Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Dodd]

Kwok, congadulations with version 1.0. The A.I is garrisoning warp points and its colonies much better than before.

Is it possibe to tweak the AI so that its fleets stay more upto date? In one game Im playing the AI maintaind a large fleet at a warp point, however it did not keep its ships uptodate. I was basicaly using advanced temporal weaponry whilst they employed at best early depleted uranium cannons (often there might be only a single missile or cannon on a AI frigate or destroyer).

As for treaties, I have noticed in both version 1.00 games that Im playing that they are easy to maintain. Once Ive got a treaty going with the AI they seem reluctant to ever break it. Is this deliberate?

All in all the AI is becoming more chalenging. Thanks for the work your putting in.

[Captain Kwok]

The AI's behaviour primarily depends on what you do to them. If you're nice and don't make them angrier (like colonizing their space or destroying their ships) it's unlikely most of the neutral or peaceful races will attack. The aggressive AIs are easier to antagonize and will break treaties.

For the v1.01 patch I've told the AI to retrofit more ships at once - that should help with out of date ships.

[Q]

Which are the races that should show an aggressive behaviour?

[shinigami]

Massive Ship Mount
Number Of Abilities := 4

Typo?

[shinigami]

Reading another thread about making individual ships more distinctive I got an idea about one way to achieve it, combat speeds. Making smaller ships faster in combat and larger ships slower encourages more mixed fleet set-ups and causes the smaller ships to retain their value into the later game.

Attached is a zip with two modded files, VehicleSizes and CompEnhancements (added a little increased range to ship mounts to offset the slowdown of the larger ships.)

I've had a blast playtesting with these changes and thought I'd share. However, since all I have done is a minor modification of the Balance Mod I don't think it would be right to release this as a separate mod (not my work and all) so I thought I would just put the two files out there for folks to look at and play around with. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Q]

One more suggestion: in version 1.0 it makes no difference in ship speed if you go from the highest level of ion engines to the first level of contra-terrene engines.
That seems a little odd to me. I understand that you wanted to make the speed increase more gradually but still there should be a clear effect IMO if you use the more advanced type of engines.

[Captain Kwok]

The Contra-Terrene Engine is an improvement over the level 3 Ion Engine, which is the branch point for the CT series. Although a level 5 Ion Engine is equivalent in movepoint production to a level 2 CT Engine, it's also a dead end tech and really intended as a economical engine for non-combat ships.

[Yoda]

I'm just plugging a Balance Mod game setup on pbw.

SEV Galactic Domination

Starting resources: 10000
Starting planets: 3
Home planet value: Average
Score display: allied
Technology level: Low
Racial points: 2000
Quadrant type: Cluster
Quadrant size: Very Large (200 sectors)
Event frequency: Low
Event severity: Low
Technology cost: High
Victory conditions: Last Man / Alliance standing
Maximum units: 20000
Maximum ships: 20000
Computer players: None
Other game settings:

No Star destroyers / black hole creators
No Warp point creation / destruction
No Ancient Race allowed

I'm open to other suggestions regarding rules / game setup

I'd like to have turns coming in once a day for a little while, then as the game expands slow things down, once we have really large empires I'm receptive to extending the turn time past 48hrs.

I'm planning to wait for the next patch and whatever changes in the balance mod go along with it.

And Kwok, Awesome work! I’m really impressed with how much time you've put into this thing!

[se5a]

wait till next version of se5 comes out yoda

[Yoda]

Do you mean the next patch? Because that is the current plan.

[se5a]

yeah, I should have read your post properly I guess.

[RCCCL]

I was trying to start a game with only myself and a friend as the only true empires, but with many neutral races. For some reason, even after editing the settings file, and starting many new games, only 5 neutral races were produced.


Edit: It appears this is the case in stock 1.17 as well. I'm sure before this it was possible to have many more neutral races.

[Romulus68]

Kwok,

Can you incorporate some of the new races or shipsets into your mod?

(Ngath and Arackterra) The ones Fryon posted a link about.

I have them on my site for easy download. http://hosted.filefront.com/lacyj3aolcom

[javaslinger]

The patch is out... 1.20...

Any idea how long until the Balance mod update?

Thanks,

Javaslinger

[Captain Kwok]

When I get home from work? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[javaslinger]

Oh no! You mean you work??? ack... I shouldn't have patched yet... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

BTW, please help with my other message.. there must be a way to cancel a surrender message before you hit end turn right???

There must be.... it only makes sense...

Javaslinger

[Romulus68]

I got it.....on my link.

[Captain Kwok]

Version 1.01 of the Balance Mod is available.

You can grab it here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

Nothing really special about this version other than it works with SE:V v1.20 and fixes a few other items. Note mines are currently always visible - which is a current SE:V bug I think - so it's really for the future. Basically your place mines will improve their cloak ability somewhat automatically.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Version 1.01 (18 December 2006)
-------------------------------

1. Fixed - Error with AI design for Small Crystalline Fighters
2. Fixed - Error in maximum number of engines for Small Organic Freighter
3. Fixed - Error in supply storage amount for Quantum Engines
4. Fixed - Point-Defense Weapons did not have troops as a valid target type
5. Changed - Increased sight range for Basic Sensors
6. Changed - Existing Mines automatically increase in cloak ability based partly on level of Mines tech area
7. Updated - Settings.txt with new entry from SE:V v1.20
8. Changed - AI will now retrofit more ships at once
9. Updated - AI Scripts
</pre><hr />

[Captain Kwok]

Oops. I accidently left in the SoundEffects.txt file from Tampa_Gamer's sound effects mod!

I've updated the .zip here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/files/BalanceModv101.zip

[RCCCL]

Was getting ready to post about the error that was causing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Captain Kwok]

Tampa_Gamer has provided an updated Tech Chart for the mod:
http://www.captainkwok.net/files/BalanceModv101_TechChart.pdf

[neofit]

Thanks for your hard work Kwok.

An amusing thing happened with the AI. I haven't played since 1.13, uninstalled the game, installed it anew, patched to 1.20 , installed the Balance Mod v1.01 and started a new game. In the first neighbouring sector I have explored I bumped on the Zholhuk protectorate. (btw, when a race description says "[..] has prevented them from developing interstellar travel", is it safe to assume that the race is a "neutral" one?).

Turn 1 I send them a general message. Next turn they reply with a treaty proposal with just one clause - non-aggression in neutral systems. Grats, this is a huge improvement over the random half-dozen clauses we used to receive.

Now, I am not satisfied with this, he has some green planets and I have to try and fool him into letting me colonize planets in his system. So I send him first a counter-proposal with just one clause, non-aggression in all systems.

Next turn he replies with TWO messages. First a counter-counter-proposal where he insists in having non-aggression in neutral systems only, which makes sense. And another with a new treaty proposal with one clause: allow colonization in each other systems. So, this behaviour (sending a counter-proposal together with a new proposal) is still in. Also, if the race description is correct, and depending on what "interstellar travel" means (if it means "moving between stars", as in "use jumpgates") he can't even jump into my any of my systems, and shouldn't even bother with a clause like that. And since the only system he knows and can travel to is his, he shouldn't also have the notion of a 'neutral system' to propose a non-aggression in.

Now, I of course have accepted his second treaty proposal about colonization, and he went from indifferent to displeased http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. So now I am supposed to be able to colonize planets in his system without driving him nuts, but have already pissed him off by just signing a treaty that he proposed, AND still have no non-aggression treaty. Logically the former shouldn't go without the latter, we'll see how it evolves http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Shadowstar]

Why does the AI in that situation remind me of a number of world leaders?

[Dizzy]

Captain Kwok said:
Tampa_Gamer has provided an updated Tech Chart for the mod:
http://www.captainkwok.net/files/BalanceModv101_TechChart.pdf



Yummy, Thanks Tampa_Gamer!

[Raapys]

I'd prefer if several of the AI empires were inclined to war regardless of if they'd been insulted or not. I.e. sort of like the Kra'hen race from Imperium Galactica 2; no diplomacy, just pure troublemakers. As it is I'm always getting spammed with treaty proposals; I'm not even bothering responding to them anymore.

Even with the Empires see all systems( i.e. no fog of war) option on, the one empire I'm at war with hasn't launched a single attack yet the 30 or so turns we've been at war. Not sure how much one can do to alter this, though.

Now that the AI's units are automatically placed around warp points when combat is initiated, they could use a huge boost to satellite production and deployment. To my experience the most they use is 4-5 satellites on a few of their colonies( way too few at any rate) and usually none at warp points.

[AAshbery76]

An A.I empire that is at war with everybody, is just a weak A.I empire that will die early game.The Kra'hen were superpowered in IG2, ie cheating A.I.

[Tim_Ward]

AIs shouldn't be at war with everyone, but there should be some that just plain decide they feel like having some more territory one day, then attack one of their neighbours without provokation.

[javaslinger]

Some things I've noticed so far.. playing with 1.20 and BM 1.01 .

I am miles ahead in planets and research. I left all of my planets defenseless essentially with no units... lost one planet. I simply was never attacked.

I was playing on Med amount of AI's (8) and no neutrals. Highest difficultly with Med bonuses....

4 of the AI's all offered me treaties immediately. 3 others that I met later, after I was way ahead, would not join into a treaty with me.

The AI ship designs that I have run across are way behind me.

Some positives.. I got annihilated by minefields by one race... whoops...

Another AI seems to have quite the well defended homeworld and core systems. Haven't scratched the paint yet. But their ships are pathetic...

I have only run into a a very few fleets from any AI's... In fact maybe 2 fleets on 6 ships or more...

Weird thing, I came across a planet with 2 light carriers.. but no fighters to be found.... planet based or otherwise.

Still I'm having a blase, played 12 hours until 6am.. ouch...

But the AI is just no agressive enough. If I can leave my systems wide upon without fear I will be able to race ahead in development by ignoring the threat. Which is exactly what I did.

Any human player would have noticed this and raped me...

Just my observations for your continuing work.

Thanks again and I LOVE the BM!

Javaslinger

[RCCCL]

neofit said:

Now, I of course have accepted his second treaty proposal about colonization, and he went from indifferent to displeased http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. So now I am supposed to be able to colonize planets in his system without driving him nuts, but have already pissed him off by just signing a treaty that he proposed, AND still have no non-aggression treaty.



It seems to me that most of the AIs get upset when any ships move through their systems. So their going from indifferent to displeased more likely has to do with your ship in the system, especially if it is still there.

In a game I have going currently, I have a single colony in two differnet neutral races systems, as long as I don't move any ships through the system, they seem content, but if a single one of my ships rears it's head they get a little uppity, they don't seem to care about the colonies though, or the sttilites and mines I've placed around them.

[jimbob]

I seem to remember for SEIII or SEIV (or both) that there were frequent AI competitions. People wrote an AI, and then all the AIs were submitted and pitted against eachother in a no-humans game.

Am I confused? Do we not have any AI writers anymore?

It would be a very cool thing if this were to happen again, and I'd be willing to pitch in a donation/prize for first, second, third... and something super duper special for last place http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Phoenix-D]

Give it some time. SEV's only been out a few months, and the AI scripts are a hell of a lot more complex and flexible than SEIV.

[Raapys]

Before that can be done Aaron needs to fix the hard-coded issue with AIs and fog of war.

[neofit]

v1.20, BM 1.01, 2nd new game. Discovered 10 AIs in the first game, but gave up when I got 10x the research of the next best race around turn 70. Started the 2ng game on Hard and Max bonuses, discovered 4 races so far at turn 40.

I like the new behaviour. Every race has offered me some kind treaty on the first or second turn after we found each other. And it usually either has a non-aggression in all systems clause or it is negotiable with 1-2 counter-proposals.

Now, I often get, on the same turn, a treaty proposal together with a counter-proposal to my own proposal. Not sure if the drop of mood I sometimes see after I only choose one of these is attributable to me not answering one of these proposals. Just to make sure I don't propose treaties on the first 3 turns after discovering a new race, they send their offer soon enough.

Also, I don't know if it's moddable, but I am still getting some weird proposals. Oh, far from the totally random ones I used to receive back in the 1.13 days, but still. For instance, is it possible to make sure that the AI proposes (and accepts) treaties that contain "both empires share resupply" and "both empires share repairs" only if bundled with the "non-aggression in all systems" clause? Because I am sometimes receiving the share supply/repair offers bundled with the "non-aggression in neutral space" clause which does not make sense.

I have tried accepting one, mostly since it came with the population migration clause. And sure enough, the sharing clause does not supersede the non-aggression clause, i.e. I still can't peacefully reach his planets to resupply.

Also, a bit besides the point, but the addition of pop migration to SE5 together with the AI's eagerness to sign treaties actually makes the game trivial (yes, even more trivial). Sign migration treaties with 2-4 races that breath a different atmosphere and voilà, most of the planets you can colonize can be undomed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. In SE4 one used to fight and conquer other races then micromanage populations with freighters in order to achieve the same result http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. But please do not use this to make it harder for people to sign migration treaties.

[frightlever]

Raapys said:
Before that can be done Aaron needs to fix the hard-coded issue with AIs and fog of war.



Does the AI play better if you remove the fog of war? I like the concept but I'll give it up if the AI has a better chance against me.

Also regarding the weak AI - they don't seem to build many WP or garrison their colonies. Or at least not enough to matter.

[AAshbery76]

The A.I seems to garrison its colonies after they build facilities.I would've thought the A.I should build some defence first.

[Raapys]

Does the AI play better if you remove the fog of war?


Well, the AI is harmless with fog of war on, i.e. there's like no chance at all he'll actually wipe the player out however badly one plays. With fog of war he's still far from aggresive, but it's alot better.

[Captain Kwok]

I'm putting together v1.02 - and besides a more aggressive AI - is there anything else you guys would like to see?

[neofit]

Captain Kwok said:
I'm putting together v1.02 - and besides a more aggressive AI - is there anything else you guys would like to see?


Though question since I don't exactly know what is feasible and what's not.

I'm in my 2nd game with 1.20 + BM 1.01. The first one, on normal difficulty settings was canceled at around turn 70, when I reached 160K research compared to the 15K for the guy in 2nd place. In my current game, also near turn 70, I am at 83K, the next best one is at around 50K, but only because this time there are no civs that breath hydrogen, and half the planets in my sectors have this atmosphere. Anyways, both times the AI hasn't been aggressive so far, allowing me to expand nicely without me even having a single ship for defense.

Now, I am not sure the AI needs to be made more aggressive. I mean it's not 'natural' or 'realistic' to start a war with another race that you've just discovered just for the sake of it. Only if you need to grow but have nowhere to go. What I am seeing is the AI fighting each other when there still are a few unpopulated systems around them. I think that this AI growth issue needs to be resolved before they are made simply more aggressive.

As for the treaties, I would like a total rewrite http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. It doesn't make sense to have one single big treaty per race, we should have separate negotiable clauses. If I have trade + non-aggression and want to add migration, I shouldn't have to re-negotiate the whole treaty. As when a country wants to sign the Kyoto protocol, they don't have to re-negotiate the Geneva Convention, nuclear proliferation nor a 200-years-old peace treaty. Now I bet this is not feasible with a mod, but it costs nothing to ask.
To compensate, maybe there is a way to have the AI propose and much more eagerly accept changes in treaties that only have one clause added, changed or removed?

As for the treaty clauses I'd like to see some of them be either linked or implied. As I've posted before, it does not make sense to have for instance "both empires share resupply" without at least "non-aggression in all systems". Either the AI should not propose nor accept such a treaty, or the acceptance of the "both empires share resupply" clause should imply non-aggression even without the non-aggression clause being explicitly stated (but I believe the latter is more of an engine issue).

Also, non-aggression, either in neutral or colony space, should come with "share minefield codes", in either neutral or colony space respectively. IMO we should get rid of the minefield clause altogether and use our non-aggression clauses to deal with mines, as in SEIV. It made more sense. For the 3 people that play against humans and can think of some clever strategies using separate clauses for non-aggression and minefields we may have a toggle, maybe? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Its seems the AI is rather reluctant to sign treaties with high trade percentages. I don't see the reason why, higher percentages = more free money. It's not like the weaker one is losing anything, nor like his trade has a huge impact on the stronger one. And BTW, how does the game figure out which empire is the weaker one? Total score?

[Q]

The largest medium fighter has 30kT space and the next research level gives a large fighter with 32kT space. But as this large fighter needs two more engines of 2kT each to have the same speed as the medium fighter you better stick with the medium fighter.
I would suggest that you just keep the engines per move relation for the fighters constant.

[Captain Kwok]

Unfortunately units still can't be retrofitted which was the assumption when the fighter sizes were made. Something will have to be done though.

---

I wasn't talking about making the AI blindly aggressive, just simpler things like attacking non-treaty ships in their space or following through on attacks during war.

---

You can just proposes changes to your treaty to change individual stipulations... the AI's willingness to accept certain clauses will depend on it's mood towards your empire. One area that probably needs to be improved is the AI initiating positive changes to its treaties in times of good relations.

I've made a few small changes for matching certain stipulations together, so hopefully you'll see less awkward combinations.

The AIs will start out with lower percentages in trade, so if you make an effort to keep them happy with your empire, you'll be able to earn more trade income. If the AI has a low bonus to start, then the trade really favors the player so it can't just be a freebie.

[Raapys]

Now, I am not sure the AI needs to be made more aggressive. I mean it's not 'natural' or 'realistic' to start a war with another race that you've just discovered just for the sake of it.



It's not only about that type of aggresiveness: even when the AI is in war with someone, he'll never really attack. That needs to be sorted out.

[MisterBenn]

I agree Raapys. The only attacks I've ever received from the AI players have been when I have colonised within their home system, and they attack to remove my new colonies. Neutral races have done this to me too. I've never seen an AI player send ships against my colonies in a system that only I own.

[AAshbery76]

The A.I needs to remember what planets other races own so they can attack.I can only remember because I write the details in system notes,the A.I can't.

This can only be fixed by Aarons programming it.I would think this a major priority for the next patch.

[Captain Kwok]

That's because they are not aware of them.

[neofit]

AAshbery76 said:
The A.I needs to remember what planets other races own so they can attack.I can only remember because I write the details in system notes,the A.I can't.



Of course it can. It DOES know where you are whether you want it or not, it has the whole game engine and planets database to find you. The same code that allows you to filter planets in the Alt-P window by your/enemy/allies. Now whether the AI can make good use of this information is another issue.


Captain Kwok said:
The AIs will start out with lower percentages in trade, so if you make an effort to keep them happy with your empire, you'll be able to earn more trade income.



I've been meaning to ask this for some time: how do I go about keeping the AI happy? I've been trying to send them general messages just to keep in touch, trying to stay away from their system, but sooner than later they go from amiable to displeased as I grow stronger, they usually drop down two notches as I pass them in the Comparisons window. I can't even imagine how to make an alliance, and if I manage to sucker some into one in the very early game, they should start hating me by turn 100 anyway.

[Captain Kwok]

neofit said:Of course it can. It DOES know where you are whether you want it or not, it has the whole game engine and planets database to find you. The same code that allows you to filter planets in the Alt-P window by your/enemy/allies. Now whether the AI can make good use of this information is another issue.

It's planet list works the same as any player - if they don't have current sensor coverage, then it doesn't know who owns the planet. Furthermore, it creates a list of its potential attack locations each turn, and again if it doesn't have current sensor coverage then it forgets the planet as a target.

[mrscrogg]

Some races should be inheritly more aggresive than others , so where one race would accept a treaty another , brcause of it's xenophillia would accept trade with every intent on breaking it or not accept at all because of it genetic , socialogical makeup

[neofit]

Captain Kwok said:
It's planet list works the same as any player - if they don't have current sensor coverage, then it doesn't know who owns the planet. Furthermore, it creates a list of its potential attack locations each turn, and again if it doesn't have current sensor coverage then it forgets the planet as a target.


You mean it doesn't cheat even a little by lifting the fog of war even on the hardest setting? And then it cannot make plans that span more than one turn? I've always thought it did and was expecting some cunning attacks from him, now I wish I didn't know how it really works http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Captain Kwok]

There's no cheating by the AI.

[Phoenix-D]

Unless you give it bonus or mod a cheat, of course. In my case I modded in a high-stealth level free sensor unit, giving the AI permanent vision of any system it enters. I'm working on an event that will spread them through -all- the systems.

[Romulus68]

Captain Kwok said:
There's no cheating by the AI.



well, it needs to cheat! lol

[Tim_Ward]

I'm starting to think the fog of war might've been more trouble than it was worth.

[Phoenix-D]

Then turn it off in your games..there's an option in game setup to make it work just like SEV. Or turn it off entirely. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[AAshbery76]

It should work like it does in many other games.When a planet is out of sensor coverage it should stay marked as the last known owner and become a A.I target.This needs MM to programme it.This is how GC2 works.

[Dodd]

In version 1.02, I would like to see large and heavy ship mounts having a greater range. This would make them more effective against the faster and more agile frigates which I tend to build in large numbers. I dont build any thing larger than a destroyer (with the exception of carriers) as large ships are too expensive and vulnerable.

[shinigami]

Admittedly I have not tested this(and haven't noticed in combat), but the way Shield Regenerators are written it looks like they can only regenerate "Normal Shields." How about added some phased shield regen?

[Romulus68]

Dodd said:
In version 1.02, I would like to see large and heavy ship mounts having a greater range. This would make them more effective against the faster and more agile frigates which I tend to build in large numbers. I dont build any thing larger than a destroyer (with the exception of carriers) as large ships are too expensive and vulnerable.



I tend to agree. The larger ships have a lot of trouble defeating a much smaller frigate with max engines.

I also, can see both sides of the argument. That smaller ships should be faster and harder to hit.

Tough call.

[se5a]

shinigami said:
Admittedly I have not tested this(and haven't noticed in combat), but the way Shield Regenerators are written it looks like they can only regenerate "Normal Shields." How about added some phased shield regen?



you might want to test this.
se4 looked the same, but it did regenerate phased as well.

[Romulus68]

How hard is it to write the AI scripts?

I would love to build a strategy for a few races, but unsure if my programming/coding skills match my desires.

[neofit]

Can you please add a new colony type to ColonyTypes.txt? I use small low value planets for storage, and would like to name them "Storage Compound" or something like that. "Resource Colony" doesn't fit, I am using it for planets that have the 3 resource values over 100%.

I've tried adding it myself, but either I have to start a new game for the change to take effect or we are limited to 13 colony types.

[AAshbery76]

Does the A.I actually build a recon satellite on their planets?

[DrewBlack]

Hi

Kwok whats the eta on the 1.02 version?

thanks

Drew

[Captain Kwok]

AAshbery76 said:
Does the A.I actually build a recon satellite on their planets?


All of their combat satellites have basic sensors, so in essence they have at least basic coverage. Tachyon sensors on sats - not yet but soon.

It should be a few more days for v1.02 - lots of revising in the scripts which takes to test etc.

[Raapys]

Don't put the tachyon sensors on the combat satellites, though. It takes up way too much space.

[neofit]

I have found a Massive Shield Depleter in some ruins. According to the description, it's a "Massive gamma radiation beam that saps all of a target's shields but does no other damage".

As I understand it one hit is enough to kill all of a ship's shields. Yet they come in many levels, each making more damage than the previous one, and being more costly too.

Why do these weapons have a damage rating at all? If the description is correct they shouldn't have one, and the next level should just be cheaper to produce and maintain that the previous one. And there shouldn't be any reason to put one in a mount.

Or is the description misleading and it works just like a regular weapon, with just a lot more damage (to shields only) for its cost in research?

[Raapys]

Looks to me as if the weapon itself is misconfigured, because at level 1 the regular Shield Depleter weapon is about as good as the Massive one because of 1/5 the recharge time. So something's obviously broken there. Keep the 10 second recharge time but up the damage of the MSD to 10k or something, I'd say.

[AAshbery76]

I don't know if this is happening just in the your mod or also in vanilla.I'm finding the combat ends just before the A.I ships retreat to another hex.So you have another combat round straight after when all that happens is the A.I retreats a few seconds into the round to another hex.You then have to fight again in the next hex.It causes a lot of wasted time.Why is the combat ending just before the retreat?

[Captain Kwok]

Is it doing this at 3 minutes? I forgot to extend combat back to 5 minutes after the fleet split fix was made. I think with the 3 minute limit and 2500 distance the ships just about approach the retreat barrier. If that is so, just adjust the value in settings.txt back to 300 seconds from 180.

[AAshbery76]

Yes it was doing 180.

The plague bomb level 1 component report is also borked.It says
"Plague bombs create a Level[%LEVEL%]Plague"

[AAshbery76]

Another thing I have noticed with the balance mod is treaty's between the A.I's never go above trade agreements.My relations with the A.I's never go above indifferent.The relations settings need tweaking.I would like to see military agreements,alliances,etc and such in the game.

[Captain Kwok]

They are treaties for military alliances (but they do require the AI generally to be at war) and partnerships. You probably don't see the AI offering because they don't propose treaties if they already have one and/or their mood is not that great towards you. It's something I've kind of change for v1.02...

[AAshbery76]

Captain Kwok said:
Is it doing this at 3 minutes? I forgot to extend combat back to 5 minutes after the fleet split fix was made.



I'm still getting the fleets split in the mod! Is this fixed in vanilla?

A few thing I've noticed by the A.I.The A.I seems to build fleets of the same size attack ships,does it not use mixed fleets of smaller and bigger attack ships?

I have seen the A.I use defence ships for surveying systems,should it not use exploration ships?

[Captain Kwok]

I was referring to the crash that could occur with the split fleets - not the absence of.

There is the possibility of creating dedicated Explorers as I have the design types in place - but not sure how much it would help.

Mixed ship sizes is on the to-do list. I'm currently working on some scrapping functions and trying to get rid of a few script bugs that have popped up elsewhere. Maybe for v1.03?

[Q]

I noticed that if you placed some new races in the empire folder of the main game (not of the game types folders), they are not only avalaible for a balance mod game as human controled race, but are also chosen as random created AI empire.
As they lack the modified AI scripts they will however almost completely be inactive.

[RCCCL]

I've noticed this too, Q.

I've also noticed that, becuase the Balance mod folder does not have it's own folder for created races, the races I've made for balanced are available for vanilla, and visa versa, which can be confusing if you've a lot of created races.(they're not compatible)

I went ahead and just made a folder for them in the Balanced mod folder, but you might want to put one in the next version.

[DrewBlack]

Kwok

Hi, thanks for this fantastic mod, however on the latest version 1.01 if I change the default max number of planets in the large sectors from 100 to 255, the game freezes any ideas???

Thanks

[Captain Kwok]

Try changing it for both "Maximum Number of Systems" and the for the "Maximum Number Of Systems Large Quadrant" in Settings.txt...

[DrewBlack]

kWOK

IM A DUFFUS!!!

Must have been having to many beers over the christmas period..... im so ashamed i missed that.... IDIOT!!!!

Thanks

Drew

[Q]

The temporal weapons, especially the time distortion burst and the small time distortion burst, are IMO extremely weak if you compare them to standard weapons like the meson blaster.

[Atrocities]

I get an error when trying to load the latest version of the mod CK. It tells me that there are some files missing.

I have attached a screen cap.

[Captain Kwok]

That file was updated in v1.01 for the SE:V v1.20 patch. Are you sure you extracted all the files? Sometimes when unzipping you have only a single file selected and only that gets extracted. Anyhow I'd recommend you unzip the file again.

---

I'm hoping to get v1.02 out tomorrow. Besides the usual fixes and adjustments, some new AI scripting was done to get the AI to more actively pursue enemy targets. For example, if the AI has some free attack ships they should attack valid targets (ie enemy and approx. same strength or less) immediately in their visible space.

I've also got scripts ready to go for AI scrapping of obsolete vehicles and units in cargo, but some of the system functions for those orders are not working properly so I haven't been able to implement them yet.

[Atrocities]

Thats probably the problem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I look forward to the next version. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I really wish Aaron would incorperate your modifications into the stock game.

[Raapys]

And then fix the AI.

How much of it do you think is fixable with the modding files, Kwok? I know it's possible to alter how often the computer should do attacks, etc., but do you think those settings by themselves can fix the AIs aggressivenes?

[Captain Kwok]

The level of AI aggressiveness is completely controlled by the AI scripts. However, certain items like not remembering AI colonies when they are not in current sensor range could benefit from a few hardcode changes. Changes like that would help allow scripters to develop more finely tuned AI that can be intelligently aggressive.

[Captain Kwok]

The update is almost ready to go, but I'm still working out a few kinks with some of the changes to the AI. It'll probably be a bit later this weekend for v1.02 to be posted.

I also heard back from MM on some of the scrapping issues and fixes have been made for the next patch - which will allow me to have the AI smartly scrap obsolete units and ships - and keep the AI's defenses up to date. Another fix was made to a function that helps control planet unit launching in the mod - currently more units are being launched than should be. This makes it harder for carriers and other transports to pick up enough units from cargo.

[AAshbery76]

Ready yet?

[Captain Kwok]

The update is almost ready. I have a few small changes to make based on some user feedback on vehicle costs/attributes and I still need to evaluate if some of the attack order items are working out.

I've made a few tweaks to AI diplomacy as well. They shouldn't spam you every turn with an offer if there is no treaty in place. They should also occasionally offer a new treaty in place of an existing treaty - something they didn't do before.

On another positive note, I through in some extra items I didn't intend to do for this update, including some tweaks to AI colony type selection that takes into account the available facility space and some retrofit fixes too.

[Captain Kwok]

Q said:
I noticed that if you placed some new races in the empire folder of the main game (not of the game types folders), they are not only available for a balance mod game as human controlled race, but are also chosen as random created AI empire.
As they lack the modified AI scripts they will however almost completely be inactive.

I've corrected this for v1.02 and the mod will no longer list each flag or shipset twice either. I've also added the following info to the readme.txt file for player's to use the custom races with the mod:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
5. Adding New Races to the Mod:
================================

If you've downloaded a new shipset and would like to use in the Balance Mod, follow the steps
below:

1. Create a folder in the Balance Mod's Empires folder with the same name as the Race's default folder - it
is important to use the exact same name so the game will now where the pictures and models are
2. Copy the race's [Race Name]_AI_main.txt file into that folder
3. Edit the following lines in [Race Name]_AI_main.txt:

From:
AI Script File := [Race Name]\[Race Name]_Main_Script.csf
AI Script Empire Setup File := [Race Name]\[Race Name]_Setup_Script.csf

To:
AI Script File := Default\Default_Main_Script.csf
AI Script Empire Setup File := Default\Default_Setup_Script.csf

This will tell the AI to use the Balance Mod's default AI files with the ship set, making sure it works
properly with the mod.
</pre><hr />
At some point I will include some individualized AI scripts for the more popular custom races so they don't have to use the default script.

[Captain Kwok]

The next version of the Balance Mod is available. This version makes some fixes and adjustments, as well as lots of little AI upgrades. The AI shouldn't be spamming you anymore with treaty requests, but let me know if they ever propose a new treaty when an existing one is in place.

As usual, grab the update here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Version 1.02 (07 January 2007)
------------------------------

1. Fixed - Error in allowable vehicle types for Ionic Pulse Missile
2. Fixed - Error in number of abilities for Massive Ship Mount
3. Fixed - Error in tech requirements for all Medium Freighters
4. Fixed - Error in exchange of trade items
5. Fixed - AI designs will no longer have 5kT of space remaining on some designs
6. Changed - AI designs will only add enough Life Support or Crew Quarters to fulfill requirements
7. Changed - AI will no longer retrofit Colonizers
8. Fixed - Occasional error for AI that sometimes resulted in a long delay during processing
9. Changed - Increased planet's population, supply, and ordnance amounts, but decreased cargo storage
10. Fixed - Error in ability amount description for Plague Bombs
11. Fixed - Error in Psychic Weapons tech area
12. Changed - Telekinetic Projectors increased to 11 tech levels
13. Changed - Tech requirement levels for Psychic Whiplash
14. Changed - Tech requirement levels for Stupifier
15. Changed - Increased damage amounts for Time Distortion Burst and Small Time Distortion Burst
16. Changed - Slightly reduced Organic regeneration rates
17. Fixed - Racial trait Drone hulls did not have the correct maintenance reduction
18. Fixed - AI flags and shipsets no longer listed in duplicate
19. Added - Additional mini flags (Thanks to Wayne W.)
20. Changed - AI players should occasionally offer new treaties in place of old ones
21. Changed - AI players should no longer spam other players with treaties
22. Changed - AI will no longer retrofit colony ships and will properly retrofit bases
23. Changed - AI will now issue attack orders against valid targets for attack ships
24. Added - Modifiers to tweak AI colony type selection based on available facility space
25. Updated - AI Scripts
</pre><hr />

[Q]

Excellent!
Thank you for your work and the instruction about new races.

[MisterBenn]

Sounds very promising! I'll be trying out at the first opportunity. Once again the effort is appreciated.

[Tim_Ward]

Kwok is: the man.

[Captain Kwok]

One item I forgot to mention is some of the new attack scripts I put in for Attack ships. Let me know if you notice a difference in the AI's aggressiveness when in a no-treaty or war state. The more aggressive AIs (Sithrak, Xiati, Sergetti, etc.) should be the most active.

Also let me know if the AI's research point levels remain competitive. I added some modifiers that should push them to make more research colonies, particularly on larger breathables. Other colony types like Resupply Depots and Construction Yards will appear more often on domed colonies or tiny breathables. Overall resource collection will be down a bit, but it will be mostly with Organics/Radioactives, which were always being made in excess anyway.

---

With the latest SE:V beta I've been able to implement a few new functions for the AI. One of them that works nicely is the scrapping of obsolete WPs on planets. Once a WP is obsolete and some time has passed, then the AI will scrap them (50% of them each turn) which will push up the demand for new WPs to be built. The overall effect will be the AIs planets should feature modern defenses.

The second item that should do better with the next patch is carriers. There was a bug in SE:V where a function that returned the units in space was always 0 - this would lead to planet's launching all but one of their sats/fighters/mines (rather than just 50%) into space leaving little for Carriers and Sat/Mine Layers to pick up and distribute.

A third item (not yet tested) is the scrapping of resource facilities on certain colony types (such Resource Colony or Mining-Farming Colony etc) when Monolith facilities become available. The AI will scrap 1 resource facility per turn on those planets, which will result in the planet building a Monolith instead.

I'm also going to create a new function for the AI to use remote mining ships. Essentially it will give orders to remote mining ships to go to an asteroid field and sit there. I suppose I'll have to put in some check to prevent more than 1 ship from mining a location but otherwise it's easy to do.

[Raapys]

Sounds very nice Kwok, I'll take it for a spin. Hope you'll be able to further develop the war-AI. By the way, does the AI start scrapping frigates and such as he continues to develop ship sizes?

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys said:
Sounds very nice Kwok, I'll take it for a spin. Hope you'll be able to further develop the war-AI. By the way, does the AI start scrapping frigates and such as he continues to develop ship sizes?

The scrapping of ships won't be until the next patch since the scrap order is not working in v1.20...

[Lord_Shleepy]

Captain Kwok said:

Raapys said:
Sounds very nice Kwok, I'll take it for a spin. Hope you'll be able to further develop the war-AI. By the way, does the AI start scrapping frigates and such as he continues to develop ship sizes?

The scrapping of ships won't be until the next patch since the scrap order is not working in v1.20...



Hmm...that's okay. I usually take pleasure in scrapping enemy AI's elderly ships for them anyway. :-)

[Juju]

Ahem ....
I started with all tech, just to check everything out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
curious me ..
and there are 3 tech levels missing for the organic baseship .. its only TL3 while the normal BaseShip is TL6

[RCCCL]

I have noticed that the AI attacks random ships more often when no treaty is present.

Good work Kwok, it's coming along great.

[Tim_Ward]

And the AI does indeed propose new treaties, though it just proposes a whole new treaty rather than use the ammend treaty option, but I guess that's not a big deal.

[Captain Kwok]

Tim_Ward said:
And the AI does indeed propose new treaties, though it just proposes a whole new treaty rather than use the ammend treaty option, but I guess that's not a big deal.

I didn't think there was much need to duplicate the routine to determine the treaty components, but perhaps I will at least change the message header. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Raapys]

When creating a new empire, there's the possibility to choose between three overall minster styles; defensive, aggresive and moderate, or some such. Do you happen to know what exactly they do, and if they're available for the pre-made AIs or only for player-created AIs? Can't remember having seen that setting in any of the AI files.

[Captain Kwok]

If there was any difference between them (which there is not at this time) they would make your minister's behave differently.

[Dan_]

Top job with the mod!

I would explain the difference by imagining a game of tennis. Playing with Stock SEV is like playing the people on the local 4pm bus using ping-pong bats, cricket bats and tennis rackets. Playing with the Balance mod is like playing the local C-grade team using good tennis rackets - quite a lot more fun.
I guess you could also say the court will be one of the best in the world once the bugs under it which keep making holes are exterminated...

I sent some problems (below) I noticed playing the Balance Mod 1.01 with SEV 1.20 & sent to se5@malfador.com (att), but some may be caused by the mod - haven't heard back yet.

- Loading hides system objects (png & save att) Loading a game showing the same system hides all system objects. Moving the view to another system then back fixes this, but if you have only explored one system you need to restart the app.

- Load Game - Game Info - Mod text not moved with window (png att) Saw this making a screen shot for the one above.

- Combat icons in main view after new or load game from combat (png att) Requires app restart to fix.

- Empire names wrong in treaties. It shows mostly blank and sometimes another empire where it should show mine. I was setting (trying to) treaties to get other races to migrate to my planets, but they never did. See Liniha counter treaty - migration options screwed.gam or Empire name not displayed in treaty with some empires 1& 2.PNG

- Treaty migration not working - probably caused by the empire names thing.

- Col. status icon - pop bar showing past limit (save & png att) Here, a planet has 8000 out of 2000 population, and the pop bar icon goes over the top. This game I wanted to check out alliances but gave up after so many strange things like this made dealing with the other players pointless.

- Can not accept a countered alliance like you can with a treaty. Saw this in the same game as the Col. status icon problem above.

- Ships move very slowly when showing long movement lines. I noticed this with a ship with repeat orders picking up troops which took 5+ turns. With very fast icon movement settings, there is an extra delay of 1+ second between moving a single sector when showing movement lines.

- Can't upgrade, retrofit, mothball etc. ships in a fleet.

- Can't upgrade, retrofit yada yada with multiple ships selected.

[Captain Kwok]

This are primarily SE:V issues, but some of them I can address (most of the treaty items) via the scripts. The counter-proposing treaty or amend treaty options I believe are two diplomatic actions where the proposing Empire's name is invalid and therefore appears as blank. I had meant to fix that for v1.02 but forgot about it.

I haven't touched Alliances so they are just as screwed up as in stock. Eventually this part of the game will be addressed by the mod.

The load a game from a game image error was actually fixed previously but somewhere around 1.1x it got borked again. Running the turn though will restore the images.

No retrofitting/mothballing in fleets is intentional - although you can retrofit a fleet of the exact same ships. I also believe you can select multiple ships of the exact same type to retrofit as well. Anyhow the lack of a retrofit window like in SE:IV certainly makes retrofitting more tedious in general.

[Tim_Ward]

I like the new protectorate treaties the AI is sending.

[Captain Kwok]

Tim_Ward said:
I like the new protectorate treaties the AI is sending.

I'm surprised you're lagging that far behind. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Actually they're not new though - it was a problem with a score calculation and the fact that the AI never proposed another treaty if one existed.

[Tim_Ward]

In fact, the Xi'chung proposed it on first contact. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

I'll have you know my empire is ranked first and shows every sign for staying there for the rest of the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif

[Captain Kwok]

Any other AI observations from v1.02?

[RCCCL]

They are upgrading treaties, in logical steps.

From a Non-Agression, to a Trade, or Trade and research, to adding other items in.

However, I've a question. In my current single player game, I'm playing with 8 computer controlled empires. I've met all 8 and have treaties with all but one, whom I'm at war with. In the last few turns, I've taken over first place in points, after doing so, many of the races attitudes towards me droped, I'm maybe 250,000 points above the 2nd place player. So why did they suddenly just all drop?

[Raapys]

Hmm, evil empire? Not sure how much of a lead is required to trigger it though.

[Captain Kwok]

It could just be a factor of how many ships and colonies you have in their sight, which in most cases will make them angrier.

[Tim_Ward]

Captain Kwok said:
Any other AI observations from v1.02?



I haven't had a chance to play a great deal, but it seems that the AI is now relatively competitive in terms of ship numbers, resources &amp;c, but it still doesn't make effective use of it's ships.

It does something I've seen in a lot of 4x games, including SEIV and various Civ incarnations. It moves its ships around in small groups, apprantly at random. Whereas what those ships should be doing is sitting on important planets unless the AI is at war, in which case they should be off attacking enemy planets, in groups of 20 or 30 not 7 or so at a time.

I predict that a humam player could win a war against an AI with equivilant ship design and technology and a 2:1 advantage simply because of the AI's fleets are all over the place.

Consider the attached screen shot. It's a small map, so this is the Phong's only system. They're at war with both the Norak and the Sergetti. The Norak ship has been sitting there ever since I put my ship in the system to observe the AI's fighting a war with each other. The Sergetti planet is more recent, but it's been there for 3 or 4 turns and hasn't been attacked.

Now, I know whatever you did to make the AI attack targets works because my own ship got attacked exploring another empires system, an I'm seeing plenty of combats between the AIs during turn processing. But one thing I noticed in my last game is that an AI fleet, if it has orders, will not cancel them to do something else. That is, if you have a single ship near one of their fleets it's safe from attack because the fleet probably has orders to go somewhere and won't break off to attack your ship.

Now, according to the score card the Phong have 18 ships. Where are they? Off on some mysterious errand, that's where. And while they're excuting orders to move about randomly, they won't be given orders to attack anything. And when ships do get attack orders, there's two few of them to make an effective attack force because the empire's fleet is so fragmented. Meanwhile, any sentient player can just bulldoze the barely defened AI planets with just a few ships almost irriguardless of their fleet size.

Getting the AI to use it's ships probably is, in my estimation, the last major obsitcle for a really decent, competitive AI.

[Captain Kwok]

I agree. In my current revision I'm going to clear the fleet order's each turn so I can effectively assign a top priority for the fleet in that turn.

[Raapys]

But wont that ruin long-term AI plans, like attacking other empire's colonies? At least if they're 1-2 systems away.

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys said:
But wont that ruin long-term AI plans, like attacking other empire's colonies? At least if they're 1-2 systems away.

The last thing you want is the AI to have several turns worth of movement/orders to a target without checking the conditions around it. If attacking that colony is their first priority than they will have an order to move to that planet and attack. On the next turn, they will likely receive the same order since they'll be even closer to the target and it will be an even stronger priority to attack. The only time this will change is if new info is available that says there is another target closer or the planet is now too heavily defended etc. Overall the attack priority will be based on target strength, distance, and perhaps a few other small modifiers and a randomness factor to throw off human players.

Fleets currently are sent on long wayward patrols, but that will be eliminated as well with next update. Instead I'm implementing the scout and patrol design types for frigates which will be instructed to travel to defense and attack systems where they can keep targets in sight range. This will keep the AI's attack locations more consistent from turn to turn, giving fleets a chance to attack if appropriate.

[Q]

One thing I didn't see is the AI laying mines on warp points. They lay mines in sectors with colonies, which is very good, but warp points would be still a good place for mines too.

[Dan_]

Thanks for your earlier info on those issues.


Captain Kwok said:
Any other AI observations from v1.02?



A little while ago I had a game with team mode (don't know what version), and the AI seemed to fight each other more than the fought me. It was quite funny actually. Several times when my scout went through a warp point guarded by two 'teamed' AI fleets. They would blast each other to smithereens while he made a casual getaway to explore the rest of the system.
The game I had yesterday with 1.02, I took control of the computer players for a couple of turns &amp; created an alliance so they wouldn't do this again. I only had to start it, and soon all the players were added to the alliance - including me! They don't even ask - you just get a message saying how they are coming to burn your cities, and you are now in their alliance... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I managed to change the alliance rules so that they needed 100% of the votes to make a change which stopped that.
A possible improvement may be to allow the AI to create an alliance for team mode, or for normal games as well, but the alliance stuff seems a bit dodgy at the moment, so this may not be such a good idea.

The other thing I looked at was the population transport, as I was considering turning this on for my empire. At the time I had two races breathing different atmospheres, and from what I could tell from looking at the script it was purely based upon numbers and distance, so may mix these making planets domed when they need not be.

[Q]

One more observation: the AI researches the other two colonization technologies quite late in the game, which slows its growth.

[Captain Kwok]

Q said:
One thing I didn't see is the AI laying mines on warp points. They lay mines in sectors with colonies, which is very good, but warp points would be still a good place for mines too.

This if fixed in the next version. There was an error with the script function that returned the number of units in space, so the AI was always launching its mines and not keeping any in cargo for Mine Layers to pick up and drop off.

---

AI's in team mode should be making partnership treaties - I'll have to double check to make sure that is happening all the time.

[Captain Kwok]

These are the current general orders for AI ships and fleets in the mod:

Attack Ships:
- Supply / Retrofit / Repair
- Attack Priority 1 - Defense locations
- Attack Priority 2 - Attack locations
- Attack Priority 3 - Attack any valid targets (Usually aggressive races)
- Explore / Survey
- Scout Priority 1 - Non-colony systems with enemies
- Scout Priority 2 - Non-colony systems with friendlies
- Patrol Priority 1 - Warp points that lead to enemy systems
- Patrol Priority 2 - Warp points that lead to friendly systems
- Join Fleet

Note that there are maximum amounts of ships to use for most tasks, so many of the attack ships are sent to join fleets. Attack orders will be issued only if the AI's strength is comparable.

Fleets:
- Send out obsolete ships for Retrofit
- Resupply
- Wait for joining ships (if # ships in fleet low compared to # available ships)
- Attack Priority 1 - Defense locations
- Attack Priority 2 - Attack locations
- Attack Priority 3 - Attack any valid targets
- Buildup for Attack
- Go for Training (Not implemented)
- Explore

[Q]

The Drushocka empire, which has organic technology, still uses DUC as weapons for the design of crusers, although they have the technology for racial organic weapons.
Is that intentional?

[Shadowstar]

Seems it might be nice for them to vary weapons a little bit, but yeah races with race tech should use those techs chiefly. Maybe throw in a DUC or two if it compliments the design in some way. Dunno how to program the AI to do that though.

[Captain Kwok]

Q said:The Drushocka empire, which has organic technology, still uses DUC as weapons for the design of cruisers, although they have the technology for racial organic weapons. Is that intentional?

I'd assume it's a Defense Ship design type for the Cruiser, which uses the secondary weapon. If they haven't reached Acid Globules yet, it would default to DUCs. Although perhaps inserting Seeking Parasites between DUCs and Acid Globules in the progression might be more appropriate.

-----

In other mod news I've been re-scripting some more diplomatic stuff focusing on adding score percent comparisons to modify AI responses. For example, a much weaker AI should be more inclined to accept a poor treaty or give a gift and things of that sort. I was also able to clean up the way the AI offers new treaties - it should now be done using the Change in Treaty message header and not as an entirely new treaty. I suppose I should come up with a scheme to prevent the same "class" of treaty being offered though.

I spent earlier today merging in some of the new AI functions added in SE:V v1.22, which focused on Spaceports/Space Yards construction. The AI will check it's build queues for these items, which means no more building multiple spaceports in a system if the planets are colonized approximately at the same time etc. I extended this to Resupply Depots as well. One related function I hope to add for v1.03 is the AI's scrapping of facilities to make room for resource enhancers (on planet's with appropriate numbers of resource facilities) or replacement of Resource Facilities with Monoliths on mixed resource colony types.

-----

It will probably be a couple of weeks to v1.03 is released since it uses functions that were added post v1.20 of SE:V and will need the next patch to work.

[AAshbery76]

I'm finding some A.I ship designs are mixing normal armour with emissive armour.Relations between A.I's and myself can never form Partnerships because relations never go high enough,same with A.I's between each other.

[Suicide Junkie]

That is a good thing, is it not?
Normal armor provides the hitpoints, emissive provides the damage resistance (at least it will once the ability is fixed).

[AAshbery76]

I thought you needed the ship to only have emissive armour before the ability worked?

[Phoenix-D]

Nope. Actually you only get the benefit of one emmissive ability.

SJ: what's wrong with it at the moment? I know it has some oddities when it comes to damage penetration, but it seems to be working otherwise.

[Raapys]

Still, if the emissive armor is damaged/destroyed first then you loose its damage resistance, so it might not be that bad of an idea to keep only emissive armor on the ships, or at least two components.

[Captain Kwok]

The regular AI will mix up the armor types, with the larger ships using mostly regular armor, plus a couple of emissive armors, and either stealth or scattering armor. Smaller ships will use regular armor and usually add just 1 emissive armor - so no backups there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

---

The updated treaty package scheme will have the AI sometimes propose better treaties like partnerships or cooperative treaties to stronger players even if relations aren't the greatest.

[Suicide Junkie]

The trick CK, is to add the emissive last.
First placed = First hit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif Sucks, I know.

The emissive armor does all-or-nothing at the moment.

59 points of emissive vs a 60 damage CSM = 60 damage to the hull.
I know we had to press him to fix this in SE4, to make it work usefully, as it did in SE3. Such a pain to have to repeat the process.

[reen]

First placed = First hit

So do you mean this is true for all components (this would really suck) or just for armor?

[Phoenix-D]

Just armor, in combat. Probably shields as well.

[Suicide Junkie]

Shields are all merged into one sad pile of points, and use the lowest numbered shield type in shieldandarmoretypes.txt

No layering at all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Phoenix-D]

ahaa. Ooops.

..ok, time to redesign my mod's shields..

[Captain Kwok]

Components should be damaged by the direction they are hit.

I've bugged Aaron a few times about shield layering although we'll need to be more persistent to get it working like it should.

[mrscrogg]

Great mod , but think I have a bug . Playing SEV 1.20 , Balance Mod 1.01 , playing against 8 AI's and I took " Hearty Merchants " as one of my traits which means I need no spaceports in any sysrems to generate resource points. Yet except for home system [I have 6 systems now } I am not getting any points from the other systems . Anybody else having this problem ? Thanks

[Captain Kwok]

I wouldn't be surprised if its been broken again.

---

I'll be away (in lovely Sabetha, Kansas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif) until Friday but keep posting observations/problems here.

[Raapys]

The Point Generation Modifier - Research and Point Generation Modifier - Intelligence abilities are semi-broken: they stack( unlike the other modifiers ). So basically you can build as many facilities with these as you want and gain stacked bonus. Perhaps bother Aaron with this?

[RCCCL]

mrscrogg said:
Great mod , but think I have a bug . Playing SEV 1.20 , Balance Mod 1.01 , playing against 8 AI's and I took " Hearty Merchants " as one of my traits which means I need no spaceports in any sysrems to generate resource points. Yet except for home system [I have 6 systems now } I am not getting any points from the other systems . Anybody else having this problem ? Thanks



I'm not having this problem. Are you sure you seleced the correct trait?

[mrscrogg]

I will start another game when I have some time and check

[Ed Kolis]

There is no "Hearty Merchants" trait - there is "Natural Merchants" (which is the one you want) and also "Hearty Industrialists" (which increases planetary spaceyard construction rate)...

[mrscrogg]

" Natural Merchants " was the one I meant

[frightlever]

"hardy" industrialsists, surely...

I WANT to be a Hearty Merchant. Right now I'm just a merchant. The money's good but I could be heartier.

[Captain Kwok]

Just a little bump to say I'm back from my trip and work on the mod is resuming. The most recent beta patch added had lots of AI updates so I'll be spending most of the week adding those in.

[frightlever]

Something I noticed when I played my last game - an AI empire surrendered to me and I paid more attention than usual checking out their ships. I'd already noticed the AI would send a few ships to attack my planet then after getting blasted by my WPs a new combat would start this time with a freighter that immediately ran for the border. I took a look at some captured troop transports and the orders on them showed Optimal Firing Range rather than Capture Planet. Or maybe this just happens when the ship gets captured and it's orders default to Optimal.

[Kiedryn]

In version 1.02 i can't create a new empire with a shipset that is not included in original se5 game. It was working fine with 0.9X but not anymore.

[Captain Kwok]

Kiedryn said:In version 1.02 i can't create a new empire with a shipset that is not included in original se5 game. It was working fine with 0.9X but not anymore.

There are instructions in the read-me file for adding custom races to the mod. A change was made to eliminate the double flag/portrait bug in the mod.

[Dan_]

It would seem that all treaties are completly ignored during combat, as empires with 'col eachother systems' treaties turn on eachother as if they were at war. By themselves, these empires do not start combat entering the same sector, only when a 3rd party does. For empires to fight together they need to be part of an alliance. But there are as many bugs in the alliance part as the rest of the game making it almost un-usable as well, so up to you if you use it with the AI.

When a fleet from AI_B is re-supplying at a plannet from AI_A (treaty), attacking with anything (1 small drone) will cause them to fight and either the planet, fleet or both will be destroyed.

[Tim_Ward]

This will be fixed in the next patch.

[Ironmanbc]

I can't create a new empire with 0 points.. (start game) save it... and try to load it up when I start a new game

It tell me I have too many points!!!! I know I know next patch it MIGHT be fixed

[Captain Kwok]

Could it be a difference in research points? Try using the maximum amount of allowed starting tech points and see if that helps.

[Tim_Ward]

I had the same problem. Do .emp files save designs as well?

[Ironmanbc]

So anyone know's when the next patch comes out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

not that i'm in a hurry http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Captain Kwok]

I believe the next SE:V patch will out next Monday-ish. The next BM update should be about the same time.

[Raapys]

That'd be 2.24? So one more set of patch notes and fixes?

I was hoping for a fix to the PD problem with time compression, but alas it doesn't seem to affect stock game, only mods( including the Balance mod ), so I'm not sure how much Aaron is looking into it. I got a response to it earlier this week where he claimed it was fixed with 1.20, but that's what I've been using all the time. *shrug*

As far as I can tell, it's related to either firing rate or the attack modifier of the PD weapons, possibly both. Could have something to do with time compression and the attack modifier going into a negative number, which rarely happens in stock, but happens always in BM because PD attack modifier start at 0.

Not so cool if we have to wait another month for a fix to this.

[Ironmanbc]

Well as long as it is fixed we can wait and work around it

[Raapys]

Actually, my point was that it hasn't been fixed, just that Aaron thinks it has. So unless someone can convince him that it still isn't fixed, then there wont be a fix for it in the upcoming patch, which would be a shame.

[Captain Kwok]

The PD problem is probably due to the increased firing rates of PD in the mod, which are generally 500 ms. I wouldn't be surprised if the time compression fix was "snapped" to 1 second intervals or something like that.

[Raapys]

I don't think that's the case, Kwok. I tried taking stock PD firing rates down, but that didn't produce the problem. Just as taking the Balance Mod's PD firing rates up again to 2000 didn't solve the problem. That's why I'm thinking it's actually connected to the 'to-hit' modifier, which starts at +50 in stock, but is at 0 by default in the Balance Mod.

However, the newest patch might have fixed this with this part: "29. Note - All weapons have a 1% chance to hit, and a 1% chance to miss, no matter what the bonuses are."

( I do hope he meant 'minimum 1%', though )

[Captain Kwok]

I'm just not sure on how the to-hit modifier would be connected to time compression though...

[Raapys]

*shrug*

Hard to say without actually having the code to look at. And I can't really say I know for sure. What I've seen is that the problem does not appear to exist in pure stock. The problem is apparant in the Balance Mod: missiles are far more likely to get through at 8x. The problem is even more apparant if you try to use SJ's 'leaky-PD' idea, PD cannons with 50ms fire rate and -90 or so to-hit modifier: at 8x all missiles get through, even if the system works perfectly at 1x.

The reason I think it's related to the to-hit modifier instead of firing rate, is that if you set the PD to-hit modifier to +50 or so, no missiles get through at 8x even with 50ms fire rate. So obviously 50ms 'works'( which means 500ms does too), but somehow, when the to-hit modifier goes too far into negative, the PD wont hit a thing in 8x even if it still hits in 1x.

Perhaps the hit/miss roll isn't done as often in 8x or some such, so if one miss is rolled it could apply to several shots.

[Kana]

Are the missiles the same speed as stock in BM?

[Captain Kwok]

They're in the same range, but not exactly the same.

[Captain Kwok]

I've got v1.03 of the mod almost ready to go, with the minor exception that I haven't compiled the updated AI scripts nor tested them with the latest patch. I hope to do that in a 2hr window I have after work, but it might be much later tonight or even tomorrow.

---

The v1.02 mod just needs the new line in settings.txt added (whether or not retreat is allowed) and it should work fine.

[se5a]

if it's going to take a while, can you release a no AI version for PBW?

[Kana]

Captain Kwok said:
They're in the same range, but not exactly the same.



I was just wondering if the missile speed might have something to do with the time compression/PD hit problem.

[GuyOfDoom]

What can we expect to see different in v1.03?

[Captain Kwok]

It's mostly an AI patch, with just a few minor adjustments or corrections in the data files. The AI improvements include some tweaks to ship orders, colony development and maintaining units, along with the addition of a few new functions from the latest SE:V patch.

[GuyOfDoom]

Cool, thanks.

[Shadowstar]

Is there a way to tell which data files have changed since the previous version? I'd like to be able to incorporate new changes in the balance mod to my mod-in-development (which is based on balance), but as I have added to some of the data files, I don't want to overwrite my changes.

[Captain Kwok]

Look at the last date the file was saved, that will usually indicated that something was changed if they are different. You can also run a comparison (using a notepad type program like Textpad) that will show changes in the files.

[Captain Kwok]

It turns out there was some unusual behaviour with the AI in the mod that I need to look into some more so that is what the current delay is. On the other hand, the new colony type modifiers seem to working out good. Unfortunately I won't be able to include a little routine I wrote for replacing facilities with better ones - ie Monoliths or adding Robotoid Factories etc - since a few built-in functions need to be added by Aaron.

---

I've noticed in the test game and it has been reported at SE.net that ships going for retrofit trigger "Can't be retrofit no SY present" message, but retrofit anyways. I'm thinking this might be an SE:V error because it didn't crop up in v1.02 of the mod until SE:V v1.25 rolled out.

---

The new RUNTURNS cheat is a godsend! Just type in ~RUNTURNS 50~ and watch tv for 30min and SE:V just computes away.

---

I've also made a poll over at the SE.net Balance Mod forums asking if I should make retreat disabled by default in the mod. Find the poll here: http://www.spaceempires.net/home/ftopict-2278.html

[Romulus68]

Can we get some Leaky shields and armor in the Balance mod?

[Captain Kwok]

Unfortunately the premise of the mod doesn't lend itself to the use of leakiness...

My next project certainly will take advantage of the enhanced damage types in SE:V.

[Atrocities]

Is the Balance mod compatible with v1.25?

[GuyOfDoom]

My next project certainly will take advantage of the enhanced damage types in SE:V.



Did I miss reading it somewhere? Did they add leaking damage to stock SEV?

[Phoenix-D]

Not stock. Its moddable though.

[Captain Kwok]

I'm going to have to finish off the update tomorrow night. Just a few more items to cover off...

[Captain Kwok]

So last night I tried a couple of AI test games before my intended release when I noticed a few problems than prevented me from posting v1.03. First problem was that the AI wasn't adding enough ships to fleets, which was due to attack ships being given too many other orders. So I got that fixed.

I also noticed the AI's treaties didn't have any stipulations! Turns out when I disentangled some of new treaty functions in the scripts, I borked the routine for adding treaty elements, so all the treaties had new elements to them! I didn't have the time to fix it last night, so I'll work on it today. It's likely a minor oversight, ie not calling some function in the right order.

There's also a few crashes or end of processing hangups. Not sure if those are mod related until I can do some script log debugging. *sigh*

On the good news front, improvements to the AI's colony type selection and facility construction are working well.

[RCCCL]

CK, in v1.02 one of the organic weapons, I think it was the Hyper-Plasma Bolt, though it may have been the upgraded Acid Globul, at max level, 6, only has a range of 20 ls. which also messes up the damage.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Captain Kwok said:
...I can do some script log debugging. *sigh*



How are you doing this?

[Captain Kwok]

DebugSettings.txt lets you generate logs for everything from a line-by-line script execution log for each player each turn or log the graphics engine etc.

[Captain Kwok]

RCCCL - The attentuation rate for the Hyper - Plasma Bolt was incorrect. It was decreasing at 5 damage points per 1 range, instead of 0.5 damage per 1 range. I'll fix it up for v1.03! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[RCCCL]

I see, but the range is only supposed to be 20 ls?

[Captain Kwok]

RCCCL said:I see, but the range is only supposed to be 20 ls?

Since the attenuation was much higher, it reached 0 damage at ~20 range.

[Uncle_Joe]

Do you think you'll have 1.03 up tonight? Its almost time for monthly stab at SE5 again and I figured with the new patch I can disable retreats and hopefully head off the long turn loading.

I'd like to wait for the newest Balance Mod before trying SE5 again if its going to be up tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks!

[Captain Kwok]

I'm running hopefully the final test game right now. The treaty problem has been fixed and everything else seems ok for most part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[frightlever]

Captain Kwok said:
So last night I tried a couple of AI test games before my intended release when I noticed a few problems than prevented me from posting v1.03. First problem was that the AI wasn't adding enough ships to fleets, which was due to attack ships being given too many other orders. So I got that fixed.

I also noticed the AI's treaties didn't have any stipulations! Turns out when I disentangled some of new treaty functions in the scripts, I borked the routine for adding treaty elements, so all the treaties had new elements to them! I didn't have the time to fix it last night, so I'll work on it today. It's likely a minor oversight, ie not calling some function in the right order.

There's also a few crashes or end of processing hangups. Not sure if those are mod related until I can do some script log debugging. *sigh*

On the good news front, improvements to the AI's colony type selection and facility construction are working well.




That's a pretty detailed description of your typical code crunch right there. The Balance Mod is the only thing making me stick with semi-stock SE V. Other than that I would abandon it.

[Atrocities]

I am looking forward to the next version as well. It is very difficult to play stock SE V after using the Balance Mod. It is like going from taking warm water showers to sitting in a cold stream.

[Captain Kwok]

Well, v1.03 of the Balance Mod has finally been posted. Keep an eye for any weirdness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Download here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php

Here are the details:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Version 1.03 (01 February 2007)
-------------------------------

1. Fixed - Error in maximum level for Organic and Crystalline Baseships
2. Fixed - Some ships had the incorrect number of maximum engines
3. Fixed - Error in ability amount for Mineral Scanner facilities
4. Added - Updated generic slot layouts (Thanks to Fyron)
5. Changed - Slight increase in supply usage for seeker weapons
6. Changed - Slight reduction in defense structure for Crystalline Torpedoes
7. Changed - Small increase in bolt speed for bolt weapons
8. Changed - Increased damage amount required to kill population
9. Changed - Slightly adjusted base reproduction rate
10. Fixed - Error in attenuation for Hyper-Plasma Bolts
11. Changed - Improved AI's facility selection for its colony types
12. Changed - AI will no longer add ordnance storage on ships/units that don't use ordnance
13. Added - AI will scrap obsolete Weapon Platforms
14 Changed - AIs will take score into consideration for accepting treaties
15. Changed - Reduced anger ranges for some of the AI's proposed treaty types
16. Updated - AI research spending tweaked
17. Updated - AI Scripts
</pre><hr />

[Raapys]

Time to try another game then, at long last. Thanks Kwok!

[Kamog]

Thank you, Captain Kwok. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I don't play standard SEV, I only play balance mod.

[Atrocities]

Thanks CK. This will help.

[Hrothgaar]

Does the 1.03 Version of the Mod work with SE V Version 1.25 or is it still for 1.20?

[se5a]

1.25

[Captain Kwok]

An important note:

Please delete the DebugSettings.txt from your Balance Mod data folder. Although technically it should only generate logs when it's set to true in the stock folder and not a mod folder, there was a report of logs being generated. The logs are made in the backup folder, and are about 6MB per game player per turn and so can use tons of disk space fast!

[se5a]

I don't want to sound like a whingeing bastard, but I don't like the new defult slots at all.

needs to have an odd number of slots across, and I'd prefer it if they were different for each type of hull too.

[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, the symmetry demands of obsessive-compulsive ship design. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I agree, odd numbers are nicer.

[se5a]

and it REALLY screws up if your in the middle of a game and switch to the new version.

[DeadZone]

se5a said:
I don't want to sound like a whingeing bastard, but I don't like the new defult slots at all.

needs to have an odd number of slots across, and I'd prefer it if they were different for each type of hull too.



Shut up you whinging bastard http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif lol
Actually, I do agree with you, I like symmetry

[Captain Kwok]

Two things about the slots:

a) I didn't actually look at them
b) I should have waited until I made a save game breaking patch before updating

I also prefer to have a set of central slots.

[se5a]

ok we forgive you :p

[DeadZone]

for now anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[se5a]

here's annother little niggle kwok - the PD animation is about 2x too big.

[Dizzy]

WHOOHAW! I'm playing again after the 1.25 patch and the game is pretty solid with the mod. Tanka Kwok.

[Suicide Junkie]

Too big?

I think all the animations are far too puny.
What's the point of 3D realtime combat if you're gonna leave out the Hearty Thoom and Sparkly Pzorch?

[se5a]

the PD is bigger than the DUC, bigger than the fighters themselfs.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, ok, I guess that could use a little adjustment then. Mostly increasing the size of the other weapons. No harm in a PDC shot being similar in size to a fighter, as long as it is a powerful PD shot.


PS:
Sorry, wrong button, I meant to hit reply.

[Dan_]

However anoying it is, you've got to admit it would be worse for the fighter pilots http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Looks good so far, and the AI are being much more resistant since they stoped blowing up their team mates. They keep leaving fighters on the planets giving my troops a hard time.

I think another big improvement could be for the AI to scrap non-breathing population if there are breathers present. They seem to have a lot of domed colonies where they need not be. For all I know, there could have been pop transports on the way to fix this however.

Edit: Also, the religious tech goes to lvl2, but I don't think the 2nd level is used.

[Captain Kwok]

Unfortunately there isn't a way to discriminate breathers through the scripts yet, so I can't make functions that selectively transport population.

Looks like I had fixed Religious Studies to 1 level on my Balance Mod spreadsheet, but neglected to actually change in TechAreas.txt - so oops.

[Raapys]

How about removing 'Fighter' from 'can target' for the main weapons? As it is they're getting shredded long before they can even reach a frigate+ class ship. Making them targetable by point-defense weapons only would make them a far more viable strategy.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'd say it would be better to reduce the chance to hit when using main guns against fighters. Still usable when desperate or out of other targets, but not terribly effective.

[Raapys]

That'd be a better idea, but is it actually possible?

[Captain Kwok]

Sure it is. It's already like that with Fighters having defensive bonuses on their hulls. Maybe they need a slight adjustment upwards? They've seemed ok to me in the past, where per kT of vehicle it seemed fairly even.

[Dan_]

I used the fighters in my last game to take a couple of systems, and they seemed ok.

Is there any way to make the AI more aggressive?
None of the nine teamed computer players had attacked or retalliated by turn 34, which should have been plenty of time to build a few ships since everyone started with 3 planets.

[MisterBenn]

Since AI aggression is mentioned, I'll throw in my experiences.

I have a game in progress with SEV 1.25 and Balance Mod 1.02, playing full AI difficulty and medium bonus. I started one or two systems away from the Jraenar race, who from about turn 5 took a strong dislike to me and have been totally aggressive. They've been sending groups of frigates through regularly, shelled a colony of mine to dust and nearly wiped me out! Only a handful of weapon platforms saved me while I built some more ships.

This fighting has continued for the last 30 turns or so: the Sithrak have joined the war against them, and my home system has been raging with fights between the three of us for ages now! I've seen the Sithrak send many groups of frigates to attack the Jraenar, I saw a 20 ship attack force (frigates, a carrier and a freighter) wreaking havoc against the Jraenar too! Once the Jraenar was beaten back the Sithrak followed them through the warp point and the fight continued.

It's been an excellent game so far! For the first ever time I have actually felt fear at the AIs attacks! Also I've seen some good proof of the AIs abilities:

* Definitely aggressive!

* Good attack ship designs. The Jraenar were using armour and DUCs at first (it was early as I said) but as the fights continued he started to mix in Anti-Proton Beams and improved his engines and armour. Very sensible here!

* Good attack fleet composition - while the AI doesn't seem to specifically create fleets, it does seem to organise its ships into groups well. There are always occasional stray ships, but groups of 5, 10, 20 were common and it's still within the first 50 turns. Often these fleets have consisted of main attack ships with direct fire weapons, and secondary designs with Missiles too, which keeps me on my toes.

So in conclusion I am having a blast! SEV has always been fun in terms of organising your empire, designing ships etc, but now that the AI can put up a fight it's so much better than it used to be since every turn matters!

So I guess yet more thanks go to CK for the Balance Mod! Between the BM and the main SEV patches I really think the game has turned a corner in terms of being fun to play - it's been stable for me for a long time and playing just the single player mode has me hooked!

[Raapys]

It's already like that with Fighters having defensive bonuses on their hulls.



That's a bit different, though, since raising their defensive bonus makes them harder to hit for all weapons, not just the larger ones.

[se5a]

are you talking about 1.25 here?

1.20 had a bug where weapons would hit fighters way way way more often than they should have.
this has been fixed in 1.25, play a bit more before changing anything (tbh, I'm wondering if fighters might not be a little too powerfull now)

[Baron Grazic]

Now you tell me with your warp point protected by 300+ fighters plus support ships. ;-)

[Raapys]

Hmm, I'm not encountering any aggresive AIs.

By not-aggresive I mean empires that have been at war with me for dozens of turns without actually doing a single attack on me( other than drive a stray ship into one of my guarded WPs ). And this is even with the 'All players see all systems' option on, so it couldn't be because of fog of war. This isn't even in a very big galaxy.

I'll just try go to war with all of them and hope that changes things.

[Captain Kwok]

There was code added in v1.03 from the latest SE:V patch that marked defended Warp Points and I can't recall what if any provisions exist to pass through it despite the fortifications.

[Raapys]

Hmm, that would explain some of the behaviour I've been seeing, since none of my defended warp points have ever been attacked by a real fleet, that I can remember.

It doesn't help the AI too much if the warp points only get marked as 'defended', though. The game should return some sort of defending-force-strength-estimate thing to be effective, so the AI would have a clue how much is needed to get through. I can see how that might be hard to implement, though.

[Baron Munchausen]

I have started a new game with 1.03 and the AIs don't seem to be building weapon platforms to defend their planets. Instead, planets are full of fighters that don't get launched. And occasionally some troops. Maybe there is a little glitch in a script somewhere that chooses the wrong thing to build? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Captain Kwok]

It's more likely due to the higher demand that fighters and troops were given in v1.03, they're just being built them first. They will build WPs. Eventually I'll need to separate the unit queue from the ship queue so I can implement a more SE:IV like system where you prescribe a desired amount of units to build for each colony rather than the randomness that it is now.

[aegisx]

Kwok,

Have you made any changes to Ionic Dispersers in your mod? From what I have been reading, they sound useless.

[Captain Kwok]

Ionic Dispersers / Missiles are blocked by shields, but pass through Armor.

[aegisx]

excellent, thanks!

[Captain Kwok]

Just some news about v1.04 - I've been working on implementing a few new items, which includes increasing the size variety of AI ships. As a bonus, I was able to streamline a small chunk of the design creation routine, which has actually made the compiled scripts about 40kb smaller. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Since I was in the area I scripted a new ship purchasing routine, but it isn't so hot right now as the AI is only building Attack and Colony ships.

Some of the other items on the to-do list for v1.04 including making fighter groups attack trespassing ships and a few tweaks for empire diplomacy.

v1.05 is going to be a good update, you'll note all sorts my new built-in functions I requested got added in SE:V v1.27 - so hopefully I can get the AI to start maxing out their colonies. Other items slated for v1.05 will be better AI strategies for their ships and much needed updates to Alliance diplomacy.

[Baron Munchausen]

The biggest thing you could do for the AI is teach it to use more ships. In my current game it's back to the same old 'stream of single ships' mode that makes stock so frustrating. Every few turns another (colonizer|scout) comes through the warp point and gets instantly slagged by my waiting defense fleet. Even a non-omniscient observer should be able to figure out that it requires more force than a single ship to get through that warp point after a while. The only time I've yet seen the AI mass a fleet together and attack is when I colonized a planet right under its nose -- in its home system.

[Raapys]

That's a problem with fog of war and the AI's lack of memory, Munchausen. Think that's something Aaron himself will have to do something about.

Basically the AI forgets about your colonies and ships as soon as they're out of his sensor range.

If you play with 'all players see all systems' set to on then you'll avoid those scenarios.

[GuyOfDoom]

I am a little concerned to discover after playing a bit more balance mod that Depleted Uranium cannons have a distinct range advantage over other more "advanced" weaponry. This seems to detract from wanting to research other weapons.

[Baron Munchausen]

That's a very interesting thought. So the AI needs to be able to remember that its last attempt to go through a warp point ended with a bang? That's what the new scripting functions are supposed to enable. Whatever functions there are to check combat results need to be used and something needs to be done to make a note/record that tells the AI to send more ships next time. But simply accompanying colonizers with an warship escort would be a major improvement.

[Captain Kwok]

The AI does remember these locations sort of. They mark all their defensive locations, which include warp points that lead to enemy systems, each turn. There is a function in the orders script that does mark these as no go sectors, but I think it only nullifies orders if the ship's destination is the same. This wouldn't help ships that were ordered to colonize a planet in the enemy's system, nor an explorer ship sent to one of the unknown warp points etc. I perhaps could modify this check to the system itself, rather than just the sector.

---

The DUC is a good early to mid-game weapon and even though it has decent range to some of the later non-seeker weapons, it's damage ratios are much less. It's possible to keep the DUC as your primary weapon, while rush researching a specialized weapon in the hopes you'll get that weapon before your enemy might get a counter in place.

[Raapys]

But how, exactly, does the AI know if a system is an enemy system, if it can't remember any colonies when they're out of sensor range? In SEV, isn't it who has colonies in the system that decides the 'system owner'?

And let's say that the above mentioned function does work, then isn't that actually a bad thing too? If a sector/system is marked as a 'no-go', then that'd mean that the AI isn't going to send any attack fleets through it either, or am I off track?

[Baron Munchausen]

Captain Kwok said:
The AI does remember these locations sort of. They mark all their defensive locations, which include warp points that lead to enemy systems, each turn. There is a function in the orders script that does mark these as no go sectors, but I think it only nullifies orders if the ship's destination is the same. This wouldn't help ships that were ordered to colonize a planet in the enemy's system, nor an explorer ship sent to one of the unknown warp points etc. I perhaps could modify this check to the system itself, rather than just the sector.




Well, that would make the AI start thinking more like a human. Isn't it possible for enemy ships to MOVE when they see your fat, helpless colonizer all alone? Sure, change the AI to consider whether the system is enemy occupied rather than the sector. That should result in a major improvement in AI strategy. Giving colonizers an armed escort whenever they are sent to a system with known enemy would be a huge improvement.


Captain Kwok said:

The DUC is a good early to mid-game weapon and even though it has decent range to some of the later non-seeker weapons, it's damage ratios are much less. It's possible to keep the DUC as your primary weapon, while rush researching a specialized weapon in the hopes you'll get that weapon before your enemy might get a counter in place.



The DUC has some major disadvantages, though. The requirement for ordnance is one. No other 'beam' requires ordnance, as far as I recall. Only missiles and torpedoes. For the sake of realism, it really ought to have an accuracy disadvantage, too. Slugs of metal (uranium or otherwise) are not going to travel as fast as particle beams or pure energy and so will be increasingly prone to miss at long ranges. I gave it this disavantage in my own minimal modding attempts. Instead I see it's about as good as the meson blaster in the Balance Mod. Since I'm not very good with math formulae "0 - ([%Range%] + ([%Range%] / 10))" is the best I can do for an 'asymptotic' curve. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Anyone got a better formula?

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys said:
But how, exactly, does the AI know if a system is an enemy system, if it can't remember any colonies when they're out of sensor range? In SEV, isn't it who has colonies in the system that decides the 'system owner'?

And let's say that the above mentioned function does work, then isn't that actually a bad thing too? If a sector/system is marked as a 'no-go', then that'd mean that the AI isn't going to send any attack fleets through it either, or am I off track?

I think it uses the system list to check if it's owned by an enemy player when it compiles this data. I'll trace the script execution tonight so I can see exactly it proceeds.

Fleet orders don't have the no-go condition in their order script. The problem here is that they're probably not getting a chance to see the attack locations in the enemy systems. I see a lot more aggression in the AI-only games when more of the empires are intermingled than with a human player, who usually carves up a chunk of solely owned space.

[Raapys]

Alright. Shouldn't all "Attack Ships" skip the 'no-go' condition, though? Not just fleets I mean, since there are times when the AI uses a bunch of single ships instead of grouping them in a fleet.

And it would be interesting to know how it managed systems owned by more than one empire.

Think it'd be too hard for us mere mortals to add a function that stored which planets are colonized, by which player it's colonized, and perhaps even the colony's defence, based on the last sensor contact?

[Captain Kwok]

Non-fleeted stacks of attack ships are actually the result of an error really. What happens is multiple attack ships are giving the same order because their within a certain distance of a target... they all arrive together in the same sector and then proceed to be issued the same orders afterwards (usually) - which has also resulted in a decrease in attack ships available for fleets. This behaviour in v1.04 will be reduced by checking if another ship has the same orders first before issuing them.

[Solymr]

Baron Munchausen said:
The DUC has some major disadvantages, though. The requirement for ordnance is one. No other 'beam' requires ordnance, as far as I recall. Only missiles and torpedoes. For the sake of realism, it really ought to have an accuracy disadvantage, too. Slugs of metal (uranium or otherwise) are not going to travel as fast as particle beams or pure energy and so will be increasingly prone to miss at long ranges. I gave it this disavantage in my own minimal modding attempts. Instead I see it's about as good as the meson blaster in the Balance Mod. Since I'm not very good with math formulae "0 - ([%Range%] + ([%Range%] / 10))" is the best I can do for an 'asymptotic' curve. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Anyone got a better formula?



To be honest, the DUC has horrible accuracy as is in BM. It misses more than it hits for me, until I get combat sensors decent enough to offset it's accuracy, or lack of.

[GuyOfDoom]

To be honest, the DUC has horrible accuracy as is in BM. It misses more than it hits for me, until I get combat sensors decent enough to offset it's accuracy, or lack of.



I wouldn't count that as a fault as a good tech level in sensors is pretty much required.

[Baron Munchausen]

Captain Kwok said:
Non-fleeted stacks of attack ships are actually the result of an error really. What happens is multiple attack ships are giving the same order because their within a certain distance of a target... they all arrive together in the same sector and then proceed to be issued the same orders afterwards (usually) - which has also resulted in a decrease in attack ships available for fleets. This behaviour in v1.04 will be reduced by checking if another ship has the same orders first before issuing them.



Guess what? I played a few more turns of that game yesterday and got a surprise... six ships came through one of my border warp points at once. Right when I had refitted some of the defending fleet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif The refitted ships had their new weapons at 100 percent damage and had to run for it while the others tried to contain the breach. It was hairy for a while.

Using a cheat code to look at the rest of the map, I see another AI is moving a stack of nine ships towards an entry warp point to my systems. It's taken them a while, this game is up to turn 300, but they are beginning to act a little more determined. I hope you can tweak them to be a bit more organized/aggressive a bit earlier. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

Ok, the Xiati are getting quite nasty with me now. They gather 8-10 ships and throw them at me every few turns. About time! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

As I've continued my research to stay ahead of the AI enemies, I've been looking at various weapons attributes. I find some oddities in the seekers category.

The Capital Ship Missile has less range than the Plasma Missile? Why? Isn't the Plasma Missile inherently short-ranged due to consuming its 'charge' for propulsion?
And if the Alloy Burner Missile is not really a missile, but an energy torpedo, why does it have a seeker turn rate? Exactly what inside a bolt of energy is tracking a target and adjusting course?

The Anti - Matter Torpedo does not have a seeker turn rate, but the Quantum Torpedo does (and is a 'directed torpedo' like the missiles), and then the Gamma Pulse Torpedo does not again. ??? So are 'torpedos' actually seekers or not? And why does the Gamma Pulse Torpedo have shorter range than the Quantum Torpedo? I realize this is the way it is in stock, but I thought your mod was supposed to make something logical out of stock? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Captain Kwok]

The Plasma Missile has a lot of charge. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

The Alloy Burner Missile entry had a few errors but has been since corrected for v1.04. Same goes for the Quantum Torpedo, which shouldn't be a directed torpedo as you mentioned.

The Gamma Pulse Torpedo has a generally better damage ratio and enhanced PD evasion (speed, defense bonus) than the Quantum Torpedo - but for the RP investment it would probably be better if it was 40kT.

[Baron Munchausen]

That's another thought... maybe the anti - matter torpedo should be smaller? 35 kt or even 30 kt? That would make it still possibly useful on smaller ships even when you've got the more advanced torpedos and vastly larger ships.

I am also wondering if it is justifiable to have the Graviton Hellbore and the Null-space Projector use ordnance. Aren't these weapons 'effects' rather than devices?

BTW, there is a typo in the Null-space projector.
Ability 1 Description := NUll-Space Projectors store [%Amount1%] units of ordnance.

[Raapys]

I've never used torpedoes; do they actually ever hit anything?

That reminds me, though. Do you think it would be possible to get Aaron to add an area damage weapon type, Kwok? I.e. missiles/projectiles/energy weapons that would explode when in the vicinity of enemy vessels, doing a specific damage type to all ships/units within a specific range. That would be a really great addition, I think.

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys,

Area effect weapons have long been asked for... but they haven't been added yet. Torpedoes are seekers so they will hit anything they're fired at with respect to range and PD.

Baron,

I actually boosted up the damage amount for AM Torpedoes in v1.04, since they were comparably underpowered for their RP cost.

[Baron Munchausen]

Another possibility is to let if fire a little bit more quickly than later torpedos. 3500 or 3000 ms might be good.

[Tnargversion2]

Captain Kwok, I hope that this is not an annoying question, but following this thread it looks like you are making many additions and changes to BM 1.04. Would you by any chance be able to post an update on your changes for 1.04 Just curious mostly on what can be expected.

Trying to decide wheter to start another game or to wait for 1.04. Next one sounds like it is going to be a good one.

Thanks

[Captain Kwok]

There hasn't been that many data file changes, although there are some mount issues to work on. Besides that, most of my time has been changing how the AI chooses hulls for design types, as well as some optimization for the design scripts themselves. I've also put in a new ship purchase scheme, sort of a mix between what SE:V and SE:IV each had. It's not working too great at the moment though... /threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Current Version 1.04 Changes
----------------------------

1. Fixed - Error in number of tech levels for Crystalline Dreadnought
2. Fixed - Inconsistency in cost for Crystalline Small Fighter
3. Fixed - Bases with Quantum Reactors were not adding Supply Storage components
4. Fixed - Organic vehicle hulls were not receiving their regeneration bonus amounts
5. Fixed - Error in Baseship defense penalty
6. Fixed - Miscellaneous seeker weapon errors
7. Changed - Increased damage amount for Anti-Matter Torpedo
8. Changed - Decrease planet defense modifier
9. Changed - Increase damage factor for weapons and facilities to be functional
XX. Changed - Mounts (Pending)
XX. Changed - Updated AI design purchase scheme (Pending)
XX. Changed - AI will now use a mixed variety of ship sizes
XX. Added - Patrol and Scout Ship AI design types
XX. Added - AI will scrap obsolete ships
</pre><hr />

[Tnargversion2]

Thank you.