It can only be done via ability unfortunately. You can change planet module build rates and costs however.

Cheers Lavo, saved me banging my head against a brick wall.

Have you considered having random planetary abilities (for boosting / unboosting etc) similar to how the Distant Stars mod has? Each planet is therefore always unique every single game. That uniqueness is further defined by any planetary bonuses that are uncovered while exploring the planet.

Certainly trade, tax, pop growth and a resource extraction rates are possibilities, how about:-

Quantium-40 Deposits

Trade: +25%

Tax: +25%

Growth: +20%

Metal: +35%

Module build-rate & cost could also be reduced - jumpgates certainly required Q40, but it may be a bit of a stretch applying such a bonus to all structures. It's a shame that ship build rates can't be affected, Norbert's original suggestion did fit quite well with B5's story-line.

All that mining activity would tend to suppress population growth, how about -10% on the rate but not impact the maximum level for the planet...it can't be all good!

While I'm not sure on the number I agree with the sentiment to a point. It's the whole reason there is a 'home-fleet' for many of the races.

Fair point, that sounds reasonable.

You would have to be careful here. The more powerful races (Shadows, Vorlons and even Minbari) are deliberately restricted in their colonization capabilities so that their early economies develop slowly, thus giving the other races (with weaker ships) a chance to expand and thus support a large fleet. If the homeworlds of the stronger races can be upgraded to support large populations you might end up negating this intent. Having said that it may give them the necessary resources to build a least one (non-free) capital ship.

It was good to see the AI making a stab at playing as the Shadows last night - it even built a (young) Shadow vessel and invaded one of my systems. The local Kanet-6 put a dent in its armour before the turret was destroyed. Sharlin war cruisers Enifili and Dogato then engaged it, scoring more damage as the ship retreated. The two cruisers pursued the vessel to the neighbouring system where it turned around an counter attacked, Enifili took the brunt of the assault, but the combined strength of both vessels overcame this icon of darkness - great stuff!

The powerfull races, older races canonically have a smaller population base (especially the First Ones, but also the Minbari), so giving them less max pupulation would be supported by the backstroy.

You could create a new planet type, Homeworld (or even a seperate planet type for each race) and then give each race a research to unlock the bonuses suggested by Darvroth. That way it would be easy to customice and balance the bonuses for each race seperately, or even unlock them bit by bit, if you spread the bonuses to more than one research subject.

Alternatively you could even incorporate these homeworld bonuses into the current "era progressions", if you don't want to have any new research subjects just to upgrade the homeworlds.

I also thought of another possible planet bonus: "Technomage's Place of Power".

From the books and crusade there are two confirmed cases of technomages not joining the exodus other than the main antagonists Elizar and Razeel (Alwin and the one who created the nanovirus in Crusade) and there are several mages missing, presumed to be hunted down and killed by the Shadows, but noone really knows.

Given how diverse the philosophies and capabilities of the technomages are, you could give that planet bonus pretty much any buff or debuff you can think of. For exampel on Soom Elric somehow managed to build machines that influenced the techtonic plates in a way that drastically reduced the propability of earthquakes.

If you want it to be a mixed thing, rather than a purely positive one, you could reduce tradeincome due to the Technomages being so secretive and feared by many people.

Hi guys,

Sorry for my absence, I'm still ill and have fever so I've yet to read all the stuff you posted (and it's a lot it seems). Can't work on the computer for long.

Still, 0.43 is actually almost done, so it can't be that long till release.

All the best

Tobias

This is very good news!

get well soon!

Both good suggestions, hopefully I'll be able to have a go at both over the weekend.

Using the baseValue entry for this research you can give the Vorlons and Shadows an automatic substantial penalty to all planet populations which then is partially mitigated by actually researching it.

NewHorizon's has the right of it. Internally we (the mod team) are on our third round of balancing tickets for the Vorlon and Shadow. They must be restricted but not so much so they are easy to zurg rush and so they can't zurg rush anyone else. With the latest tickets they should be playable and the AI can manage them.

A couple thoughts for the forum: even with all the balancing we are still in alpha and much content and features are still lacking so there will be hick ups. When they are found please let us know so the issues can be addressed in future builds. I've played both the Shadow and Vorlon and to be honest they are boring. The latest build introduced a nerfed planet bombing ability but by design neither race should be able to take down a developed planet through bombing. It is sufficient to reduce an asteroid but not much above that. Both factions are to be feared in battle and do NOT engage a large fleet though smaller fleets are managable. Both factions spread slowly but tend to keep what they claim. If they are set as an AI explore early and colonize everything you can around them as by design both will have problems kicking you off. All the orbital planet modules can expect to be vaporized in short order but the planet is safe. That will change with later releases but for now is a necessary balancing tool. Culture can still flip a planet, let us know.

Research tech trees: they are rough we acknowledge that and we are still tweaking them. Players familiar with 0.42 will see significant changes in 0.43. We are open to suggestions, be specific.

String files: there are lots of problems with mismatches of description to entity file mainly cause we keep tweaking them and a sweep is a project for later but where there are glaring issues let us know and we'll correct.