Hi, everybody. I put up a new link for beta 3.

So, what is new? Well, I continued my attempts in finding a solution for the 1pp-bug, and finally decided to disable the Power Plants, Slaveling Training Center and Artificial Slave Pod. They are still in the file, just commented out, so it is easy to re-activate them. The bonuses have been added to the techs instead. I was a bit weary of this change, originally, because of what it might do to the balancing. After a lot of number-crunching and in-game tests, however, I came to the conclusion that it isn't as bad as I feared. In fact, it turned out to be working quite well.

Based on my findings, I made some adjustments: Industrial Revolutions now grants the +10% Social Production-bonus again. Advanced Robotics now grants +10% to both Social and Military Production, and Precursor Studies now grants +10% to Research, but the Iconians lose access to Planetary Improvements again. I also increased the manufacturing-bonus of the Molecular Fabricator to +75%, because the Iconians were always far behind everyone else. This will make them more competitive. They are now slightly ahead of factory-users in military production (except the Altarians and Drath) and about on par in social production. The Yor, however, still surpass everyone when it comes to production (as it should be), so I decided to change the manufacturing-bonus from the Manufacturing Vortex back to +15%. I also increased the cost to 200 and reduced the maintenance back to 4bc. The Distributed Energy Matrix has also become more expensive to build (400) and cheaper to maintain (10bc again).

The Yor saw some changes to their tech tree, too. It is now a bit closer to the vanilla-version. With some exceptions, it was mostly tweaks to the ability-bonuses. The Research-bonuses from Computational Matrix, Synthetic Ingenuity and Creative Insight have been reduced to +5%, while the Efficiency Studies-line now grants a combined bonus of +50% (instead of +100%).

Last but not least, there were some changes to the starbase modules. The bonuses from production-assist modules have been adjusted so all races can get a bonus of +30%. In hindsight, it wasn't quite fair (or balanced) for the production-challenged races to get a weaker bonus than the races with strong manufacturing abilities. I also added some starting mining modules to all races (except the Thalan), because I had free space and there wasn't much to do with mining starbases in the beginning. At the same time, I reduced the maximum mining-bonus for the Iconians, Thalan and Yor from +36% to +35%. 1% may not sound like much, but it adds up, if you have several mining starbases.

Well, those were the highlights. For everything else, take a look in the changelog.

Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the current state of the mod. The only thing left to do, if nothing else comes up, is to adjust the AIs research values.

I haven't looked at his mod that closely yet, as I just learned about it. We both attempt to do the same thing, but with different methods, which is to be expected. Overall, I'd say that Altarn's mod is more for the purist, who just wants the bugs fixed, while my mod also fixes inconsistencies with the lore and rebalances cost and maintenance of planetary improvements, among other things.

If you are really interested in the differences, though, I'd suggest you take a look at the changelogs we both provide.

I noticed the type in GC2_HINTS.XML as well but discovered it isn't read from the mod folder.

Same goes for the .STR files what provide texts for buttons and pop-up hints.

Aye it is. I toyed around adding hotkeys to the tooltips in the .STR files so you'd get Rally Point (P), Set Launch direction (L), etc.

By the way, I noticed you are using the default (AIP7) for the Drengin, Yor and Korath. Have you figured out a way to get these guys to colonize properly?

Okey.

Some info for FlavorText regards to espionage:

[TheirRaceDescription]    Shows the decription of the race with relations
[RaceDescription]    Same
[RaceRelations]    Shows race relations. Does not work with TheirRaceDescription and RaceDescription. It simply doesn't show up. I'd use this one if you type a custom race description. e.g. Iconians, etc.

Note to self: Never proclaim satisfaction with the current state of the mod, because you are bound to find something annoying afterwards.


As you can probably guess, Beta 4 contains several changes. On top of this are two bug fixes. The Drathian Temple now has the correct tech requirement and the Altarians have Enhanced Defenses in their tech tree again. The last bug is actually quite embarrassing, because it was around for almost a year now. When I rewrote the tech trees from scratch last February (for the 8th or 9th time since I started), I forgot to add the tech back in the Altarian tech tree. Or accidentally removed it. Both viewpoints are correct in that case.

While we are on the topic of "removing", I scrapped the Yor's Uplink techs. They just weren't adding anything new and felt a little redundant. The Research and Economics bonuses are now back to more appropriate techs, so nothing changed in that regard. In essence, the Yor just have three techs less and no additional Diplomacy bonuses. I also removed the Diplomacy bonuses from the Imperium and Hive government-techs. It just made no sense to me, that the Drengin and Korath are better diplomats than the Yor. The Iconians are now almost back to vanilla-level of Diplomacy. Only the Arceans and Thalan are negatively affected, but it makes sense in both cases. The Arceans are a warrior race, so diplomacy isn't that important for them, and the Thalan are the most alien race in the game.

Space Mining, Industrial Starbase Construction and Xeno Refining now require Xeno Engineering. This seems thematically more fitting than Interstellar Construction, which is about ship construction. I also increased the Logistics bonus from Interstellar War Colleges and Righteous Fleet. The Terrans and Krynn will now be able to put at least one more tiny ship into a fleet.

Some of the morale improvements now have different icons, which should make it easier to keep them apart. I also went through all of the descriptions again. It should now be more clear what type of bonus (planetary or ability) the improvement provides. Most importantly, I changed the requirement for the Restaurant of Eternity from Trade to Xeno Business.

The Torians now use AIP8 and I made some adjustments to their AIValues. Nothing big, but they should be a little better now. However, they still need a lot of work, just like all the other races, before I consider them done.

A last note: I think I fixed the empty war declaration message from the AI. However, my test time is limited, so I need somebody else to confirm it. It didn't happen in my last games, but there is always the possibility of it still occurring. To test this, you would need to play a good stock race (not a custom one). The bug doesn't happen when playing against the Terrans, Drengin, Altarians, Arceans, Torians and Yor, so you can leave them out.

Well, those are the major changes. For more details, please read the Changelog.

Loving this, thanks

I'm not happy with the changes to farms being a percentage bonus because now the planet tiles that are supposed to increase the food production of farms built in the tile don't do anything.

Well, Beta 4c is up a little sooner than I intended. I found a pretty serious bug, with the help of MabusAltarn's Mod Validation program, so I decided to release this version sooner.

The bug was, that the Torians lost access to the Mining and Production Assist-modules, due to the way I re-implemented Mining Barracks and Starbase Factory. I fixed this by giving the Torians their own versions and making Mining Center and Advanced Starbase Factory independent of the previous modules.

Speaking of the Torians, I removed the base food-production from the Harvester. I originally wanted to make the Harvester more unique and give the Torians a bigger food-production. In the end, it was just too dangerous. On the flip-side, they now start out with Basic Farm. So do the Thalan.

I split up a couple of the starting techs into several smaller ones. The Basic Farm got moved from Industrial Revolution to Farming. This removed the necessity for the Drengin/Korath Slave Farm, so I gave them access to the Xeno Farm again. The Market Center is now unlocked by Capitalism. The Basic Slave Pit and the starbase modules are moved from A Ruthless History to Traditional Slavery. The Basic Collective and the starbase modules are moved from Cybernetic History to Basic Manufacturing. I'm not exactly happy with the names and descriptions of the new techs, but they will do for now.

I only made some small changes to how the Terrans are researching. It still isn't great, but at least their hunt for manufacturing techs should be slowed down a little bit.

When I was restarting my work at the end of 2011, I began an attempt to balance the weapons and defenses, by removing all of the iterations. Around early/mid February 2012, I concluded that the attempt was a failure. The AI just couldn't handle it. I needed to undo the changes and begin re-adjusting the AIValues again. This time, however, I wanted to try something else. I was curios how the AI would handle the game without any human help. After setting all the AIValues to zero, I began several test games and was quite surprised. The AI was doing quite well. Better than I expected. Sure, it made a couple mistakes, but nothing that couldn't be helped with some adjustments (or so I thought). I set the Values to 10, to have more leeway in either direction, and got back to work. Until my computer began crashing...

Now, I let the AI do its own thing, and occasionally nudge it in the right direction when necessary. It is still time consuming to find the right AIValues, but far less so than using the vanilla ones as base.