How soon to post a new mod

[tesco samoa]

wow those rates will slow the game down

[gregebowman]

Mine won't be quite as extensive. I'll basically take the TDM mod and mix some things with it. But like I've said, it's just an idea in my head right now and I really haven't done much with it yet. Maybe when I have my next day off I'll tinker with it, if I don't have a honey do list or my son doesn't want to play with me that much.

[mvstang]

Forgot one semi-significant point, the movement rates on the chart are assuming you pack in the maximum number of engines possible, which may not be optimal for an attack ship. Using the lowly scout as an example, in order to get it's max speed, you have to put nothing put engines on it.

The construction rates will be pretty slow, but that's something that'll be ironed out more later. Ship construction will be much slower comparted to an unmodded game than facilities construction will. It doesn't slow the game as a whole down too much at the beginning, since for the first year or so you're waiting to build that first ship, then go explore or colonize, then wait some more, so the turns go by pretty quick. I haven't gotten beyond about 10 years or so before I've found something that really needed to be changed though, so I'm not sure about the mid-late game.

[Alneyan]

Out of idle curiosity, will there be many ships in your mod compared to the vanilla game? That is, will the ships be more expensive to build and/or to maintain? (In some universes, you would need a well-developed world just to build a single ship)

Good luck with your mod! I have to admit I didn't delve into the charts, as they are quite obscure for me. (I do have issues with maths or anything along the same lines) I will likely give it a try once it is available though.

[oleg]

AI will have problems with building units - It never uses shipyards for units production, only planets

[mvstang]

I'm trying to keep the number of ships down compared to a vanilla game. A lot of that is already working due to the increased build times. I've seen strats floating around where you use emergency build to pump out 10 colony ships in the first 10 turns. With the settings right now, it'll take a little over a year to build your first one. As I get farther into test games, I'll be able to see how it comes out affecting the total number of ships an empire has.

Right now, in my latest test game with the beta Version I'll release later today, I'm about 14 years into the game. I've explored about 1/5-1/6 of a large galaxy with around 230+ systems. 19 planets on 13 systems, and only 11 ships. Most of my ships are currently population transports or scout ships with solar collectors to explore the galaxy. Granted, I don't have as much experience with SEIV as many others probably do, so others might have strategies that would develop the empire faster.

I did run into one non-neutral computer player 2 systems away from me, and eventually forced his surrender after I built a ship bristling with Napalm and flew it into his home system. Interestingly enough, he did have an orbital shipyard above his home planet, so I'd assume he was using it at one point to produce ships, but I can't be sure. The neutral races aren't producing bases, but 3 of the 5 remaining computer races have at least 1 base built, so hopefully it won't be too hard to rewire the AI to use space ship yards effectively.

Tweaking or re-writing the AI is something I'll probably have to do by the time I'm done with a finished Version of the mod. It's something I haven't done before, and it'll likely be the Last major step after I try to get the ships to balance. Right now I have something like 116 races installed into the mod, but I'll probably scale that back to the default races so people won't get errors when the mod tries to load a race they don't have the pictures for in the main folder.

[ November 26, 2003, 17:45: Message edited by: mvstang ]

[Alneyan]

Building ten colony ships in the ten first turns is usually more than a strategy, it is mandatory as well. (When you play with other players that is, where the competition for land is significant) Having three or four systems can be quite a problem when your neighbours are ruling over twice or thrice this number, leaving you dependant on these.

11 ships after 14 years in the game seems really few indeed, at least compared to the vanilla game. (I read that, in a one-to-one game, a single player (Phoenix D) had lost more than 200 ships a bit after turn 100, so there is quite a difference) I will give it a try once it is released to see how different it plays with such tweaks.

Good luck with the AI! I am not sure about what you can do and cannot do with the AIs files though, as I haven't delved into these either.