Silvermane’s Balancing Mod for Sins of a Solar Empire 1.03

Heavy Nova

from Sins Forums

Hello,

I just uploaded my mod, Heavy Nova, but it wouldn't take the description that goes along with it.  I guess it was too long.  Anyway, here it is, if there is any way to post this with the mod, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Silvermane

Hail Friends,

I’m proud to present HeavyNova, a balancing mod that doesn’t add or remove anything from the game.   It simply balances the existing game elements to provide an enjoyable single player campaign. 

Targeting & Damage

The chance for bigger ships weapons to hit smaller targets now goes down smoothly.  The damage ships do to targets of different size now varies smoothly.  This eliminates the effect of a capital ship and light frigate shooting each other for long time without doing much damage.  They can hurt each other now.  Each ship does 150% damage against its best target and 50% damage against its worst.  For example, and anti-fighter frigate does one and a half times the displayed damage against fighters but only half the listed damage against a capital ship because it’s weapons are designed for use against very light ships.  The opposite is true for capital ships.  Planetary defense modules are designed to repel any kind of invader.  Therefore, they do 100% damage against all targets. 

Pirates

 I increased the strength of the raids and changed the mix of ships, providing them with a more effective and balanced force.

Markets

I made the markets a little more sensitive to player purchases.

Artificial Intelligence

I reworked the artificial intelligence tables.  I don’t know how much of it is the 1.3 update and how much is the changes I made, but I’ve been playing on hard and they’re raising fleets, colonizing aggressively, developing their planets sensibly, and generally kicking my butt.  I’m going to actually have to make peace with one of my opponents just to survive.

Ships

I completely rebalanced all of the ships in the game.  Here are some things you should be aware of.  The costs and capabilities of a ship are based on and proportional to the slot count.  In general, a ship that takes twice as many slots will do twice as much damage.  Siege ships and carriers do 2/3 damage and colony ships do 1/2 damage due to their specialties.

Shields regenerate at twice the rate that hulls repair.  Tech ships have 100% hull and 50% shield.  Vasari ships have 125% hull and 25% shield.  Advent ships have 75% hull and 75% shield.  One cruiser for each faction gained the ability to bomb.  Light carriers now support two squadrons and have a weapon.  A weapon firing out of multiple banks does less damage.  1 = 100%, 2 = 75%, 3 = 66^, 4 = 50%.  Thus firing out of multiple banks is an advantage if the ship can maneuver to use both of them, but a disadvantage if only one has a target.  I try to move my battleships to the center of the fray so they can fire in all directions at once. 

Modules

The cost, slot count, range, and damage (where applicable) of all orbital modules has been rebalanced.  Modules require more metal, planet upgrades require more energy (crystals), research requires more money, and ships require equal amounts of all three.  All costs are divided into one, two, and three parts of the three different resources.

Planets

All planets have been rebalanced.  The asteroids, gravity wells, and costs, and slots have been redesigned.  There are six stages of development.  A given stage is the same across all planets.  The number of stages a planet can develop to depends on its type.

Terran – six stages of development, fewest asteroids.

Desert – five stages of development.

Ice – four stages of development, crystal asteroids only.

Volcanic – four stages of development, metal asteroids only.

Asteroid – three stages of development, most asteroids.

Dead Asteroid – two stages of development, no asteroids.

Pirate Base – special.

Research

Rebalanced the cost and time of research.  Changed the capital ship slots to two for each level of research instead of starting with one and finishing with three.

Miscellaneous Tweaks

Increased salvage refund percent.

Allegiance only goes down to 50% instead of 25%.

I’ve had some great games with this mod.  I hope you do too.

Regards,

Silvermane

 

modding
21,881 views 29 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Read all your changes and it sounds real interesting. Can't wait to try it out.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I just uploaded my mod, Heavy Nova, but it wouldn't take the description that goes along with it. I guess it was too long. Anyway, here it is, if there is any way to post this with the mod, I would appreciate it.

I wanted to look at this, but where is it? It didn't show up on the DL page referenced above... Am I missing something?

T
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Where is it???

Javaslinger
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
You know tec is intended to have more hull and less shields, and vasari be in the middle though? :x

Though if you change it that's fine, it's your mod after all, i just hope you adjusted how their cap ships level and stuff too then?
Plus tec has much better armor tech to better buff their high hulls.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
"Markets

I made the markets a little more sensitive to player purchases"


I been looking for that file overall in the directory cant find any file that involves that has market or black in the name.


Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Where is the link to download??

The mod sounds great and i'm really looking forward to trying it out.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
You know tec is intended to have more hull and less shields, and vasari be in the middle though? :xThough if you change it that's fine, it's your mod after all, i just hope you adjusted how their cap ships level and stuff too then?Plus tec has much better armor tech to better buff their high hulls.
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Thanks for tip innociv. I didn't notice that. I'll have to switch that around because I don't want to mess with the capital ship upgrades or tech tree, other than the cost and time.

Fortunately, I have everything modelled in a spreadsheet. I can just change a few formulas swap the relative strength of hull and shields for all ships for all races. I also wrote a program to generate the .entity files for me so I don't have to do any tedious manual data entry.

This puts me in a good position to quickly make sweeping changes to the mod.

Hopefully, the original Heavy Nova mod will be in the download section tomorrow. If the mod catches on, I'll post tables with specs to help plan colony development and fleet composition.

Cheers,
Silvermane


Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
"MarketsI made the markets a little more sensitive to player purchases"I been looking for that file overall in the directory cant find any file that involves that has market or black in the name.
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I halved minTimeForMarketChange and maxTimeForMarketChange in Gameplay.constants. There are other properties there you may want to try changing. For the market, I think something in-between 1.02 and 1.03 would be best. In 1.02, the price went out of control. In 1.03, it doesn't move enough. Please let me know if you find some settings that work well.

Regards,
Silvermane
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Seriously???

Where is you mod???

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I created a web page with a link to download the mod at the bottom of the page:

http://letosilvermane.googlepages.com/home

As promised, this version has the TEC at 125% hull and 25% shield while the Vasari get 100% hull and 50% shield. I also reduced the jump angle to 25 degrees and doubled the duration of booms and crashes.

Thanks for trying out Heavy Nova. I hope you enjoy it.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I updated the mod on the webpage:

Reduced the strength of pirate raids from 4 times vanilla to double vanilla - that 4x was due to a bug, I never played with them like that in my own games.

Changed TEC to 100% hull, 50% shield

Vasari to 87.5% hull, 62.5% shield

Advent to 75% hull, 75% shield

because I didn't like playing TEC with 125% hull, 25% shield.

Reduced bombers from double fighter hull to 1.5 times fighter hull.
Reduced light carrier damage from 2/3 normal to 1/2 normal to balance the second squadron.

Reduced the slot count (and everything that depends on it) for frigates by 2. This allows for more frigates and makes more of a difference between frigates and cruisers.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Play tested the mod a little late last night... had a few "observations"...

While I agree with, yet not necessarily enjoy the crystal/metal hikes in the costs of things, I notice an alarming lack of financial burden... There is more than a definitive trend here. As an example, increasing of logistics at a local colony: 94/188/282. It strikes me as odd that this massive amount of resources is required, yet very few man hours ($$$) to do the job. In my experience, labor is always a huge cost when associated with this type of endeavor. I would say the same of research. Yes it takes alot of resources, but it's the people and labs that eat up the budget... the dollars should reflect that. Currently I find I just hang out at the black market selling ridiculously low on occasion, and buying the materials almost every other project. I have to spend WAY too much time there, even with all of the extra resources you added.

Cap ships are insanely cheap. I actually felt guilty being able to steal one so cheaply. I like that the Metal/crystal costs are way up, but with the dollars given, they done built themselves...

Why does the Dunov CapShip, which reinforces everybody else's shields have such piss poor shields of it's own? I would think if ANY CapShip would have monster shields, it would be this one. (possibly effected by the changes made in the previous post.)

Don't know if it's tied to any of these, but I built a hanger defense and then discovered a dead asteroid... followed promptly by a game crash. I have the mini dump if it's helpful, but I have had NO other crashes with either the normal game, other nods or my own modded files...

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Hello Antracer,

Thanks for taking the time to try the mod and post some feedback.

I doubled the credit cost of everything and quadrupled the credit cost of capital ships. That puts the battleship at 3000 credits which just happens to be the same as vanilla.

Originally, I had the TEC at 125% hull and 25% shields. That gave all their ships poor shields. Recently I changed that to 100% hull and 50% shields and adjusted Vasari accordingly.

It looks like vanilla doesn't give Dunov a shield bonus so I'm reluctant to boost it's shields without doing something comparable for the other races.

I'm sorry you got a minidump. It's impressive that no other mods cause that. I'll use WinDiff to compare the modded entity files with the originals this weekend until I track down the problem.

Regards,
Silvermane
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I don't quite understand: Advent is at 75% hull and 75% shields? So all their ships got nerfed?
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
So all their ships got nerfed?
Have you ever wondered if nerf would work in space as a weapon?

I'll DL the new version and try it out, although may not be until the weekend... I noticed you had changed the CapShip slots, 2 to 4 instead of three etc. What's the upper limit now?

Curious to know if you do alot of waiting for money now vs. waiting for resources... In my own mod I had upped the tax base on population a few tenths of a percent. Not so much for me, but for the other cash strapped races. I may tweak it in the mod just to give that little bit to save a turn here or there. I had also upped both the sell and buy price a touch to allow them more cash... 1.8 and 3.8 I believe. The numbers were good for keeping me(the player) honest with selling to much, and made it hurt when I had to buy. I had also tweaked the volatility so it would start to crash as soon as you started selling, although that tweak doesn't always work as it should... It was my intention to make the finance side of things a little less tedious to allow for concentration on the strategy side, as well as compensate for for a market it was WAY to easy to take advantage of.

The crash may have been a fluke, but it was weird in the timing of it. It may even be a map issue. I was playing a familiar custom map, and it may not have liked something. I have noticed some quirky 1.03 map behavior, and my gut says that's where it lies... perhaps you will turn up something obvious, but until they get some of the quirkiness out of it, I think a few random CTDs will sneak in.

T
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
A readme would be awesome so some of us less technically inclined dont bork things.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
I don't quite understand: Advent is at 75% hull and 75% shields? So all their ships got nerfed?
End of quote


I don't think it is a nerf. One of the first things I noticed in the vanilla game was that shields recharged slower than hull's repair. I changed that so shields recharge at double the rate of hull repair. That gives shields an advantage over hulls. This I hoped would be balanced by the fact that repair stations and repair bots can repair hulls, but not shields.

Varying the hull and shields seemed like a good way to make the races a little different. They all have exactly the same amount of protection. I just gave some a little more shield and others a little more hull. The vanilla game does this as well.

75% hull + 75% shield = 150% protection
87.5 hull + 62.5% shield = 150% protection
100% hull + 50% shield = 150% protection


Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
Im gonna say again which file is the black market file?? Ive been looking for it to do some of my own modifying
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Im gonna say again which file is the black market file?? Ive been looking for it to do some of my own modifying
End of quote


I tried to think of a reason why I should answer a question asked in a tone like that, but I couldn't find one.

Sorry,
Silvermane
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Im gonna say again which file is the black market file?? Ive been looking for it to do some of my own modifyingI tried to think of a reason why I should answer a question asked in a tone like that, but I couldn't find one.Sorry,Silvermane
End of quote


I was thinking the same thing... good thing you got the question, I'd have been moderator acted upon...

Hoping to have time this weekend to try vs2.

T

Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
Hoping to have time this weekend to try vs2.T
End of quote


Thanks Antracer,

I think version 2 has better weapons fire, but I still have more work to do on balancing the economy. I'm working towards being able to play on a large map and support a full fleet at each tier while working through the tech tree. After that, I will spend some time experimenting with the AI settings.

Cheers,
Silvermane
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top

A thought from the desk of "The Economy"...

Have you been looking at the resource asteroid limit that was "instated" with 1.03?

It's a little above my pay grade, but I have read some interesting stuff on cloning the planet files and adding in different numbers for each set. (ie. 3 Terran worlds, one with 2, one with 3 and one with 5 resource asteroids...) It would make for a nice variation to have a few good planets and a few not so good ones... Not necessarily about "balancing" the economy, but imbalancing it a bit, I suppose. Throw in some positive and negative planet exploits to effect production and you could really change things up a bit.

I mention it as perhaps an easier workaround than rewriting the economy as a whole... Being able to have a few extra resources for ships would work short term. I also have a gut feeling that the number of asteroids will change with the next update... If they re-introduce the 3 or 4 asteroids a planet, or even the ability to randomize them, you'll have to rebalance everything all over again.

Could be I'm completely in the wrong ballpark too... it's so dang hard being a mind reader these days. Use to be so easy... people just wanted food and shelter. Now they want computers and TV's and phones and Ipods and ponies... I shoulda taken that tooth fairy job when I had the chance...;)

Tim

PS- Forgive me if I seem "bossy"... it's the email talking. I like to think outside the box... problem is most people don't, nor have time for those of us who do. If at any time you'd like me to stop "suggesting", hit me over the head with a large hammer... I'll be sure to stop.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Interesting ideas. They may have changed the default number and type of asteroids for 1.03, but modders can can configure them on a planet type basis. I specify the minimum and maximum and they are randomly generated within those limits.

Last time I played, I found myself waiting for resources too much in the middle of the game.

Rather than increase the base resource rates, I've been increasing the benefits of research. This way the player can build a powerful economy but they don't get it without investing in research and construction.

I increased the extraction tech from 6% per level to 10% per level. I doubled the number of levels of population tech to 4. I increased the cargo hold tech to 10% per level and increased the number of levels to 3. I halved the cost of research and increased the build times.

Tonight I'll play another game and see how those changes work out.

Thanks for the ideas,
Silvermane
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

The research idea is good. I like that I can expand what I've got by getting "better" at it... How many techs total are there now? IIRC there were 3 sets of metal and 2 sets of crystal, plus the extractor sets and the cargo hold sets. From what you're saying, the only level added was to the cargo hold set?

In my own playing I too increased the population limits a touch. I also changed the base tax rate by one or two. It comes out to 13.9 or so instead of 12. It doesn't seem like alot, but is just enough to go to market and pickup that 100 crystal you need in a pinch.

Would you say the resource short game as it stands now was used to help the AI or to keep a gazillion ships off the screen to avoid video card issues? In a back door kind of way, what you plan to do would be a definitive answer to that. If the AI are unable to take advantage of the additional resources due to low tech emphasis it would very well make for alot of park walking... I like a good walk in the park, but it does get old quick. I have not had enough play time to get to the AI's response to tech issues, and am curious to see their reaction. (what, you can't tell? ;))

If there's no calls today, I may get a chance to try v2 this afternoon... of course now that I've said that...

Stay Dry

T