New SE4 Total ConVersion Mod "SMod" open on PBW

Fyron · #1 November 7th, 2004, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Readme.txt says:
I always let an existing readme or credit file in the directory, if I use stuff from others.

This does not seem to be entirely accurate. I could find no credits info for the images borrowed from FQM, nor the cursors borrowed from the Ultimate Mod.

Also, going along with the racial combat bonus problem, training facilities definitely give way too much training... In unmodified SE4, a trained fleet gets 40% (total) combat bonuses against an untrained fleet. This is a huge, nearly insurmountable advantage (assuming other factors are relatively equal). In your mod, training goes up to a total of 60%, which only makes the problem worse... I suggest limiting total training (fleet + ship) to somewhere around 10% to 20%. This still gives trained ships/fleets a noticeable edge, without making them overly powerful.

Is there a particular reason why only those races that select the "Gas World Natives" racial trait can ever colonize Gas Giants, but any race can research the tech necessary to colonize rock and ice planets? This seems unfair.

Snorky · #2 November 7th, 2004, 07:55 AM

Ok, I will tweak the costs for ship combat and movement and think about the maintenance problem.

But separating the reworked images is a problem. I don't know on which I worked, which dirty background I cleaned. There are many pictures I just corrected in size and format, but I think the most of them were race pictures. So it should be ok if someone uses the image packs instead of the pictures in my mod, but I still recommend to use the full Version.

At the beginning of the modding I just changed things without writing down where I took them and what I changed. It was only for me and some friends. Just for playing the mod now over PBW with hopefully new players I had to make a distributable Version and it was difficult to search all credit files. It seems I forgot some, so apology and thanks for reminding me. Of course I will credit your mod, Fyron. I put a credits.txt in my Pictures/Systems folder with this content:
The Nebulae and Nova pictures are real pictures from NASA.
I took them from "Fyron's Quadrant Mod" (http://fqm.spaceempires.net/) and reworked them a little bit.
Is this OK for you? I also included a credit file in the sounds directory which includes the sentence:
The sounds are from the "Tampa Gamer Sound Mod" and the "Eclipse Mod Sounds".
But I can't remember where I took the Button and Cursor files. I can't find the Ultimate Mod you mentioned. Can you please send me a link to it? If someone else misses any credits, please contact me. I will include them in the next patch.

Ed Kolis · #3 November 7th, 2004, 02:43 PM

The "Ultimate Mod" was created by Hadrian Aventine a number of years ago and when he gave up on SE4, he entrusted it to Lord Kodos, who has followed through with Hadrian's wishes of keeping it a Really Big Secret (tm), for whatever reason that Hadrian had for that

... so in short, there are no download links available that I know of

Gandalf Parker · #4 November 8th, 2004, 11:35 AM

I snagged the original zip which apparently had the full image pack included in it. But when I finaly got around to running a test game I got errors. One of the reasons I snagged the mod is that it sounded like what I wanted. Lots of races included and lots of general balance upgrades rather than just making the game harder.

One was a "demeanor" lack in confed_ai_general.txt and alot of errors from tholian_ai_research.txt

When I got errors like that before I figured it was from installing races that were not created for SEIV Gold. I thought your mod would have caught/fixed those already. Am I missing something in my SEIV Gold which is causing these?

Fyron · #5 November 8th, 2004, 02:54 PM

Quote:

- no AI implemented and the mod takes about 500MB disc space.

Note that no AI is implemented. Seems rather pointless to include so many shipsets if they have no compatible AI...

Suicide Junkie · #6 November 8th, 2004, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:

Quote:

- no AI implemented and the mod takes about 500MB disc space.

Note that no AI is implemented. Seems rather pointless to include so many shipsets if they have no compatible AI...

Note: the light Version I uploaded leaves out the shipsets, but does include the default AI files provided. Just copy them to the shipsets you copy to the mod.

Gandalf Parker · #7 November 8th, 2004, 03:38 PM

I didnt add any to the mod. The mod included races dont work?

spoon · #8 November 8th, 2004, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:

Quote:

- no AI implemented and the mod takes about 500MB disc space.

Note that no AI is implemented. Seems rather pointless to include so many shipsets if they have no compatible AI...

Pointless? I think it's cool. (Speaking as someone who is generally too lazy to download shipsets - it is nice to have them all in one place...)

Gandalf Parker · #9 November 8th, 2004, 05:10 PM

Quote:

spoon said:
Pointless? I think it's cool. (Speaking as someone who is generally too lazy to download shipsets - it is nice to have them all in one place...)

True enough but I had already added mega amounts of shipsets, and gone back to delete (actually moved to a temp dir) all of the ones causing errors. Ive been considering going back and tackling minor edits to get more of them to work but I cant seem to do that without wanting to actually look at each change to try and make it fit the race. Not just copy default files into each one. I cant believe that I might be the first one to offer a large AI load in a zipfile which will work in SEIV gold.