You get offensive/defensive modules for researching weapons and defences with this mod too.  There aren't a lot of them because, as I noticed in some of my games, a cunning human player can create very effective kill zones populated by just drones and military starbases.  So there are fewer ship assist modules in the mod now, which is just as well since I had to trim as many as possible to get most of the modules in before the 100 limit for the AI to use them.

Can't do that.  Reason being, mods can override the same data files - tech trees, buildings, etc.  In order to use one mod with another you need to merge them together,  Using Windws Exlorer, take what's inside both folders and drag it over to a new mod folder.  For example, if I wanted to combine my mod with the High Resolution Graphics Mod, I'd make a folder called 'SWFM V HRG' and drag the contents of both mod folders to there.  Don't drag the actual mod folder over, else it won't combine them into one mod folder structure.

This assumes that one mod can work with another.  As I mentioned, some of them can override the same basic files.  So you can't get the features of both without opening up conflicting files in Notepad or some other editor and doing it manually.  So you have to know what you're doing with them, else you can crash your game with circular tech dependencies and stuff.

The biggest time suck is not the modding though, it's testing out the mod through normal play.

Even then, there are limits to what can be done by modding.  Unless I created a whole new version of the mod designed around low-habitability galaxies, there's no way to prevent the AI from spamming the wrong kind of buildings.  All I've done is stave off economic meltdown in the early game, by depriving AI and human player alike of money-sucking buildings.  It's up to Stardock to come up with a smarter AI that can use buildings more effectively in the first place, demolish buildings that it no longer needs, and use bonus tiles to maximum potential, without making the early game even more painful for the AI that it already is.

What you have to appreciate is that designing an AI that can strategise and build a thriving economy like a human player is no small task.  Some of the concepts we take for granted (like holding onto the initial treasury and running at a loss to use full production) fly in the face of what a simple query tells the AI about its situation.

A new thing that I finally decided irks me.

Sensors.

The first tech is sort of useful because it gets you the survey module and a bonus to your Sensors ability, but the Sensors Mk I module itself is worthless due to the space it takes up.

So I've made a slight adjustment to the space used by Sensors Mk I and II and slightly decreased the cost on the Mk II.

I've also decreased the cost for the Sensor Array while increasing the space usage, making it less expensive to use early on but not so competitive that you never want to use Sensors Mk III.  I will be adjusting the research cost on that as well, since it's basically a bonus tech for picking Terrans.

Yep, the Iconian buildings are available, it's just the AI doesn't want to build them.  Probably because it got itself set on personality 10.  No idea how that happened.  Nothing for you guys to worry about though, the mod's raceconfig has the Iconians set to personality 8 instead.

So I've had a look again at the beam weapons.  There's not much of a gap between Disruptor IV and the Doom Ray in terms of cost to damage ratio or damage to size ratio.  However if I make Doom Ray better, it's almost worthless to play a race that gets Disruptor on their tech tree.

So I've created a new end-game beam weapon for races that have Disruptors instead of Phasors.

Omega Beam
This new ultimate beam weapon is a disruptor weapon of colossal power which actually unravels the space and time that the target is occupying.  Because this breakdown is temporary, it does not harm our universe, but it is very harmful to the target.

Posted a new version today with the changes to engines, sensors, sensor array and the new Omega Beam, and the fix for Arceans getting stuck.  I've also included a new evil custom race for you to try out, they have the Super Warrior ability and are focused on industry.

There might be some issues with getting the race to display their logo, you may have to go into their config file in CustomRaces and edit the path to logo.  Or it may work fine.

By default you will not be able to select them to use as your race, you'll need to drag them from the mod folder, change the file extension so it reads raceconfigxml, and maybe a couple of other things.  They're meant to be used as an opponent race.

So I haven't had much of a chance to play GC2 what with XCOM Enemy Unknown and Fallen Enchantress hogging my time.

But guess what?  GalCiv III isn't here yet, and neither is a patch for GC2, so it seems I'm not done yet.  I'm not sure when I will update next, it really depends on what there is left that I can fix or improve.

What I would like is for someone to post an AAR of a game using the latest version of the mod, or even a review of the mod gameplay if that's more your thing.  I had one going for a while there but doing that and working on the mod at the same time was just killing me.

I left the mining modules alone for the most part and stripped some modules from economic/culture.  That's what I wrote in the changelog.  If there are more manufacturing assist modules than there were before, it's because I added racial-specific manufacturing techs.

Hi people

Well, if i want to play vanilla Gal Civ 2 , i don´t want to use mods that change too much of the game.

But yes, i can remember that some races built ship hulls without any weapons. And i want to fix this.

Do i simply have to remove the <Category>PD</Category> in <Weapons ID="Space Weapons">for all affected tech trees ?

Please forgive my confusion.  I once downloaded and installed the Tolmekkian Tech Mod.  Do I have to uninstall that before installing the 5D version I just downloaded from here?

Current state of the mod: Still playing my Altarian test game.  It's going really well actually, someone picked a fight with me and immediately three other races declared war on them.  I haven't lost any planets to invasion yet, but I need better ships and more of them if I'm going to fight back.

Although the Altarians initially start out with a penalty to their Weapons ability, between a starbase built on red anomaly and beelining to Dark Energy Research I've got about +26% in it now.

Overall  I like what I've done with the Altarian improvements.  Their factories have a small but cumulative bonus to manufacturing.  Of course, the Altarians do not get power plants in the mod, but they don't need it in order to compete in manufacturing, as previous games have shown.

It's going to take a while to get used to the fact that I don't have any cool ship templates handy.  I would really have loved it if someone had come up with some naval-style ship templates but in the Altarian style.

If you caught the running commentary on my latest game you might remember that I said the Arceans were struggling.  I haven't revealed the map to find out whether that's because they started in a bad place or whether they've been marginalised by the other nearby races.  They are at war with the Yor, who seem to be gobbling up other empires at a frightening pace, so the latter theory may fit better.

Hopefully I will get a chance to see if they're able to progress through their tech tree like the other races without getting stuck again.  I'm not too hopeful because they're only just researching Laser III, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Anyway, until I have something more, there's not much in the way of changes to be made.  I may have another look at the weapons balance, in particular Laser V vs Particle Beam I.  Okay, fair enough the particle beams are fairly cheap to research, but unless you research Miniaturisation it is often necessary to keep going until you hit Particle Beams II.

Others have made the argument (and I agree) that having five grades of laser weapons is quite obnoxious.  The basic weapons techs are not something that either the human or AI player should be spending lots of research time on.