I didn't mean the colour. Click on "View all edits made to this post" and keep in mind, that I was still using AIP 8 without noticing it. The screen shots probably won't work anymore, however, because I removed them from my dropbox account.

As for the Korx needing work, I think so too. You wouldn't happen to know the RGB values for the green that is used for Dollar bills?

Edit: Found it! Well, or at least a tone called "Dollar bill". Wikipedia really does seem to know everything.

So, what do you think? Korx are in the upper-right corner.

Here is my suggestion:

Here is yours:

I don't think so. At least not at first glance.

Here is a screen shot with with the races who have the most similar colour to each other. Yor and Thalan at the top, Korath, Drath and Drengin in the middle, and the Korx (with bbr91's colour) at the bottom.

I think, that is the case with all colour changes I made. Thanks for the feedback. If you have the time, I could use some more. Ahm, see the bolded parts.

Warning! Wall of Text incoming!


As you have probably noticed from my last big post, I'm taking a look at the Thalan at the moment. However, unlike what I stated in the next big one before I deleted it, AIP 11 does a decent job. It still has some problems now and then, but, for the most part, it's good. Certainly better than AIP 8.

I'm currently pitting the Thalan against the Arceans and the Drengin in my AI vs AI test games. In those instances were the Thalan are winning, they often end up allying themselves with the Arceans. Only rarely do I see those two duking it out. I'm not certain, if that is because I reduced the Aggression value for both races to 50, or if it is because both use AIP 11. This is an unexpected development and I'm not sure, if I should even try to do something about it. The Drengin still manage to win quite regularly, but I'm not yet ready to call them "good". While they are faster to research Slave Canyons, it still isn't as fast as I'd like. I also have yet to test, if they manage to do as well in an actual game.

I made a couple more changes to the Thalan tech tree and improvements. The most obvious one is the removal of farms. Farms did more harm than good for the Thalan AI. Depending on the planet, it either build no farms at all or two or more. However, it never utilised the morale improvements properly. It's painful for me to see a planet with a population of 20b and only one Zero-G Amusement (if they even get that far in the tech tree). Why isn't this a problem for the other races? Because they have other improvements available from the start. The Thalan only begin with a handful of unique improvements and farms. Once they are able to research new improvements, the next farm-level is among the first they take. Removing farms not only helps the AI in this regard, but also adds a drawback to the Thalan and makes sense based on the lore. According to their description for Planetary Invasion, there just aren't enough Thalan to waste as cannon fodder.

To help Thalan morale, I made some adjustments to those improvements. Zero-G Amusement is gone, because it just didn't make sense at it's current place and was too hard for the AI to get. In exchange, the Recuperation Center got a boost. It now provides a +35% bonus instead of +15%. However, I also changed the cost back to 50. Overall, this should allow the Thalan to set their taxes much higher early on.

However, the biggest change I made was to Industrial Adaptation and Technology Adaptation. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was considering to turn those two tech lines into one tech each. That is what I'm currently testing. The AI still has some problems with researching those techs, going either for Tech Adaptation early on and taking Industrial Adaptation some years later, or doing it the other way around. Only sometimes does the AI go for both techs early on. Still, it is an improvement compared to how it was before. Balancing this change, however, will be much more difficult.

Right now, Industrial Adaptation costs 500 (reduced from 800) and Technology Adaptation 800 (increased from 500). The Manufacturing Matrix costs 100, provides 12MP and has a maintenance of 6bc, while the Technology Matrix also costs 100, provides 16RP and has a maintenance of 8bc. As you can see, the Thalan can get those buildings pretty quickly. Fully utilising them, however, is not so easy early on, because of the maintenance cost and lack of citizens to tax. However, I will probably need to increase the buildcost, especially for the Mfg. Matrix due to the construction bonus from the Super Hive ability, to balance it out with the factories and labs from the other races. Although, there is another way to balance this, but it requires more work.

When I began to work on this mod five years ago, it was just a small assortment of bugfixes for planetary improvements. Shortly after, I decided to address some of the balancing issues, like odd jumps in buildcosts and maintenance. I came up with two ways to fix this. The first was, to keep the scaling, but use a stable increase, so there would be no sudden jumps. The second was, to use a fixed value for both buildcost and maintenance (so more advanced improvements would just provide more output, but are otherwise the same as the old ones). I tried both approaches several times over the years, but ultimately ended up using the first one, because I was afraid that a fixed value would be too unbalancing. In beta 5, I went back to a fixed value for maintenance, because the AI had trouble to cope with the scaling. Now, I'm considering to do the same to the buildcosts. (You can probably see now, why it took me so long to release my mod. I'm constantly changing game mechanics, because I'm either unsatisfied with how they work, or afraid of what they might do to the AI and balancing. Well, that and several RL issues... )

Going back to a fixed buildcost has both pros and cons. The biggest argument for it, is the upgrading of improvements. Both the player and the AI spend a lot of time money just upgrading their buildings to the next best version. This happens several times over the course of the game. Unlike the player, however, the AI can't just disable auto-upgrading and wait until it has the ultimate version of the building. I already alleviated this problem somewhat, compared to the vanilla game, by reducing the buildcosts for most of the improvements, but it is still noticeable. Building up a new colony in the later stages of the game would also take less time with a fixed cost, because the improvements won't be as expensive to build. This would give especially the AI a leg up, because it doesn't use rush buying as often as the player.

The cons, as far as I can see them, are twofold. First, it could cause a serious imbalance between the empire building phase of the game and the war phase. Colonies will be build up much quicker than usual, leaving more time and money to build ships. This means, that wars will brake out much sooner than usual, and possibly makes the game less fun for those who prefer to build up empires (like me). Still, I haven't tried to use fixed buildcosts in two or three years, so it might not be as bad as I remember. The second con is, that it makes no sense. New technologies are more expensive to produce. This is the case in real life (for the most part) and in the game. New weapons cost more. New defenses cost more. Bigger hull sizes cost more. Why should planetary improvements be different? Because they exist to help the player to achieve his goals. Be that crushing the enemy races with a huge fleet, using influencer starbases to flip one planet after the other, or going up the tech tree to win a research victory. Does the constant increase to the buildcost of more advanced improvements make this more engaging or fun?

Well, that is the question. I don't know. I don't know about a lot of things anymore lately, but I really want to put an end to this constant back and forth. So, I'm asking you. Should I go with fixed buildingcosts or keep the improvements as they are now? If you need to play it first, before you can make a decision, I will provide a new PlanetaryImprovements.xml with the necessary changes. Once decided, there is no going back though. No matter the decision, however, I will re-adjust the techcosts for the labs and factories of all races. When I released the first beta, I had already changed them so they cost roughly the same for each race. However, they still feel off in some places, so I want to address this.

Speaking of costs. Does anyone have a opinion about the cost of the defense and military-assist starbase modules? I get the feeling that they are a bit too expensive, especially the ones for the Thalan, but maybe that is just me. If they are, I could probably reduce the cost or use a entry fee, like for the culture modules. However, I want to hear from you first, before I make any changes.

Well, the post is already much longer than intended, so I better stop here.

Well, I continued to adjust the techcosts some more. The lab techs haven't changed, but the cost for manufacturing techs have increased. The Yor have now the cheapest techs (7100), while the Thalans have the most expensive (10700). The Iconians (9600) and everybody else (8100) are in the middle. To be entirely accurate, though, the values for the Thalan haven't changed. I just forgot to include the costs for the Hive-techs yesterday.

The tests have been mostly positive overall. I saw some noticeable improvements in the Korx and Iconians. If left to their own devices, the Korx can become a serious threat. They may not always win, but they can put up a fight now. Their research still isn't optimal, however. The Iconians, on the other hand, have become a real beast. In almost two dozen test games, they haven't lost a single time. They either crush their opponents outright, or hold them off long enough to win a Tech Victory.

The downside is, that the Yor have become worse. In over 40 test games since yesterday, they have only won three. In each case, an Alliance Victory. I'm a little worried that the costs for research techs are too low now for the other races, making it difficult for the Yor to keep up. It may not be entirely the case, though, as in some of the games, the starting position of the Yor was terrible. I'll keep an eye on them, and if it doesn't get better after adjusting some AIValues, I may need to take another look at the costs.

Yesterday, I began updating the campaigns to be compatible with my mod. The maps and mission-texts are done now, leaving only the scenario-files. I'll do them once I'm certain no more changes to the tech trees are made, because I don't want to have to redo them every time something changes.

The biggest bug, I noticed, was in the maps of the DL campaign. The Dread Lords still used their old race-number, which means, that they are classified as Krynn in TotA. This could make a mission unwinnable, if the main-objective is killing the Dread Lords. As is especially noticeable in the mission "Apocalypse". I think Stardock fixed this bug in one of their patches, but obviously not by fixing the problem, just the symptom.

Did you know, that the DL campaign has a branching storyline? If you loose certain missions, you can go on another mission to eventually reach your goal. There was post, a few weeks ago, that mentioned this, and I could hardly believe it. I've been playing this game since release, and I didn't knew this.

While I have played the DL and DA campaigns several times over the years, I have played the TotA campaign only twice. Once at release, and another time after v2.03 came out. From what I remember, there was this one bug in the last mission that really annoyed me and never got fixed. The bug was, that on first contact with the Iconians or Krynn, they wouldn't say their usual greetings. Instead, they would say "Iconian morality msg 0" and "Krynn morality msg 1" respectively.

Now, after having a look at the files, I can say that this isn't a bug at all. Instead of real greetings, the Iconians and Krynn just have those placeholders assigned to them. This has been the case since release.

Why do I even care anymore?

I think "Starbase Militarization" is a proper name to encompass both the merged trees.

It's really amazing how much work you've put into this mod already and you're steadily improving it with each version.

However, by reducing the farms to only one building, and thus the maximum population to said values, aren't you eliminating the morale aspect?

Ok, I have been busy IRL, but I have noticed the following since the new beta

1. The Thalan as expected do not wage war nearly as often

2. The ENG, Evil-Neutral-Good type alliances that end up in struggles for control tend to be more common now with the Thalan now less aggressive

3. Overall Thalan performance seems to be pretty much average - not remarkable, but not near the bottom either, unless they get a really bad starting position

I'd agree that the Yor might need a slight buff. Will play more next week and see.

Collectives sounds interesting. Yet another option may be to buff their manufacturing output by 1 per building.

The problem with giving them another defensive structure is that the AI may or may not build it and of course, even on front line worlds, they may not demolish their buildings to make it happen.

Repair assist is worth a shot. I don't know how well the AI will take advantage of it though.

I suppose that for now, it's a matter of wait and see.

As the for the military starbase module costs, I have not seen the Thalan AI building very many. I do not know whether this is because it's too expensive though. Thalan is kind of in a situation with a big upfront cost to modules right now.

I tested the Repair-Assist module and the AI doesn't seem to be using it. Therefore, I'm not going to add them, unless somebody can come up with a good reason for doing so.

In the meantime, I finished updating the DL campaign. There were more bugs in it, than I anticipated. Some races began play with no homeworld on certain maps. In a few missions, there were inconsistencies between the mission briefing and the actual scenario. In one case, the referenced mission text didn't exist, so your allies would greet you as if you two had just met for the very first time. Plus a couple bugs more. All of this should be fixed now. In some cases, the mission will probably be much harder than before.

One thing I noticed during testing is that the tech-limitation of the minor races also affects the Dread Lords. This isn't quite as bad as for the minors, because the DL start with all techs already researched. However, there is one little problem with this. The DL use Industrial Sectors for production. So, if only one major race with Industrial Sectors in their tech tree is on the map, the DL will have a hard time building their ships. In other words, the DL will be a pushover. This is especially apparent in some of the later missions of the campaign. I already considered giving the DL some more advanced techs for some time. This is a good enough time as any to actually do that. I just need to figure out a way to balance them, so they are better, but not totally OP.

So much for "almost done".

Edit: I also made another change to the Drengin and Korath. The Drengin use Market Centers again instead of the Black Markets. This means, that the Drengin will have a much stronger economy compared to the Korath, but it will also cost more maintenance. In exchange, the Korath are now the sole user of the Aul Power Center. However, the Economics-bonus of the APC has been reduced from +25% to +15%. It also costs 500 to build now instead of 1000. The previous build-cost was a bit excessive, considering that the APC is almost identical to the Galactic Stock Exchange which only costs 500.

I already added those lines, but they don't help that much in this case. The base AI of the DL just isn't the best. It also seems to depend on when the DL appear. If they appear early in the game, they seem to be doing fine, and sometimes even manage to crush everyone else. If they appear later, end of the 2nd or beginning of the 3rd year, they may be able to survive for a time, but eventually get destroyed. Mostly because they are unable to conquer any new worlds. Strangely enough, the DL in the campaign seem to be doing better.

Speaking of the campaign, I'm done now with fixing and updating all three of them. However, I still haven't decided if I should incorporate the files into my mod, or make them a separate download.

I also made several more changes, mostly to the morale improvements and techs, and the Yor. The Drengin, Iconians, and Thalan also saw a few edits.

I really should have learned it by now, though, that everytime I say, that I'm finally satisfied with the current state of the mod, something new comes up. Well, it happened again.

One of my newest changes had a very bad effect on the AI. I'm not sure how or why, but the AI isn't researching and building improvements as well as it used to anymore. Not just the AI of one of the races, but all of them. It looks like I'll have to re-adjust them yet again. I did that several times during the pre-beta phase, so it shouldn't take that long to bring them to roughly the same level as they were in the last version.

I'll try to get the next version out by the end of next week, but I can't make any promises.