Hey again Tolmekian.It’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve had a chance to play a few games using your v2.0 mod so I thought I’d throw some feedback your way. You know, because I’m a helluva guy or whatever. Anyhow, I’ve rounded up all my notes and hopefully at least some of this will be useful to you. Oh yeah, it’s long, so I hope it fits in one post and I hope it doesn’t hurt your eyes…
Wall of text.
It's all good. I'm kind of a wall-of-text guy myself, with no aversion to reading. I appreciate all the feedback and the time you took to make notes. Your commentary was entertaining, as well, so that helps.
I'll hit your comments point by point:
Minors. Since smart minors can't colonize, they're left to build constructors and warships. I'm surprised at their aggression, but if they have a military and the majors don't, I can see how it happens. AIPersonality 5 (the minor AI), also looks to be optimized for life on one planet. That means heavy research into weapons and trade, for one. They also have what I think is a unique ability to build new structures over existing ones. As far as I know, minors neither give nor receive treaties with the other AIs. It's never happened in any of my games, even with colonizing, semi-major minors. Are there any races you haven't encountered? It could be that the treaties are going to an unknown race, in which case it won't show up on the treaties screen. Also, in the trade dialogue, if you change your view to Relations, it will show who they are at war with, allied with, and who they have treaties with. You can hunt down the lost treaties that way. If you still have any save games, could you try it out and let me know?
Loyalty. I didn't do anything to loyalty, other than make a couple techs and improvements boost it. Your problem could simply be influence. You need to break 4x influence for planets to start flipping.
Double buildable icons. The Induction/Recruiting Center is a known issue. It's the only way to make the same building available with 2 different techs. Not much I can do about it, but it doesn't hurt anything.
Extreme Colonization. Extreme and Advanced Colonization actually are the same tech. They just have different display names in different tech trees. Since they're the same tech, you can't double up on it. You research/trade for one, and you can't get the other. As for gateway techs, they needed something. Glad you like it.
Offensive Meditation. This is an Altarian tech. I'm assuming you have tech brokering off if you can't get it from anybody else. You'll have to beg the Altarians for it. And don't overdo the cologne, they have sensitive noses.
Mercenary Accadamy. The Mercenary Academy grants War Profiteering of 2%. That means you get 2% of the economy from each race at war. They don't lose it, you just get it. Only once for each race, no matter how many wars they are in.
Unique techs in Diplomacy. I'm guessing the Drengin and Korath techs may not have asterisks because they share them. Since they are in more than one TechTree, I guess they're not unique. 2 Imaginative Researches? Don't know what to say for that. Okay I just reread your comment - I don't know why some techs have it and some don't, if they're all shared between the two. Hmmm.
Random Team. I've heard of this. Shouldn't have anything to do with my mod. Do you play campaign at all? Just make sure to check you relation with each race while setting up and make sure it's either unknown or neutral. I prefer neutral because then you can talk to all the races at game start, even if they're on the other side of the galaxy. They can also join in UP votes, so no 1 or 2 race votes for the first few years.
Defenses. I'm not sure offhand how my sizes stack up. I tried to stick somewhat close to the originals. Since I upped the strength of defenses, I may have upped the sizes a little to prevent ships with outrageous defense.
Trimming the tech tree. At present, only the unique weapons and Fleet Warp Bubbles got the axe. The good and evil weapons/defenses have taken the place of the ultimate weapons/defenses at the end of the appropriate line. Maybe that makes good and evil wait too long for benefit, but that's the way it is for now. You'll be happy to know that the fleet attack/defense/warp bubble techs are all coming back in v2.1
Hull spaces. What you're thinking of is SizeMod, which increases the component size based on a percentage of the hull. I may have relaxed that some. I'll look back and see if it bears any changing.
Spies. Like Agorwal88 said, more money = more spies. I also gave Counter Espionage a 10% Espionage bonus, which helps, I think. Also, if you were the big-money galactic leader with your trade empire, you could simply be the target of everyone else's spies.
Non-weapon/defense balance. Never really considered systematic balancing of other things. After reading about how people don't use Industrial Sectors and reading your comment, I think I may have a look at them. Not sure about Warp Drive. I'd like to get v2.1 out in the very near future, so I'm not likely to tackle too much more at this point.
Galactic Achievements. Glad to hear you like the changes. The only one I added, I think, was the Hall of Justice for neutral civs. I did that mostly because I needed something for Balanced Vision. I restored 3 that were lost due to typos - the Galactic Stock Exchange, Galactic Monument, and Hyper Distribution Center. Maybe in a future version I'll tweak some. I may have a look at the Eyes of the Universe right now. You realize, though, if I nerf it everyone will be looking at you . . .
Quantum Power Plants. Heard about it. They may have fixed some, but I think some are still broken. I don't think I can do anything about it. I'll put it on the list of things to look at, though.
Trade. Coincidentally, I also reduced the bonus to 50% for v2.1. I appreciate your respect for my ownership of the mod and the effort and all, but please feel free to do with it what you like. The whole idea of the mod is to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. If there's something you don't like, change it and be happy. I reserve the right to kick you in the balls, though.
Alrighty then, that was a fun little slog. Thanks again for all the input. It looks like you'll be happy for v2.1 when it comes out. I just need to get the conversation fixes from qrtxian and look at a couple small things, then it's on!