Working on a few more economy changes to Rogue to make them more competitive.

The first is the dreaded 80% planet population loss. The planets will still start with an 80% loss, but you'll be able to reduce that for each logistic structure built. Basically, the amount of structures you have directly impacts your level of intimidation and ability to tax local population.

The next is your cost to upgrade population will be significantly reduced. This should help with early expansion and initial losses to under-development.

I'd like to get a few more abilities for the utility cruisers too if anyone has any ideas.

Or any other changes you'd like to see to make Rogue more competitive and fun.

I'll have to say, i'm not too familiar with the Rogue. Haven't played with them yet, and i'm also wondering: did something happen to the archailect? Have they been started at all, or not? because i see them up top in the OP but i don't see them in R6.2.

Also going to have to apologize for what could be a massive wall'o'text, but i cannot currently get pictures of what i drew up sent to you.

I've done a quick notedown of a possible structure of the Cylon Military research tree, as that one seemed (to me) to have the most useless upgrades, since it was based off of the Vasari (for instance, the only weapon upgrade that actually did something was the Phase Missile researches, and shield upgrades are completely useless), and I just wonder about your take on a few abilities/research upgrades i've come up with.

First section is weapons research.

at tiers 1, 3, and 5, i have missile damage upgrades.
at 2 and 4 are missile range upgrades, which lead to a tier 6 research that was questionable:

Basestar Multi-targeting:
number of levels of research is your choice
Allows Cylon Capitals' missile banks target one extra enemy ship. That's not per research upgrade, but total. So it could take two or three points to research, but won't allow the extra targeting until the last point is researched.
This one i thought questionable because it could totally mess with balancing, so i wanted to run it by you.

At tiers 2 and 3 i have upgrades to raider damage (or autocannon damage, but it seems raiders are the only ones with that weapon type unless starbases do too, but starbase upgrades are in the defense research tree)

then, at tiers 3, 5, and 6 i have siege damage upgrades leading to a siege range upgrade.

Next section looks at Hull research.

Tiers 1, 3, and 5 are hull point upgrades, leading to tier 7 hull regeneration upgrade.
Tiers 4 and 6 have armor upgrades.

I couldn't think of anything more to put towards hull, but maybe a mitigation/PDS percentage upgrades?

Last section holds Ship Schematics and abilities: (note, forgot names of most ships, a fact i am ashamed of.)

tier 1 holds siegestar schema

tier 2 holds support 1 schema and flak schema

tier 3 holds a repair upgrade for support 1, and the LRM schema

tier 4 holds the carrier and support 2 schema

tier 5 holds the heavy basestar schema and another research to run past you:

Advanced Pack Mentality:

number of levels is 1 or 2 (depending on balance)
All raider squadrons gain +1 raider per research point. 
Because, in the reimagined series, Raiders were made out to be at the animal level of consciousness, i figured that naming it "pack mentality" fit. Raiders are trained to work in larger squadrions.

Tier 6 holds the intercept ability for heavy basestars (taken from Kodiak Cruiser ability) and the anti-module schema

Tier 8 holds "Basestar Resurrection" stolen from Advent research to gain experience over time, and the schema for the Cylon superweapon.


Sorry if this is stepping on toes, and i'm attempting to learn how to program in researches for a mod, so i might do it on my own and separate from your work if you'd like me to, but i'd love to try and help out, as it seems you've got alot on your plate with this mod.

If you want me to i can try to find a way to send you a picture of the actual template i drew up (kind of messy but it works) so that you can much more easily see where the researches might go.  

Rogue has a nice looking fleet... They're just missing something.

Archailect is on the back burner momentarily. It's a capital ship only race of which I'm missing a few good models. I have the basic structure and roughed out abilities, but don't want to release anything until I get good textured models for them. I thought I would make better progress with R6, but didn't.

Sweet, looking forward to reading through it.

Maybe, but with these nudges it's nearly automatic that the AI will research techs it wouldn't previously 

Ok... AI changes are moving swiftly...

Research access is being added as we speak for all races. Basically the research access pattern forces the AI to research certain technology paths. There is a limit to how many paths I can research if I want to keep it hidden. Basically I can hide about 6 research access prompters. 1 of these will be used for AI specific features like the starbases below. The other 5 can be used to prompt key research in the normal tec trees.

For example I'm prioritizing the following:

Advent: Shields, Hull, Plasma, Lasers, Beams, Starbase

Tech: Hull, Armor, Autocannon, Laser, Rebellion, Starbase

Vasari: Phase Missiles, Hull, Armor, Culture, Bombardment(includes pulse/beam), Starbase

Some techs are auto-magically researched like Advent culture and Tech missiles because the AI get's a hard on trying to research superweapons. 

I've got some goodies for the Starbases In fact ALL AI starbases will get extra stuff put on them through the course of the game. It may not be immediate but eventually you'll see starbases with meteor storm, mass disorientation, boom bases, debris vacuum, etc. 

I'm thinking about making Hangars on starbases require research to keep the AI starbases from going to crazy. I'll just have to see after I get the other improvements in place.

I haven't decided if I'm going to keep the 50 AM ultimates with the longer cooldown yet either, but the other balance changes I've made will likely stay. I still need to swap out some of the crappy synchronized abilities too so the ships are actually useful.

Sounds really good !

But I also would prio ECO, because the Ai needs enough resources to compete.

For example Rogue:

CREDITSFROMTRADE0

CREDITSFROMPURCHASES0

COSTDECREASERESOURCES0

SALVAGEEFFICIENCY !!

Without that researches Roque would have a huge disadvantage.

In my opinion non-combat researches are very important, too.

Btw -- R5 Hypercorp

STRUCTUREWORK_METALEXTRACT1

STRUCTUREWORK_METALEXTRACT2

You forgot to improve the extraction rate for crystal (its only for metal).

STRUCTUREWORK_METALEXTRACT0 is correct.

It is. The starbases will be a WTF moment for most people that have never seen a higher level upgrade on an AI starbase.

I understand your point, but...

The game already affords a way for the AI to get more income via the built in difficulty levels. I'm also modifying Rogue with R6 to increase it's income potential by reducing the population hit as more modules are built in the gravity well. My goal is to make the Rogues more competitive without taking away all of their flavor. 

If the AI still needs more help I may have to add a couple visible Research Access items for some of those techs. I'm just trying to avoid obvious AI manipulation at this point.

Let me basically sum up why I've chosen the Research lines to upgrade...

These upgrades are ALL gameplay impacting upgrades while credits/resources can help the AI build more ships it doesn't do anything to upgrade those ships. This means the human player is always at an advantage both strategically and with unit effectiveness.

My goal for every faction is:

Culture is fully upgraded

Toughness and Weapons as defined by the faction is fully upgraded

Starbases are given a competitive advantage.

Going to stick with these and add more after R6 is released so I have a smaller sub-set to evaluate. If more is justified I will have to use un-used ship slots on the build menu.

Thanks, it will be fixed in R6.

SotF R6.3 (Pending stuff is what I want to finish before I push out 6.3)

• All: Adds Quick Start Templates used in some maps for all races (Pending
• All: AI enhancement for research access. Includes gameplay impacting techs for each race. Economy is not the focus of these improvements as harder level AI's get resource cheats.
• All: AI may purchase advanced upgrades for Starbase.
• Completed: Advent, Nephilim, Plague, Rogue, Tech, Vasari
• Pending: Alliance, Colonial, Cylon, Hypercorp
• Alliance: Ability minExperienceLevelRequired normalized to 0/2/4 from 1/2/3.
• All: Gas Giant Colonization research added
• Completed: Advent, Hypercorp, Nephilim, Plague, Rogue
• Pending: Alliance, Colonial, Cylon
• Gas Giant popuplation increase research added for Advent, Alliance, Hypercorp, Tech and Vasari.
• Colonial: capital ship factory placement radius increased to 2950
• Cylon: missile burst count delay tweaked. Needs more work.
• Cylon: hud updated with slightly translucent picture of hybrid (WIP)
• Cylon: maxShadow's reduced on orbital structures to reduce glair when zooming out.
• Cylon: hud icons for frigate and orbital module access updated in research tree.
• Rogue: Rebalanced Economy allows -80% population control to be slowly lifted as new orbital modules are built.
• Up to 60% can be lifted by building extractors, frigate factory, culture center, trade port and refinery.
• 20% can be lifted by building a capital ship factory or starbase (does not stack).
• Timed charges damage reduced from 1200 to 250. Idea is to steal credits.
• Rogue: Colony capital replaced mutiny with chance with old swift attack. I will bring this back with Rebellion due to new buffs available.
• Rogue: Colony capital can now capture enemy extractors (1/2/3) when colonizing a newly destroyed world.
• Rogue: Moved unstoppable phase jump down 1 tier
• Rogue: Removed unnecessary second level of research for star and worm hole access.
• Rogue: Added new research that decreases planet population upgrade rate and cost
• Minor UI changes for various factions

Hi Zobies,

I tried everything to force Rogue to resarch non-combat things. 

For example:

#############

AI-SHIP01-ROG

....Prerequisites
    NumResearchPrerequisites 1
    ResearchPrerequisite
        Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_RESEARCHACCESS_ROG1"
        Level 1
   

RESEARCHSUBJECT_RESEARCHACCESS_ROG1

.....

Prerequisites
    NumResearchPrerequisites 2
    ResearchPrerequisite
        Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ROGUE_EXTORT_CHEAPRESOURCES1"
        Level 2
    ResearchPrerequisite
        Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ROGUE_EXTORT_COSTDECREASECREDITS0"
        Level 2
MinimumArtifactLevel -1
BaseUpgradeTime 1.000000
PerLevelUpgradeTime 1.000000
BaseCost
    credits 1.000000
    metal 1.000000
    crystal 1.000000
PerLevelCostIncrease
    credits 1.000000
    metal 1.000000
    crystal 1.000000

###############

I tried the same for Advent, Plague and Tec and could improve the AI significantly.

All other races resarch no-combat. Rogue stop resarching no-combat after two resarches.

I am at my wit's end. Could you please take a brief look why this happen only to Roque (R5).

Many thanks in advance.

I know this is kind of a side note but, is it possible to make a frigate or a capital ship act as a mobile frigate or capital ship factory?

Reason i ask is because i'd like to see (or make myself if need be)  the colonials become more of a mobile faction as opposed to a traditional planet faction.

I remember reading something about the vasari faction in rebellion being able to do something like this, i'm just curious if its something that can be done in diplomacy.

sorry if this was posted and I missed it. I down loaded both down loads last night and there are a lot of folder's, my question is how do I install this properly. do I install all folders separately and activate them all in the game options? 

again sorry if I missed an obvious answer but it's late and I was trying to try it out be for bed.

thanks

Dathion

dathion here is my standard advice regarding the locating of the mods folder

assuming you have sins 1.193/entrenchment 1.053/diplomacy 1.34(the current non-beta versions), AND your windows is installed on the 'C:' drive,  the Mods NEED to be placed here for xp
C:\Documents and Settings\'user name'\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-v1.193
C:\Documents and Settings\'user name'\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.053
C:\Documents and Settings\'user name'\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Diplomacy v1.34

or here for vista/windows 7
C:\Users\'user name'\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-v1.193
C:\Users\'user name'\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.053
C:\Users\'user name'\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Diplomacy v1.34

NOTE the first two folders after the 'user name' are hidden , so to see them you must first click on 'tools' then 'folder options', then 'view', then click on 'show hidden files& folders' then click ok, then you will be able to browse your want to the folder. I suggest when you find the folder that you create a shortcut to it on the desktop

NOTE 2 the 'user name' in the above paths is your WINDOWS login user name, eg Administrator

note 3 these shortcuts assume your windows is installed on 'C' drive

and if the mod you want to use is from an EARLIER sins/entrenchment version place the mod in the mods folder FOR THAT version eg mods-entrenchment v1.03, then download and run my mods updater from the latest version archive which will have the same number as the vanilla sins version number, and AFTER updating the mod(s) to the current version for any mods of pre 1.04 entrenchment ALSO run the manifest maker on ENTITY manifests on EACH of the mods EXCEPT for total conversion mods

harpo

well I'm using windows 7 in my app folder I only have diplomacy folder in there the game is from steam account.

the only other mod I tried is distant stars and runs fine. I added all your mod folders in the mods folder loaded the game

and received a mini dump. that's when I came to ask for help as there are 20 some folders and I'm unclear on how to utilize them.

thanks for the fast response I really appreciate it.

Dathion

Follow the link below (also in the OP) for instructions on how to activate the mod. It's probably mini-dumping because you are activating the pieces in the wrong order.

How To Install Sins of the Fallen R5

thanks that was most helpful will play tomorrow night after work how many races should I be able to load at one time?

Dathion

The AI doesn't seem to follow the 2nd research pre-requisite when determining a ship or structure can be unlocked.

The role type of your research access ship also has an effect on how much the AI wants to unlock the pre-reqs.

Not in a good way. The ability does exist to spawn frigates via abilities BUT you need them to be temporary as there is no way to tie this to fleet supply currently.

Colonials aren't really a nomad faction but I can see some wanting this for their personal mod.

not to a good extent. There was an attempt to make a rogue faction with the Tri-pirate mod, unfortunately there are just too many obstacles with current set of buffs to make this possible.

From what I understand with Rebellion there is a real possibility to make a much more nomadic faction.

As you've seen the main purpose of the structure is because of the 2GB limit, it somewhat depends on your system specs and various hardcode limits in sins. 

If you load more than two custom factions (excluding Advent, Vasari and TEC as their assets are always loaded) I would recommend setting effects to High/Med/Low.

Also consider if you only have 4GB or ram your real RAM allocation may be somewhat less than 2GB for gaming after OS, etc. 

Faction order in highest to lowest texture sizes.

1. Colonial
2. Cylon
3. Plague
4. Rogue
5. Nephilim
6. Alliance
7. Hypercorp

Basically if you activate Colonial and Cylon watch your memory

Thank you for your information.

I am looking forward to R6.3. I hope you can solve the problem, that rouge does not resarch non-combat .

After playing a while i finally built a colonial envoy (yeah... i don't care much for diplomatic resolutions) anyways i noticed that the model is really good,however the colonial one; is small compared to everything else. I know in the tv series the colonial one landed in one of the galacticas runway wings... but a single viper fighter should not be 2/3rds the size of the entire ship.

So if someone gets a chance, or has the spare time to enlarge the colonial one envoy  by 50% or so that would be cool. I would do it myself but unfortunately 3d modelling and me don't get along very well. 

Other than that great job with the mod!  

It's scheduled for a size increase. It's about 5 or 6 times smaller than what it's intended size should be.

Updated notes:

SotF R6.3 (Pending stuff is what I want to finish before I push out 6.3)

• All: Adds Quick Start Templates used in some maps for all races
• All: AI enhancement for research access. Includes gameplay impacting techs for each race. Economy is not the focus of these improvements as harder level AI's get resource cheats.
• All: AI may purchase advanced upgrades for Starbase.
• Completed: Advent, Nephilim, Plague, Rogue, Tech, Vasari
• Pending: Alliance, Colonial, Cylon, Hypercorp
• Alliance: Ability minExperienceLevelRequired normalized to 0/2/4 from 1/2/3.
• All: Gas Giant Colonization research added
• Completed: Advent, Hypercorp, Nephilim, Plague, Rogue
• Pending: Alliance, Colonial, Cylon
• Gas Giant popuplation increase research added for Advent, Alliance, Hypercorp, Tech and Vasari.
• Colonial: capital ship factory placement radius increased to 2950
• Cylon: missile burst count delay tweaked. Needs more work.
• Cylon: hud updated with slightly translucent picture of hybrid (WIP)
• Cylon: maxShadow's reduced on orbital structures to reduce glair when zooming out.
• Cylon: hud icons for frigate and orbital module access updated in research tree.
• Rogue: Rebalanced Economy allows -80% population control to be slowly lifted as new orbital modules are built.
• Up to 60% can be lifted by building extractors, frigate factory, culture center, trade port and refinery.
• 20% can be lifted by building a capital ship factory or starbase (does not stack).
• Timed charges damage reduced from 1200 to 250. Idea is to steal credits.
• Rogue: Colony capital replaced mutiny with chance with old swift attack. I will bring this back with Rebellion due to new buffs available.
• Rogue: Colony capital can now capture enemy extractors (1/2/3) when colonizing a newly destroyed world.
• Rogue: Moved unstoppable phase jump down 1 tier
• Rogue: Removed unnecessary second level of research for star and worm hole access.
• Rogue: Added new research that decreases planet population upgrade rate and cost
• Rogue: Fixed Interdiction buffTypeToQuery finishCondition
• Plague: Updated phase jump sounds on capital ships
• Plague: Growth stages require 3 previous levels to unlock
• Nephilim: Culture rate 5 requires 2 previous levels to unlock
• Minor UI changes for various factions
• Flagships: Support capitals removed from random flagship selection. Colony as 2/5 chance to spawn
• Moons: Moons may spawn at Terrans, Desert, Gas Giant, Volcanic and Ice. Multiple moons may spawn at Terrans and Gas Giants. Moons spawned at neutral worlds are captured via colonizers. Moons are automatically converted to star bases once captured.
• Moons: No longer start with weapons. Reduced to missiles only with second level upgrade increasing weapon damage.
• Moons: Can only be captured by colony frigates (no scouts!).
• Artifacts: Fixed second weapon upgrade to include 2 upgrade level.

Trying to decide if I should refactor the AI stuff into an addon or leave it in the core mod. Need to play some more games to decide on that.

Zombie, could you consider releasing an "enhanced AI" faction add-on for each of the vanilla races.  Pretty much like your three additional players "add a race" mod but with the AI enhancements included.

Would be great for solo play.

No. my focus is on completing my mod right now.

It's questionable how much impact the vast majority of players will even see with any "Enhanced AI" changes as it is. A couple of other mods have similar approaches you can look at if you want to create this yourself. EA4x and SOGE all have AI enhancements.

What really bothers me is the AI doesn't have any way to prioritize research is odd to say the least. I've tried the priority option and nada, the AI doesn't care about unlocking abilities either which would make the game more dynamic which leaves out 25% of the research trees. Outside of the known things it tries to unlock research is completely random if it ever occurs. Research pre-reqs are only partially successful too as the AI doesn't care about the 2nd pre-req in my observation.

At this point I have the AI atleast researching some things that make it more formidable and gives a couple cheats for starbases if the AI chooses to unlock them. I'm going to let these burn in a bit before I look at doing anymore.

Just wondering, if I give the AI enough resources (credits, metal, and crystal) will it then research ALL of its Tech trees?