Who would be the person at Stardoc to appoach concerning any Assymbly modification on the EXE file?

Will it? I've seen the AI build scouts equipped with Survey modules in Autumn Twilight. I had changed the tech requirement from Sensors to Stellar Cartography at the time, so that may be the reason. I need to test that.

For me, things need to make sense. They have to follow an internal logic. My suspension of disbelieve only goes so far, and the Survey Ship as is is already stretching it. I know, I know. The Survey Ship is the way it is, because that's how it was in GalCiv 1. However, it made sense in that game, because there was no Ship Designer. Every ships was pre-designed.

I only removed the Advanced Navigation Center because of the 1pp-bug. Otherwise, it would still be here. Also, the "engines" part in the hint is referring to "physical engines", i.e. Hyperdrive, not the Navigation Centers.

The issue with the Survey Ships, however, is more about balancing, which makes me less inclined to use drastic measures.

How many planets did the AI have? Also, did it build any morale improvements on the colonies? As far as I know, the AI uses the civ-wide approval rating in order to determine the tax rate. So, if the AI has lots of planets, then the approval rating of the homeworld will have less of an impact. While any planet with a high morale bonus will make the civ-wide rating less reliable.

You're right. That really looks ugly. It also makes no sense. Why would a Starport be so easy to maintain, that you actually get money for having one? As some critics/snobs would put it: "suspension of disbelieve broken: zero stars."

Why would the basic Cargo hull be faster than any other hull? I don't see the logic in that.

I've already halved the range of the Basic Support module. Removing it (or all Support modules) completely, however, is out of the question. It would require too much work to do properly (editing every single ship design and template), and would change the game too much. It's fine for a mod (I've done it in Autumn Twilight), but not for the base game.

I have to see them in-game, before I make a decision. It also depends on what everyone else thinks about them.

 

Also, any opinions on the new buildcosts? I'd like to get some feedback before I implement them.

Okay, I've tested it, and it doesn't work. The AI only places Basic Support modules on their Scouts. On a medium map, no less. Something is amiss.

Or I could simply set the cost for Spore Weapons to zero. That works too. However, it still doesn't help. Despite starting out with Spore, the Korath managed to get themselves wiped out, because they refused to use their advantage. Instead of conquering other races, like any player would do, they just kept the Spore ships in orbit of their planets.

I don't know.  This would make factories feel less valuable. It also doesn't address the other buildings, and how easy it is to add up maintenance costs.

Wouldn't that make some factories even more cheap as they are now?

+Social will mean more production costs (although cheap/50% one) wouldn't that further exacerbate that matter?

My whole point is to put the AI in a place where he can have his global spending slider up 100% (optimal) or, at least, do better than now, by having more bcs at his disposal. There has to be a balance between his global sources of income and spending, so we either advance the first and decrease the latter.

Surely, if the AI would be so clever to build only pop growth/economic/morale structures on his planets in times of need (negative income) then buffing him socially would in the end be helpful, but that is not the case.

AFAIK scouts are automatically used by the AI to explore the galaxy, even if they have a Survey mod on it. Simply built one and gift it to him, you'll see.

On the other hand if you gift him your starting Survey Vessel he will invest anomalies. So what he is going to do with a ship is probably based on the original design, and may be even hardcoded.

I've never seen him build MediumHulledSurveyor, nor would it matter that late as then there aren't much anomalies left.

Scouts don't make good Surveyors they lack speed+range. Cargo based vessels are optimal. But I don't know how to manipulate the AI to use new designs. I've tried it by presenting alot of new ones in GC2ships.xml (and eradicating all the old ones) - the AI doesn't rely on them but instead designs his own, always.

Maybe I did something wrong, actually it would be really nice if we had the possibility to create standard designs for him and make him use these designs.

I know, but I actually got the AI to build Scouts equipped with Survey modules while working on Autumn Twilight. I'm just unable to reproduce it.

"The Arceans treat their engine technologies differently than other races. 

Instead of upgrading their physical engines, Navigation Centers are built to improve the speed of ships on a per-planet basis."

Sounds pretty clear to me. "Engines" refers to Hyperdrive & Co., while "Navigation Centers" refers to the improvements shown in the picture. Yes, it may be a bit confusing that one of those improvements isn't in the game anymore, but I consider this the lesser of two evils.

The easiest way is this:

1. Build a Fusion Power Plant

2. Upgrade it to a Anti-Matter Power Plant

3. Destroy the Power Plant (decomission it; sell the planet to a race that doesn't have the Power Plants in its tech tree; get the planet invaded by a race that doesn't have the Power Plants in its tech tree; etc.)

4. If you lost the planet during step 3, get it back

5. Try to rebuild the Power Plant

Step 5 is impossible to do, because the Power Plants are no longer in the build list (neither Fusion, nor Anti-Matter). If you unlock Quantum Power Plants, then it won't appear either. The game considers the upgrade as building a second improvement. In essence, the game thinks you built 2 copies of the same 1pp. If the actual building gets destroyed, you (or anyone else) will never be able to rebuild it on this planet, because the game thinks that 1 copy still exists.

I ran into this bug a couple of times over the years, going all the way back to DA. However, I only managed to connect the dots about two years ago. I had a lot more upgradeable 1pps in Autumn Twilight, which made the bug much more prevalent.

Then how would you solve this without changing the essence of the 1pps, or introducing possible balancing issues, like, for example, turning the Navigation Centers into SPs would?

The GC2_Hint.xml doesn't work from inside the mod-folder.

Probably because it is a non-military vessel who doesn't need alot of structural integrity like warships. They do only have 1 hitpoint basically alot of armor metal must be missing, reducing its mass, it can be accelerated with lesser energy.

But frankly, I don't know. It's not that these ships exist for real and I can go looking.... It's simply a computergame... ultimately there is absolutely nothing logic about it or in it, the future doesn't even exist yet etc pp I mean can you explain me how Artificial Gravity works? or the Galaxy Generator (lol) from GalCiv1...

I call this Custom Duties in my personal mod. These darn aliens surely have to pay up before they can visit my paradise worlds   but it could be anything, you can be creative here^^ but ok, it's probably too much of a step to go.

 

To get more Survey ships out. Something any player would do.

You wanted to know how to create the bug, and I gave you instructions to easily recreate it. That's it.

Any situation that can lead to the destruction of the upgraded 1pp will result in this bug, and there are enough of them happening through normal playing.

Have you ever had the AI place a Power Plant on a bonus tile, and you wanted to build a more appropriate improvement there instead? I have. And if that Power Plant was upgraded, then there goes the ability to rebuild it. Especially nice, if that planet was meant to become a manufacturing world.

Have you ever used Tidal Disruption, or any other tactic capable of destroying improvements, during invasion? Or got your planets invaded or flipped by a race that doesn't have Power Plants/Navigation Centers in its tech tree (even through trade)?

Seriously, it doesn't matter, if you can trade those techs or not. There are too many possibilities to lose the improvements, even when you have the techs.

I thought about making those 1pps indestructible too. However, this isn't a clear-cut solution either, because it introduces balancing issues. Now you can make use of those improvements even without having the necessary techs to build them. You want to make your ships even faster? Just get a planet where the Arceans built a Navigation Center. Suddenly, you have the necessary telepaths to train as navigators. Not to mention the knowledge to do so.
Sure, you can say the same thing about several other 1pps. However, those are at least understandable. Either from a lore-perspective or as a means to prevent exploits (though even those make some sense from a logical standpoint). What excuse does a run-of-the-mill power plant and a school for navigators have for being indestructible?

Not exactly.  +social only works on social construction. Once every structure is finished it's lost to prevent military production from benefitting from +social. Once a planet is build up any extra costs associated with a +social bonus vanish.

We still have a very serious issue when one makes any change in the Personality tab when editing a race.

I'm pretty confident players won't mind. Factories will increase in strength but they'll start with a lower value. MP and TP are different "currencies". What's the problem with a basic lab giving 6 TP and a basic factory giving 3 MP. There's no direct MP to TP conversion, just focus.

Heck, slash research in half too because: a) Research just seems a bit to fast. Stuff gets more expensive the more you research. AIP8 in particular is vulnerable to this because it grinds through it's manufacturing and research tech like a maniac. 

As to maintenance cost. It might not need adjusting. Every MP costs 1 bc. By cutting MP in half you also cut the expenses in half. IF you increase the cost of strucures you'll also increase their buyout value. Similarly, if you want to reduce the amount of ships build by making them more expensive you'll increase ship maintenance cost.

In short. If they AI is producing to much expensive stuff, reduce how much they can build. 

I'll run a few tests when I can.

@Gaunathor. Which races are you AIValues tweaking atm?

 

 

Just ran a little experiment. I cut the MP and TP in half on all structures and had the AIs have a little fun medium map, tough difficulty, no eco bonuses, abundant planets. No techtrading.

The year is 2229

The results are as follows:

• Arceans. 422 bc/t
• Yor. 3000 bc/t (?!)
• Torians. 993 bc/t
• Drengin. 174 bc/t

All were able to make money while keeping their people happy. The Yor are making far to much money though.

Large map. May 1st 2229.

• Yor. 79 tax. 79 app. 1395
• Thalan. 79 tax. 76% app. 875.
• Drath. 69 tax. 74 app. 576.
• Altarian. 69 tax. 78% app. 725
• Terran. 79 tax. 71% app. 808
• Arceans. 69 tax. 59 app. 774
• Torians. 69 tax. 74 app. 884
• Iconians. 79 tax. 76 app. 1123.
• Drengin. 69 tax. 54 app. 220.

So the drengin come in last again. All the AIs had their espionage slider at a 100% and they were still making money. Again the Yor come up top.

If this proves anything it's that reducing TP/MP really helps the AI save money.

 

 

But these scouts aren't set to auto-survey but to explore the galaxy! I've informed you about this here:





They are rare exceptions, not more. In the classical game these power plants don't bring a base production to the table, only a percentage bonus. Right now that's changed and so it's not surprising to see that the AI is confused.

But even if it would happen - I would never delete a power/quantum plant because it sits on a bonus tile. I'm usually happy if I find a planet where one already is, and simply leave it there. On obscene/suicidal you cannot afford their immense production requirements as you cannot build tier IV + V factories nor labs, because the AI will roflstomp you beforeahead.

And if I get planets from the AI then this means I'm already invading why should I care about social events at all? If you have Space Superiority the best thing to do is to set sliders to 100% Military and only produce Transports and additional Fighter. The annexion of AI planets will add more to my empirical strength than any other strategy.



I use these techniques without harming the planet nor its structures. Also this:





Yes, it does because (see my quote above) + (see below quote)





Gaunathor, I'm not intending to bury bugs and afterwards try to talk them down. But they are not as common as you try to let them sound. Especially when there are multiple methods available who would further decreases the chance of this bug to appear in a game.

And in no way does the 1pp bug pose any balancing issues, because it can happen to any player/AI. And a disadvantage to everyone is an advantage to none. You simply have to live with the fact that in one of 10 games there is a single planet where you cannot rebuild something. So what? The fact that you are using planet destructive invasion techniques tells me that it doesn't really matters to you if occasionally something is missing.. (esp. when you could circumvent the negative penalties of these techniques...)



In the classic game the whole Arcean propulsion techs were ALL tradeable - you could build these Navigation Centers on ALL your planets giving ALL your fleets additional speed, and further, you also got the racial speed increase from these techs, too - if you compare this to your stated scenario you'll see it's exactly the opposite. A few planets here and there where ships can be released that have +1 speed, so what? If you fleet these ships together with your common ships they will instantly loose this bonus! And this does basically happen all the time in the AI game.

And if the human player goes so far as to administer different fleets, he will have a few with +1 speed, big deal!

Apropos Arcean+balancing, what exactly is your intention regarding their propulsion tree? Traditionally they did have the slowest ships, but the devs did give them multiple bonuses in order to compensate this weakness. For one, their SA, and further, they did have the strongest ships because they could leave their engines on planets making more room for weapons + Stellar Forge. And all these bonuses did positively influence each other.

However, as it is now, the Arceans seems to have the fastest ships because of the boatload of racial speed they get (!) from untradeable techs while they are able to trade for the common propulsion techs giving them even more racial speed etc pp. You've basically changed the face of race upside down, from slowest to fastest.

And even added additional features, now they even mimicking the Yor by slowing other ships down WTF if anything the Yor should get these SB mods (although I don't want to advocate to make them even stronger, I think they are OP (Stalks & Distr Energ Matrix) but thematically it would fit them more as the Arceans....)



GC2 is not a RPG but a 4X strategy game, IMO "lore" based arguments do not weigh that much if they hinder a correct application of bug-fixes/ re-balancings, esp. when they would solve year old nuissances and make the game more playable, more challenges, and simply better.

You might maybe disagree here but I tell you that most of this lore is bogus anyway and in a lot of cases is used to rationalize/explain certain game mechanisms, and alot of lore actually does contradict itself, other statements, or the game itself.

You just have to look at the game from a neutral standpoint and you'll see that these "internal logics" are applied randomly & arbitrarily.

What kind of excuses do improvements X, Y, Z have to withstand a multiple asteroid attack - 1000 of tons of superheated metal & rock at several thousand km/h will destroy anything, even a Civilization Capital. And if that rock is just big enough the sky would darken for a thousand years (see Dinosaurs-extinction).

Sure, that planet wouldn't have any production or food, so what? You could still buy improvements or re-route asteroids etc, it could be made habitable within 1 turn.

But then again, there are even lore-based arguments available to support this. I remember alot of complaining of players that a planets population was/is growing too fast, that it's not possible to grow 1.000.000.000 people in 4 weeks right from scratch - and we got an interesting feedback from Stardock officials here (if I remember correctly I think it was even in a manual, but am not sure):

Basically the population of a planet stems from inhabitants who are already there but they need to sign up/being registered before they can pay tax and contribute to the empire. And improvements like the Recruiting Center would aid in that (therefore its name). So yeah, if I conquer an Arcean planet sure there are still native Arceans civilians there who would like to have their old jobs back. That's our trainers. I don't think every invasion is followed by a genocide on the civilians, do you?. At least, the invasion screen only shows military, and I don't think that a races total population is made entirely out of soldiers...



It does totally eliminate that bug and therefore makes 1pp structures very interesting.

These buildings do have a very positive effect on the AI behaviour, because he doesn't have to make a decision of how many he is going to queue on a planet. You just need to make sure that the importance is high enough for him to build it on most planets and then he only has to research the necessary technologies and his planets will grow linearily with his technological development.

Additionally, it would give planets a certain "racial" expression, for example, whenever you've taken a planet from eg the Torians, there is most likely a Food Harvester still there, or a Central Mine, so this will influence your game abit of what you can do with this planet. For a strategy game, that's interesting, because here the human player has to modify his standard behaviour.

Ever went against AI's who had universally all their planets set up to 16b people? I did. With the help of 1pp structures NP.

***

I'm currently playing a game using the latest build, obscene diff, large galaxy, abundant habitable, rare anomalies + asteroids, common stars+planets, normal techspeed, without techtrade/broker, playing as Yor versus Arcean, Drath, Drengin, Torian, Iconian, 2 Minors. I've given myself only weak starting bonuses like sensors, range, hitpoints...

2 years have passed I have the lowest MMR and probably lowest planet count (only 16), best population (due to the stalks) but only medium economy (the AI bonus on obscene are responsible for this). My strategy so far was to focus on planetary development and shun all military for 22 months.

The map is 50% revealed. This is what I see from other planets:

13 Torian planets, 25 Drath planets, 2 Arcean, 1 Iconian, 0 Drengin. I'm at the side of the map there's plenty of unexplored territory which is responsible that Arcean, Iconian & Drengin are still a ? to me.

Lets shift attention to my 2 neighbours, Drath & Torian.

11 (from 13) planets from Torians are already maxed out at 11b while having a morale of 98%-100%. There is no planet in red moral. He didn't build a single farm, although all planets are at maxium, and he has several moral improvements there, which would make the growth through breeder an easy thing.

Torians are designed for high pop, but right now, the only thing that's high is his morale. Which won't save him from being an easy target to invade. All he has right now is his military, but as soon as I researched a better weapon & defense I'm going to do a mass-shipupgrade (I get a total of 1,5k bcs/turn plus) and that will suffice. Then turn to 100% military and simply overrun everybody.

The Torians lead militarily so probably I will first focus on weaker opponents, and take them the last, like the Drath who have the most planet count:

7 planets at max 8b people and high morale.

3 planets with +10b, among them Dratha at 15b @ 23% morale.

All other planets are subpar, some of them are in red moral he will not grow additional inhabitants there. Looking at these planets I see NONE morale improvements built. Other planets do have morale structures. On Dratha there is a morale bonus tile with a Temple on it + an additional Temple. This is the reason why he didn't develop his population because it makes him jack up the taxes once Dratha is at 100% during the colony rush.

Other colonized planets can only follow him once Temples are finished, if none are queued, those planets remain low pop + low moral - free fodder for my invasion strategies.

If anything he should take taxes down so his population can grow/max out, but he seems to have financial problems. For example, a lot of planets do not have a social queue (but tiles are still empty) PLUS he deleted also their military queue. He's just doing alittle bit of research that's all. He seems to have alot of galactic resources under his control.. so I don't know how to buff him any further.

It's simply that the planetary moral disharmony isn't making the game easy for him, besides, noone except me seems to try to max out population although right now there's so much moral racial in the game....