Proportions Version 2.0 available

[PvK]

Snag it HERE. (http://www.latibulum.com/pvk/proportions)

This Version adds a lot of stuff (see below) compared to 1.5.3, especially solving some balance issues with fighters against ships.

This is also the first Version of Proportions <i>NOT</i> to support upgrades from games created with earlier Versions. However, I do plan to release a Version 1.6, which includes almost all of these changes, and will upgrade earlier Versions.

If anyone wants Version 1.5.4 (described in the changes notes below), which changes minimal aspects compared to 1.5.3, but includes many little fixes, I could make one, but I'm not planning on it - I'd recommend people go to 1.6 if they want to upgrade and continue an existing game session.

Here's a bunch of new notes from the readme:


Version 2.0 design note:
========================
Version 2.0 is NOT backwards-compatible with games created with earlier
Versions of Proportions. The highest Version that is backwards-compatible
(more or less) is Proportiosn 1.6.x. This is because of the new PD mounts
added in 2.0, which I felt were important enough to do this for. These had
to be added at the beginning of the list, which breaks existing games. The
new mount could not be added to the end, because SE4 AI always chooses the
LAST mount available, so if it were at the end, it would have made the AI
only use PD mounts on ships. An entire second set of AI mounts could have
been added after that, but they would still appear on the player mount list,
which would be cumbersome. Because of the above, I also re-shuffled many
components so they appear in a more logical order. This would also completely
mix up any games that attempt to upgrade, but since it would already have
happened due to the mount shift, I decided it was a good time to do this.


Common Questions:
=================

?? "It won't let me load existing empires." Yes, empire files created with
other mods won't load, because SE4 doesn't know what do do with the
different racial traits that have been modded. It can still create new
empire files.
?? "The map is blank when I start a game." This sometimes happens when
running a mod for the first time. The solution is to save your game, and
then load that game. (You can do this without exiting the program.) The
map will then appear, and it shouldn't happen on later playings.


Notes for better game setups:
=============================
<> Don't set the game to limited resources!
<> If you choose a new warp-point "rich" quadrant type, try turning off the
option to connect all systems with warp points. The "richness" will
probably accomplish this anyway, and the map will tend to be much more
interesting.
<> Setting starting tech levels to "high" (i.e., all) is not recommended
except for testing. Because some techs can be researched to very high
levels, the highest techs are very specialized and not representative
of the typical balance of equipment in regular play.
<> If you are upgrading from a game that was played against the AI with
a Version earlier than 1.5, and you want to continue that game, the
AI will be greatly helped if a human player plays them for one turn,
and cancels all of the cultural center construction projects on all
(or almost all) of their colonies. Otherwise, those colonies will
probably remain stuck trying to build those for a century or two, or
three...
<> As of Proportions Version 1.6's release, the effect of the Lucky and
Cursed abilities was in question, but this was reported to Malfador.
Selecting it on the notion that it may have no effect is a gamble
against it working, now or later.


Tips for effective play:
========================
<> Consider building several or more population transports to help colony
development progress, ferrying population with auto-repeat orders.
<> Note that there is an "efficient" Version of every engine type. It is
slower but much greater ranged. They can be mixed with other engines
to trade off between speed and fuel efficiency.
<> Note that security stations and supply storage are much cheaper, and
come in small Versions.
<> If you have researched high tech standard armor, pay attention to the
cost of the higher levels - it is strong but quickly gets enormously
expensive.
<> Note that fighters are extremely difficult to hit in Proportions, but
(as of Version 1.6+) they don't do a lot of damage to ship-sized
targets. Main ship weapons will often not be able to hit fighters
except by very lucky shots. If your enemy uses fighters, you should
deploy _something_ that can hit them: PD mounts, small WP or base mounts,
PD weapons, other fighters, or perhaps very small maneuverable ships
with appropriate equipment.


Changes Log:
============

Version 2.0:

* Added PD ship _mounts_. This finally is a change that will mess
up existing games. Games upgraded from earlier Versions would
have all of their mounts messed up on existing units that use
mounts.
* Component order re-grouped so newer high level Versions appear
in sequence with older ones.


Version 1.6:

* Greatly increased non-domed planet cargo capacities (by x 10).
* Phased polaron beams extended with seven new lower-strength and
intermediate marks, and reduced in research difficulty from 1.5's
high cost.
* Added distribution centers, which are space ports with storage
depots in one facility. This should help compensate the AI for its
investment in redundant space port construction.
* Numerous adjustments to cultural modifiers. They are now almost
all mostly balanced, in theory, including "Neutral" culture.
* Changed self-defense cannon size to 10kT, and set to-hit mod to 0.
* Added point-defense beam turrets, for anti-fighter use.
* Increased cost of Natural Merchants trait to account for the extra
cultural center it generates.
* Adjusted tech requirements cost, and effect of various small weapons.
* Added AFV and fighter shield generator intermediate/extended levels.
* Gave organic infestations, ruptures, and hyper-dense cores some bite.
* Removed the chance that homeworlds would start in planet-poor systems.
* Expanded and adjusted small unit electronic warfare components.
* Adjusted afterburner costs and added defensive bonus.
* Added light missile launchers.
* Increased max shield tech level to 12.
* Spread out shield regenerator tech requirements.
* Added regenerating shield generators and phased Versions.
* Adjusted small ship mount to-hit bonus.
* Greatly decreased fighter weapon damages, to get them back in
proportion with their size, and also because their defensive bonuses
meant not only were they extremely hard to hit, but they could smash
ships left, right and center. Some of the higher tech weapons are
still very powerful, but those are the anti-ship Versions, so those
fighters are very vulnerable to other fighters.
* Halved fighter shield strengths.
* Adjusted fighter engine and armor structure Ratings.
* Added range attenuation to TK projectors.
* Added high-energy magnifier levels IV and V.
* Tweaked incinerator beam damage up a wee tad.
* Added null-space projector marks IV and V, and increased their
research costs and requirements.


Version 1.5.4:

* Added an Empires folder, so empires for Proportions will be stored
separately from empires for normal and other mod types.
* Added a sample empire, the Soluk, so that there would be an empire
that would cause the Empires folder to be created.
* Made rippers and incinerators appear on "show latest".
* Corrected weapon family number of heavy infantry weapons IV.
* Corrected cost of small combat sensors I.
* Added to-hit modifiers to descriptions of all weapons that have them.
* Multiplied neutron bomb damage to compensate for population damage
resistance increase.
* Corrected typo in the names of the Organic Generation Facilities.
* Stopped AI from illegally using satellite armor on non-satellites.
This shouldn't have happnened, but was mainly a cosmetic issue.
* Corrected tech requirements of AFV DUC's.
* Reduced shield generation on cultural facilities.
* Corrected typo in to-hit mod description for small arms III and IV.
* Corrected max shield tech level to 11.
* Improved Amon'krie weapon selection.
* Fixed some apparently benign typos in Weapon Platform Computer Cores.
* Cosmetic fix - added troop tech requirements to AFV components.
* Increased number of system names from 243 to 286, to support 250
systems in a quadrant, and to add some more neat names.
* Corrected shield generation on AFV shield generator IV.


PvK

[Fyron]

I don't know if you have done this already, but could you put the efficient engines in a different family than the normal engines? It's really annoying to have to remove all of a ship design's engines and re-adding them when upgrading it.

[Gimboid]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I don't know if you have done this already, but could you put the efficient engines in a different family than the normal engines? It's really annoying to have to remove all of a ship design's engines and re-adding them when upgrading it.<hr></blockquote>

It looks like its been done http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Normal engines are family 9, the efficient engines are family no. 309, and gravatic drives are a different family again...

[raynor]

What exactly is this? Could you please include a short description of what this is? Thanks!

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>What exactly is this? Could you please include a short description of what this is? Thanks!<hr></blockquote>
Do you mean component families, or the Proportions Mod?

[Gimboid]

Component families relate to how SEIV Groups components

If u press the upgrade design button then u will see Groups in action as SEIV will attempt to find the most up to date components for all the component Groups on the ship u have selected.

Say for example u finish quantum engines 1 this turn. Then u press upgrade design for one of your ships. Now normally in seiv it upgrades the ships engines (+ any other more modern components) with the latest designs, thus giving u quantum engines on that ship design being upgraded.

If the quantum engines were a different component family to the others then when u pressed upgrade u would have to totally redesign the ship to put the engines on as it wouldnt automatically substitute the newer engines over the older engines on the ship.

[ 31 March 2002: Message edited by: Gimboid ]</p>

[Askan Nightbringer]

First off I'll say "WOW". I've had a look and this mod is a radical change that would make for some interestuing strategies.

I've just got one question -

I noticed you can't upgrade cities into metropoli and so forth. To me this seemed like a natural progression thingie.

Cheers,
Askan

[PvK]

Thanks askan!

I'd like to have the urban facilities upgradable, yes, but I'm not sure what's preventing it. The space ports are upgradable into distribution centers... let's see...

Ah, ok, I just needed to add Roman Numerals to them... I'll add that in the next patch. Thanks for prompting me to look into that!

oleg, yes you're quite right. Going through and tweaking all of the AI empires takes a lot of time, and the Last time I tried to touch all of them with unique changes was in 1.3. There are probably a number of other simple tweaks that would help them out, too. Thanks very much for taking the time to go through the AI setup files and adjusting them. I'll take a look and include in the next Version.

PvK

[Fyron]

Why do the City thru Arcology have these abilities, but all set at 0?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Ability 11 Type := Change Population Happiness - System
Ability 11 Descr :=
Ability 11 Val 1 := 0
Ability 11 Val 2 := 0
Ability 12 Type := Change Population Happiness - System
Ability 12 Descr :=
Ability 12 Val 1 := 0
Ability 12 Val 2 := 0
Ability 13 Type := Change Population Happiness - System
Ability 13 Descr :=
Ability 13 Val 1 := 0
Ability 13 Val 2 := 0
Ability 14 Type := Component Repair
Ability 14 Descr :=
Ability 14 Val 1 := 0
Ability 14 Val 2 := 0<hr></blockquote>

[PvK]

Those have no effect. They exist because I made them by cut & paste from the Cultural Centers, which have more abilities that the smaller urban facilities do. If I removed those entries, I would have to re-number the later ones, which would have been a fair amount of work with no effect, except to avoid this point of confusion for people trying to figure out the files. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif So, I just replaced them with do-nothing abilities.

PvK

[Fyron]

Ahh, ok. So basically, you were being lazy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[PvK]

Yep. LZ

[oleg]

Proportion mod changed many cost values for race characteristics. However, AI_general files are imported from standard SE IV. As a result, when AI generates random empire, it is often goes overboard after adding just few characteristics and subsequently drops advanced racial traits (it happens to Abbidon, Ukra-Tal and Xi'chun)

I tried to adjust race points for all races for 2000 start. It may be non-optimal, so please take a look and reassign values according to your taste.

1017577804.zip (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/newuploads/1017577804.zip)

Propulsion experts for Sergetti could not be salvaged. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[ 31 March 2002: Message edited by: oleg ]</p>

[geoschmo]

Pvk,

2.0 is on the server and ready to go.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

Super - thanks, Geo!

[oleg]

Another balance issue:

Solar Collector (crystall tech) has not been adjusted and is now superior to all other resourse producers.

But, please, do not make as worthless as they are in standard SE IV. May be just a little tweak.

[Tnarg]

Is there a printable Version of the Proportion Mod Tech tree? I'm looking for a Tech areas and Tech levels txt.

Am I correct to assume that Proportions 2.0 contains everything that all the previous updates had along with the new race Soluk? I am starting a new game, so what great timing if so.

[PvK]

Tnarg, yes, 2.0 contains everything from previous Versions of Proportions. You can start with the Version from the Gold CD and just apply the 2.0 patch, or load the complete 2.0, and get the same result.

If you are starting a game against the AI, it might make sense to try adding oleg's AI_general files which he just posted, below.

There's no Proportions tech tree except the Version the game can create automatically. That is, start a game with "allowed to see the complete tech tree" selected; then go to the tech screen and click "tech tree", then "tech levels", then "export".

Mostly Proportions keeps the original tech tree, but adds some levels, and a lot of components available from those levels are different.

Oleg, yes I guess I missed the solar plants in Proportions, and should tweak them. I think it would make sense to remove their mineral-generation ability, because I can't imagine how minerals would be something that could be generated solar-ly. ... Oh, I guess that's the "crystalline" part (crystal = minerals + rads)? Ok, I'll just reduce their abilities, without making them a disadvantage - it's a bit hard though since they multiply output in binary and trinary systems. I think I will add a weaker non-crystalline solar plant, too, that doesn't grow any minerals (the rads would represent solar energy).

PvK

[Tnarg]

What exactly are these AI general files download going to do, and will they automatically be introduced to the Proportions 2.0 file, or will I have to do a little trickery.

[Tnarg]

Is it possible to use a ship set from the Universal Ship Yards in the Prop 2.0 mod for my self to play?

[Fyron]

Yep. Just copy it into the Proportions Races folder, and you'll be good to go! Just make sure not to let it ever be under AI control, as that could cause problems.

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by tnarg:
What exactly are these AI general files download going to do, and will they automatically be introduced to the Proportions 2.0 file, or will I have to do a little trickery.<hr></blockquote>

I haven't studied them yet, but I assume they will alter the AI races slightly, but mainly will get them to choose characteristics and traits more effectively. Since I changed the values of these without tweaking the AI setup, in some cases some of the AI's may not spend enough points or not take any traits (spending all their points on characteristics).

You would just want to extract these files on top of the Proportions AI files. They aren't in 2.0 but I will add something like this when I get around to doing 2.1.

PvK

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by tnarg:
Is it possible to use a ship set from the Universal Ship Yards in the Prop 2.0 mod for my self to play?<hr></blockquote>

Fyron is right, but if you just want to use the ship sets and not the AI (which will be designed for another mod), you can put them in your SE4/Pictures/Races folder. You'll still be able to select the ship set when creating an empire running Proportions. Just don't set it to use the minister style of the race - choose aggressive, defensive, or neutral.

I think though that if you do include the AI files for the ship set, and you DON'T choose some of those empires, and then generate random AI empires for a game, it might choose one of those AI's, and try to use the ship set's non-Proportions AI, in which case, it would be best to either remove the AI files from those ship sets, or add renamed copies of some Proportions AI to a Proportions/Pictures/Races/[nameofshipset] folder.

I hope that made sense... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

[Fyron]

I think that all he wanted to do was use one of the races for his empire, so I didn't go and make a long-winded post like yours. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif You answered an unasked question. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Of course, the question was bound to come up sooner or later anyways, so it's probably best that you answered it now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[PvK]

Ya, I'm getting sleepy, so I shouldn't be trying to answer questions. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Your answer to Dogscoff on the other thread points out too that I should have said that if the pictures are in the main se4/pictures/races/my_race directory, then there needs to be a blank folder called Proportions/pictures/races/my_race.

PvK

[Fyron]

Yeah, sleep-deprivation makes fools of us all. I should probably be getting to bed soon too, so I don't start acting like you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif (j/k)

[Sinapus]

Just out of curiousity, how does that "Check Population Growth" setting in Settings.txt work? The default is 1 (which I guess is once every turn) and proportions mod is set at 10 (which is apparently every ten turns...)

Does it apply the full growth rate every ten turns at that setting, or does it now take 100 turns for a population to grow as much as it does when set to 1?

[oleg]

Tnarg, do as Pvk said:

Extract files from my zip and sort them into
appropriate folders, for example
terran_ai_general.txt should go to
proportions/pictures/races/terran

I fixed points for 2000 start only, if
you want 3K and 5K, you will have to it yourself
and we all will appreciate very much if you
posted it here.

I have 2K .emp files for all standard races, if anybody want, I can post them

PvK' saurok .emp is not a new race but a test file to make sure everything is OK with directories structure.

[PvK]

It slows population down by a factor of ten, in Proportions.

The way it works is, the game increases population the same way it used to, but it only does it every tenth turn (once per year). The number can be set to whatever you like, but setting it to ten seems to put the average more or less on par with industrialized humans, it seemed to me.

However, this makes a massive difference in the population growth of low-population planets! This is because SE4 rounds UP any population growth to a minimum of one million people. With the pop growth check set to 1, that means you get AT LEAST one million people per planet per turn, even if you only had one million there to begin with - that is, for a planet with one million colonists, a reproduction rate of 1000% per year (or more, considering there is no mortality rate)! In Proportions, this is still a fairly obscene 100% per year for the first year, but then it quickly tapers down in later years to 50%, 30%, 25%, 20%, 17%, etc. until it reaches the actual reproduction rate, which by the way is only 1/10th of what the game shows it as, because the display does not factor in the growth check rate from settings.txt. That is, in Proportions, if it says 10% growth per year, it's actually 1% growth per year (minimum 1 million per year).

I figure that the minimum 1 million per year is ok, and abstractly represents either civillians arriving by their own transport, or simply the initial development of a new world and infrastructure, and not necessarily actual reproduction.

PvK

Edit: corrected verb form, and removed mathematically dubious parenthetical comment about rate.

[ 02 April 2002: Message edited by: PvK ]</p>

[oleg]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
I figure that the minimum 1 million per year is ok, and abstractly represents either civillians arriving by their own transport, or simply the initial development of a new world and infrastructure, and not necessarily actual reproduction.

PvK<hr></blockquote>

Well, population growth is a difference between birth rate and mortality. When people settle a new world, it is mostly young, healthy people with all normal human instincts. Not surprisingly, population jumps in first years.

[RabidFan]

Every time I play this wonderful mod, I run into a situation where I get an "Integer overflow" message. Anyone have any ideas on this. I do like to play on large maps....

I do have a saved game where I can get it to happen everytime in one move....

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by oleg:


Well, population growth is a difference between birth rate and mortality. When people settle a new world, it is mostly young, healthy people with all normal human instincts. Not surprisingly, population jumps in first years.<hr></blockquote>

Yes, although I don't think the SE4 pop levels can be taken literally, and make sense under a critical eye. I think it only makes sense as an abstract measure of effective working population, including their equipment and the level of infrastructure and other development on the planet.

That is, even 400 years from now, I don't expect one million effective, educated citizens to become two million effective, educated citizens, in one year. That would require some amazing technology to accelerate fertilization, growth and learning (and automatic cultural brainwashing). Genetic Abuse Tech Level 12 and Cybernetic Societal Abuse Tech Level 12?

The way I see it, it's just that if you dump a bunch of colonists on an undeveloped planet, they have an immense project ahead of them to develop even enough shelter, farms and industry to keep themselves alive. The initial pop growth I see as this initial work, rather than a hyperactive breeding frenzy. If everyone got pregnant with twins immediately after landing, it would be a disaster and not a great triumph for a colony.

PvK

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by RabidFan:
Every time I play this wonderful mod, I run into a situation where I get an "Integer overflow" message. Anyone have any ideas on this. I do like to play on large maps....

I do have a saved game where I can get it to happen everytime in one move....<hr></blockquote>

Please send me the saved game. I think it may be from the AI building a scad of units, and this error may have been fixed in Gold 1.65.

PvK

[Cornelius Scarecrow]

Simply remarkable Mod PvK. one of the finest I've played.

I am having a little problem with 2.0 at the moment however. Maybe I've run into a bug...

In any event, it's with the ECM component. No matter how high I research combat support, the availible ECM component remains at level "1a". I mean, it keeps telling me after I've researched to a new level that ECM II etc. is availible, but when I go to upgrade or add the component, it's perpetually "1a"...?

- Cornelius Scarecrow esq.

[Fyron]

Sounds like a family component/placement problem in the data file.

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Cornelius Scarecrow:
Simply remarkable Mod PvK. one of the finest I've played.
<hr></blockquote>

Thanks!

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>
I am having a little problem with 2.0 at the moment however. Maybe I've run into a bug...

In any event, it's with the ECM component. No matter how high I research combat support, the availible ECM component remains at level "1a". I mean, it keeps telling me after I've researched to a new level that ECM II etc. is availible, but when I go to upgrade or add the component, it's perpetually "1a"...?

- Cornelius Scarecrow esq.<hr></blockquote>

Yes, I originally had it so that various types of electronic warfare (EW) components would appear with "show only latest", but a player noticed that this had the unacceptable side-effect of making their effects stackable. So, I had to remove that luxury. Now, in order to see all the variants of EW components available, the player must un-check the "show latest only" button.

As with several aspects of Proportions, there is an unclear choice presented between different components to deploy. In a sense, the Ia is better than the mark II in that it is smaller and cheaper. From another perspective, the II is better because it has the greatest effect.

PvK

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by RabidFan:
Every time I play this wonderful mod, I run into a situation where I get an "Integer overflow" message. Anyone have any ideas on this. I do like to play on large maps....

I do have a saved game where I can get it to happen everytime in one move....<hr></blockquote>

Ok, I tested this and the cause was the massive hit points of all the defenders of the enemy homeworld you were trying to attack. This crashes Gold 1.60 with the "integer overflow" error, but not Gold 1.66 (the current beta Version for the imminent first patch).

HERE is a patch for the components file that makes infantry weaker but should reduce the chance of integer overflows until the first Gold patch removes the problem. (http://www.latibulum.com/pvk/proportions/Components.zip)

PvK

[Elmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:


snip..., but not Gold 1.66 (the current beta Version for the imminent first patch).

PvK<hr></blockquote>

How imminent? C'mon Richard throw us a bone. At least a listing of the fixes from 1.60 to 1.66.

Elmo

[PvK]

As soon as the testers stop finding quick/important things to fix. I think someone already posted the items 1.61-1.64, didn't they?

PvK

[Elmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
As soon as the testers stop finding quick/important things to fix. I think someone already posted the items 1.61-1.64, didn't they?

PvK<hr></blockquote>

I did a search on 1.61 and only this thread comes up in the Last 30 days.

[Gorgo]

This is what Mephisto posted at the time:

Version 1.64:
1. Fixed - Resource modifiers were going into negative percents.
2. Fixed - Integer overflow with large numbers of units in combat.
3. Changed - Increased the "maximum number of ships per player" and the
"maximum number of units per player" selection to have an
upper limit of 20,000 each on the Game Setup screen.
4. Fixed - Maintenance cost displayed for designs was not taking into
account abilities of that design.
5. Added - You can now use an AI_Construction_Units.txt file with your
AI. The file will only be used if it exists. This supplements
the AI_Construction_Vehicles.txt file with specific units to
purchase. See the AI_Construction_Units.txt file included for
more details.

Version 1.63:
1. Fixed - The AI was not matching class names correctly from the Vehicle
Construction file.

Version 1.62:
1. Fixed - The AI was not purchasing colonizing ships.
2. Changed - Put in opening screen from release Version.
3. Added - More details to AI Fleet order debug output.
4. Fixed - AI was not creating multiple designs which were of the same AI
Design Type (even if they had different names).
5. Fixed - Troops were not using their shields in ground combat.

Version 1.61:
1. Changed - The Default_Ai_Construction_Vehicles.txt file will now allow
for the design name or the design type. The term "Colonizer" is
till hard-coded to be evaluated to the needed type of colonizer.
When looking for the design to build, the game will look for the
latest design which matches the design name. If no match is found,
then the latest design which matches the design type will be located.
If neither is found, this purchase item will be skipped.
2. Added - Added an optional file called "DebugSettings.txt". This filed should
be placed in the SE4 directory and controls whether certain debug
setting are used in the game (if the file is not present all of the
debug settings are turned off). See the file for complete details.

[Rollo]

Okay, here is an update.

_________________________________________

Version 1.66:
1. Fixed - The wrong System Physical Type was set on some of the nebulae
systems in the SystemTypes.txt file.
2. Fixed - Problem in the SE4 Map Editor which would cause Access
Violations when you edited abilities.
3. Fixed - Cloaked minesweepers will decloak their entire group if they
encounter a minefield (regardless of their minister settings).
4. Fixed - Improved the AI's calculation of resources available for purchases
of ships and units.
5. Fixed - The Construction_Units.txt file can now have a list of comma separated
colony types.
6. Fixed - Multiple items from the Construction_Units.txt file were being added
each turn to the same construction queue.
7. Added - Added "Percentage of Resources To Reserve For Unit Construction" field
to the Construction_Units.txt file.
8. Fixed - "Lucky" racial trait was not always working.
9. Fixed - Abilities "Change Bad Event Chance - System" and "Change Bad Intelligence
Chance - System" were not always working.

Version 1.65:
1. Fixed - Range check error when AI was processing its turn and
was trying to launch drones from a planet.
2. Fixed - Display error where the Fighter report would display
in the upper left-hand of the Main window.
3. Fixed - QuadrantTypes.txt had a misspelling which caused spatial
ruptures to not show up.
4. Fixed - Fleet name generator was incorrect for fleet numbers over
100.
5. Fixed - Combat Simulator would remove a fleet when you tried to add
the first ship to it.
6. Changed - Fighters with zero supplies only get one movement per turn.
7. Changed - Ships and fighters with zero supplies get zero shields.
8. Changed - Ships and fighters with zero supplies will not be able to fire
any of their weapons.
9. Changed - Drones can only target planets, ships, and satellites. Fighters,
mines, and other drones are too small to target.
10. Added - TCP/IP Host dialog will display all valid IP Addresses for the
host's machine.
11. Added - TCP/IP Player dialog now allows the player to select which source
IP Address they wish to use for play (the selection defaults to
the first available).

[Elmo]

Thanks guys.

[bstripp]

Great Mod! However, here is the odd thing that I am finding. I make a population transport with engines, cargo bays, and supply storage. When I try and use it to move population, it gives me an error saying that "it can not contain any more cargo". However, when I look at the cargo screen it shows 0/910k available.

Also, I can load satelites into the ship. It just appears that population does not work. Any thoughts?

[bstripp]

Ok, further notes... it seems that if you place supply cargo bays and standard cargo bays onto a ship, then the ship will not pick up population... when I drop the additional supply containers then I can make a population transport.

[Fyron]

Each unit of population (1 Million people) takes up 1000 KT of cargo. Have you noticed that the colony ships have 1000+ kilotons of cargo space, and yet can only load 1M people?

[geoschmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Each unit of population (1 Million people) takes up 1000 KT of cargo. Have you noticed that the colony ships have 1000+ kilotons of cargo space, and yet can only load 1M people?<hr></blockquote>That is correct from what you have said. If each 1 mill of pop takes up 1000 Kt, you would need 2000+ Kt to hold 2 mil of pop. Cargo can only be stored in whole units.

Geo

[Devin D.Bass]

It seems that MOD is getting considerable attention that must mean that it is good.
However I have a question...I am solo player only is this mod suitable for single player against the AI? If so, how would rate the AI?

[PvK]

Yes, 1000 cargo spaces are needed for each population unit. Less than that, and your transport will only be good for units.

Devin, the AI is doing all right now, with some areas of foolishness that I will eventually patch. It depends on your level of skill with SE IV, and the level you play on. If you are a beginner, then the AI in Proportions is probably fine. If you're skilled, it may still be a challenge if you turn up the AI bonus and/or take the "reduced planetary exploitation" trait without using the points it gives for other abilities, then it will probably still be interesting and challenging. I recently looked at a game one player was in who was giving the AI an advantage, and he had a major challenge ahead of him.

However, I will say that once I take the time to tweak the AI's and take advantage of the new features coming in Gold patch 1, the AI in Proportions should get very tough. &lt;evil grin&gt;

PvK

[RabidFan]

Just a note, PvK has checked out my Integer Overflow issue with my saved game and it is fixed in the upcoming patch that has been said to be coming real soon.

[bstripp]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
Yes, 1000 cargo spaces are needed for each population unit. Less than that, and your transport will only be good for units.<hr></blockquote>

Ok, that makes sense. It also makes a real need to research cargo tech early or you never get your colonies off the ground!

One other question, my transport minister does not seem to work woth this mod. It never seems to want to drop population off on my colonies. However, after I make it drop population off, it will go back to my homeworld, reload, and sit there. Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

Also, one other comment in general. A population increase rate of 10 might be a bit long. I have found that the game I am playing is taking forever to get anywhere. Have you considered a rate of 3-5 to make the game a bit faster paced.

Other than that, I really love how things play out. The cultural centers are great, and I like the homeworld centric theme. Also, the thrust system is cool http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Good work.

[wr8th]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:


However, I will say that once I take the time to tweak the AI's and take advantage of the new features coming in Gold patch 1, the AI in Proportions should get very tough. &lt;evil grin&gt;

PvK<hr></blockquote>

PvK,

I finally loaded and played this mod this past weekend (1.5.3) and believe as Oleg mentioned in another post, that this is the way SE4 should be played. I imported the ST races (didn't modify the AI, I suppose I should) and enjoyed this game. One suggestion: the computer players were a bit too much on the amiable non-xenophibic side, it seemed to me (maybe I haven't pissed off the right one yet). Anywho, the idea that you can transport only 1 point of pop per 1000kt necessitates creating a "merchant marine" of at least 20 transports and use them to build up your colonies using he repeat order command. This alone completely chanegs the complexion of the game.

Seeing how much work went in to revamp the necessary files, I'd like to say "thanks and great job" as well as "keep the tweaks coming".

[ZeroAdunn]

Like so many people have said, this is a great mod.

The AIs are a but on the friendly side, but don't piss them off, it is very hard to regain their trust.

W8th:

Once you have a large enough hull try putting one shield and one good gun on your transports. One time, after a dissasterous homeworld invasion I had like three enemies ready to invade, I held them all off with my transport fleet.

[wr8th]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:

W8th:

Once you have a large enough hull try putting one shield and one good gun on your transports. One time, after a dissasterous homeworld invasion I had like three enemies ready to invade, I held them all off with my transport fleet.<hr></blockquote>

I was thinking about that after I created a colonizing ship that had satellite launchers (just to have something, anything to defend that neo-natal colony). I had imported the Klingons and in roleplaying them figured they wouldn't build any ship without some form of warring device aboard. Q'plah!

[cascalonginus]

As a matter of interest, the mod be used for ver 1.49?

[PvK]

Thanks for all the feedback, bstripp, ZeroAdunn, and everyone. I'm glad people are enjoying the mod so well. I knew I'd like these sorts of changes myself, but I wasn't sure how many other players would, particularly because it does slow down the speed of development so much.

bstripp, I think I do like to 10-turn population growth settings. You can easily change it for your own games by changing settings.txt, of course. The reasons I prefer 10 to 3-5 are that it's more or less on par with human growth rates, and because I think it's about right from the games I have played in terms of the very intentional goal of the mod to make it take an extremely long time, or an extreme amount of tech and resources, to do what happens way too easily in the standard game: mutliplying like ants and turning every colony into a fully-developed world in a few years' time. Also, by setting the repro rate to 1/10, it doesn't make it impossible to build up a planet quickly; it just makes it take a lot of effort. One thing Proportions makes a lot easier is being able to make cheaper ships with lesser capabilities (instead of it nearly always being best to build maxed-out warships, and auxiliary ships costing as much or more than a warship). In this case, if you build a large fleet of transports (like wr8th suggested, 20 or more) and set them to ferry population out to the colonies, you can get their populations up pretty quickly. By keeping the repro rate at 1/10th though, it means this effort is more or less required to build up an important colony. If you turn the rate back to 1/3 - 1/5, then colonies that you just visit once with a colony ship will develop a lot faster. If you prefer a faster rate of development with less effort required, though, please feel free (of course) to alter any of the settings anywhere in the mod. I do appreciate everyone's suggestions and reports of experiences and so on. You folks have given some terrific feedback.

cascalonginus, no, I don't have a Version for SE4 1.49 (pre-Gold), because I developed this for the Gold edition. There are also a couple of things that would not work so well in pre-Gold, although it could be retrofitted to work in 1.49. For instance, 1.49 doesn't have either of the abilities to change population size or repro rate, so it would be a lot harder to get the same effect on limiting colonies in 1.49. If I had the time to work on that, I'd probably re-do the population effect curves, and so on, to compensate for that weaknesses. Rather though, I really recommend getting the Gold edition of SE4 - I think it's a major improvement over 1.49 and well worth the price.

PvK

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>For instance, 1.49 doesn't have either of the abilities to change population size or repro rate, so it would be a lot harder to get the same effect on limiting colonies in 1.49.<hr></blockquote>Huh? What exactly are you talking about? Both of those were in 1.49. Organic tech facilities have those abilities.

[Tnarg]

PvK, how easy is it for you to make changes to your mod? You have a great base and I am enjoying it a great deal. Seems very realistic. I have been toying with the idea of wanting to see a new type of tech area along with additional new facilities. See the thread on "How easy is it to add a Tech area to a Mod". Just for curiosity sake mostly, is this something that could be explored. There are a number of areas that need to be fine tuned of course. Especially in the areas of FTL communications. Suicide Junkie has been throwing in some great ideas. Hopefully something feasable can be made of all of this? Or should I stop daydreaming and just play the game.

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Huh? What exactly are you talking about? Both of those were in 1.49. Organic tech facilities have those abilities.<hr></blockquote>

I'm talking about the new (introduced in Gold) entries in Settings.txt, which are not found in 1.49, and which look like this:

Population Mass := 5
Reproduction Check Frequency := 1

I think these were added by MM more or less because I'd been requesting them so I could do the kinds of changes to population found in Proportions. Before Gold, you couldn't really pull this off at all.

PvK

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by tnarg:
PvK, how easy is it for you to make changes to your mod? You have a great base and I am enjoying it a great deal. Seems very realistic. I have been toying with the idea of wanting to see a new type of tech area along with additional new facilities. See the thread on "How easy is it to add a Tech area to a Mod". Just for curiosity sake mostly, is this something that could be explored. There are a number of areas that need to be fine tuned of course. Especially in the areas of FTL communications. Suicide Junkie has been throwing in some great ideas. Hopefully something feasable can be made of all of this? Or should I stop daydreaming and just play the game.<hr></blockquote>

It's relatively easy to add tech areas, and I agree that ideally, a lot could be done. In fact, Proportions is actually only part of my original larger mod project, called "Foundations", which has the same sorts of changes that are in Proportions, but also does a major overhaul of the tech tree, and adds a lot of different equipment and weapons and facilities. I didn't have time to add all of the weapon data before the Gold mod submission deadline, so I quickly made a Version that just included the scale changes but left most of the techs unchanged, which is Proportions 1.3. Since people liked that so much, I decided to add a bunch of tweaks to make Proportions a lot better (IMO), but still trying to avoid major alterations to the tech tree.

One hard thing about adding or altering tech areas, though, is that it requires manual (or SJ AI modder assisted) changes to ALL of the AI files http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif if you want the AI to be able to research and use your new techs levels.

For Proportions, I think the tech side should probably try not to change too much more, so it can keep its original purpose, which was to offer an alternative set of proportions using the same basic game as the original tech set. That will also let me call it more or less "done" at some point. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

The tech changes I have added so far to Proportions have been mostly for balance or realism improvements, or to adjust to other changes in the mod.

Having said that, do keep letting me know of any suggestions. Anything easy and neat enough, I may not be able to resist adding. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Also, I hope to get around to finishing Foundations some time, and neat new techs that don't seem to fit in Proportions may end up there.

PvK

[wr8th]

As much as I like this mod, I wanted to include the ST races. A quick (sorta) and dirty method I used was to:

1) note the racial attributes from the unmodded Version of the races I wanted to copy.
2) create respective file folders under races in Prop 2.0 for the races I wanted to add.
3) copied the AI files from a similar race and renamed them (Jraenar = Klingon, Terran = Fed....). This allowed the shipset to be read.
4) "add new". Make the necessary racial attribute modifications. Save empire.

Realize of course that any future modifications to Props by PvK will have to be taken into account in the respective AI files for each race. It's a workaround that may be useful for those who wish to add any non-Prop-vanilla races.

[wr8th]

PvK:

I like the light missile sytems with the quicker reload times you introduced with 2.0.... nice addition that was sorely needed in the missile tech area.

Not sure if this was considered: unstable worm holes that can cause ship damage (possibly a percentage of compartments vs. a flat number) or extra supply expenditure (simulating being caught in a temporal vortex that would make subjective time pass more quickly for the affected ship(s)).

[PvK]

I don't think the effects you describe for wormholes are currently possible, although I did recently (unreleased 2.1) add a lot of variety to wormhole and storm effects. The best I could do though was to make the damage unpredictable without experimentation, and to make some warp points do damage to ships that camp at them (making them harder to defend).

As for AI support, ideally I will try to see if SJ can add Proportions to his automatic AI adjuster, but I think it would be a complicated proposition, mainly because of the ship design creation files.

PvK

[wr8th]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
I don't think the effects you describe for wormholes are currently possible, although I did recently (unreleased 2.1) add a lot of variety to wormhole and storm effects. The best I could do though was to make the damage unpredictable without experimentation, and to make some warp points do damage to ships that camp at them (making them harder to defend).

As for AI support, ideally I will try to see if SJ can add Proportions to his automatic AI adjuster, but I think it would be a complicated proposition, mainly because of the ship design creation files.

PvK<hr></blockquote>

Thanks. I realize that the extent of mod-ability makes for some interesting but inconsistent variations from mod to mod. I haven't gone far enough into a Prop game yet to uncover all the wormhole changes... I did spot a greenie though.... gee, wonder what it does....

[QuarianRex]

PvK:

I've been playing around with 2.0 (I had tried out earlier Versions as well) and have some questions, suggestions, etc.

First, colonies. I like the premise of the mod in regard to colonies, emphasizing the importance of homeworlds while lessening the impact of quick expansion. It seems though that you have made too many tweaks to inhibit them, to the point of nullifying their importance altogether. I'll try to make comments and point out what seem to be problems (to me) in a manner that is at least somewhat coherent.

Upping pop weight to 1000kt and increasing time to reproduce by x10 to keep colonies from quickly maxing out - nice, very effective.
Severely lowering production/construction rates based upon pop - very nice, accurately reflects the reduced capabilities of a fledgling planet, or one recovering from war, plague, famine, etc. Also adds new visciousness to food contamination and neutron bombs.
Severely lowering the capacity of all cargo components - ouch. I assume that this is another way to inhibit the development of new colonies by further restricting pop transports. I can see the logic behind it but it seems to have far reaching consequences that cause more harm than good. As for its effectiveness, lets see. A fully loaded large starliner (standard control components, engines, and the rest cargo III - 70kt capacity) will provide 4340kt of cargo space, enough for 4 pop. That same starliner filled with standard cargo III's (at 250kt each) has a capacity of 15,500kt, enough for 15 pop. Would increasing the payload by a little over 3.5 times be unbalancing? Nope. Even with a 15 pop capacity it would still take 267 trips (not turns)to populate a 4000 pop capacity planet. Even if a planet is within one turns worth of movement from your homeworld (2 sectors for ion engines, 4 sectors for quantum) it would take over 53 years for a single ship to fill it up. That is over 530 turns (!). Granted, you wouldn't have just one. Even with a fleet of 20 liners going to a planet one turn away it would still take 27 turns, not to mention the fact that you would depopulate your homeworld. This also brings to mind the dreaded possibility that your home star might become unstable and require the evacuation of your homeworld. If you were lucky enough to find a habitable world in another system that is only 10 moves away it would take a fleet of 89 starliners with standard cargo III's (and ion engines) 3 years to evacuate the planet, while if they were equipped with proportions cargo III's would require a fleet of 334 for the same job in the same time. In the first case you might be able to salvage some of your precious pop, in the second you can kiss your empire goodbye. Also, if you're looking at realism and balk at the concept of a 1450kt ship hauling cargo of over x10 its own weight, you might want to think again. Cargo haulers usually weigh only a fraction of the mass that they are designed to carry. Transport trucks are a good example, as are tug-boats and trains, and these are all without the benefit of micro-gravity.
Lowering the effectiveness of virtually all facilities - double ouch. You've already ensured that colonies will develop at an extremely slow pace with the pop size (reducing the effectiveness of pop transports) and lowered reproduction/construction rate. Why do colonies have to work so hard and so long to produce something so worthless? A huge breathable planet with all 25 facility slots filled with research center I's (a herculean task in and of itself) only produces 2500 research points. That is virtually nothing compared to all of the work that went into it. This, more than anything else, seems to nullify the usefullness of colonies. I can understand the core concept of making colonies less important but this can easily be accomplished without completely marginalizing them. Lower the value of facilities, yes. But lowering them by over 80%?

The problem that I'm trying to point out is that proportions seems to have been turned into a battle of the homeworlds, with colonies having no effect on even extremely long term games. I was playing a game with v1.53(I think) that got up to @ 360 turns and there was no appreciable change in score other than for the occasional capture/glassing of a homeworld. And that was with aggressive expansion using a race with replicant centers and turning entire asteroid belts into rings of breathable worlds. Even all that didn't much improve upon the capabilities of my single homeworld. While colonies shouldn't overshadow the homeworld they shouldn't be contemptible either. There was a reason the British were so powerful in the 19th century, they had many non-useless colonies that reaped actual benefits for their homeland. Also the loss of said colonies (the U.S. comes to mind, those damn anarcy Groups...) dealt a severe blow to the British empire, not as severe as losing Britain itself, but it was important nonetheless.

The second problem is with units. It seems that fighters have been crippled. You have both lowered the damage that fighter weapons can inflict and lowered the number of fighters that can be put into combat at any given time (by lowering the capacity of cargo components). They might have survived one change but not both. Their only useful purpose now seems to be as planetary defense. Planets are now the only place that enough fighters can be stored to make them effective in combat. Granted, they are hard to hit, but that has always been the case (and is what PD and sensors are for).

Troops are also problematic. Why on earth did you make them so tough? 1600 for troop shields?!? Ouch. The problem is that I can't see why you did this drastic revision. To prolong troop combat? Lowering troop combat to 5 or even 3 turns (as I think was in previous Versions) is far more balanced and effective. So that there are some troops left after planetary bombardment? Troops are the Last thing to go in Gold (cargo is destroyed in this order- mines, sats, WP, troops. IIRC) and so don't need special protection to Last till the landing.

The real problem occurs when you just want to glass a world. The troop shielding provides more protection than the planetary shielding and armoured WP's combined. I recently assaulted an AI homeworld (in 2.0) and managed to bust through 17,000+ planetary shields and 60+ weapon platforms only to face 78 troops all equipped with 1600 shields apiece (that's a total of 124,800 shield points gents, and it all has to be chewed through). In the 3 turns that it took for my troop ships to get in place I only managed to take out 2 with most of my warships balzing. To add insult to injury, when I dropped the first 25 (of 150, I was expecting a long haul) large troops I took out all 76 defending troops an the militia in 3 rounds. Why you ask? Because shields are still unusable in troop combat, though I hear that this will be patched.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that mobile shield generators (and armor for that matter) mounted on ground vehicles should not be a more effective defense against bombardment than the actual planetary defenses (ie. shields and WP's). This tends to cause an unrealitic imbalance that I don't think was intended.

To end off I should mention some praise for this intriguing mod so that this doesn't sound like a rant or somesuch (which, I assure you, it is not meant to be). I like a lot of the changes you have made to the components. Turning solar sails into engines that give you supplies is beautiful and makes for an interesting alternative for those cross-galaxy hikes before warp point creation. Making quantum reactors supply storages of unholy capacity before granting unlimited fuel was quite sweet. Adding boarding defense to crew quarters is a nice idea but I thought that crew quarters already had a BD of 16. Does the additional 5 stack? The inclusion of combat bridges and incompetent master computers was a nice touch too.

For the game overall I do enjoy the leveling effect that the homeworlds have on play. Even neutrals are now worthy of long term alliances and such which is definitely a change of pace. It does make it a very different game and that is never a bad thing.

I hope that I didn't come off sounding like a disgruntled postal worker here. Please take anything I've said here with a grain of salt. I'm just trying to help a fellow modder and would hope for the same kind of feedback when I eventually get around to posting a mod or two.

P.S. I haven't seen any one mention this and I don't know if you have spotted it yet but there's a typo in the CompEnhancement list. Under heavy ship mount it has damage as x3 (as normal) while tonnage is x4. This didn't seem intentional since that trend wasn't found with any other mounts, so I changed it and started a new game since the AI kept building ineffective battleships.

P.P.S. You said that this was based on a bigger mod called foundations. Any connection to Asimov?

[ZeroAdunn]

Ack, don't change cargo storage! The most I would suggest is adding more levels.

Quarian: I think you are wrong about the colonies value. I know I relied on my homeworld for the longest time, but eventually it is just not enough. Also I think that another thing to consider about colonies is that they can eventually become similar to your homeworld (That is the point of the smaller city centers) it just takes a lot longer. And trust me, someone can put up a fight without their homeworld. I have seen the AI move around with fleets of 20+ ships long after their homeworld has been lost. Albiet they were not the best ships in the universe, but they still pose a threat.

I've been using a facility in my games, I don't know if you would be interested in adding it to your game but here is the basic idea:
Slave Mines: Like resource generators but can be built quicker and cause a negetive happiness rate (I believe I heard that you could now use negative values in the mod. happiness perc.)

[QuarianRex]

ZA:

Slave mines are a very interesting idea. would give incentive to blow off the points to get emotionless as well. As far as the cargo - you haven't found it to be problematic? Do you use fighters/drones/etc. much? Ever had an unstable star go boom? Even with 50 ships hauling @$$ I barely put a dent into it before it went boom. As far as the urban facilities go, I agree that they are quite sweet but don't you think that 70+ years for the construction of a *single* cultural center is somewhat harsh? Even trying to put enough simple cities on a world to warrant changing the colony type to "Developed World" takes longer than most other games Last.

As a side thought, is there any way for a facility to increase a planets max population. I was thinking that that would be an interesting addition for the urban facilities. It would be interesting to try to represent the "hiveworld" where people are stacked on top of each other (sometimes literally) in their arcologies and such. Don't think it can be implemented yet but one can dream.

[PvK]

Quarian, thanks very much for the very thoughtful feedback! I didn't take it as anything hostile (au contraire), and similarly, this reply isn't meant to retaliate or argue, but to respond with how I see things, and why Proportions is as it is in 2.0.

I don't claim everything's perfect in Proportions, and really welcome all feedback from players. The feedback so far from everyone has been really super!

In the games I've played, I've found that colonies are extremely important to gaining a decisive advantage in Proportions, but that they are not entirely essential and dominating, the way they are in the standard game. I haven't done huge amounts of testing or analysis, but so far I've liked the effects. By using population transports and a lot of patience, I find that the gains from developing colonies over a few years has a very marked effect on the strength of an empire, just in terms of research, intelligence and production. It is also essential to develop military strength, through defensive ground bases, no-maintenance shipyards, resupply depots, and places to put auxiliary colonies to assist the homeworld (since you wouldn't want to scrap cultural centers).

For cargo capacity, yes I reduced them because I didn't want transports to be able to carry 15 million people per ship, but also to because I like the effect of needing to build a large number of ships in order to move a huge amount of stuff. I don't how in the standard game, a single transport can carry more troops and weapon platforms than you can even fit on a planet. In Proportions, a massive exodus or invasion fleet will hopefully require at least several transports, and not just one high tech one. To me, it increases the interestingness of the problem of moving vast amounts of stuff around, and of concealing and protecting those movements.

It is a bit extreme when there is a crisis such as a core instability or even a plague, and maybe it should be tweaked, but so far I've mainly found it more interesting.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>
Lowering the effectiveness of virtually all facilities - double ouch. You've already ensured that colonies will develop at an extremely slow pace with the pop size (reducing the effectiveness of pop transports) and lowered reproduction/construction rate. Why do colonies have to work so hard and so long to produce something so worthless? A huge breathable planet with all 25 facility slots filled with research center I's (a herculean task in and of itself) only produces 2500 research points. That is virtually nothing compared to all of the work that went into it.
<hr></blockquote>

I disagree. 2500 research points isn't much in standard SE4, but in Proportions, it is a major advantage. A typical Proportions homeworld starts with about 16,000 research points. 2,500 more is a 15.6% increase, which is a huge advantage over an empire that sits at home. Also, it's not all that Herculean a task - it just takes patience. It doesn't cost much more than doing it in the standard game - it just takes longer, depending on the amount of population and construction facilities you manage to assemble on the colony. Two points about why this makes sense, outside of a balance concept:

1) In Proportions, not all facilities are considered to represent the same size. A Cultural Center represents something like several space-age nations. A research center represents a single major research complex, and whatever infrastructure is necessary to keep it operating on that other planet. Look at the difference in cost between the urban facilities and the quick & dirty standard facilities. A city costs a lot more than a facility, and takes a considerable time to build, but has the output of several facilities. The challenges of building a colony on an undeveloped alien planet, that will have a positive output rather than a massive net expense, are almost not represented in the game - I try to factor them in via the population curve.

2) The SE4 mechanic of research being additive (two labs research the same problem twice as fast as one) and also serial and flexible (players can concentrate an entire empire's research on one project, with no delay to switch projects), seem incorrect to me. The small research output of colony facilities is my abstract way of reducing this effect. It's imperfect, but in most cases I think it works rather well.


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>
This, more than anything else, seems to nullify the usefullness of colonies. I can understand the core concept of making colonies less important but this can easily be accomplished without completely marginalizing them. Lower the value of facilities, yes. But lowering them by over 80%?<hr></blockquote>

I don't think they're marginal at all. As you showed, a SINGLE colony can give your empire a 16% research advantage, without even bothering to build a single city. Given that Proportions empires start out quite strong, 16% is a lot, and of course, dominating players still probably won't hole up with only one planet - it would be a major disadvantage to do so. Not immediately, but with patience, they can still make themselves several times as strong as empires that don't colonize. It just takes a lot longer.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>
I was playing a game with v1.53(I think) that got up to @ 360 turns and there was no appreciable change in score other than for the occasional capture/glassing of a homeworld.
<hr></blockquote>

I'd really like to see your saved game, so I can see how it developed and what example you're commenting on. It's seemed to me in my test games that the colonies I developed were, after a few years anyway, making a very signifigant contribution to my production, research, and intelligence, not to mention my ship deployment range, territorial control, and so on.


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>
There was a reason the British were so powerful in the 19th century, they had many non-useless colonies that reaped actual benefits for their homeland. Also the loss of said colonies (the U.S. comes to mind, those damn anarcy Groups...) dealt a severe blow to the British empire, not as severe as losing Britain itself, but it was important nonetheless.<hr></blockquote>

Yes of course, but when were those colonies established? The 17th century. They didn't start to be a major advantage for quite a while. This sort of thinking went into the numbers in Proportions. I thought - how long should it take to replace the benefits to an enpire of an entire civilization - the combined resources and (physical, intellectual, cultural, etc) of say, a significant part of Europe. 100 years? Sounds quick, to me, but that's where the base rate for a cultural center comes from. Now how long would it take to duplicate that on another uninhabited alien planet, by means of ferrying space ships over there? Quite a while...

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>
The second problem is with units. It seems that fighters have been crippled. You have both lowered the damage that fighter weapons can inflict and lowered the number of fighters that can be put into combat at any given time (by lowering the capacity of cargo components). They might have survived one change but not both. Their only useful purpose now seems to be as planetary defense. Planets are now the only place that enough fighters can be stored to make them effective in combat. Granted, they are hard to hit, but that has always been the case (and is what PD and sensors are for).
<hr></blockquote>

I can see how you might think so, but run more tests and give me examples if you still think so after running those tests. In my tests, I discovered the weapon strength changes were pretty much necessary to prevent fighters from being way too strong against ships, in human vs. human play. Fighters in Proportions 2.0 are a lot harder to hit with ships than they are in standard SE4. Most fighter weapons are quite weak, yes, but take a dozen or two fighters against a cruiser or two, and you will see that without some serious PD, the cruisers will have a hard time killing many fighters, and depending on the cruisers' defenses and other specifics, they will probably get hurt, and maybe really shot up or destroyed. There are also several fighter weapons that are specialized for anti-ship attack, and for these, their targets had better have good PD and/or fighter support. Most fighter weapons are good against light targets and other fighters. Fighters with anti-ship weapons will tend to be very vulnerable to fighters with lighter weapons.

Anyway, in the tests I did, I was finally pretty happy with the results. I think fighters now can be very effective, even decisive. They can be countered and defended against, though, without the standard set's problem of getting totally shredded by PDC. The change to make most fighter weapons weak relatively weak against heavy ships is entirely intentional, though. Try a rocket pod or torpedo on your fighters, though, and they are a real threat to ships, but become vulnerable to enemy fighters.

As for troops, there are two main reasons why I made them so tough:

1) To make ground invasion a very useful, and sometimes necessary, course of action to capture a planet. My understanding of the current mechanic is that actually, the weakest unit on a planet is the one that gets destroyed first. With weaker troops, they get shot off before weapon platforms. Also, the whole idea of being able to shoot all defenders off a planet from space in a month, may or may not be wrong depending on your science fiction, but in any case makes defensive troops relatively useless, as the tactical AI can and will shoot until there are no defenders left, and then land troops. That makes land warfare nearly obsolete. The only way I see to make it so that troops can survive a bombardment from space, is to make them tough (since to-hit mods have no effects on planet-based units). Precedent on Earth - artillery and air strikes never conquer ground, or eliminate ground forces completely.

2) Due to the way ground combat currently works, this was the only workingway I found to achieve my desired state where infantry is generally cheap and takes a lot of time/effort to eliminate, and yes, to prolong combat so that conquering an entire planet would often take more than one quick shoot-out, and could Last for several turns, with players potentially dropping in reinforcements. Precedent on Earth - no army has ever conquered the whole planet, and rarely an entire continent, and such wars generally have taken years. Besides, this is an interesting and different state of affairs, makes troops more interesting and useful, and is something that several players have asked for.

You are right though that the side effect is undesired, that troops end up being a kind of very powerful planetary shield. I blame the current limitations of the SE3 engine, and hope for future patches to make a change possible that will allow me to still achieve my two design goals, above, and yet not have this side effect. Meanwhile, I think the side-effect does have work-arounds, besides invasion, for those genocidal maniacs who refuse to use troops and want to exterminate alien civilians without mercy, or whatever: Planetary weapons, or fighters, or prolonged bombardment. However, after all the planets that are routinely glassed every day by lazy players of the standard game, and all the planets that are "accidentally" glassed by the AI, I don't have a lot of sympathy for those wanting to be able to more easily glass planets.

In defense of the ability of troops to absorb more than weapon platforms, there is a rationalization that weapon plats are large conspicuous installations, while troops aren't literally stronger, but are much better at hiding from bombardment. This frames the problem as more of an AI limitation than anything - the ships always try to soften up troops, rather than massacreing civillians.

In sum, ideally, yes, troops would not have this ability to shield a planet from glassing, but achieving my goals 1 and 2 are worth it to me, and I don't know of another working mechanic to achieve these with the current game. Of course, players are free to mod these things down to suit their own (genocidal http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) tastes.

Agh! Thanks for finding the Heavy Ship Mount typo - that's a big one that I'm surprised I didn't notice before. Both the cost and the size are wrong, although actually, the way it was wouldn't be completely bad - it wasn't a good use of space, but it was efficient in price. But it WAS a typo, on both the cost and size lines. It should read:

Long Name := Heavy Ship Mount
Short Name := Heavy Mount
Description := Heavy sized weapon mount which increases damage from the weapon by 3 times. Requires a vehicle size of at least 800kT. Can only be used on Direct Fire weapons. -10 to hit with.
Code := H
Cost Percent := 400
Tonnage Percent := 200
Tonnage Structure Percent := 300
Damage Percent := 300
Supply Percent := 400
Range Modifier := 0
Weapon To Hit Modifier := -10
Vehicle Size Minimum := 800
Weapon Type Requirement := Direct Fire
Vehicle Type := Ship


As for the title of Foundations mod, no, I wasn't thinking of Asimov, but rather of the mod's design goals, which are to make everything require a lot more development of foundations to achieve. You can see this in Proportions for the things it changes - many things require a lot more time and work and prerequisites to build up. Foundations applies that sort of thinking to the tech tree, with a lot of prereqs and multiple requirements and general sciences and basic low-tech equipment and stuff.

PvK

[Phoenix-D]

"One hard thing about adding or altering tech areas, though, is that it requires manual (or SJ AI modder assisted) changes to ALL of the AI files if you want the AI to be able to research and use your new techs levels."

Yes, this is a pain. Then again, so are multilayered components..UG. 500 torpedo variations, anyone?

Phoenix-D

[QuarianRex]

PvK:

Just wondering, how long are your usual games anyway?

You advise patience, and I do understand this, I tend to go for the long haul myself, but have you ever actually built a colony cultural center? Ye Gods man! If you have done so you must have the enlightened patience of the Buddha himself!

As far as 100 years being a barely reasonable time frame for industrialization I must disagree. That may be somewhat accurate for a pre-industrial tech level but the more advanced things get, the faster they happen. It may have taken the states @100 years to reach viability and break away from its parent, but it only took Russia 40 years to go from a virtually fuedal state to a cold war superpower, and it has only taken India a little over a decade or so of foreign aid to get to the point of aquiring nuclear capability. That is a lot of development in an extrenely short period of time that just got shorter with the improvement of tech (among other things).

Also, if you want to take the states/colony analogy a little further you would have to factor in the initial -90% construction rate for low population that gradually increased through reproduction and immigration (and there wasn't any fleet of large starliners shuttling people either). And to be fair you would have to include in that 100 years all the time spent as little more than an organics farming facility (perhaps with some minerals thrown in). Overall it would take far less than a century to construct an equivalent cultural center in an area with a more dense starting population or similarly advanced neighbors (ie. lower consruction penalties).

What I'm trying to say here is that while development of a colony world should be difficult it would be nice if it were actually a realistic possibility. And I'm not talking about filling it up with cultural centers either. For a large breathable colony world with a pop of 500 (a somewhat reasonable goal with -17% to construction), level one shipyard, and no other racial or cultural SY bonuses to fill all 20 slots with cities it would take @480game turns. And that is just for basic cities. To do the same with metropoli (is that the plural?) would take over 1200 game turns. Which, by the way, is the time it would take to make a single cultural center(!). Checking my current game, using a race with severe SY bonuses it would take over 700 turns to replace a single cultural center on my homeworld!

It seems as though you are thinking of colonies as space based extensions of the wild west with prospectors and uneducated settlers trying to eke out an existence and barely able to get ahead. This isn't the case with colonies. These are going to be populated by trained, driven individuals (slackers aren't likely to leave the soft comforts of their home planet) who arive with all the benefits (if not the resources) of the advanced technology of their homeworld.

Even if the cost of cultural centers was dropped to 400k it would still not even come near to overshadowing a homeworld. On a colony with 1000 pop (no SY penalty) it would take 200 turns to produce just one. And even a couple out there spread among your best colonies would be a nice little trophy, letting the unwashed masses of alien rabble know that you are indeed bringing civilization to the galaxy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .To fill a large world would take 4000 turns, and if you have the patience for that you are a far more dedicated gamer than I (or are perhaps in some form of coma that allows you to hit the end turn button over and over...).

I'm not saying that anything should be made easy (that would be no fun) but as it is, the keenest of facilities, the cultural center, is just unattainable eye candy.

By the way, why did you remove the ship yard bonuses from the cultural centers? I thought that that was a really interesting idea, further emphasizing the importance of a homeworld (and ensuring that the AI had a couple hundred defense satelites in orbit by turn 3 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ).

P.S. for the cargo thing, I do not consider a fleet of 89 massive starliners to be a single high tech ship, just a more realistic alternative for planetary evacuation/transport than the 300+ ship fleet that would otherwise be needed for the same job (and those were under some pretty optimal conditions).

[PsychoTechFreak]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
My understanding of the current mechanic is that actually, the weakest unit on a planet is the one that gets destroyed first. With weaker troops, they get shot off before weapon platforms.<hr></blockquote>

Is it ? This would not be consistent with ship components to be hit chances. The higher the resistance the more chance to get hit, that is what your changes to the standard and emissive armor is about, isn't it? I have tried to destroy the basic life supports (1kT) in a starliner, it was almost impossible because of the more resistant components which always have been destroyed first.

[Mephisto]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
Is it ? This would not be consistent with ship components to be hit chances.<hr></blockquote>

PvK is right, the smallest unit gets destroyed first. Always.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Yes, but Damage Resistance is the important point regarding this issue:

Name := Basic Life Support
Description := Mechanical means to generate a livable atmosphere on a starship. This system is not built for compactness, or to withstand battle damage, but is less difficult to manufacture.
Pic Num := 5
Tonnage Space Taken := 15
Tonnage Structure := 1

This component is extremely hard to hit. And if I carry over this idea to the proportions troops, with an extremely higher damage resistance, they would be easier to hit than they have been before.

[oleg]

QuarianRex has a point. Cultural facilities need some cost adjustments. To keep the spirit of this mod, namely the supreme importance of Homeworld, it would be nice to make some changes to decrease the cost of low level facilities but keep cultural center as it is. It takes only 3-4 turns to research Construction I and make Cities obsolete. At the same times it takes years and years to build even one city on any colony. I don't think it is right. Every unique and important steps in colony development needs some game time window to be useful and worthy to be build. I suggest to increase the research cost of megapolis (construction II ?) and decrease a bit the production cost of cities.

[PvK]

The situation is different with planet cargo under bombardment than it is with ship system damage. Ship system damage is allocated in a far more varied fashion, which is why the armor components in Proportions work so well.

The smallest ship component is only rarely damaged first. A ship with a large proportion of structure in high-strength Proportions armor components (that lack the "always first hit 'Armor'" ability) will tend to get hit in the armor, and frequently absorb the blow until accumulated damage is enough to destroy the entire armor component hit. Sometimes a small ship component will be hit first, though, but it's rare, apparently in proportion to its structure compared to the rest of the components left on the ship.

For planetary cargo, however, the weakest total-damage-capacity cargo items get bLasted first, which is why troops without boosted strength get shot off first. It also means that if you build a "shield base" weapon platform, it won't protect your weaker-damage-capacity, armed weapon platforms! (Small shield platforms combined with larger armed platforms may work out, though - compare their total strengths.) This is on the suggestion list to change, though. At which point, I would take another look at Proportion troop strengths.

PvK


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
Yes, but Damage Resistance is the important point regarding this issue:

Name := Basic Life Support
Description := Mechanical means to generate a livable atmosphere on a starship. This system is not built for compactness, or to withstand battle damage, but is less difficult to manufacture.
Pic Num := 5
Tonnage Space Taken := 15
Tonnage Structure := 1

This component is extremely hard to hit. And if I carry over this idea to the proportions troops, with an extremely higher damage resistance, they would be easier to hit than they have been before.<hr></blockquote>

[ZeroAdunn]

I had an idea recently to solve the long city build time and make it more realistic at the same time:

Why not create different levels of the city center? Each one could be about a year or two build time difference, with the first taking something like 5 years. Each one would get progressively more advanced, slowly adding the new areas and increasing the already existing abilities.

[PvK]

QR has some good points, which I'll get to here, and I agree it would be good to add more big facilities. However I tend to disagree that the City is made obsolete by the Metropolis, or the Metropolis by the Megalopolis. Cities are better that Metropoli in the same sort of way that facilities are better than Cultural Centers - they take much less time to build, and so start producing much earlier, and tie up the planetary construction queue for much less time. This is why the AI was hopeless in 1.3 - it went straight for CC's on almost every colony. Generally, I think it makes sense to build several facilities on a planet, then build a city or two, then maybe build (or, in later patches, upgrade) to a Metropolis, etc.

BTW, the reason Metropolis and Megalopolis require any research is because of the technological difficulties of establishing space age ones, and everything needed to support them, on another planet that may not even be in the empire's home system. Existing technology for building large cities on the homeworld would be for the homeworld's familiar gravity, atmosphere, weather, and so on. It's not a massive research leap, but it does require some development of new technologies.

However, I'm not completely against re-examining the city build costs. When I've built them in my games, though, I didn't think the time was way off what I'd wanted it to be.

PvK


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by oleg:
QuarianRex has a point. Cultural facilities need some cost adjustments. To keep the spirit of this mod, namely the supreme importance of Homeworld, it would be nice to make some changes to decrease the cost of low level facilities but keep cultural center as it is. It takes only 3-4 turns to research Construction I and make Cities obsolete. At the same times it takes years and years to build even one city on any colony. I don't think it is right. Every unique and important steps in colony development needs some game time window to be useful and worthy to be build. I suggest to increase the research cost of megapolis (construction II ?) and decrease a bit the production cost of cities.<hr></blockquote>

[PvK]

Yes, I think this is a probably very good idea. Thanks!

PvK


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
I had an idea recently to solve the long city build time and make it more realistic at the same time:

Why not create different levels of the city center? Each one could be about a year or two build time difference, with the first taking something like 5 years. Each one would get progressively more advanced, slowly adding the new areas and increasing the already existing abilities.<hr></blockquote>

[PvK]

QuarianRex, the Proportions test games I've played haven't gone much longer than 200 turns, but that's just for lack of time to spend playing. The game could keep playing probably for 1000 turns or more, and there would still be plenty to develop, plenty to fight over, and probably plenty left to research. Although perhaps not many players will manually play a game 1000 or more turns long, they could, without having the game system break down the way it does in the standard game due to exhaustion of planetary spaces, exhaustion of the tech tree, and/or domination of the empires with the largest number of colonies.

I've never finished building a Cultural Center in a Proportions, but the cost of those was supposed to be prohibitive, or nearly so, within the time of a typical game. With a time scale of ten turns to the year, a game of Proportions that might take 200-300 turns (20-30 years) would and should represent not the complete development and explotation of an entire star cluster, with empires toppling left and right, but simply a period of conflict and expansion between fledgeling alien spacefaring races to determine the future of the qudrant. That future might even be theoretically playable using this mod, to an extent, but yes, at 10 turns to the year, the play time required would be huge/prohibitive... but that seems appropriate to me, for the time scale.

In 20 years in a standard SE4 game, frequently the whole quadrant is pretty much colonized, and more or less the whole tech tree can be learned. That's a better pace for doing everything the game has to offer in a reasonable amount of play time. It doesn't seem true at all to life or fiction, though.

By the way, with the new auto-turn-running program, it could be quite interesting to let the AI (especially, if I tweak it some more) play Proportions for 1000 turns or so, and then start playing, to give a scenario with already established tech and colonies and so on.

Now, before getting into details, I'd like to be clear that I do see what you're saying, and I don't mean to say Proportions' current values are all correct and shouldn't be changed. I think they could probably use a lot of adjustment and development. Mainly, I think players can and should adjust the game to suit their tastes, and in some ways the development pace in Proportions goes from SE4's extremely fast, to an extremely slow one. The game might be more fun for more players if the planetary development scale were accelerated, but I tend to think that going half-way would be a "Proportions (Faster)" variant.

Anyway, back to cultural centers taking 70-100+ years to build new ones. You equated this to industrializing a planet, but that's not how I see a cultural center. If you take Earth in a few hundred, or a thousand, years, when it has hopefully got its act together and is ready to actually try to explore and maybe settle other planets in earnest, each single cultural center on Earth (in Proportions) would represent something like North America, Europe, South America, Japan, China, Russia, Africa, SE Asia, the Middle East, India (let's see that's ten), and maybe two for all of the other nations and cultures. Now imagine that a meteor strike, planetary napalm, or other massively destructive event completely annihilates one of these - only charred dirt is left (or worse, only irradiated blind refugees are left - hundreds of millions of them, pleading for help). What is the effect going to be on world trade, world culture, politics, goods, technology, culture, religion, psychological effects on the surivors, etc? It would be something never before seen in history. How long would it take to "replace" this? I'm not talking about just replacing factories, human bodies, roads and buildings, but about replacing the damage to world culture and the way everything is done. I haven't even mentioned environmental damage, but that's partly because I also mean just to consider what it would take to build a new civilization on an alien world.

I need to interrupt myself at this point, but it suffices to say that I see "industrializing" a planet as filling it with facilities and adding a city or two and maybe a spaceport or other stuff. That doesn't take all that long, relatively speaking, in Proportions.

To build a whole new culture on an alien world, I would equate this to building say, eight cities, two research complexes, a space port, and a distribution center. Especially with transport support to build up population, I expect this would be achievable during a typical game. Note that its abilities would more or less equal or exceed a homeworld colony center. This colony is just much less compact than a CC, and some of the bonuses are less, which to me reflect the difficulty of developing an entire planet, and of trying to duplicate a civilization on an alien world far from the homeland.

To answer your PS, the reason I removed construction ability from CC's was because of SE4's hard-coded limit of one construction facility per planet (after initial placement). Without doing this, a homeworld was unable to build a higher-tech shipyard, or to build urban facilties that included construction, and no more than one of such could be built on a colony. I agree it was a neat effect, but I also didn't mind the reduction in ship building rate.

PvK

[geoschmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
I had an idea recently to solve the long city build time and make it more realistic at the same time:

Why not create different levels of the city center? Each one could be about a year or two build time difference, with the first taking something like 5 years. Each one would get progressively more advanced, slowly adding the new areas and increasing the already existing abilities.<hr></blockquote>
If you do this make them upgradable. Say it takes five years to build a basic city or whatever you call it. At that point it would be producing resources at a certain rate. To build a more advanced city you shouldn't have to scrap the first one and start from scratch. You should be able to upgrade it over time. This should take a certain number of years, depending on population, race, etc. If you make a big enough cost differance between the two it should take a sufficently long time to upgrade.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

Yes, I am already making them upgradable for 2.1. I had tried before but the way I tried didn't work at the time, but since then I have found a way that is working.

They don't even need to have a higher cost, IIRC. The better/bigger ones would cost more though, of course. But as an academic point, even at the same cost, upgrades cost a bunch. So, there's no way I know of to avoid making this a trade-off between "time to best Version" and "time to immediate results"... which, depending on the numbers, may be realistic enough.

PvK

[Askan Nightbringer]

Just another note...

If i start up the TDM mod at the top right of my space empires screen I get "Using TDM-Modpack" directory.

Reckon you could do this for proportions?

Askan

[PsychoTechFreak]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by askan:
Just another note...

If i start up the TDM mod at the top right of my space empires screen I get "Using TDM-Modpack" directory.

Reckon you could do this for proportions?

Askan<hr></blockquote>

I created 2 intro screens for the different resolutions, the problem is, even zipped they take about 1.2 MegBytes, which is not worth to upload. The intro screen should better be personalized, with the information taken out of path.txt.

[PvK]

Ya. I wouldn't mind, but the download would be a bit much. I guess I could make it an optional download... doesn't seem like a high-priority item, though.

PvK

[Askan Nightbringer]

I didn't realise you had to create a whole new screen for it...just thought it was a setting somewhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Askan

[Tnarg]

When beggining a new game If I were to pick Player begins with three planets, do all of the other AI player begin with three planets? I have also noticed that playing with computer difficulty set at medium, I can easily become 1st in the score within twenty turns. What are some good settings for starting a new game that will be a bit challenging with the AI?

Oh, and I remember reading somewhere that PvK is working on the "Foundations" mod. Any one have an ETA on that? Just curious.

[PvK]

Setting number of starting planets applies to all non-neutral players. In Proportions, this will have a massive effect on empire strength, and multiply the research rate more or less throughout the game. If you take more than one homeworld, I suggest at medium or slow research speed. More than three homeworlds should probably go with slow research speed, unless you want to get to high/max tech levels quickly.

Being number one in score is easy against the AI because the score system can't be modded, so it's still weighted the way it is in unmodded, and so, is not a valid measure of empire strength. You will probably colonize faster than the AI, and each colony, even if it is currently costing you more than it's worth, is increasing your score a lot.

I would suggest High AI difficulty and Low or No AI bonus, if you are playing Proportions 1.5 or higher. Consider playing with no AI bonus, but after you have chosen your racial abilities, take "limited planetary exploitation trait" and don't use the points to buy other abilities. This, and/or low or medium bonus will put you at a distinct disadvantage. High AI bonus will be quite hard - unless you can conquer a couple AI's homeworlds earlyish in the game, you'll fall behind the AI in true strength (though maybe not in score, at first) quite quickly. I wouldn't really recommend AI bonus higher than "Low" unless you want to try to play agressively to overcome the huge AI advantage.

The AI's I modded for Proportions aren't particularly aggressive, though, if you're peaceful towards them. Also they currently only make defensive ship designs, which means they don't make long-range strategic attacks, only ones in supply range of their short ranged designs. When I get time, I'll improve the AI, though...

Edit: Note, these short-ranged designs are still capable of waging war, capturing your planets, and wiping out neighboring empires. They just tend to deploy more cautiously, because of the supply issue.

The Foundations mod has been taking a back seat to Proportions tweaking and other tasks. I figure it makes sense now to get more play experience and tweaking done on Proportions until it seems about right, and only after that, try to finish Foundations. So, it might turn out to be vaporware or an SE 5 mod.

PvK

[ 06 April 2002: Message edited by: PvK ]</p>

[QuarianRex]

Tnarg:

Setting the game to a three planet start will begin everyone with three homeworlds (which, in proportions, is a pretty huge bonus). The only exceptions are neutral races who only start with one.

As far as making the game more challenging, try putting the game on hard and give the AI a high bonus. Chances are that you won't be seeing 1st place for a long time.

[Tnarg]

Which quadarant type is the best to use in Proportion mod for the AI. I'm trying to edit a generated map to customize my game a bit. Before I do any of this I just want to get find out the best quadarant type with out causing problems for the AI.

[PvK]

The best type for the current AI is one without very many uncolonizable systems (at least one planet each). That's the main issue, I think. The Proportions 1.6 and 2.0 Sidereal (default) type is a good start.

PvK

[Arboris]

PvK,

First I need to tell you that I feel you have done an incredible job with your "Proportions" mod. It is clearly evident that a lot of thought and effort went into the making of this mod. I am truly impressed with the changes that you have made and it's almost like playing an entirely new game.

The curtailing of rapid expansion adds an entirely new atmosphere and invokes a sense of awe as your fledgling empire struggles to expand in the vast expanse of space. I welcome the gradual population growth and the arduous task of populating newly found worlds. While standard SE IV already provides an epic scope. I truly feel that "Proportions" fortifies and expands the importance of each and every colony that you have acquired and thus the Quadrant becomes a very large place indeed.

Each and every colony plays a more significant role and your role as Emperor has never been so important. You work very hard towards colonial development. You painstaking administer population transport routes and must consider military escorts in high player/AI traffic areas. Diabolical opponents can perform raids on your transportation routes and disrupt the progress of your colonies along with terminating the precious lives of your brave world settlers .

I have always enjoyed to immerse myself in the ruling of my empire. "Proportions' allows you to be absorbed by the details and I find it very rewarding experience. Systems become more than mere circles on your intergalactic map. As your empire expands so does your intimate knowledge of all that goes on within.

Super job PvK!

When can we expect the next Version of "Proportions" to be released? I can't wait to see what you will add next.

Nigel Wulf

[oleg]

About AI settings:

I started a game with high AI difficulty and medium bonus. There are two warp points in my home system. One leads to a very nice system with several large and huge planets. There are another 3 warp points in that system. And behind each warp point lies AI home system: Cryslonite, Drushoka and Fazrah. Obviousy, each race claimed this system. I never saw so much bloodshed and destruction in any SE IV game before ! All AI players are far ahead of me in research and ships (3X bonus to home worlds). Huge fleets zip through that system back and forth, obliterating any attempted colonies. The remnants of those fleets occasionally warp to my system. I only allive because Proportions AI is not good with point defence. I think I'll post a story based on this game.

[PvK]

Thanks for the feedback, Nigel Wulf! These were the sorts of effects I was trying to get, and it's very nice to see them happening for other players!

I'm about to release a small 2.1 patch which fixes and improves a few things, and 2.2 maybe for this weekend or next, which will adjust a few of the facilities' Ratings. I think I'm going to be waiting for more testing and feedback before adding much more except tweaks, so I expect to focus on AI improvements. The first Gold patch adds several powerful AI customization improvements that should be very helpful for making the Proportions AI much more effective.

Oleg, your game sounds pretty neat - I hope you do write an account. It is fun and useful to see what the mod does in players' games. AI bonus is quite hard to overcome in this mod, as you can see.

PvK

[wr8th]

Actually, I prefer the slower game and the slowed building up of infrastructure. Too often in the unmodded Version, I'd leave a colony to languish (who cared if it got gobbled up and it was not yet developed, I'll go back in in a couple turns and retake or glass it). No longer. Now it requires attention to develop and defend. My colonization fleet ships (Colony Ships and Pop transports) now carry mines/AFVs/fighters.

The effect of distance is now enhanced, as are the supply planets' ability to extend the reach of your empire. By far, the largest difference is the need for a dedicated migration fleet. Because of it's relative importance in developing colonies' population and production, it cannot be ignored to provide maintenance points for warships. A compromise is to mount some weapons and better engines on some of the Pop transports so that they can act as privateers in times of urgent need (not really meant to act as warships, but to augment the existing fleet).

This past weekend I started 3 different games just to get a better feel for the opening moves of Proportions. Including the efficient engine models, small missile sytems and changed ground pounder rules, this mod should help me kill many hours I'd likely be spending doing something productive like remodeling the kitchen or bathroom or some such frivolity that wives like.

[PsychoTechFreak]

When do you implement upgradable Cities/Metropolis, is it in 2.1 already ? At the moment I would have to scrap a City to build up a Metropole, right ?

[PvK]

Yes, that's right. I have it in 2.1, but I remember why I didn't put it in originally. SE4 does not allow upgrades to intermediate levels - only to the highest level. This means that as soon as you develop Megalopolis, you won't be able to upgrade from City to Metropolis, only to Megalopolis (which will take a long long time). I'll send a request in case it's easy for MM to allow intermediate upgrades, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I'll still add upgrades to 2.1, but this is a kind of annoying limit. If anyone knows of a way around this, let me know.

PvK

[PvK]

wr8th, I'm glad you're getting so much out of the mod. Yes, arming transports (and/or using convoy tactics) can be helpful, also because enemy raiders will have a harder time against them. The maintenance reduction means it's not prohibitively expensive to add some interesting abilities to transports.

PvK

[wr8th]

PvK,

Somewhat off-topic, but I checked your profile and you list yourself at wargamer.com. Co-incidentally, I remember a couple years back looking around for scenarios for some Talonsoft games and coming across that website.

Are you a webmaster for that site? Jes' wunnerin'

[PvK]

I was the executive editor at The Wargamer for some years - now I'm Editor Emeritus (meaning I contribute what time I can spare).

PvK

[PsychoTechFreak]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
Yes, that's right. I have it in 2.1, but I remember why I didn't put it in originally. SE4 does not allow upgrades to intermediate levels - only to the highest level. This means that as soon as you develop Megalopolis, you won't be able to upgrade from City to Metropolis, only to Megalopolis (which will take a long long time). I'll send a request in case it's easy for MM to allow intermediate upgrades, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I'll still add upgrades to 2.1, but this is a kind of annoying limit. If anyone knows of a way around this, let me know.

PvK<hr></blockquote>


I don't think there is a workaround other than hardcode changes. I would say, intermediate upgrades are a must for Mods like this. Just with the unmodded 3 types of easily upgradable facilities it does not hurt much. But until we get intermediate upgrades (hopefully), I think non-intermediate upgrades are better than nothing.

Another nice-to-have feature comes to my mind, I would like to switch on/off facilities, why?
In limited resources games it is sometimes necessary to lay fellow (not sure about the term) a planet, until it regains resources with value improvement plants. Scrapping all of the mineral miners and rebuild them later is not a very economic way.

[PvK]

Yes, it would be nice to be able to turn off faciltiies, as you say. It could also be useful to reduce your own overproduction in order to limit the benefits your trade partners receive.

The expression "to lay fallow" is appropriate, but applies to agriculture.

PvK