I have a few ideas as to re-balancing siege and anti-structure frigates...

first, I'd switch their armor type to heavy.  Light Frigates are supposed to be their counters, not fighters.  Second, give them antimatter pools and abilities that greatly increase their power.

One of the big problems (IIRC) from the early sins siege frigates was that they alternated between being way OP to being fragile useless supply hogs... one person suggested requiring them to take time to start bombing (like, well, actual siege equipment) but this would 1. probably be impractical to implement and 2. remove the possibility of a pop. killing/weak planet bombing raid.

My proposal would be to give them abilities that would greatly increase their power.  IIRC there's no ability value to directly alter siege bombing damage- only cooldown- so by, say, doubling damage and cooldown rate (thus keeping same DPS) and then using an over-time ability that consumes AM and halves cooldown you're effectively doubling bombing dps.  Other abilities could, for instance, be a channeling AM hog that deals heavy (4X or more the normal damage) DoT bombing but requires a "warm up" and "cool down" (e.g. takes 5 sec. of charging to start, then disables frigate for a few seconds upon ending the ability) which would mimic the "deploy/repack siege gear" thing.  Perhaps an ability to double damage/deal extra DoT/pop damage and/or other debuffs but also would decrease shield regen/disable passive regen or something similar (e.g. a Vasari Destructor captain going "channel weapons/shield power to teh lazer of doom!") or perhaps a "double duty" AM heavy ability that "manually fires anti-planet weapons at orbital target, dealing massive damage if it hits" but having say a 50/50 chance of hitting (or something, maybe no penalty if it's just AM expensive), costing heavy AM (limiting other options) and/or disabling the ship/requiring a charge up time.

Essentially such an ability would allow siege frigates to act as makeshift anti-structure frigates, though this would really be an inefficient method, as AM costs  (not to mention possible misses/debuffs afterwords) would probably limit to say, 3 or 4 volleys at full AM pool. Just giving them some extra options and mileage.

The same could go for Anti-Structure frigates, e.g. a "channel shields to weapons" or "disable maneuvering engines to stabilize firing arc/targeting" or "deploy secret weapon!" ability, or a "turn torpedoes into makeshift bombs" to add more double-duty versatility.

All of this would, naturally, further increase the Light Frigate's role against these two suckers, as they'd be able to target the AM pool and/or disable abilities (cutting out quite a bit of the extra tactical options) etc.

Also, why not make "copies" of existing strike-craft, making variants for different ship/structures etc.  EG a separate fighter type for battleships, carriers etc.  These could have different abilities/stats and flavor text/names, e.g. the Antorak Marauder's "[something sinister] Raiders" which would be faster, have greater weapon range and higher raw damage plus perhaps a passive, deal extra damage to structures ability, but have slower turn radius and much looonger build time plus rate of fire, i.e. really good first strike/close to engage and perfect for hit-and-run raids, not so good in prolonged engagements.

A similar fighter type for, say, the Kol, the "Admiral's Guard" or "Kol's Dogs" or just "Interceptors" which would have a passive ability that deals extra damage against SC; they'd have the best raw speed/weapon range/damage of any fighter (possibly firing missiles instead of auto-cannons, should be pretty easy to mod that) but have poor turn speed/rate and the passive ability lowers their evasion (chance to be hit (?) as damage target, remember SC have less than 100% chance to be hit by default, varying by weapon type vs. armor type etc- this can be played with!) so they're devastating at intercepting incoming bombers/fighters in a heavy "first strike" but between poor maneuverability, longer weapon cooldown, and being easier to hit, they'd be at a distinct disadvantage over a protracted dogfight- just like real interceptors vs. fighters.  The Sova's SC would be somewhat poorer than others (even TEC's) but be more numerous and build much faster- in essence being the zerg red-shirt human rookies swamping the much more elite but irreplaceable Vasari vets in a painful war of attrition.  And of course cruisers could be even cheaper/weaker, so on a one-to-one basis they're outmatched by cap ship fighters; but Hangar defenses/SBs might be cheaper/weaker still, simply having the advantage of expendability/cheapness/numbers/fast build times etc.  Or other race or structure specific abilities or trade-offs.

Also, I'm going to try my hand at adding shield meshes to all structures, and also new weapons nodes to cap. ships, to give them anti-fighter turrets.  This, too, could add quite a bit of variation- for instance, the Sova's laser defenses would deal anti-light damage, shredding bombers (much more valuable for air superiority and protecting the fleet/itself, then) but sucky damage against ships and structures, so another cap could tear it to pieces relatively easily.

The Battleships would still deal cap. type damage (or composite, perhaps?  Not sure how that would compare balance wise) but be relatively weak compared to other cap. weapons in ship-to-ship combat and/or have somewhat lower range plus having poorer accuracy vs. SC etc.  So they'd be decent against everything, but not particularly good against anything, though again given the really fast & hard hitting interceptors, all-round toughness and abilities of the battleship it would still be able to hold its own against SC quite admirably, even if it isn't shredding them, just like WWII battleships, which could take insane levels of punishment even from SC and never got sunk while under air escort but would eventually succumb if undefended/unescorted and facing hordes of anti-ship bombers.

I PMed GoaFan earlier about this question and got this response.

QUESTION - Hey, i was playing your 4X mod, me and a friend of mine play Sins and when we are done doing the actual game we like to have a massive battle at some space junk, just send everything we got at each other with a hope and a prayer and see what works. We have been doing this with your 4X mod, and its fun and all but i was wondering if you perhaps know of a way for me to make a Sins map, like 200 planets 3 solar systems - nothing fancy, but have it use the planet mods that you have. Ive used the galaxy editor so i have a vague idea of what i would need to do, but i cant seem to figure out how to use the new planet mods to make a map.

ANSWER - You can make a galaxy forge for any mod by coping the Galaxy Forge folder, then pasting it somewhere. Give it a name like "E4X Galaxy Forge".

Then go to the E4X Mod folder, and go into it's GameInfo folder. Find a file called "GalaxyScenarioDef". Copy it.

Then go to your E4X copy of the Galaxy Forge, and paste the GalaxyScenarioDef (GSD) file from the mod into that folder. It should prompt you to overwrite the GSD file already there, but say yes.

And you're done. That process can be used to make a Galaxy Forge for any mod. In my case, I have put as many options for map makers as possible, from extra random planet options ("Random Crystal" for example) as well as all the bonuses and things.

I will say that very few PCs will be able to handle a 200 planet map without lag late game. If you have only 4-6 players it might be alright, but 10 with maxed out fleets on a map of that size will probably cause issues.

Is this for Rebellion or Diplomacy?

Cool. Yeah you got to make sure you're using the Rebellion version of Galaxy Forge. Some people don't realize it's in there steamapp folder and download the one for Diplomacy from this site because it's not well labeled.

I know they count for the super weapon limit. Unfortunately there is no other way for the AI or autocast to work unless they're done that way. I can't really give you much more advice other than to look in the GalaxyScenarioDef file to see how I've spawned them in.

As for the autosaves, yeah, that's just the program. You'll get that with the Rebellion version regardless if its a modded Galaxy Forge or not. Unless Stardock wants to release the source code there it's not something I can change.

justinian66, I DO have a beta version of the textbin gui for rebellion, but one or two users have had trouble with it not finding the sins rebellion on their computers, which is why it is still in beta see reply 209 in my text bin gui thread.

harpo

I actually did try using your beta converter for the files in this mod before, but they didnt work. Keeps saying the program is "Not Responding" when I try to convert a few files from this mod. I was trying to see the stats on the new super weapons by converting them to txt but the converter always failed. Perhaps I am doing it wrong or did not set up the program correctly? Don't know what the problem is other than maybe the program just cant handle files that arent in the original Rebellion game, such as those superweapons entities I mentioned. Maybe you know or have experienced a similar problem.

Well the quality of the ships and structures is DEFINITELY being affected by the raid strength lol. Heres a screencap of the last few surviving Corsairs from an "Overwhelming" raid I sent.  I had to raise the bounty on the player to over $25k to get the overwhelming raid level unlocked (I did notice however, and very much liked, that the "pirate severity" level gradually went back down soon after). So its fair to say I brought this hellish pirate nightmare upon my self so to speak, but there are bound to be other games where the bounty level is going to be raised significantly by the other players too so I was hoping to address this problem in regards to those instances.

[ok, how do I insert an image without it converting itself into all that txt mumbo jumbo? facepalm.jpg]

As for the pirate embassy, yes, the defeated player is still calling in pirate reinforcements after Ive conquered their home world and gotten the defeat notification from them as well. Its not like its unmanageable, I just made sure to max out the tactical slots in that grav well and then carried on with my other business.  But it still leaves a sore taste in my mouth that a defeated player is still able to spawn in new units like that.  You probably have a better idea as to what you can or cannot do to fix that problem, but perhaps an easy fix would be to just make the embassy capturable. But what did you mean about "retaking the Command Center for heroes"? Have I missed the fact that you CAN capture those structures? Is the pirate embassy ALREADY captureable?

Ok, last edit. I promise.  Arent the TEC Rebels supposed to be immune from pirate raids after researching a certain tech? Im still getting raids even after I've researched all the diplomacy techs. I thought that was part of a recent fix/update.

justinian66, I have done some testing of the gui and was able to duplicate the not responding issue and even find a work around for it, the workaround is to copy the current ConvertDataRebellion.exe from your game folder to the folder with the gui.

goafan sorry about the thread hijack

harpo

justinian66, it WAS the rebellion convertdata and the mod folders in a folder with the word rebellion(eg mods-rebellion v1.041) in the name was it?

the attempt to use the original(vanilla) sins  convertdata suggests that  the gui could NOT find the 'rebellion' in the path to the files that you were attempting to convert, and as I stated in my last reply the convertdata's from each expansion AND version differ in the actual encoding of the bin version files so the convertdata from originalsins 1.191 will NOT convert rebellion 1.041 bin files and originalsins 1.18 convertdata will crash and not convert files on originalsins 1.191 bin files, which is WHY my sins/trinity utility set supplies ALL the convertdata's from all the versions so that both the mod updater AND text-bin gui could convert any needed file between txt & bin modes and apparently the SAME is also happening on the rebellion series as well.

harpo

I'm a little confused by the wording of your reply, but perhaps if I provide this info it will help.  When I download the program and extract it, the file contains two ConvertData_Rebellion files (ConvertData_Rebellion and ConvertData_Rebellion1.031). Should I delete one of these files, replace one with the ConvertData_Rebellion file from the actual "sins of a solar empire rebellion" file, or do something completely different?

Also, when I start up the program, I am initially given a message stating: "registry error. unable to access the registry:"

After playing around with this mod for a few months, there is one thing that keeps bothering me, and I wonder if I'm the only one. It's Advent Loyalist culture; it feels a tad too strong (I'm talking single player here). I'm the type that likes to go into 100+ planet maps and slug it out with unfair/cruel/vicious AI's for a handful of hours or more, and this mod is great for that (aside from the hideously OP Vasari Rebels, but that isn't this mods fault). But AL culture seems too strong, and this is coming from someone that always plays either Advent Loyalists or TEC Rebels. When I'm AL, it feels like I can be exceedingly lazy, because of how strong the culture is; and it ruins long games because rebellions on enemy worlds cause my enemies to lose worlds faster than I could ever hope to conquer them via bombardment. On the flip side, I just finished a 3v3v3 game on a rather large map (3 TEC Rebels, 3 Vasari Loyalist, 3 Advent Loyalist, all cruel) with me using TEC Rebels, and I managed to kill off all but 1 of the AI's, the remainder being an AL.

Now at this point, it was so late into the game, that that remaining AI had a decent sized empire, as it had taken much of what the Vasari started out with. The problem is, that even as TEC Rebels, with ALL culture related upgrades, 2-4 culture centers on most of my worlds (at least the border worlds) and the Xenophobia tech, all of that didn't matter; I eventually started to have rebellions on my border worlds. Now I penetrated into their empire and began taking a few worlds, but that costs ships, ships that are difficult to replace with 60%+ taxes from fleet supply, which I am losing planets here and there to culture alone, and there isn't anything that can stop it. Then, after the worlds rebel, they cannot be re-colonized due to enemy culture. I only barely managed to win because it was a capital planet game, and I managed to circumvent 80% of their empire and take out their capital. Point is though, if things had gone on the way they did, even as TEC Rebels whom I think have the strongest anti culture capability in the game outside of Advent Loyalists, I would have lost. Not to the enemy fleet, but because Advent Loyalist culture seems unstoppable by any means save destroying their culture centers and taking planets, and this doesn't even mention Deliverance Engine spam.

I realize that the AL are in many ways the weakest faction in the game, and prior to this mod, culture has always been a bit limp wristed, so their culture being this strong is their ace in the hole. But I feel it is TOO strong, when even a fully loaded TEC Rebel, with the Xenophobia tech and many culture centers cannot stop their cultures advance, what are the other factions supposed to do? The thing is, when I play AL, the REAL weakness they have is that their eco capability is still terrible, it takes so much to research and build a fleet with them because things are expensive and their ability to generate income is pathetic. Maybe I'm just bad and completely off base here, but I think that somehow toning down Advent Loyalist culture spread, and compensating them with a small economic boost, would do wonders.

Sadly no, as I have one universal save game file that I just save over every time I play again, and I've already started a new game. But because you asked, I'll try to replicate things in a more stark fashion; perhaps I'll do something like a 5v5 with me on the side of 5 TEC Rebels and facing 5 Cruel/vicious Advent Loyalist AI's. I'll upload that when I get deep enough into the game. About the captured ships, I think that it is a big help to the faction, it's the only thing that makes them militarily capable imo since their eco is so weak, those things make up for it to some degree. But in my case, I had no problem defeating them in fleet to fleet battles, and they were never taking my worlds with fleets, it was solely culture that was defeating me, so I'd say that is a bigger issue than their fleet supply being buffered by enemy vessels.

Yeah, the change I made to the defense system has benefited the way the AI plays, with the exception of mines. Other players have said the AI seems better in most other areas too, but I'm not exactly sure why. Besides setting up priority research for it, I've done nothing to give it extra cheats or advantages like some other mods have. Oh well, I certainly won't complain.

Of course, I've had people complain about this mod for the exact same reason so I guess it depends what you're looking for.