something skinned, unless you are willing to skin it

I was just talking to my brother. He's not totally on board yet, but if he were to put something together with me, I think it would be easier to split the work load by having someone else to do the skin. Got a lot I really need to get done and I've been less than excelling as of late.

Twilight Im still personaly not a fan. But I do think it would make a nice mini-mod. For those who like you are looking for ships like that. One suggestion I would say i up the Fleet points by 2X at least. It seems fair for the ammount of firepower and versitility your getting from that ship. Also what would be the counter to this ship? Hc's ? Right now they seem to able to counter every ship type more or less. And I know you said you wanted to limit them to just a few. The only way to do that is to make them cost a huge ammount (which isnt a good way to do so, even im MP most of us have enough cash to build whatever we want), or cost a serious ammount of  Fleet points.

Anyhow, you could use a current ingame model to make a prototype mini mod with it. Maybe if i see how you impliment it and such I'll change my mind. lol, thats the beauty of being able to make mini-mods for DS. Like Im not a fan of DM but doesnt mean its bad. Im acutally glad someone took the time to make it for those who like it. So everyone can play like they want.

And now to the patch question. We dont plan to incorporate the SINS optimization project. Currently they are going the opposite direction we have been going. Less is more for them. More is More for us. We will hopefully soon have the time to optimize our mod, much like they have done. But it wont be a merge like we done with other mods found with Distant Stars. And the next patch will be out when its out. We all have been busy with other things and have not had a good chance to sit down at discuss and work on improvements.

I'll look into getting that modded and get back to you then.  Still working on my full scale reference chart though.  I'm about half done with capitol ship abilities right now, then I've gotta add in buildings and Planets.  Though I have also mostly finished the Starbase section as well.  (I'll be adding some strategic data to each ship/structure/ability as well)

Thanks for the input on the Cruiser, I probably will up the fleet points a bit.

-Twilight Storm

hmm looking at my DM and I am thinking I probably will be increasing some of the values, perhaps increasing the turn rates... but I am still testing it out...Let you all know about choice.

The Bane of the Vasari.  Space Ponies have them on the run!  Can anyone stop them?

Sign up at your local recruiting office today soldier and do your part!

Don't know why I felt like doing this, but I'm bored I guess.

LOL that is flipping awesome, SPACE PONIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No No No.

Space Ponies do OVER 9000 to anything Pbhead controls.

Been playing using the mod with my friends quite a bit, against each other and against the AI.  We generally agree it's a massive improvement over vanilla Sins, and have a few humble suggestions to improve gameplay for your next patch based on things we've seen.  Also, does the AI know how to research the extended levels of research in DS?  We find the end-game report always states the AI researching a very low number of researches compared to the human players; often less than half of what the humans research.

Major issues:

-Lack of crystal 'roids.  I really think most planet types need to have at least 1 crystal slot like in Vanilla Sins.  There's far too many all-metal planets, leading to perpetual crystal booms and metal crashes.

-Credit income on Fast game speed should be lowered to the vanilla Sins Fast rate.  Fast is generally the preferred game speed among players, and the current DS credit rate on Fast causes resource management to become irrelevent due to easily achiving credit rates of 50+/sec.  A TEC player in particualar can get trade ports up fast, and with level 4 Favoured Client Discount ends up with pretty much infinite resources in short order.  Extract rates are fine, other than the crystal shortages.

-You've already mentioned you were nerfing them, but yeah bomber spam is seriously OP.

-Certain upgrades are broken with the extra levels in DS.  Major offenders: Mass Trancendency (free level 6 on all caps!), Modular Architecture (80% off frigate factories and extractors!), Molecular Assembly (160% build rate increase!), Slave Labour (16% cost decrease on everything!), and Favoured Client Discount (30% off all black market resources!).  None of these upgrades should go beyond their original limits, as they lead to overwhelming advantages.

-Pirates are even more stupid than in vanilla Diplomacy.  By the fifth wave, they were sending 7 cap ships + lots of other ships.  And there's no easy way to remove them in DS thanks to the pirate starbase.  If you throw two pirates missions + normal raid on someone, they are simply dead.  The main offender is Ironclad's new pirate armour type, which breaks things badly.  It's kind of a waste to overhaul the pirates like that, only to have everyone turn them off.

Minor issues:

-The scaling costs on upgrades lead to silly situations where the 4th upgrade onward is actually more expensive than the 1st upgrade for the same research type in the next tier.  Or as an example in plain English, the final upgrade of Laser Amplification will actually cost MORE than the first upgrade of High Intensity Lasers.  It's not major, but it just doesn't make any sense.

-Pacts need to be adjusted to DS levels.  At the monent, they aren't really worth bothering with in DS.

-Consider tweaking the envoy abilities at some point.  Some are really good (Visari resource rate boost and TEC trade income boost), some meh (Advent culture boost), and some totally worthless (TEC population boost comes too late, Visari planet healing too weak, Advent alligence restore way too situational).

Anyway, these are just suggestions from a group of four of us using your mod.  Fantastic work; it really improves the core game and I doubt we will ever go back to vanilla Sins.  It boggles the mind how the new planet types didn't make it into an official expansion, they alone add so much more variety to the game.

yes a lot of those things are going to be addressed, doing MP with it have really brought those issues to the fore

the pirates are going to take a different strategy, will see for future issues

I do and don't like the pirates. On the one hand, I can see how someone with a great economy could smash another with them, but at teh cost of producing their own fleet. And the pirates are such a pain in the ass that it almost makes them another, compact player. In fact, you kinda want to smash them ASAP to avoid excess fleet units from returning for defense. Btw, my brother had them get 400+ caps and 2000+ ships at their base. He's whittled them down to ~200 caps and ~1000 ships. But that's the beauty. Even if you don't consider the trade bonus worth it, attacking them suddenly becomes worth it. Do think they should have 4 logistic slots for the Vasari and Advent though.

Apparently Diplomacy let's you actually colonize the base rather than just taking it for the plundered booty ability.  I saw population on it of 10/20(Never went higher than 10, though) when I colonized one last night.  (Again, this is in regular Diplomacy)  which gave me ~3.1 creds/sec.  How long have pirate bases been able to support populations?

+4 logistics slots to vasari/advent on pirate bases would take away from the TEC's advantage there.  They can put a frig factory/trade port/whatever on a pirate base adding to their usefulness.  Give the base +4 logistics for only Advent and Vasari, and at least Advent will have an advantage with their Tactical slots upgrade as well.  (What is the Vasari Equivilent?  Their 15% fleet supply increase research?)

If you do add the logistics slots, make it +4 to the Pirate base for all 3 races, so the TEC don't lose their advantage altogether.

Is there currently a research to increase Asteroid Population Caps?  If not, I would love to see one.  Like + 50% max population at its highest level.  Affecting both Roids and Pirate Bases.  (Maybe add in a 3rd tier to that that unlocks a Pirate Base logistics Slot for all 3 Races, rather than giving the base logistics at the start.)

Kinda rambled on there, hope that makse sense.

Another idea to shoot at:  How about a research that can put X ammount of Squadrons based on your home planet's surface?  Like, 4 squadrons of your choice, but only available if the planet is your homeworld.  They'll be replaced the same way as Cap Ships Squads, using no Antimatter, and would add in a defence that is only nulifiable by Fighters and Flak, rather than being able to destroy the hangar/carrier/starbase/whatever.

-Twilight Storm

never noticed the population before for the pirates (never colonized the pirate base in regular diplomacy I will admit)

when you add logistics slots, it affects all races equally

increase in Asteroid Pop Cap? ummm, both underground tunnels (which was originally purpose for asteroids) and anti-gravity researches affect them and all other planets, we found that you can only affect the population for three different types of planets (hostile, topical, normal)

nope, tried that

@lbgsloan- oh and the AI in diplomacy at higher levels uses the research just fine
                 *looks at the rest of the MP crew*
                 Right boys? rofl
                 We got our heads handed to us by vicious AI last night, one AI had 122 research done

Higher then that.  By the time I had finally dropped out, one of the AI's appeared to have completed all of the research, if not all, then damn close.

It used to be pirates had no option for Population.  Now when you view the pirate base when they own it, it says 10 population.  And when you own it, it says 10/20.

I remember the tunneling thing now I think about it, stupid question.

No, too powerful, or no, it can't be done?  (Assuming you were talking about the fighters on planets)

Could just be that ibgsloan kept getting Aggressor/Defensive AIs.  Try putting a couple on Researchers and see how that goes.

-Twilight Storm

yeah now that I think about that I did see that yeah

as for the fighters on the planets, just won't work, we tried it

Yeah Since we reduced the reserach to 4-8 instead of like 10 per item the AI has had no trouble in my games researching. Lower AI diff. are not the fastest but they will in time. When you play my game pace. They eventually do it.

The harder new AI cheat on their reserach. Ive got a topic about it somewhere. Oh wait here it is.... Damn AI cheats.

Hey! I resent being called AI, and I've never cheated!  Not in multiplayer anyway...

Ooh, here's another idea:  If stars boost AM regeneration, how about having a different type of grav well that drains it?  Most likely an energy cloud of some type.

Ion Cloud maybe?  Drains 2.5 AM/sec.  (No, I am no physisist, I have no idea what an ion is other than a cool name.)

-Twilight Storm

anions and cations, particles with an electron count different from the proton count. AM regeneration is based on the anti-particles that are generated by particular solar radiation atmospheres, such as those found in the Van Allen Radiation Belt around Earth and a similar field around Jupiter. Simplified for game mechanics, as you can imagine. In order to drain AM, you would probably need an atmosphere similar to the phase conditions which cause AM loss. A phase storm, violent interactions between high energy particles in and out of phase with our space, could potentially leak small amounts of AM despite containment.

NEXT!

Well, there's that...  A less geeky answer from our fine Brazillian dancer friend there would have been: "Ships use antimatter to phase jump, if they drain too low and can't regen it back, then you lose the use of the ship.  So probably not a good idea. Thank you for the thought though."

Ships don't use AM to phase jump, they just lose 100 if they have it, or all of it if they have less than 100.  Otherwise Arcovas wouldn't be able to go anywhere either.

Thanks for the info though, Draak.

If my ideas are annoying or anything just lemme know and I'll stop posting em.  (I got this habit of posting things as soon as I think of em rather than thinking it out...happens when I talk too...)

-Twilight Storm

Actually, Stant, you didn't read carefully. AM is not used for jumping and so there's no big issue with a storm like that. And I'm okay with the idea (just another region as far as I'm concerned), I was just suggesting a name and description. By all means, do it. It's less annoying than a Pulsar.

shame Sins doesn't have a random event generator in it that makes events happen in real time. Solar flares/radiation discharges and what not. Something that makes the environment of space more dangerous for fleets

that would definitely require hardcoding not already in place.