http://www.xup.in/dl,19679606/FutureWorlds_v0.65.7z/ Filesize: 68.5 MB
Bugfix for version 0.65:
http://www.xup.in/dl,44779613/FW_Bugfix_for_version_0.65.7z/
1. Mega Homesystems:All races start out at a system holding 4 habitable planets averageing a total of base PQ40 (moons & rings count as PQ1) with 2 exceptions - Iconian & Thalan. The idea behind this change is that homesystems now do form a considerable stronghold for every race, and that it's also now possible to start out tiny/small all-rare galaxies with reduced risk to not get completely unlucky esp. on higher difficulty settings. Alot of new graphics with intricate details have been added for this. 2. New Political Parties:4 new parties are available (Automatists, New Colonists, Explorers, Traditionalists) in order to widen the available bonuses presented while all other conventional parties were slightly altered. 3. Advanced Customization:The distribution points spending screen now makes all meaningful ratings accessably including: Miniaturization, Logistics, War Profiteering, Purchase Now Reduction and rebalances many conventional choices. Stock Races do start out with a prefixed selection of these perks - all of those can be undone ingame by a player at the game's setup.4. Divers Anomalies:More than 15 new anomalies now bring previous untouched stats to you, even introducing new mechanisms (which may have been forgotten in vanilla...) while many traditional anomalies have been (slightly) buffed. As a compensation a few anomalies bring penalties to its finders!! This will further diversify galactic development and throttle a player going crazy on surveying.Includes all possible variants of anomalies (Stellar Black Holes, Temporal Rift & Space Junk) with brighter textures to better see them when playing zoomed-in.[NEW] All 8 anomaly-types have their own texture now.
5. Big Asteroids:Some races get additional techniques to mine out Asteroids at the end of the Space-Mining branch. Some of these are locked and require that you trade for the unlocking key-technology from another race...Asteroid-textures/fog have been beefed up to make them less prominent.6. Strong United Planets:Selection has been streamlined to 25 options with most being permanent, and their impact have been dramatically increased in force & numbers. Meaningful votes that are going to make the game less easy for the player should now appear more often (Neutral-ground, End-all-wars, Anomaly-ownership etc). Remember you still have the option to leave the UP!7. Racial Rework:To promote more unique play and balance the stock races versus custom race setups. Rule of thumb all races now have a particular weakness while the positive rating & starting technologies suggest the general strengths of that particular races' techtree. So you know what you can expect right at the start of the game.Furthermore, all Stock Races customization points have been reduced to 5 (which are already preselected) but they've been given some additional -mostly unique- technologies to compensate. In contrast the Custom Race now has 15 points more, so a player has all freedom to generate a faction to his/her own likeing.8. Specialized Hulls:4 new hulls to be used for: Sensory Buoys, Planetary Defenders, Military Starbase Swarms & Fleet-support Ships. To use these hulls look under 'Templates' for already completed pre-designs.The conventional hulls have been slightly rebalanced (Tiny & Small are a little bit boosted).Cargo Hulls -and its capacity-modules- were greatly revamped to keep Cargo's out of fighting business while still retaining functionality.The starting ColonyShip has been defunctionalized to a nonmoving prototype so the AI won't establish low-pop planets. It initially helps getting a glance at near neighbouring systems and later could be decommisioned to get 250bc.[NEW] The Arceans get to build 'Gigantic'-sized starships as part of their Technological Victory.9. Simplified Range:This makes the game more territorial - you won't see constructors zipping halfway through the galaxy for a resource that's already been claimed by some neighbour. The AI will also now build more starbases in own territory and have its fleets more guarding own space.10. Engines Revamp:The purpose of engines is to deliver speed in order to cut down time to reach a destination. But the high costs of engines only increase the buildtime of a ship to such extremes that paradoxically this happens even LATER! So especially starting engines (in early times when production is still low) has been considerably decreased - but you won't be able to stack them at ships that much than before.Secondly, the base-speed increases have been ripped out from the engine-modules and collected into their own branch "Slipstream Technology" - which gives the player the option to choose which method to use in order to have faster ships. As well as giving me the option to incite the AI to get rather base speed (which they can use flawlessly...)11. Resistant Minors:Strong 1pp buildings: To compensate their starting handicapps.Early trade: Tradeing is the very best they can do in order to stay alive longer.Homeplanet PQ increased to 25. This even stays upon conquest.Severely restriced techtree - because many items are useless for them (like Influence), but many techcosts decreased by approx. 25%.They're not helpless victims anymore - their weakness is to only have 1 planet. But if they manage to gain more planets via conquest you may loose that game You could even design a CustomRace using their own techtree - but be warned: You can't colonize anymore: just like a real MinorRace! .[NEW] Stuff you'll get from Minors:-Weather Control & Biosphere Modulator.-All Trade Goods: Minors won't build the improvement themselves but they can still research the technology (which holds some minor bonus for them) and trade that technology away to Major Civs which, in turn, may erect the Trade Good.12. Real Stars:About 400 names of the historically most important and also, most visible stars in the northern hemisphere. If you look up in the nightsky you'll see many of them unknowingly. Most bear a latin or arabic name (some english). See README.txt for additional installation-instruction.13. Enhanced Graphics:Old DL planetary improvements have been doubled in size and beefed up in coloring/contrast to adapt to the TA standard (also their querries). Many did see completely new artwork. Much artwork of ColonizationEvents, MegaEvents, RandomEvents and general infopopup-graphics are now better visible, upped in colour-depth to 32bit (formerly 256 colour) and depixilated/decluttered.Stars now have flares, an add. star-type added (Grey - Dusty Protostar).Both survey- & sensormodules now have an own texture in unique color distinguishing it from shield-mods.The CustomRace now uses another logo + dynamic trade sequences [courtesy of Donfield]14. New Techtrees:All techtrees underwent drastic changes - to better AI play and give a player more interesting choices. This is an ongoing endeavour so there's more to come with each update!Every race now has, at least, a single 1pp building which is indestructible - even staying after conquest. This has done to help bringing a conquered planet faster back up (Efficiency Matrix, Food Distribution Silo...), to prevent exploiting (Weather Control Zenith, Gaia Vortex, Biosphere Modulator...) and simply make the mid- to endgame more interesting, showing that each race will still leave a unique imprint on a planet even after they've been banished there.15. Super-Ability Fixes:SPY - unlocks 3 additional technologies.ISOLATIONIST - 'Barren World Col.' has been significantly increased in costs (which they get for free).ANNIHILATOR - 'Toxic World Col.' has been significantly increased in costs (which they get for free).ADAPTER - 'Aquatic World Col.' has been increased in cost (which they get for free).DOMINATOR - the Corvettes got buffed, carrying now 1*Stinger & 1*ArmorPlating.TRADER - unlocks 2 additional technologies (otherwise unique only to Korx).There are still some other, kinda weak SA (esp. for the player...) like Manipulator, Organizer, Warrior etc but it's not possible to work on these skills directly. I've therefore changed/boosted some of the racial stats or starting technologies of the races which carry these weak SAs to compensate at least the stock races, and to prevent that a more strong Custom setup is possible. For example, WARRIOR/Arcean - runs on AIP8 now to build all-attack ships, MANIPULATOR/Drath run on AIP10 to make use of their immense defense-bonus....
16. Additional Shipdesigns:Around 35 shipdesigns - mostly tight to Tiny & Cargo Hulls - are now prefixed and will automatically appear in the selectable buildqueue once all required technologies have been gathered. Some of these designs may hint vaguely at specific gamemechanisms and thereby exemplify what can be done extraordinairily by combining different functionality modules. One example would be to create Colonyships with surveyability (most likely after its cost's been nullified) in order to pick up anomalies while en route to its destination or trying to cut down travel time by using wormholes...17. Unique Technological Victory:Every race gets unique bonuses/improvements as it researches down their own TechVic-branch. At the end lies usually something that is so powerful that it should win the map for this race - if used correctly. However, if you plan to use this ie. to "play-out" a technological victory - you'll have to disable that victory condition on mapsetup otherwise you'll just get that boring victory-screen.The other reason why these bonuses are there is because the AIs still research down this line even if tech-vic is disabled - so without any bonuses they waste a ton of research for nothing artificially gimping their game. In Future Worlds this cannot happen anymore.
[NEW] To sum it up for each race:-YOR: Miniaturization as a path towards ever smaller robotic sentience.-TORIAN: Morale & Range in their quest to make the whole universe habitable to their physiology (ie. "fluidic").-ARCEAN: Weapons & Hitpoints crowned by the Gigantic Hull-size, in an ongoing effort to become a Super Warrior that fights space battles losslessly.-ALTARIAN: Luck & Creativity as a path to a complete understanding of the universe.-DRENGIN: MP & Logistics to achieve total space supremacy.-TERRAN: Speed in order to be faster than ever before.-KORX: Purchase Now Reduction, under Neutral alignment and/or some more starting bonuses they'll be able to buy anything for free.-DRATH: WarProfiteering & Diplomacy, plus the ability to weaponize a TerrorStar - this will be the ultimate weapon to sell!-THALAN: They're able to reassemble their past technology which is based on 'Expert Gravitronics' which will nullify the limitations of some of their improvements.-ICONIAN: Their Technological Victory gives them the ability to fully colonize all tiles on every planet.-KORATH: MilitaryProduction at the expense of PlanetaryQuality, plus the ability to construct a very cheap TerrorStar regardless of ethical picks.-KRYNN: Tremendous cultural bonuses to sway their neigbours to their creed.18. Easier Techtrade:In the CU both AIValue- & WillingnessToTrade-tags saw (sometimes) huge increases calling for quadruple costs in order to ensure a tradedeal. I've therefore adjusted many of these values to make techtrade much more easy again.Some historically untradeably unique technologies are now tradeable as well, although the specific AI will ask for A LOT in compensation.Many untradeable techs can now be stolen - to ensure that this will happen more frequently many tradeable techs have been rendered unstealably (except Weapons). However, some untradeable techs also remain unstealably most noteably many techs holding buildings.Creativity is made now more generally available but technologies beyond 2000 base costs cannot be affected anymore - except weapons/defenses where every other tech can still be creatively researched.19. Events Debugged:All Colonization- and Random Events do now do exactly what the text states, ie. mechanisms that don't work have been thrown out. Since it's only possible to have negative-good-options and only positive-evil-choices I've nerfed some of the good-penalties & evil-bonuses. To ensure that good isn't always handicapped I've presented them with some additional choices steming from technologies alongside the XenoEthics-techs, which all are also more easier to get than the evil-techs.20. Spying Finetuned:Espionage suffered a roundabout penalty of -50% (to help the AI) but to make the Spy-game more interesting all techs which are easy to get through techtrade cannot be stolen anymore - meaning that your invasive forces or spies only bring home technologies which are either rare or significant.
21. Clever Cost-reductions:Several improvements now reduce specific shipmodules in cost to help the AI:- Freighter Factory --> Trade module (Korx/ Trader SA)- Galactic Guide Book --> Survey module (All)- Stellar Forge --> Constructor module (Arcean)- Space Trucker's Guild --> Mining module (All)The reductions may require a reload to be effective (if the corresponding module was already available before the improvement got built...)
22. New Invasion Techniques:Many additional invasion techniques are now available and the whole field of Invasion/Soldiering/PlanetaryDefense got greatly rebalanced. Every race has now a different mix of techniques at their disposal, some rules of thumb:- One invasion branch deals in destructive invasion which will incapacitate the defendants defense-roll, the trade-off is a penalty to PQ/buildings/influence. At the end of the branch lies usually an uberstrong technique that will most likely guarantee a successful invasionbut greatly damage the planet. This branch is unavailable/incomplete on some good/neutral-races.- The second branch deals mainly with techniques enhance the own advantage (through better soldiers etc) oftentimes not damaging the planet. At the end lies the Adv. Troop Module.- Unique buildings or technologies are placed frontally, usually right after Planetary Invasion so they will have a great impact on that specific race's attitude towards conquest.Sometimes I did heavily alienate from that general design when it either made thematically sense or because of balance. For example, Torians are Breeder and therefore need a sooner access to the Adv. Troop Module, and also less access to general soldiering-bonuses or planetary defense (they simply try to win by sheer numbers). They're also an aquatic race so their preferred technique is "Tidal Disruption" which they get at decreased costs.
[NEW] 23. Weapons-love:All weapons now have their own unique animation, be it either differently in colour or texture or both. The original game only uses about ~30% of what's in its internal folders. I've also used much more soundfiles - and together with the animations applied them in order to make out an evolution in sound/effect (ie. rockets get bigger in size or more in numbers, beams get bigger and nastier, slugs faster or more devastating etc).Further I've applied differently looking explosions (the vanilla game only uses 2 out of 37!). Blue-colored slugs now cause blue explosions and so on...Several new weapons are available (although not to everyone):- Multi-Seekers- Bioforce Thrower- Overcharge Disruptors- Nova Torpedo- Photonic Salvo- Star Sprinkler- Tachyon ShockwavesAdditionally, all Defense-tiers got their uniquely colored textures/lights.
[NEW] 24. Further Techtree-Individuation/Extension: :- Introduced the 'Hyperion Research'-branch to some factions which replaces the (relatively weaker) 'Adv. Laboratories'-branch.- 'Automated Repair Systems'-branch offers up to 45% Repair-ability boost on most trees.- 'Xeno Obedience' & 'Thought Manipulation'-branches may offer up to 50% Loyalty to various selected factions.- 'Secret Service Training' offers up to 40% increased Espionage. [NEW] 25. Trade-Goods distribution:Most tradegoods are now only available in 2 or 3 trees, their bonuses/effectiveness slightly buffed and the tech holding the good gets a minor related bonus as well. This should disable a player from leasebuying all goods once they become available (if this is worthwhile is dependant only on the planet-count...). That is, most tradegoods have to be traded for - or their residing planet taken by force.
*. Latest patch:The mod includes many of the latest (and future) CU patches to Twilight 2.20 - the re-introduction of proper farming, invasionfix, old weapons/defenses and all other bugfixes & changes as well.No Campaign-compatibility! Play only in Sandbox-mode!
HAVE FUN!
See the included README.txt for installation-instructions!
Hi,
I find the idea of the mega home-systems very good. It should help in balancing games, even on larger galaxies.
thanks, you're right, it even serves a positive function on larger all-abundant maps because there, the traditional homesystems do become quite weak swiftly in direct comparison to systems holding 3-4 habitable worlds, esp. if high-PQ.
BTW I've just upped a new version which sorted out 2 minor errors while expanding the mod to 3 different subjects (Anomalies, Asteroids & UP votes).
I'll try it.
Should I apply your mod over official CU or the changes you and Gaunator have made are already playable?
Currently apply it over the official 2.20 TA, but just yesterday I've been working to integrate the latest changes as well (simply because I think that it will take SD another lengthy time to make these changes official, and the game positively profits from many of these changes, as well as there were several bugfixes.) But since quite some files were changed I'll do this step-by-step, and not overnight. The next major change will be to introduce stronger Minor races.
Cool.
I can wait a few weeks; waiting for SD would probably mean waiting for many months.
v0.3 is up! Includes a boatload of new content with a special focus on Anomalies and their graphics, shiny new planetary improvements (more to come soon) and new textures for Asteroids & Anomalies to make these things more visible when playing zoomed in... (btw I need to change planetary rings to highres they're too ugly currently )
Stay tuned
v0.4 is up! Filesize is dramatically increased to 40MB, mostly because of new icons/querries for improvements, and gimped up pics for all ingame events.
I've cleared out a serious bug - Anomaly that gives a planet - will cause a crash if any AI encounters it.
The Stock Race design is finished incl. starting technologies and all techtrees have now their final core design. However, I'm still planning to add some content to most of them:
- A branch to increase stats on Loyalty, Repair, extra defenses for Mining Starbases, and modules to weaponize Terror Stars.
- Throw the remaining low quality generic icons over board, also making more unique approaches to technology for races that use the generic branches. But this is something I can't force to pull - just when I get creative. This time the Torian factory-line saw a rework (they establish planetary mines), the Drengin/Korath facs saw a huge rework, and Yor play now even more differently.
- In a future update I'll add the option for AIs to change their alignment, that means you'll get to play against evil Torians or good Korx if they just get randomly hit from it. Also, ethical technologies will be expanded - basically all factions contribute something to their normal alignment-pool: so far only the Drengin add a minor version of the Artificial Slave Center to be built by everyone.
- Starbases will become elligible to have their circle-of-influence increased from adding a special module.
Thanks, I was just going to start a new campaign. I'll try the Iconians, never played with them.
Wow, just began a new game, and I'm really impressed. The Iconians are very well characterized, starting abilities and techs are harmonized and very interesting; I have to say the starting planetary improvements are very powerful compared to the CU, especially the one that decreases colony maintenance by 10. Very very powerful during the colonization race, I hope not too much.
I also like that I need to research Hyperdrive before I can start building colony ships, I hope Terrans are the only ones that start with Hyperdrive, is that so?
One question, I tried several starts and I never got a bonus tile in the homeworld. Just unlucky or you designed it like that? If it is by design, I think it's a very wise choice.
I also like the mega home systems, but I already told you that.
I think the only thing I didn't like is that my survey vessel had sensor radius 1. The problem with radius 1 is that you can only see what lies 1 tile from you in the four cardinal directions, anything that lies 1 tile south-east, or north-west (just as an example) is not visible. That makes the ship almost useless for exploration and usable for anomalies only in auto-survey.
Anyway, I played only Iconians and only for maybe 20 turns, but I already can tell you that if you managed to characterize all races as well as the Iconians, and also succeeded in game balancing, well, I will play this mod for a long time.
And this is just 0.4; I'm eager to see what you will do next.
A couple of observations:
I just realized I cannot build a starport on colonized planets, I checked the tech tree and saw it'll not be easy to get it. This is going to make exploration much longer. I suppose it is intentional but why?
I have put the Space Trucker Guild in construction, saved, loaded, and the improvement was not in construction anymore and not available among the other buildings.
After I have successfully built the Space Trucker Guild, the Space Miner design is not automatically updated with the decreased cost, I have to upgrade it and save it without modifying anything in order to use the free mining module.
Thank you
Well, the Iconians in Twilight always had quite strong starting improvements so I thought I would expand that concept a little bit further. However, in order to compensate this I decided to nerf them in later stages of the game. For example, I've split the Research Coordination Center & the Omega Research Center away from their traditional technologies and made new techs for them - but the Iconians don't have those 2 - because they already have their 2 Precursor-Labs.
The factory-line saw quite some change - the usual Replicator-upgrades are now 1-per-planet factories and the only Replicator-upgrade is at the very end of their factory-line. The Torian industry is somewhat similar to this approach. 1pp buildings are very easy to use for the AI and to mod in because you can set their importance high without the risk that the AI goes overboard with it, which would happen if no limitation would be present. I currently work on a concept to the generic farming to use the 1pp approach to get all AI worlds into a region of 13-15b inhabitants and that, I hope, also limiting the danger of going beyond 20b food if bonus tiles are present - but it's not finished yet, got very little free time the next days.
The "Custom Office" --> "Starport" - chain has been deliberately designed to help the AI to not go broke by the colonial rush - which may still happen (because many AIs simply spend all available money to quickbuy Colony Ships) but at least, they'll recover so much more faster than in any other version of the game. Well, at least, until they've researched the Starport.
The design manipulates the AI into this behaviour:
- Initially only Colony Ships from the starting homeworld will/can be released
- All of these ships will spawn colonies starting at a full 500m inhabitants. Precisely for this reason I've also turned the initial starting Colony Ship into a non-functional prototype (because this very ship hitherto has been used by the AI to spawn a only 100m colony --> which in turn will release another colony ship with only 10m people after a few turns --> these colonies take almost forever until becoming self-sufficient).
The rework of the stock Colony Ship-design does, however, prevent that design from appearing in your normal list, and I guess this is what tricked you into this error:
You just need to make an own design using a Cargo Hull + the Colony Pod. But I'll add that to to my list of things to do, at one point I'll return all these traditional designs like "Paladin", "Battle Hammer" etc pp which have been blanked out in the CU because the auto-ship-designer seems to do a better job. But these designs still look nice when you right-click a technology in the techtree, but it'll require some work to get them right.
But to come back to the Starport-rework:
- The AI will initially build only Custom Offices at all his initial colonies - which nullifies the 10bc maint of the Initial Colony-building. They also get all money invested into Mil Prod refunded, and it'll slow their expansion speed a bit down. Which is not a problem because they have more planets at their disposal from the start of the game. The thing to realize is that the main throttle to any colonial rush is if the economic balance gets broken by a too-fast acquisition of new planets - and this change will help the AI to raise his population and build the Recruiting Center before being able to release ships from everywhere.
For the player the Custom Office opens up even a new level of play in midgame or endgame esp. on larger maps - for example if you don't wanna bother with ships being released on planets at your total backyard just build a Custom Office there: The increased economic level will then help you mustering/buying more ships at strategically important places or you'll be able to maintain a larger military.
There are a few that have it because all Stock Races do get a certain package of starting technologies to make them unique and give them some starting strengths to varies fields of the techtree. However, because Cargo Hulls + capacity mods saw a complete rework the engines-branch isn't really much of an importance early on because you can only add 1 such mod to a Cargo Hull. It'll take some level of miniaturization to get to that point (or playing Yor). Yesterday I've worked on the propulsion branch and split ship-components and racial-bonuses into 2 separate branches - so you'll have the choice which way you prefer in a future release. (I'll expand this concept also to sensors, and perhaps, a few other branches as well....)
The original Lore states that HyperDrive technology was given to all Stock Races by the Humans so all races did already have this tech in their tree - I find this boring because it rendered the tech irrelevant. So only a few now have it, and maybe in future only the Terrans may have it, but I'll firstly need to make all techtrees more unique - then being able to distribute unique starting technologies to each race.
The occurence of bonus-tiles is set by mapsize, dependant on your planet setting you may get many or less on your homeworld. There's nothing I can do to influence that. However, bonus-tiles only appear on normal tiles - that is, all tiles which are there upon galaxy-creation. All tiles which are added later (for example, by Biosphere Modulator, Weather Control Zenith, or PQ-Bonuses) are always blank. The Iconians in FW have +30% PQ bonus and therefore, lots of their worlds will appear to have less density in bonustiles.
I wanted to generally make exploration harder - and especially harder for the player (since the AI works quite differently). There's a cap of 15 sensor-radius and my rework of everything that's sensor-related will still ask the player to invest some resource into this or he will accept to have a bad vision.
The starting Survey Ship will be used by the AI to auto-survey - for nothing else (if all anomalies are gone, it'll just stay put). You can do the same without handicap - that's fair^^ If you want to use it for exploration - invest 2 points into Sensors and/or pick Explorers-Party - you'll gain +2+2 starting sensors. Stellar Cartography adds +1 and the Gravity Wave Array another +2. Eyes will magnify all sensorrange by 50% - ie. the more you pick starting bonuses the more you'll additionally gain by building it.
Last but not least you could also research the Sensor Buoys Hull - and outfit it with sensor mods. It's very cheap to build and has a base bonus to sensors. Refer to template to have a finished design.
And the starting Colony Ship-prototype actually has a base sensor vision of 8 - that is, it should be possible to pear into near-by systems. That is, you get enough planets to colonize giving you enough time to do something about the sensor-dilemma^^
I've just made a few tests with that but I can't recreate the problem. Do you have any additional information on this?
It's a problem with the AltCost-tag, it has a certain weakness to not retro-actively update older or the current design: Luckily the AI will oftentimes update its designs, and it doesn't build that many Space Miners after all. The Truckers Guild is more or less an improvement for players that which to play a heavy-asteroid-mining game [let's see if you'll get to the Tier5-7 ones ].
Another thing what you could do is to quicksave & reload - that should instantly update the shipcosts.
At some point I may also get the Stellar Forge to reduce the cost of the Constructor-module to 0 - because the Arceans originally had the "light"-construction-module - but they didn't use that. The cost-reduction will however, work for both AI & player.
Another thing on my list is to make an improvement to be able to reduce the cost of the Colony Module to 50% (or more) - most likely available to all races. That should be quite interesting for a game with lots of habitable planets.
I have to admit that I just noticed this mod. I'll check it out when I'm finished with the text section of Guanthor's latest CU drop. Looks very interesting!
Hey DMF - didn't have much time the last days so I thought I'd rather focus on my mod [seriously, the more I work the more ideas come to my mind - this way I'll never get to be finished... ] but I'll be happy to return to the CU and if only to integrate whatever changes you are currently working on.
I've finally finished GC2_Conversations and my eyes are spinning. Also done Flavor and English. I'll check the others in that directory tomorrow or so.
@abelisari
it'll still take some time for v0.5 but for now I can tell you I took your advice and've taken a discrete look on the starting sensor-balancing and think I got it down even to the point no more frustration will arise even without picking one of the distribution point perks or political party.
for one I've expanded the sensor-branch and sorted its content and made a real tree out of it, so you can quickly get to the stuff you plan to use.
secondly base sensors of any hull is increased by +1 but I've given all AIs access to the Gravitiy Wave Array and sometimes the Nano Recorders - so there will be a competition for it and on higher diff levels a player may find himself being locked out from these bonuses until he can conquer the correspondending planets
thirdly the starting Survey Ship is now based on a Cargo Hull - ie. you can upgrade it to any design you wish it. this makes alot of sense if playing with only rare-anomalies setting (turning that ship into a colonizer or freighter etc) or whenever you've encountered one of the 2 very-rare anomalies where a mysterious station upgrades your ship to +2+2+2 resp. +3+3+3 weapons/defense -- these bonuses only occur if, at least, a single weapon resp. defense mod is on the ship. early on such a ship would be quite strong, although you'll have to be lucky with HP-increasing anomalies or research into HP-mods.
If you want just host them somewhere and post a link in the CU thread.
The "Custom Office" --> "Starport" - chain has been deliberately designed to help the AI to not go broke by the colonial rush - which may still happen (because many AIs simply spend all available money to quickbuy Colony Ships) but at least, they'll recover so much more faster than in any other version of the game. Well, at least, until they've researched the Starport.The design manipulates the AI into this behaviour:- Initially only Colony Ships from the starting homeworld will/can be released- All of these ships will spawn colonies starting at a full 500m inhabitants. Precisely for this reason I've also turned the initial starting Colony Ship into a non-functional prototype (because this very ship hitherto has been used by the AI to spawn a only 100m colony --> which in turn will release another colony ship with only 10m people after a few turns --> these colonies take almost forever until becoming self-sufficient).
I understand the reasons behind your choices regarding Custom Office, Starport and initial Colony Ship. Interesting, it makes colonization slower but smoother, and it should help the AI, yes.
Regarding the Space Trucker Guild, I'll check if I still have the savegame where the problem appeared, maybe I can send you that; I cannot give any more detail, because there is nothing to say, I just put it in the construction queue in New Iconia, then saved.
After loading again, it was disappeared from the construction queue, not visible on the tile, but it was also not possible to build it, because not present anymore among the available buildings.
Regarding the colony module cost I don't know, you are the expert, but consider that after building the fusion reactor on the initial colony, building a colony ship is already fast, making it even faster maybe is too much.
Suggestions as to where? I don't have public Dropbox. Google drive maybe?
Personally I prefer
http://www.xup.in/
because you can host even without having to make a registration. and if you register - which puts you into the position to be able to organize your uploads, they won't sell your email-address and you won't receive ads.
Yah but it's mostly in German. I'll see if I can make it work.
enjoying the improvements thank you.
I'm wondering if you could add a feature to your mod: show the cost in resources of the improvements, instead of showing the weeks needed for building them. It would make things easier during the development of the first few colonies, when it is important to optimize things.
I'm not talking about the building queue, there it's fine to show the building time, I'm talking about the small window where you can see the details of the selected building.
Or, if that is not possible, could you add this information in the description of the improvement?
I was playing your mod and rushed for starport technology: surprise, custom offices are turning into starports and my expenses are skyrocketing
I have to restart.
Anyway, I wanted to confirm that no special resources are appearing in the starting star system, in any of my games as Iconians.
Probably it is caused by your change in PQ of the homeworld star system.
Ok, never mind. Starting a new game, a tile in the home system had the approval bonus. So, even if very rarely, the bonus resources do appear.
That's an interesting point, I remember I had shown the buildcosts of all planetary improvements in the first take of the mod, which can be quite helpful if you intent to match planetary SP output with these costs in order to cut down down.
However, it's not possible to give you this information in the small box in the middle bottom part of the screen. Two other places would be possible - as you can see in the screen:
In the big one to the left it would be a little less intrusive, but in order for this info to be seen one would have to select the improvement firstly.
Or to the right just below the impr name - where usually a short desc stands. This short description is actually not quite helpful to my eyes, because I can only use very little space to write 2-3 words: in the case of a simply improvement one can easily deduce from the toolbox what it's going to do. And in the case of buildings that do alot of sifferent stuff the line isn't long enough to give out multiple descriptions of whta it does anyway.
What do you think?
BTW one my design-philosphy is that all races do have access to a starter building that is cheap to build, has zero maintenance and that it won't increase spending (ie. no prod-bonuses, so either moral, econ, popgrowth) which you can use to fill your planets with during the colony rush even if you're on the brink of going bunkrupt.
I think a few races still ae missing this, but as for now, the Fitness Park, Barter Station & Trade Den as such improvements.
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