based on minerals costs, but it usually just chooses psychic.
2.) The sensor satellites have armor but no weapons. wouldn't it be better to at least have *some* weapons?
3.) Isn't it generally most effective to have a mix of point defense types, to be able to target multiple fighters?
4.) Should drones have anything other than engines and warheads on them? maybe some kind of armor or something?
5.) The AI chooses normal armor for most of its armor, over better stuff like emissive, or things with other abilities like crystalline or organic... should the other armors be more equal, perhaps?
6.) Some of the designs had the weapons that pierce normal shields in an "all tech" game, well into the time when everyone is using phased shields...
7.) The AI doesn't use any religious items in the ships, even when they are available.
8.) In a full tech game, wouldn't it be better to put *planet improving* items on the homeworlds, things that work 1/planet, and then put all of the *system improving* things on the other worlds, since the homeworld is so valuable?
9) in a full tech game, even with all the various population enhancers, shouldn't the population increase per turn, so that you aren't very very quickly emptying your homeworld of its population?
10) The AI doesn't want to build the temporal starship yards, even on a "huge 10 billion pop gas giant", which is the OBVIOUS place for them to go...
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
1. Temporal or Psychic races will pick their own types of advanced sensors if they are available.
2. In theory it should usually be within a group of regular satellites, so it doesn't make a huge difference.
3. The AI will use a mix of PDs if they have them available and assuming the hull is large enough to incorporate multiple PDs.
4. It depends on the type of drone. Anti-Ship/Planet Drones are just engines, armor, and warheads. Armor is good becaue it adds structure
which increases ramming damage.
5. The AIs with racial armor will use that armor as soon as it can. I haven't setup the default scripts yet so that ministers for players will look at which armors are available. Most AI ships mix armor and emissive armor to save a bit on costs.
6. It's difficult to return what other empires are using, so in some cases the
7. AIs set up to use Religious components (Norak) will employ them if they can spare the space.
8. I suppose you get the system benefits right away on your other planets when they are developing. Also, in a full-tech game, they're tends to be many other planets that can be made much more productive than the homeworld with little effort.
9. The population does increase each turn. If you're homeworld is losing a bit of population that's usually because the migration has leveled off yet.
10. The AI should build Temporal Space Yards if they are available because they have the greatest Space Yard ability - but that probably needs to be check.
Were these randomly generated AIs you were facing?
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
All of my info was for *what my ministers were doing*, no other ministers. Also, I can't seem to find a way to pick and choose any existing AI or Empires. Are any included in the mod? what folders do I have to put them in to be able to choose exactly which empires are going to be in the game, or to modify an existing empire, presumably be able to use their scripts in the single player to see how they "play"? Because I made a custom race, and didn't modify an existing one, as I don't know how... Are there versions of AI empires for all amounts of racial points? Where do I find them and put them?
1.) Not happening for custom made player race...
2.) Okay.
3.) Only saw two types, not all 4 in custom made player race.
4.) Are drones at all useful without ANY warhead at all?
5.) Well, isn't the best way to "save on costs" to make it so that, roughly, the minerals and organics and radioactive costs of a given ship are as close to each other as possible? don't emissive armors not actually cost much (any?) more minerals than normal armor? And also, do all the different racial shipsets have the same amount of armor for equivalent ships?
6.) You didn't finish the message. But it was odd when it seemed like ONLY ONE combat ship used them...
7.) Ah okay, just not the custom player race.
8.) Well, if you fill up your homeworld with planet-improving things, and get the quality of the world up pretty high, the fact that it has a huge population and can be pretty big with "good" planet options should help, not to mention all the expensive things that are already in it!
9.) I think its because of the massive colonization I was doing, heh... I just thought that a "mostly full" planet should be able to increase its population fairly easily, and be able to send out a WHOLE LOT of colony ships without loosing too much population... I guess I like some of the mods that have more reliance on population for production than anything else!
10.) Well, it wasn't for my custom all racial tech player race!
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
I haven't created any saved empire files for the mod yet. I've been asking MM to add a version of the "Use AI from Race" setting like in SE4, which would allow the race in use either the AI files associated with a shipset/flagset. If that happens, I will create some saved empire files that players can add to specify their AI opponents. Right now it's best to just let the game generate AIs for you, as they will use the various races AI files and it makes for a more enjoyable game.
A potential workaround is saving empire files from randomly generated AIs via the player options menu, but I'm not sure if those empire files will retain the race's specific AI files. That's important because I have setup each of the main empires to use specific traits and weapons. If they don't have them available they revert to basic weapons, which puts them at a big disadvantage.
The player's race will use one of the 3 default AI files based on the minister style they choose. These are pretty generic in their setup and refer to only to general components and weapons. In the future, I might add some sort of analysis routine to determine which weapons are actually available and to pick the best one.
1. The default race should pick Tachyon Sensors - but they will only add them to satellites.
3. Each of the race specific AIs has two preferred PD choices they'll mix up.
4. In the Balance Mod, Drones can do lots of things are not stuck on ramming as they are in stock...
5. Emissive armor is twice the total cost of regular armor, of which it uses 50% more minerals.
6. Oops. I wanted to say that it's to make the AI responsive to the designs they encounter, so sometimes they might be using something that isn't great against one combination, but is generally effective. Although I have made a few changes for v1.14, where PPB usage is moderated by what shields are estimated to be available to other races.
9. When migration levels out, the homeworld will start gaining population again. It's actually get beneficial really to be running a bit under the capacity, because if your homeworld was at full population capacity every turn, you'd lose the potential 50M or so of population growth.
10. I think the ability selection script function just returns the first facility with that ability, instead of the facility with the best amount for that ability. Not hard to fix.
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
I checked, and can't you just add more than the "main three" AI types in the empire setup screen? Just put a bunch there, make sure that the empire choices you have are matched to the appropriate file... would that be possible?
Also, Should there be at least ONE intelligence center in the homeworld on a full tech game?
So I have been messing around quite a bit in a full tech game... and to me, there are a ton of items that really aren't all that useful, or have take up way too much space, or whatever... should the AI really want to have so many engines? Is that really worth it? It just seems like there are a ton of commonents that are of limited utility for the space... I dunno. I have been playing too much Imperium Verus for SEIV, and it has a completely new take on how to balance the game that I *very much* prefer...
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
At some point I'll add default scripts for each of the racial traits.
Which components are you finding not so useful?
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Well, some of it is the components for ships, and some of it is the components for planets. There are lots of things... I think that the weapons should have major, easily understandable differences... lets say you make a custom, full tech, all the racial techs, and full ruins techs.
If you look at the "final" items in the game, you should see that every single weapon that remains on the final list should have some reason for being used. Weapons that don't have a reason for being used need to be rethought, or combined with other weapons!
Now, there are a few things that a weapon can be used for:
being put on cheap, small ships so that they remain useful to the late game, as this particular weapon works good in large numbers and doesn't have a way of being much better when put on a really big ship
being put on really big ships to do things like base cracking, and getting past things with advanced types of emissive armor, or whatever reason you would want to do massive damage in a single shot
lessening an enemy ship's ability to actually hurt you
helping a ship without many other defenses get away from a single foe, so that you need to bring more than one ship to bear to go straggler-hunting
Draining Shields for ships that have lots of shields
Armor Burning for ships that have lots of armor
Bypassing Armor
Bypassing most Shields
Bypassing shields and armor to attack devices, but this should be a gambit
Intercepting fighters, drones, and such
Attacking planets
In my opinion, every single device should have a reason for existing, and have a place where it would be smart to actually use it...
The same should apply with facilities...
In my opinion, if you actually fold all of the racial and ruins techs into the main tech tree, and simply lay out a few paths where you can focus for "styles" of techs, you don't REALLY need so many weapons!
Like you could have a one "standard" set of weapons, without focusing on crystalline or temporal or organic or psychic...
organic weapons could be one of the main "alternate" set of weapons, and psychic doesn't really need a large amount of weapons, it could be fine with one, that has something that makes it unique, for the most part... temporal could simply give *upgrades* to some aspect of shield burners. or psychic could give *upgrades* to organic weapons, but only a living ship / living computer / living bridge could use them... if you want, I can send you a version of Imperium Verus for SEIV, I'm pretty sure the author won't mind, that has the sort of thing I'm talking about...
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Considering players usually don't take all the racial traits and that a couple of weapons are parts of a tech progression, then you have exactly what you describe. You want a weapon with a high damage per hit medium range weapon, try Wave-Motion Guns. You want a compact weapon that does high damage at short range, go with Ripper Beams. Want something that skips all shields and armor - there's Null Space Projectors. Take a close look at the items...
It's the same facilities, there's not really any facility that doesn't have a useful purpose outside of the case where you might have a racial facility that outclasses a regular facility. Even Monolith Facilities - which were an automatic upgrade in stock for any resource facility - have a specific place in the mod without making the traditional resource facilities obsolete.
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Well, apparently the racial facilities and the nonracial facilities of some of the same types do stack... like the population increasing stuff, that stacks..
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
just so you know, I found a glitch: it will only allow me to build one space yard facility anywhere, saying the "only one per planet."
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Codex, thats not a glitch. Thats hard coded in by Aaron (the maker of Space Empires). Only one spaceyard facility per planet/ship is the rule.
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Astorax: No, actually it's a moddable restriction now. Look in Facilities.txt / Components.txt for the space yard entries to see.
Codex: You mean you build a spaceyard on one planet and now you can't build any spaceyards anywhere else in your empire? That's weird - I never encountered that with 1.13...
~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious 
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
I think the nullspace projectors in balance mod are underpowered. I've been using them in our PBW game and well.. not too happy.
If I pack a dreadnaught with them it hardly has any punch at all in battles.
Sure... one on one can be interesting... but the development of the weapon falls real short. Especially considering how much research you have to put into it.
Perhaps it would be interesting for you to include a weapon that comes after null space projectors V. Perhaps a bigger missile or a faster one.. Whatever.. cause currently it's not making me happy.
~Myrath
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
For seeker weapons to work effectively, you usually need to give them some projection from PD by using them in larger numbers or adding another element like fighters to give seekers a better chance of hitting. You may also want to consider delivering them via smaller, cheaper ships using the max range strategy as well since there's no real advantage launching them from a slower large ship.
Re: Balance Mod v1.13 Available!
Hooray for CK!