rspiccaver

Naselus, I hate to challenge your hard work but you are not factoring in the base colony production [quote who="naselus" reply="22" id="3564853"] This makes entertainment buildings most valuable if they are used when you are at either the very bottom or the very top of approval. You start out a colony in the middle at 60% approval. Adding 1 entertainment building at this point gets you to 100% approval, which will give you the 25% bonus (again, this is only equal to a factory or

It's really not as much of an issue as everyone makes out. Placing 2 entertainment centres next to each other gives you a flat +6 morale, if you have these in a block with your ideology building which I almost always do, you get +10. That goes a long way to combating the LEP. By the time you have more colonies than this can combat, you should be able to upgrade to better morale buildings. Everyone keeps talking about how adding a factory or research lab will

Placing a factory/research building isn't always better than raising moral. There's a balance, unless your LEP is a silly number the high morale bonus often works out a larger increase since it affects total production. LEP is easy to counter until you get to over 100 colonies, and once you do it doesn't matter. I can't be bothered to micro 100 colonies, I get annoyed past 30ish, this doesn't impact a large number of players.

I've decided to look at it from a different angle. I'm going to try to balance it for normal difficulty using handicaps for the player rather than bonuses for the AI. It will make it easier to tweak without so many hidden abilities and compound calculations by the game using different mechanics to balance the same thing.

[quote who="a0152570" reply="23" id="3564395"] The problem with this is you are going to kill the AI (because it does not specialize or build optimally). If you pop into god mode and take a look at the AI's research levels in mid-late game, they are typically way behind you in R pts/turn and just can't keep up. Totally understand where you are coming from though. [/quote] They are still ahead of me technologically, I haven't killed them yet and that's what I

[quote who="naselus" reply="18" id="3564148"] I'm modding the AI strategies pretty extensively atm, so I'm not really using anything over normal - I've no objection to handicap bonuses, but they do make it tricky to figure out whether the strategy is improving their performance or if it's just the handicap. [/quote] Would love to see what you come up with keep us all informed :) Right now I don't want to mod too heavily. My main goals are quite si

[quote who="naselus" reply="16" id="3564079"] The main problem I've encountered through adding colonial maintenance is that the AI still needs about 100 turns to get going - after around turn 100, it can really kick off the colony spam properly, but prior to that it's pretty slow. I've been tweaking the AIstrategydefs xml, and the first option in there - 'startingstrategy' - appears to define how the AI acts early; I've pushed it to favour manufacturing more and m

I don't really want to boost the global tourism income. The goal is to make money more important. From what I understand tourism in beta was generating a staggering amount of income and was reduced significantly. I believe the tourism buildings were balanced with that in mind. After they reduced global tourism income I don't think they considered that it would make the tourism buildings uneconomical. I want to make them worthwhile for the tile they occupy, especially since they are un

Early impressions seem good, it's definitely slowing the game down. Turn 66 and I only have 10 technologies, I got a bit of a rough deal in starting location with almost all dead worlds nearby so my early colonisation was slow. The largest impact right now is definitely the maintenance changes. About 40% of my economy is dedicated to wealth and it's proving a fun challenge balancing research, manufacturing and income. I'm actually having to think, can I affo

I'll give this a try, I'm fed up having 10000000 durantium and zero elerium LOL. ***Edit*** Great job! It's definitely an improvement, about to start a new game and just cleared the fow on a few map generations. Stardock really have a crush on Durantium don't they? I still have to keep asteroids set lower than the others but at least I'm getting some more antimatter and elerium is no longer non-existent. It's nice to find someone th

Ok over the past few days I've been making some fixes to the current bugs in my game. I've also been investigating the research cost inflation mechanic the game uses. I've now been able to make some modification to address some of the issues in my opening post and have made the following changes: Increased Technology Inflation I've increased how much technologies cost in the game, currently they are inflated each time you unlock a

[quote who="Thecw" reply="13" id="3563745"] The solution is to delete the stat from the TradeFocus1 tech and create a star base module that is depended on that tech. [/quote] This was the only way I can think to fix this problem also, however as I stated in a previous post, that requires you to build the module on all the starbases you want it on. Granted since it affects traderoutes you shouldn't have that many places you want it. Personally I don't wan

The only designs that upgrade over time are the ships defined in the xml, the out of the box designs you might say. It is possible to modify these or add new ones if you are willing to try some xml "shenanigans" as you put it :)

[quote who="Deathwynd" reply="10" id="3563567"] From what I have learned in my own modding this fix will work because something targeted at "AreaEffect" will alter the values that all AOE applies. Every race has a similar tech and I cannot fathom why it would be set to effect Research. I think what you may not be realizing is AreaEffect is a code object just like starbases ships and colonies, it is generated only by starbases but anything that uses AreaEffect as Scope will appl

Ships built with Elerium require the resource not just to build but as a maintenance cost. The screenshot indicates you are mining 3 Elerium and have 3 ships that are using up this resource. You have a net of 0 Elerium resources. Are you saying you do not have 3x Prototype Assassins M2?

[quote who="Saruboy" reply="47" id="3563520"] e = TechInflationExponent_All m = TechInflationExponent_All (copy paste error, should be: TechInflationMultiplier_All) [/quote] Haha, I wish, IE crashed just as I finished the post and I had to quickly take a screenprint and retype it all! Fixed it now.

[quote who="TurielD" reply="8" id="3563501"] Perhaps it could be modded to give the basic starbase econ ring that bonus? [/quote] The problem is it needs to apply only when the technology is unlocked, so you would need a way to tie this in. I'll have to think on it or someone else could maybe come up with a solution. You can have a technology unlock a starbase module for building, but not modify an existing module. At least I don't currently know of a way how

[quote who="Chibiabos" reply="6" id="3563375"] Note: "Tariff Stations" (tech available to Altarians) describes "All starbases now give a significant boost to the trade income of colonies with their Area of Effect." but the only effect unlocked is "Research +10%" (nothing unlocked for boosting trade income) Probably something else to look at in the XML? [/quote] If I remember correctly it does nothing right now, you don't even get the 10% boost to re

TechVictoryPoints are only used by the game victory progression. You don't need to research them although all except the specializations are required to progress further up the tree. In theory you could trade for the later ones proceeding the Age of Victory Techs and skip the others. I believe the points are also used to affect diplomatic relations.

OK, I thought I had it pinned down exactly but I'm off by about 1% which I'll try to find when it bugs me more than tires me to look at. :) The problem is the habitable planes modifier. Currently the game uses a set of mechanics to modify the base tech costs we all see in the TechDef files: Global tech costs are increased for every technology you unlock "Tree" tech costs are increased for each technology you unlock in the related "Tree" (Colony, Warfar

I meant to add, yes it's a bit broken. They need to equalise the points on all trees and make none of the specializations award points.

If you are playing Terrans: TerranResearchOptimization1 TerranDeeperKnowledge TerranQuantumUnderstanding TerranBeyondMortality TerranXenoArcheology TerranPrecursorExploitation TerranPrecursorEngineering TerranPrecursorUnderstanding TerranCulturalOptimization1 TerranStellarEmigration TerranCulturalDomination TerranCulturalAffinity That's 12 Terran Tec

[quote who="jmccrea" reply="43" id="3563399"] Thanks for all the hard work on this Rspiccaver! [/quote] Thanks for the encouragement! Even though I'm doing this for myself it's nice to know it can potentially benefit others. Good news is I cracked the formula about 5 minutes ago! [e digicons]:D[/e] [e digicons]:D[/e] [e digicons]:D[/e] Just a couple more things to double check now and I'll share my findings.

[quote who="DARCA1213" reply="41" id="3563377"] Hmmm... Seems that with old galciv percentages mattered more. Now like you said (and I forgot) the percentage becomes less effects when you have more positive ones from labs. Might be possible to have actual rp deducted and percentages? Or devs could make the pacing be the last in the algorithm? Then again, it won't matter as you will always have the same amount of rp. Observe: 20p * (100% - 50%) = 30rp. 20p * 100% - 50% = 30rp <br

[quote who="dansiegel30" reply="4" id="3563305"] "Ascending" to the next tech age always requires a certain number of current age techs. It helps prevent tech spamming. BTW, I noticed a bug where Alterian was always #1 in Tech Victory ranks, forcing me to out tech them. It turns out, they were pathetically behind me. The Tech Victory ranking lied terribly. Dont know how repeatable this is, but if you doubt your tech victory ranking, start a diplo