So much going on in here, but this is about the only thing for me to comment on.  The hull modules were never changed or removed.  In v2.1, all modules are back in just they way came in the original game.  The only difference is that I modded the required techs to prevent the AI from researching them.

v2.1 Sneak Peek

Since work on v2.1 is taking significantly longer than anticipated, I figured I'd give a little glimpse into what I've been doing.

First up, while I had time I decided to deal with the Planetary Defense techs.  The descriptions were woefully inaccurate and the entire line needed some improvement.  First off, Planetary Defense was dirt cheap while the Advanced and Supreme techs were obscenely expensive - about 2x and 6x as much as the next most expensive invasion tech.  Problem is, all the goodies come with the basic tech - the Planetary Defense and Omega Defense System improvements - while the mere 10% soldiering bonus for Adv. and Sup. PD offers little incentive to research them.  So, one could easily snag the first tech and forget about the next techs until practically everything else on the tech tree was researched.

There were a few issues that needed attention: Balancing the benefits among the PD techs, addressing the huge cost disparity, and making the PD improvements more attractive.  I started by splitting the improvements up.  Planetary Defense stays with the first tech, while the Omega DS goes to Adv. PD.  That didn't leave anything for Sup. PD, so I decided to make it worth the cost and boost the soldiering bonus to 20%.  Now there is actual incentive to research through the PD line instead of leaving it as an afterthought.

Next, I looked at the improvements.  Does anyone actually build PDs or the ODS?  Maybe, but only in special circumstances.  Furthermore, the AI may build them, but will almost always use them poorly.  I took some feedback to heart and decided that I would make the blah improvements more must-have, while doing my best to keep it balanced.  For PD, it was easy.  I followed the Arcean's lead and simply gave it a 10% morale boost.  Who doesn't like being protected from invasion?  I had just boosted the Arcean's Space Cannon from 10% to 15%, so they still have a significant advantage there. 

For the Omega DS, I had to go further.  It's a Super Project, so it should be super - something you really want to build, and something I can make the AIs build without feeling like I'm disadvantaging them.  It doubles the hit points of ships in orbit, but the AI usually only keep one defender around - not much help there.  Fine, let's put the Omega in the Omega DS.  After you frag the lone defender, you'll now face a 50% PD bonus as the ODS helps repel the invasion.  Continuing with the theme of defended people being happy people, the ODS provides a 20% bonus to both morale and cultural resistance.  No easy flipping of the fortress planet.

There.  I think I managed to turn an afterthought/blah improvement into a must-have that I can feel good about forcing the AI to build.  Have extra fun conquering the Arcean planet with both the ODS and a Space Cannon!

 The new PD setup. Notice that the resistance bonus on the ODS is invisible, just like for the Secret Police HQ. I reduced the cost of PDII from 2000 to 1500, and PDIII from 6000 (!!!) to 3000. Considering that Stellar Marines is only 800, it's hardly cheap.

While I was tooling around the PlanetImprovements.xml, I found some other things to do.  The Propaganda Center, for instance, seemed a bit . . . blah.  Unlocked by Concepts of Malice, the PC is a normal improvement that boosts planetary culture resistance by 10%. Goodie-goodie-gumdrops.  Again, does anyone ever use them?  If so, only in the rarest circumstances.  The AI could never to it right, so I went to work.  The PC is now a Super Project that broadcasts the superiority of your evil empire, boosting overall loyalty by 10%.  The planet hosting it becomes an icon of your strength, granting planetary bonuses of 25% influence, 10% morale, and 20% cultural resistance.  You'd expect the propaganda planet to be fairly stable and influential, right?  Once again, blah to bam!

Then I found this buried treasure:

 <S_InternalName>LifeForcePower</S_InternalName>

 <S_Name>Life Force Power</S_Name>

 <AI>8</AI>

 <S_Type>GalacticAchievement</S_Type>

 <Maintenance>0</Maintenance>

 <Cost>1000</Cost>

 <S_BriefDescription>Increases economy.</S_BriefDescription>

 <S_Description>By converting the refuse of society into raw energy we can gain a 25% improvement to our overall economy.</S_Description>

 <S_IconName>EntertainmentNetwork.png</S_IconName>

 <CanHaveAgents>1</CanHaveAgents>

 <S_TechRequirement>TheDarkSide</S_TechRequirement>

 <EconomicBonus>10</EconomicBonus>

 <PrestigeBonus>10</PrestigeBonus>

 <AbilityType>0</AbilityType>

 <AbilityAmount>25</AbilityAmount>

 </Improvement>

Life Force Power?  TechRequirement TheDarkSide?  Looks like it was meant for a never-included Ultimate Evil type tech.  Well, why let it sit unused?  I changed the name to Life Force Extractor and set the requirement to Ultimate Evil.  I also gave it the unused CoreTap query and icon, since it looked good enough for the purpose.

That's about it for now, but you may have noticed that these changes help evil races quite a bit.  I think evil is fairly well set up at this point.  They've been more than fairly compensated for losing their free starbase module perk.  Rest assured I'll be looking at the good Super Projects as well, and making sure neutral stays competitive.

  Evil is flush with goodies.  Again, the resistance bonus doesn't show up.

 

 

 

 

  The Secret Police HQ.  I boosted the resistance bonus to 20% and gave it a loyalty bonus of 10%.  I took the loyalty bonus away from the tech itself, so you'd have to build the SPHQ to get it.  I'm having second thoughts about this.  With the tech, you could only get the loyalty bonus once.  With a building, you could possibly capture two or three and end up with a huge loyalty bonus.

Thoughts?

As a parting thought, I had another idea for evil weapons and good defenses.  What if, instead of a bunch of weapons or defenses, you just got access to a single tech that provided a weapons or defense bonus?  Say, Psionic Weapons for evil and Telepathic Defenses for good?  How much of a bonus would be appropriate? 25%? 50%?  How much for weapons?  How much for defense?

If you've read this whole thing, you're a trooper.  Thanks for any responses.

The problem with doing things this way is that attaching a percentage bonus makes it an absolute difference rather than a relative difference, so the more bonuses you're able to stack on from other sources (mining resources, techs, anomalies), the less benefit you have for being Evil-or Good.

I don't know if this is an actual issue or merely a perceived one, but it certainly would only really have ethics matter in the early game.  There's also the question of attempting to balance any racial bonuses versus the next weapon/defense in the tree; I find it easy to see how simply continuing weapons/defense research could be superior to an extra boost, and then what good does it do?

Considering how the mechanics work on morale, I'm not convinced that your modifications are enough, especially since they're one-per-planet (IIRC).  Something along the lines of twice as much, and perhaps converting it to Approval instead of Morale (I remember that the Neutral ethics choice used to give this, although it doesn't anymore, and I know high-PQ planets do), if possible-but I honestly don't know if that's even an option.

Thanks for the kind words, Gaunathor. I vaguely remember coming across the Life Force Power and Historical Preserve improvements last time I was working on this, but wide-scale fixes of planetary improvements were out of the question then.  In the year since, I simply forgot.  It's like finding a surprise all over again.   Now that I'm more or less satisfied with the TechTrees, I can spend some time working on the improvements.

I remember the Secret Police HQ being described as all evil and nasty, but everyone had access to it through Good and Evil.  I'm not really comfortable making it evil-only at this point, especially after what I just did for evil.

I don't know what to do for weapons and defenses for neutral.  For the time being, I think they'll have to go without.  Maybe next time around.  In the mean time, they've got Neutral Trade, the Hall of Justice, and Neutrality Research Centers, among other things.

Sole Soul, thanks for the feedback.  I guess I'll stick with the actual weapons and defenses for good and evil.

As far as I know, there is no way to code for an Approval bonus.  It may exist, but it's not in any of the guides and I haven't yet figured it out.  I didn't want to overpower the improvements by granting huge morale bonuses.   For the most part, they are just there to make the improvements slightly better or not entirely restricted to a narrow purpose, like Planetary Defense.  I originally had the Propaganda Center at 20% Morale, but didn't want to overpower it.  As I finish up, I may go back and bump it up again.  Either 15% or 20%, but likely no more.  The influence, loyalty, and resistance bonuses are the real payoff.

Could someone ether post a link to, or PM me a link to a download containing the default TA tech tree?

this mod broke my custom tech trees.

As far as adjusting AI use of improvements goes, the biggest impact is in the early game, because later on the AI tends to just auto-upgrade everything without bothering about doing something with unloved bonus tiles.  It's one of the reasons why I cut many starting improvements - so that they have a chance to build economic improvements first, which are essentially the bedrock on which everything else is built.  Factories and labs cost money besides the obvious maintenance, so in order for the AI to run a balanced economy, they need to be limited in the beginning.

You can set certain improvements to be only 2 or 3 per planet, then relax this restriction for the upgrade building, which with the AI in mind, will almost certainly get built.  Okay so you are constraining them from building more of that type of building, but in the early part of the game, that's for their own good.

I'm sorry you had trouble.  It does sound as though you used my files to replace the original files.  That is certainly never recommended.  MarvinKosh's suggestion should help you get things back.  If you're still having trouble, let me know and I'll put the original on my RapidShare account.

It makes sense that your custom TechTrees wouldn't work with my mod, since I removed a number of techs and added others.  How many custom TechTrees do you have?  I'd be willing to look at them to see if I can make them compatible with my mod.  It shouldn't be to much hassle, so long as they aren't crazy and there aren't, like, 50 of them.

I'll have a look and see what I can do.  I would only change those things absolutely necessary to get your TechTree working.  For example, I noticed that you have the Yor/Iconian weapons in your TechTree.  Unfortunately, those weapons have been removed in my mod.  I'll have to simply replace your weapons and defenses with the standard set used in my mod.

As for weapon FX, I don't think I've ever taken a serious look at that folder.  Yet another GC2 black box.

Oi Tolmekian, I just wanted to jump in here to say that the stuff you've got cooking for the new update looks great!  I hope you didn't take my whining about the SPH too seriously - it was just one of many galactic super deals that I never build (like the Omega Defense Salami).  Though it sounds like nobody else was building them either.  Anyway, good stuff all around.

I always wondered about those extra weapons and defenses that Neutral was supposed to get, because I never saw any.  I think once upon a time we used to have Nano Rippers or something, but maybe that was before ToA.  Anyway, personally, I'm fine with Neutrality as is.  It's even better than it used to be because now we get the Halls of Justice (and Aquaman!) in addition to Neutral Shipping and theLearningCenters.  Of course if we got a unique weapon/defense in a future update, I wouldn't complain.  Anyway, if anyone needs a buff, I think it’s the Good guys, those poor dumb bastards.  They always get the shaft when it comes to moral choices.  

There was a thread I saw somewhere in which a guy was trying to mod the moral choices to be more even so that they didn’t screw Good and buff Evil so much.  As I recall, it wouldn’t work, and I think you had posted in that thread and claimed to have tried fixing it yourself.  That got me thinking.  I never really questioned why Good got boned in moral decisions while Evil got the gold.  That’s because I thought I remember reading somewhere when I first started playing, that the reason Good loses out on moral choices is because once they end up picking their alignment, they actually enjoy better relations with other civs – like making alliances, picking up treaties, or swapping tech or whatever – while evil races got more of the cold shoulder.  Is this at all accurate?  If not, then where am I getting this from?  I drink a lot, but I don’t think that explains it.  Am I just thinking about Good civs trade bonus with other Good civs?  Anyway, if Good DOESN”T get some kind of bonus to offset the crappy results of their virtuous decisions, then I take back what I said earlier about Evil getting unjustly boned – they SHOULD get boned for wiping out all those warring bug hives and serving Boilshire Farms Flesh Nectar in school cafeterias.

Also, I'd just like to cast my vote for your first idea regarding evil/good weapons/defenses.  Not sure why - just like the thought of individual weapons instead of one big multiplier.  Seems like the multiplier might get a bit gnarly later on in the game.  But what the hell do I know?  One thing that I really do like about your mod, is that you got rid of all the scary weapons at the end of the tree.  Even though I never get that far, it bothers me when games make you slog through a bunch of relatively balanced weapons, only to put the Mega Apocalypse Death Star Enema Cannon at the end, which of course totally trivializes every other weapon in the game.  I would rather they continue with a balanced approach, instead of trying to impress me with game-breaking overkill.  But again, what the hell do I know?  I’m sure there’s plenty of blokes out there who love that stuff.

Once again, sorry for posting so much, and not really saying anything.  Does that piss you off?  Blame my parents for not paying me any attention.

But is this just one of the perks of being Good?  Because Evil gets their own perks as well, and the fact that they get all the good results from moral choices would seem to be unfair unless Good's perks outweighed those of Evil.  Was just curioius.  Galciv wiki says that Good civs get a diplomatic bonus with other Good civs as well as NEUTRAL civs, so maybe this does even things up (I had always thought it only aplied to other Good guys).  Or maybe not.  Just seems odd that they would give one alignment such an obvious advantage over another.

That Hall of Empathy sounds great if you don't play with surrenders disabled...   

How can you read "Hall of Justice" and not hear Ted Knight's voice? hehehe

Which is a big part of the reason that it needs help.  The idea is to make it worthwhile, even must-have, under any conditions.  Given its nature, I'm thinking hefty overall population growth bonus as refugees and like minded people flock to your empire.  Put that in with a planetary influence and morale bonus and I'm thinking people will actually want to build it.

It is.  After deciding that AI 7 can work under certain conditions, I've been working on getting the Korath to use their spore weapons in my mod.  I was going to jack up the AIValue, but maybe changing to it Weapons ID will do the trick.  I also noticed that the Korath avoid invasion techs completely.  In a game where they don't research their spore weapons they're left with no means of invasion.  It's a shame, because they are monsters in my games, but end up collapsing under their huge militaries because they can't conquer anyone.  If they get those spore ships up and running they may become the scourge of the galaxy.

It's funny.  Since I was using AI 7, I decided to go as close to original as possible.  I set all the AIs back to their original settings, with the exception of the Iconians and Torians.  Turns out that having all the AIs together changes the way they research.  The AI 8 tendency to rush weapons forces the other AIs to adjust their normal research to keep up.  For a moment it looked like all my balancing went out the window, but then I remembered my earliest tests.  It's not game breaking, by any means.  So, under certain conditions AIs 7,8, and 11 can be used.

Not bad.

Hello, Tolmekian!

Just here to say thank you for great job and that I am very excited about upcoming 2.1 update!

Your mod gives the game a new breath, I could not believe how so many bugs were left in game after 2 addons and some patches... Keep up a good job