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.

[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 ...

[Fyron]

If I could control the homeworld facilities directly (*cough* SE5 *cough*), HWs would start with several entertainment networks. But alas...

Arralen said:
But the homeworlds are generally full, so unless the AI can tear done facilities now to replace them with more needed/fitting ones, it will end up with maximum angry homeworlds and the according production penalties.

With even a low bonus, they get a 100% bonus to production; up to 400% bonus with high. And it only applies to the HW. The angry penalty is not that significant for them, in my opinion.

Also, there are the effects of ships:

Our Ship in Sector := -10
Our Ship in System := -3

1 ship in the same sector as the planet offsets a 1% facility penalty. I suspect it might take a while before they get enough ships roaming about to have an overall mitigating effect, but it could happen.

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

Yes, planetary happiness abilities stack.

Is there something upside-down with the happiness in between-nation relations?

The AI is insane.

[Arralen]

.. sorry, had some edits to make to my above post ..

[Fyron]

Arralen said:
I'm not sure if I like them (any more) - looks to me they don't really work out...

It seems to work as intended in the mods I've tried with leaky armor. The whole point is to let some damage get through, but still have the armor components take a good share of damage. Generally, leaky armor components have a lot more hp/kt than normal components (usually at least an order of magnitude). The component selection function is further biased towards hitting high hp components, disproportionate to the component's percent of total hp.

The size of leaky armor isn't so important; larger pieces actually generally work better due to having more hp/component. For example, in leaky armor setups like B5 Mod and Adamant, ships with heavy armor tend to defeat ships with (the same total tonnage of) light armor, despite the light armored ship having a ton more total hp. The lower hp/kt heavy armors tend to take more hits from the "internals" than the higher hp/kt light armors.

This gets rediculous if some armor types stay 'hit first' .. 1 piece providing 100% protection ..

If you are refering to Adamant, the "dense armor" components come at the end of the tech tree, after all leaky armors. They are not really comparable to them, and by that point leaky shields + dense armor are generally the way to go, rather than using much leaky armor. Though, note that there are armor-skipping weapons available to all races (graviton hellbore and graviton missiles for physical paradigm), so you can really pull off some surprise punches against those dense-armored ships.

Note that armor-skipping weapons (shard cannons, graviton hellbore in Adamant) have some interesting effects against leaky-shielded targets. The Skips Armor damage type does not trigger the SGFD (or Emissive) ability, so "skips armor" actually works well against both leaky shields and dense-armored targets. No shield points are generated as a result of an armor-skipping shot, and the damage bypasses the dense armor.

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 ...

First, not that regeneration abilities are not part of the leakiness; leakiness comes from the shield generation from damage (SGFD) ability.

But it is leaky; it doesn't block a percentage of each hit, so much as replenish the shields after each hit (to a point). Statistically, this has the effect of regenerating damage by a certain percent. If you have more total SGFD than what weapons do per hit, you essentially get the overall damage reduced by half. The percentage of reduction varies by damage type; for example, 1/2x to shields means that overall damage is reduced by 66% (it takes 2 shots to deplete the shield points generated from 1 hit that entirely damages internals). Naturally, the water becomes murky when different types of weapons are mixed together, but you still get some general overall reduction in damage.

At least in Adamant, low tech shields are not very powerful. At low tech levels, it is better to rely more on armor. As tech progresses, the shields start to come into their own. I did make them 20 kT to speed up the point when they start becoming useful, though.

When you get tech to efficiently mount both leaky shields and leaky armor, the damage from each shot is statistically reduced on two levels before reaching internals to do real damage to the ship. There is always the possibility of being unlucky and receiving several hits that do not hit leaky armors, thus incapacitating the ship more quickly than normal. There is also the possibility of getting lucky and having most/all hits go into the armor, thus making the ship remain operational far longer than normal. But overall, it tends to balance out. This is the beauty of leakiness.

[Arralen]

Let's take this discussion to the Adamant Mod Thread ... .

[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.