Downloaded and played your mod (APT2), works fine.

I have just one question: Am I supposed to get no basic improvements playing as Terran? I can only build any structures after research of the "advanced" techs...could not find this in your mod's description, maybe I have just missed it.

Altarn - Many thanks for all your work on these mods! (And other like-minded modders on theirs... I just haven't explored them yet.) I first played GCII shortly after the Ultimate edition was released and was incredibly disappointed by the AI. Almost five years later now, I come back to it to find that you and others have been hard at work fixing those issues as best you can. I finally had a blast all weekend conquering the galaxy with a basically passable AI using APT1 (with Drengins @Painful). I may explore APT2 or other mods later once I better understand the base game, but I'm fine with APT1 for the moment.

Altarn, etc - I had some questions concerning balanced race configuration that I'd appreciate experienced input on. First off, I wanted to clarify... if you're using the point-based initial abilities, then you need to set those and save them for every AI, correct? The game won't go and pick them for you if you leave them blank? Personally, I don't feel the additional abilities are necessary and would prefer to play without them. There are already huge differences between the races, and those optional abilities seem very unevenly costed and exploitable, or sometimes just too game-changing. However, I also see that some races have fewer available points than others - evidence that the game expects you to be using those abilities. Any suggestions for a set of race configs that results in the most balanced game, given the limitations of APT1 to fix the AIs' limitations? Do any particular AI's still fare poorly in APT1 in a way that might be slightly remedied by giving them some boosts? Of course, I could play a bunch of games myself and eventually come to my own conclusions, but these are awfully long games and I'd prefer to work from others' experience if I can.

A separate but related race question... should the races' political parties be set in the same way as the optional race abilities, and does this actually work as intended? I notice some strange behavior here. Before my last game, I went through each race, set a sensible political party, and saved each config. Now, if I start a new game, get to the player race selection screen, and click a race, I see the party I set. Great! But then if I click a different race and click back to the first one, the political party sometimes gets "stuck" on the one from the other race. I'd chalk this up to a cosmetic interface error, but then I met races in my last game with a different party from what I set. Also, from that selection screen, if I click Next to configure the race I'll always see the "correct" party, no matter what was shown on the screen before. And from then on, the correct party "sticks" no matter what I click. It all seems very suspicious and buggy to me, but I don't know exactly how the underlying configuration is supposed to work. Any insight is appreciated.

Again, it's really great to see this game finally working at least somewhat as intended.

edit: Wrong name... Marvin did one of the other mods. Sorry...

I did some more poking using cheat codes. It looks like there are four different sets of ability modifiers generated for each civ. First are the fixed race-based bonuses, which work as expected. Second are the political party bonuses (see below). Third are the point-based abilities. These will be read from the race config if you set them, but do not appear to be picked automatically for the AI if you leave them unset. Fourth are another set of ability bonuses that, according to the wiki page, are handed out based on the difficulty level, though exact details are unknown. These are assigned regardless of what's in the race config and are cumulative with those abilities. They're also quite significant bonuses, equal to approximately 10-12 points of optional abilities (edit: at Tough - I didn't check every level). I had been under the impression that Tough was basically an even playing field, but this is far from the case. Or maybe it's supposed to be the case if you spend your 7-10 optional points on your own civ but leave the other ones unset, in which case those bonuses are roughly equal to what you get yourself. Of course, that would assume that you remember to unset those bonuses in the configuration when you switch races.

I'm just going to leave all the point-buy abilities unset for everyone for now and maybe go back and add some more in if I think that could help remedy any observed AI weaknesses.

Sure. Every game setup and opponent mix will play out differently. I was only curious if other APT1 users had observed any general patterns.

I took a closer look at this too, and it turns out not to be cosmetic. If you start in the usual way by clicking the race you want and clicking Next to continue setup, the game ignores the political party set in the race config (even if you specifically saved one earlier) and apparently picks a random party. To get the game to read the party you've set in the race configs, you need to click Next and then Back for every opponent from the race config screen. You don't need to click Save again - just going forward and back is good enough. At that point, the party "sticks" even when you click between different AI's and will also show up properly in-game.

edit2: Sorry, that last part was unclear. If you just start a game normally, the game will read the party for your own race just fine, and of course you can change it in the setup screen. It's the AI's parties that get messed up unless you do the Next/Back trick.

APT1 game, galactic date: 1 jun 2228.

Thalan have built a Defender M0 v1 that has no weaponry and no defense.

Why would they do such a thing?

(In orbit around the same planet is a Heavy Fighter M1 v1 (also 8hp) with beam weapon attack value 2.)