[MOD][WIP] Equilibrium

from Sins Forums

Welcome to Equilibrium!

THE PURPOSE:

The focus of Equilibrium is gameplay.  Sins of a Solar Empire is a fantastic game, but there certainly are areas where it can be improved.  This mod has two purposes:

  1. Diversity and Balance - This mod seeks to make all options viable.  Every technology, every capital ship, every ability...nothing should be "useless" or "marginalized".  That being said, everything should be balanced...each faction equally playable, each ship type equally important.
  2. Quick but Casual - This mod aims to allow the player to play at a nice, relaxed pace without having to invest oodles of hours into a single game.  One can expect most games on normal speed to end within 2-4 hours.

Equilibrium is an attempt to restore balance and foster diversity.  Don't be deceived, this is more than a simple balance mod...great liberties will be taken to achieve the stated goals.  In fact, this mod is bound to be highly unbalanced in its initial stages as new ideas are tested and evaluated.   What effects might these radical changes have?  Who knows!  But that's half the fun of any mod project!

THE PLAN:

This mod will be released in stages, with each stage completely changing a new area of the game.  Eventually, all elements of the game will be examined and modified as necessary. At some point, this mod may be packaged with new content or graphics/music, but that is certainly far off into the future.

Versions of Equilibrium will be released as it is updated.  The initial versions will be far from complete, but will be made playable for the purpose of play testing.

TO THE SINS COMMUNITY:

This mod is primarily for my personal use with friends, but it will be open to everyone.  I will of course very much appreciate feedback, opinions, and suggestions!

CURRENT STATUS:

Right now my main focus is on planet bonuses and combat ships.  Will be working with TEC military first. Playtesting, feedback, and new ideas are much appreciated!

DOWNLOADS:

Equilibrium Alpha 10 (Diplomacy v1.34) -- Released 2/25/12 (Includes new race and team colors)

modding
13,920 views 46 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

CHANGE LOG (ALPHA 1)

  • Bonus income rate for normal game speed decreased from +15% to 0%
  • Planets (Population)
    • Tax rate (credit income per population) increased from .025 to .05
    • Max population for Terran/Desert/Ice/Volcanic/Asteroid changed from 280/190/160/70/20 to 200/120/60/60/20 (so tax incomes changed from 7/4.75/4/1.75/.5 to 10/6/3/3/1)
    • Growth rates decreased from .125 to .1 for planets, increased from .025 to .1 for asteroids
    • Now only one population upgrade needed to remove underdevelopment penalty
  • Planets (Extractors)
    • Base income increased from .4 to .5 for planetary extractors, decreased from .833 (?) to .5
    • Deserts now can have 2/3/4 extractors instead of only 2/3
    • Volcanic/Ice now can have only 3/4 extractors instead of 2/3/4
    • Plasma storms no longer have neutrals
    • Gas Giants, asteroid belts, and space junk are guaranteed to have at least some extractors (2/3/4, 2/3, and 2/3)
  • Planets (Health)
    • Planet health changed from 1500/3000/4500/6000 to 500/1500/3000/5000
    • Asteroid health changed from 1500/2500 to 500/1500/3000
    • Initial health upon colonization decreased from 200 to 100
    • Health regeneration rate decreased from 6/s to 5/s
  • Planets (Tactical Slots)
    • All planets now have 10/20/30/40 slots
    • Asteroids now have 10/20/30 slots
  • Planets (Civilian Slots)
    • All planets/asteroids start with 2 slots...each upgrade adds 2 slots
    • Max number of slots for Terran/Desert/Ice/Volcanic/Asteroid is now 10/8/6/6/4
    • First logistics upgrade no longer gives an extra constructor
  • Planets (Miscellaneous)
    • Dead asteroids are in general the same as asteroids now in terms of planet upgrades, slots, etc.
    • Pirate Base now has no planet upgrades (set at 5000 health)
    • All planet upgrades have different costs now...upgrades now cost the same amount of metal and crystal (instead of more metal)...additionally, ratio of credit cost to resource cost is the same for all upgrade levels (instead of more resources for higher levels)
  • Structures
    • Frigate factories and labs use 1 logistic slot...all others cost 2 slots
    • Refineries have the same cost, health, and construction time as trade ports
    • Refineries now collect .05 metal/crystal (down from .06/.08 (?) for planetary/neutral) per extractor
    • Trade bonus for longest trade length decreased from 7.5% per node to 5% per node
    • Resource focus increased from 8%/17%/25% to 15%/20%/25%
  • Technologies
    • Development mandate now grants only 2 extra slots, not 4
  • Miscellaneous
    • HW should start with 2 logistic upgrades

I may be forgetting some things (doing this from memory without the files) so this change log may be updated...

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

CHANGE LOG (ALPHA 2)

  • Planet Bonus
    • High Security Protocol no longer is "discovered" by exploring planets
    • Geothermal hotspots now only gives 2 logistic slots (instead of 4)
  • Planet Structures (Civilian)
    • Cost of capital ship factory is now 1200/150/150
    • Cost of trade port and refinery is now 1000/125/125
    • Cost of culture center is now 800/100/100
    • Cost of lab and frigate factory is now 600/75/75
    • Labs and frigate factories now have 4000 HP, 2 hull/s regen, 0 armor, and grant 80 XP
    • All other structures now have 5000 HP (up from 4500), 2.5 hull/s regen, 0 armor, and grand 100 XP
Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

THEORY BEHIND CHANGES

It is my belief that planets with more population should have less resources, and planets with more resources should support less population...

Population and average number of extractors have been selected as such to exhibit this effect...

Terran -- 200 Pop vs. 2.5 extractors

Desert -- 120 Pop vs. 3 extractors

Ice/Volcanic -- 60 Pop vs. 3.5 extractors

An explanation for why logistic slots have been changed can be found in this discussion....

Refineries produce .05 metal/crystal per extractor...using 4.5 as the conversion ratio, that is equivalent to .225 credits per extractor...

A trade port has a base income of 1 credit/s...with a trade length of 10 nodes (and a 5% bonus per node), that comes out to 1.5 credits/s...simple division shows that a mere 7 nearby extractors are needed to make a refinery more profitable than a trade port even with a very long trade length...

Since it is easy to average far above 7 extractors, refineries would be easily OP if it weren't for the very hard limit that each asteroid can only support 3 refineries...since trade ports have no limitations at all, it is only fair that the more limiting facility be more powerful...

A few test games with this mod have shown average incomes of 5/1/1 (credit/metal/crystal)...this means that on average a player will generate about 2.5x more credits than resources....

Planet upgrades have a ratio of 2x more credits (so resource heavy) while structures have a ratio of 4x (so credit heavy)...

Changes related to planet health (both regen rate, max, and initial value) make rush expansion harder to pull off (future changes to scouts will make rush expansion even more difficult)...it also makes health upgrades much more important (planets only start with 500 health)...this currently is a questionable change, but in general rushing will be made more difficult in later versions so I don't believe this will be a problem...

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Meant to post here forever ago, nice to see this get a central thread. :thumbsup:

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Getting it now.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Cool...any feedback will be much appreciated!  Just remember that right now it's only tweaked for normal speed....

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Got ya.

 

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

CHANGE LOG (ALPHA 3)

  • Planet Structures (Civilian)
    • Culture centers and capital ship factories now use 1 logistic slot instead of 2...so, all structures now use 1 logistic slot except trade ports and refineries (which still use two)
    • Construction times, HP, hull regen, and XP have been tweaked for all structures...in general, the more expensive a structure is, the longer it takes to build, the more HP/hull regen it has, and the more XP you get for destroying it...the rather short construction times for trade ports/refineries in previous versions was an error, and frigate factories/labs are easier to destroy...
  • Planets
    • Starting population for planets has been decreased from 10 (technically 50% of starting max) to 0
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Nice and DL'd

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

CHANGE LOG (ALPHA 4)

  • Gameplay
    • Time considered for being bombed (in regards to health regen and population growth) has been slightly increased
    • XP gained for destroying a planet increased from 400 to 500
    • Passive and max gain/loss rates for allegiance have been more or less doubled
    • Allegiance gain from culture has been increased from 10% to 20%
    • Base planet allegiance levels have been changed...HW starts at 80%, with planets 1/2/3/4/5 jumps away starting at 75%/65%/50%/30%/5%
  • Planets
    • Plasma storms and gas giants no longer start with pirate militia
  • Technology
    • Allure of the Unity now has one level granting +10% max allegiance instead of 2 levels granting +5% max allegiance each
    • Each culture tech now increases max allegiance by 2.5%, for a total of +10% for TEC/Vasari and +15% for Advent via culture techs
  • Galaxy
    • 7 new galaxies have been added...these galaxies are identical to the 7 random maps in every way except that these new galaxies will not have any pirate bases...they are named "Random - [Size] - NP" where the NP denotes "No Pirates"
    • Appropriate string additions have been made for these 7 new galaxies

As a modders note, this is the first version to make changes to the string file or a manifest...for future reference, I will try to place all string or file name additions/changes at the end of the string file or respective manifest...

Changes to culture were inspired by GoaFan's Enhanced 4X Mod...

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

This is will be the fifth release of Equilibrium...it is by far the biggest release as of yet, and focuses on changing the technology trees....some of these changes may be controversial and as always, feedback is much appreciated...

Because there are so many changes with this release, the change log will highlight the biggest changes (AKA the ones I can remember)...

CHANGE LOG (ALPHA 5)

  • Gameplay
      • By this point research, income, and structure build rates have all been "zeroed" at normal speed...moving the game speed up or down one level will change the respective rate by +/- 25%...while this mod is playable at other game speeds, it is optimized for NORMAL SPEED
  • Planet Bonuses
    • Geothermal hotspots now gives only 1 extra logistic slot
  • Technology
    • In general, all technologies have been collapsed into one level...for example, a tech with 2 levels each granting a 5% bonus will now be a single level granting a 10%
    • Abilities improved by techs with multiple levels have been condensed in a similar matter...in general, the bonuses granted by each level of an ability have been shifted one level (so what was level 3 is now level 2, what was level 2 is now level 1)...at this point, only capital ship abilities have 3 levels.
    • All research times and costs have been changed...using the format Tier X costs credits/metal/crystal and takes T seconds:
      • Tier 1/2/3 cost 400/50/150 and take 100s
      • Tier 4/5 cost 800/100/300 and take 150s
      • Tier 6 costs 1200/150/450 and takes 200s
      • Tier 7 costs 1600/200/600 and takes 250s
      • Tier 8 costs 2000/250/750 and takes 300s
    • Fleet supply and capital ship crew technologies are slightly different:
      • Tier 1/2/3 cost 500/100/100 and take 100s
      • Tier 4/5/6 cost 1000/200/200 and take 150s
      • Tier 7/8 cost 1500/300/300 and take 200s
    • Fleet supply techs now grant slightly different improvements to fleet supply
      • Tier 1/2/3 still add 150 each
      • Tier 4/5/6 now add 250 each (down from 270)
      • Tier 7/8 now add 350 each (up from 320)
      • All fleet supply techs have a maintenance of 10% (up from 9.375%), leading to a max maintenance of 80% (up from 75%)
    • Technologies that increased weapon range (3 levels at 4% each) now increase range by 25%
    • All armor techs now only add 1 point of armor per tech (for a max of +4 for TEC, +3 for Vasari, and +2 for Advent)
    • Population cap increase techs either grant a +15% bonus (terran/desert) or +25% bonus (ice/volcanic)...you will find that all of these techs are at tiers 1-3 now, making them more economical...
    • Culture techs now give +25% bonus to culture rate per tech (totaling +50% for TEC/Vasari and +75% for Advent)
    • Resource techs give a +10%, not +13.3%, bonus to extraction rates...in general, all bonuses to income max out at +30%....
    • The basic diplomacy techs that increased relationships now all give the same bonus per tech, but still give the same max bonus as before...
    • Many techs originally with 2 or 3 levels will no longer provide quite the same maximum bonus...for example several technologies that provided a 10% or 11.1% bonus per level now simply provide a 25% bonus...in general, maximum bonuses (adding up all of a faction's techs) usually add up to 25%, 30%, 50%, or 100%...powerful techs (like pervasive economy) provide a greater bonus per level, but a smaller maximum bonus than before...notable changes are listed below...
    • TEC changes
      • Pervasive economy (being such a powerful tech) is condensed to one level, but provides only a slightly greater bonus per level than before...
      • Industrial juggernaut now is one level giving a +20% bonus to ship build speed instead of three levels totaling +50% bonus to ship build speed...
      • The Civilian Ship Safety Act used to grant access to an ability increasing the hull and armor on trade/refinery/construction ships...the ability no longer affects ships, but rather increases the hull and armor of all civilian structures (1000 HP, 5 armor)...
      • Advanced Maneuvering now increases the turn rate of capital ships by 50% (up from 15%)
      • Development mandate now adds only 1 extra logistic slot
    • Advent changes
      • Resource techs have been moved to lower tiers to match the TEC...an important distinction however is that for Advent, crystal techs are easier to get while for TEC, metal techs are easier to get...
      • Resource Focus is now a passive ability that grants a 5%/10% extraction bonus to all extractors in the same gravity well...technically speaking, the related technologies also give resource focus (the game mechanic, not the Advent ability) a 5%/10% bonus rate...this rate is frivolous and does not affect gameplay in any way; however, it provides useful in game text in the tech tree that indicates what Resource Focus will do...
      • Karmic retribution was an ability on trade ships that placed bounty on any player who destroyed that ship...this ability no longer is on trade ships, but is now on all civilian structures and places 250 bounty per structure on the player who destroys them...in light of this change, the tech no longer requires the trade port technology
      • Note that Allure of the Unity was already condensed into a single tech increasing max allegiance by 10%, and has been left alone...
    • Vasari changes
      • The trade bonus techs now affect both trade ships and refinery ships instead of just increasing trade
      • Wave cannon techs have been moved a full 2 tiers down
      • The last phase missile tech still only gives a +10% damage bonus (despite there previously being two levels, each giving +10%)
  • Abilities
    • Karmic Retribution and Fortified Structure have been changed, as noted previously, to affect civilian structures instead of trade/refinery/construction ships
    • Phasic Barrier (the Vasari ability that reduces damage on civilian structures) is no longer a toggle ability, but a normal ability with a cooldown and duration of 20s...with this change you should find that this ability acts a bit smarter than previously...additionally, the damage reduction has been increased from 33% to 100% (remember, that only halves the incoming damage and does not eliminate it)
  • Appropriate string changes have been made for the changed abilities/technologies

I will apologize in advance if I have omitted any other changes (there are quite a lot and I'm doing this from memory)...in general, these changes affect economics more than military, and probably help Advent the most and TEC the least...I would point out that future changes intend to help the TEC military, so shrinking the economic differences between Advent and TEC/Vasari will eventually be coupled with a similar shrinking between the TEC late game military and Advent/Vasari late game military....

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Holy cow--that's a lot of stuff there.  Nicely presented sir.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Well I do what I can...

I'm hoping to get some of my friends in this weekend and do some legit play testing...using the AI can only do me so much good...

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

CHANGE LOG (ALPHA 6)

  • Technology
    • Communal Labor no longer affects constructors, but rather increases structure build speed by 25% and reduces the credit cost of all purchases by 5%
    • Research Aggregation now reduces the cost of research by 5% (in addition to still speeding research by 25%)
    • Resource Focus has been moved up from tier 4 to tier 5
    • Resource Focus and enhanced focus bonuses reduced from 5%/10% to 2.5%/5%
    • Expedited Permits bonus to structure build speed increased from 30% to 50%
    • Labor negotiations no longer affects structure and ship build speed, but rather decreases credit and resource costs of all purchases by 5%
    • Artificial Longevity population growth rate bonus increased from 50% to 100%
    • Bonuses from Enslaved labor (credit cost reduction) and Optimized Construction (resource cost reduction) doubled from 5% to 10%
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

An update will likely be released soon...still trying to perfect the tech trees, though I've been pretty pleased with the last few LAN games we've played...

Right now, both TEC and Vasari each have techs reducing costs of all purchases (a low tier tech for credit cost, a high tier tech for resource cost)...Advent will only have the low tier tech reducing the credit cost of purchases...

Vasari of course already had these techs...for TEC, Labor Negotiations will now grant the resource cost decrease while expedited permits will reduce the credit cost...this is instead of these techs increasing the structure build rate (which is a pretty lame bonus)...

For Advent, it will be Communal Labor granting the credit cost decrease...

Additionally, the techs that allow caps to be upgraded to lvl 4 (instead of just level 3) now grant a 50% bonus to XP earned...should make these (otherwise) pointless techs actually worth researching...

Finally, I am considering buffing all the economic tech bonuses...I think it is worth pointing out that my friends and I are using this mod to play nice, relaxed, 3 or so hour games on normal speed...with that said, some of the payoff times for technologies are still a little too long...so, instead of all bonuses maxing out at 30%, I'm trying things out with a 50% max...

So, population cap techs will be 25% each (50% for ice/volcanic), extractor techs will be 16.67% (12.5% for Vasari since they have 4 tiers), and trade/refinery techs at 25% each (remember that in this mod, there are far less trade ports an refineries, making these techs in general less valuable)...so all in all, everything caps out at a 50% bonus...

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

CHANGE LOG (ALPHA 7)

  • Technology
    • Communal labor now reverted back to original benefit, with a 25% structure build rate bonus per constructor (note that planets cap at 4 constructors)
    • Labor negotiations reverted back to original benefits, with a 10% ship build rate bonus and a 50% structure build rate bonus
    • Industrial Juggernaut ship build rate bonus increased from 25% to 40%
    • All cost decrease technologies (enslaved labor, optimized construction) now have an 11.1111% cost reduction bonus (which actually yields a perfect 10% cost reduction)...
    • Knowledge aggregation research cost decrease has been buffed from 5% to 10%
    • All basic training techs now grant a 50% XP earned bonus
    • Generally speaking, all economic bonuses cap at 50% (up from 30%)...for example, each TEC/Advent resource tech now increases extraction by 16.67%, and each population cap technology grants a 25% bonus
    • Ice/Volcanic population cap techs add a 50% bonus to pop cap per tier (making a total 100% bonus)
    • Rapid development changed...planet upgrade rate bonus decreased from 50% to 25%...logistic upgrade cost decrease buffed from 15% to 25%
  • Galaxy
    • All random maps (both the originals, and the ones without pirate bases) now have a planet bonus density of 100%...this means that virtually every planet will have at least one planet bonus (note that this does not affect artifacts)
  • Planets
    • Exploring now costs 400-100-100 credits/metal/crystal per level (instead of 500-125-125 / 600-150-150 for level 1/2)
Generally speaking, economic techs have better payoff times...
 
All three factions have the potential to get a 100% structure build rate bonus (Vasari via one tech, TEC via 2 techs, and Advent via one tech and having 4 constructors at a planet)...
 
Exploring planets should be much more profitable now....

 

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

Added another link...same as Alpha 7, but includes some changes to the race and team colors...

Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top

seleuceia, the link to the alpha 7  main file appears to be dead as it goes to  an undefined page at mediafire.

harpo

 

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top

Confirmed.

Dead linky.

 

Alpha 7c works just fine though.

Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks for letting me know...I did a quick hotfix (the initial release actually had a bug regarding resource focus) and I'm guessing I updated it wrong...no guarantee that the version you downloaded before is not bugged, but the links now should be good...

Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top

I also like to point out that this is still optimized for normal speed...not that the other speeds won't work, I've just not really bothered testing them...also, there is a (small) chance that the Gameplay file has slightly slower ship speeds than intended (normal should be 0.30 but it might be at 0.0)...

Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top

Well....for what it's worth, I may have screwed up the downloads again...you may find the damage tables with Alpha 7 are actually the one's I'm using for the upcoming Alpha 8 (which has an entirely different counter system)...just an FYI...

Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top

=O

 

Btw, have you tried spliting LRF banks from 1 to 2 and cutting damage in half? Zombie did this and he liked the feel for it.

 

Not sure if that fits into your grand plan but I thought it was a good idea to share, in your quest.

Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

Well, for now the basic triad will be:

LRFs -> HCs -> LFs -> LRFs

All three ships will be equally capable against capital ships, so I'm not inherently worried about LRFs being too good at FFing...this will also not put the illuminator at such a disadvantage...

That being said, that's the plan for now...once rebellion comes out and we have a new ship type, my plan is to have a triad with corvettes, LFs, and HCs....LRFs will be the "ogrov" used for taking out caps or titans...

If however, I feel like balancing the LRM/kanrak against the illuminator becomes a problem, then what Zombie did may be a solution to the problem, so thanks for the tip...

Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

Alpha 8 has been released...suffice to say, it is a HUGE update...

I'm going to go run...then take a shower...and then eat...and maybe then I'll consider writing about all the changes I made...

For now, I will simply state that this version should only be played with TEC as that is the only faction I've worked on so far in regards to units and capital ships...and, as always, it is most optimized for normal speed...

You will find that the combat counter system is much different, and some of the abilities on the caps and support cruisers have been changed radically...

This mod is now highly experimental and radical...and it will take a lot of playtesting to put everything into balance...