A first!!!

[Fyron]

Adamant Mod seems to fulfill all of those roles. You could make it introduce far fewer other concepts by deleting the races using non-physical paradigm, and only taking it for yourself.

Btw, you can easily decrease pop growth in any mod by going into Settings.txt and increasing this:

Reproduction Check Frequency := 2

Reproduction occurs every X turns, based on that setting. Stock uses 1, Adamant uses 2, Proportions uses 10 (for some examples).

Doing so might create MP savegame incompatibilities, but that's not a concern if you are just interested in single player.

[Captain Kwok]

Sadly, the mods get only some things 'right', but inevitably introduce some other ideas which spoil the whole fun for me.

I wonder if this was in reference to magic?

[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.

[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.

[Arralen]

Imperator Fyron said:
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.

Thanks, will try that out. And have a look at the file, to see how it is done.

You know, its not that I don't like the idea in general - while I have some doubt if that penalty makes sense - if I can build an entertainment falicity seperatly, why not postulate its already incorporated into the Mega-Polis thing? At least, mines, farms, extraction and research centers seem to be ...
What I don't like is that it feels not entirely thought-through .. the AI can't cope with it, I think, and even the human player has little options to cure the unhappiness, at least at that level ...

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

Means -20% production from angriness nevertheless.

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.

But the homeworlds are generally full, so unless the AI can tear done facilities now, it will end up with maximum angry homeworlds and the according production penalties. AFAIK, it can't raze facilities?!

Btw, it looks to me like those morale penalties from the mega-cities are cumulative .. at least the +4 entertainment thingie didn't help me at all ?!



Speaking of un-happiness:
Is there something upside-down with the happiness in between-nation relations? If I stumble over an AI in the next system which is agressive and whatnot, it knocks on my door asking for a trade agreement some turns later .. despite having all our system disputed by each other and all.
Then, I meet another AI out there 5 systems away. Despite being neutral and having not one disputed system, and none of mine ships in their systems etc., they go "murderous" and declare within 5 turns. Sometimes their mood gets up to normal levels again, but they'll stay at war forever.
Have started 5 games (with different mods), and it happened not only once, but in at least 3 of those 5 ?!?!?

What about leaky armor/shields?

I'm not sure if I like them (any more) - looks to me they don't really work out, at least in the versions I have seen up to now:
Armors:
Some mods even mix leaky and 'normal' armor, what doesn't make sense at all? I mean - leaky armor is just a functionless compoment, that can take more damage than 'real' components. But this is more 'armored structure' than outlying armor which shields the ship .. unless 30% of the components or more are armor components - otherwise hits on the armor are just too unlikely. Sadly, those armor pieces still have standard size, therefore if I fill a ship with 30% armor tiles, it wouldn't be able to do anything as there wouldn't be sufficient space to place everything else. If those armor tiles are smaller than normal components (some mod does that), they work better, obviously, but take forever to repair ...
This gets rediculous if some armor types stay 'hit first' .. 1 piece providing 100% protection ..
Shields:
Shield regenerating ability was way too low to make any difference, at least at the tech level I got to try out: Again the shield should be reloaded to at least 30% between single hits, otherwise its not leaky, it turns into duct tape after the first go-through ...

[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.