A first!!!

[Arralen]

Captain Kwok said:
I wonder if this was in reference to magic?

More generally : there's something in every mod that I really dislike. In one, its magic. In another one, its the rediculous slow movement of ships during the first 5 tech levels (main tech!, therefore 150 turns or something), in the third, I'm pretty sure the AI cannot cope with the intricate colony development at all.

Btw., Adamant Mod is focused on MP gaming and its AI roughly en par with the basic games, isn't it?

If there was a mod with a TDM-like AI ... and no, I'm not looking for MP gaming. I'm looking for a nice casual space game I could do now and then when I have the time and the mood ...

[Fyron]

AFAIK, Adamant is quite playable in SP. Parts of the AI are loosely based on the Aquilaiean AI from TDM, which happened to be the first (non-stock, highly optimized) one in the list. And as I said, you can ditch the magic elements of the mod in just a few short minutes. It includes a list of races by paradigm in the adamant\pictures\races folder. All the neutrals are physical (or monsters), so no concern about them.

Note that early game engines were increased in speed in 0.16. Additionally, you can try a med tech start for more of a boost; it starts at the ion engine. Propulsion Experts trait is also quite handy.

[capnq]

Atrocities said: Does any one still play SE IV?

PBW is still getting over 300 members visiting per week, and they certainly aren't hanging around for the scintillating conversations on the PBW forums.

I've got one PBW and two active solo games going, plus a bunch of unfinished solo games that I don't feel like counting.

[dogscoff]

I assume you dislike Proportions because the AI isn't too wonderful in the latest version.

Try playing one of the 2.X versions, the AI there is pretty good.

I'm seriously tempted to start tinkering with the Proportion 3.05 AI to see if I can get better performance out of it.

[Arralen]

Imperator Fyron said:
AFAIK, Adamant is quite playable in SP.

"Unable to load:
se4\pictures\facilities\facil_638.bmp"

... when building Research Center I
It does show up on the facility screen (Facil_638.bmp), does generate research and intel points, but right-click results in:

"stream read error"


Btw., why all those multiple-ability facilites (again). Don't tell me the AI can cope with a homeworld that starts with 12 "Metropolis I" which give +2% anger and -3% environment each turn? (And I wondered why my pop got angry within the very first 5 turns ...). Or did you teach the AI how to raize buildings to build others .. because the homeworlds are packed with 15/15 facilities, so one can't build some amusement parks. Btw., those should be "included" with a Metropolis, which should be happiness-neutral or even positive for most races.

Such things simply do not make sense to me .. therefore for me, the mod sucks.

[Fyron]

The stream read error is an issue with the image mod. You can solve it by opening the file in a non-Paint image app, and resave it as BMP. If you use Photoshop, make sure to select the "OS/2" option for formatting, not "Windows." A more general solution is to run a batch conversion, with an app like Irfanview.

The idea was that huge cities clustering tons of people into small spaces tend to raise general levels of discontent. If that is the only thing you dislike about the mod, you can perhaps try the attached file, in which I set the unhappiness to 0 for metroplises.

Note that homeworlds can not riot; they stop at the Angry level.

The AI never bothers with conditions improvement plants, so the pollution does not matter (it only makes improving conditions harder, doesn't ever lower them).

The AI is configured to build as many happiness facilities as it needs (actually 1 extra) for all colony types, so the worker unhappiness scheme generally will not hurt them.

[Artaud]

Imperator Fyron said:
And as I said, you can ditch the magic elements of the mod in just a few short minutes.

I'll have to play around with doing this over the weekend. The mod looks interesting, but magic is not my cup of tea.

[Sivran]

Play Carrier Battles

[bearclaw]

Arralen:
I'm not sure but I think Dark Nova 4 might satisfy most of your concerns. PBW has the most recent version (v4.24).
- viable small ships in late game
- Adapded TDM AI's
- increased importance of organics and rads
- harder to colonize non-native planets
- variant of quasi-newtonian propulsion

About the only thing it's missing from what you request is reduced population growth rates. The only flaw with the AI is that they don't do Intel very well. And, unfortunatly, I don't know about modding AI files enough to figure out how to correct it.

As for SEIV, I'm still in 4 PBW games. 2 of which have just started since SEV came out.

[Fyron]

What about leaky armor/shields?