Of course not. As I said before, the mechanical part is hardcoded. Making changes to the description won't fix the broken code. I'm also starting to wonder whether my memory is playing tricks on me again, and this law never actually worked in GalCiv 2. Code doesn't suddenly stop working for no reason.

Already done.

What's wrong with Morale? The game uses it and approval pretty interchangibly.

I don't think making those 1pps indestructible is necessary yet. Just keep an eye on them. Especially the Navigation Centers.

Tell me about it.

The Political Capitol would be another valid target, in my opinion. However, I think the Galactic Showcase would be the best fit.

I know what you mean. It's bothering me too, but apparently not to the same extent as you. The morale and econ improvements are also affected. That's far too many icons to replace.

Yes, the DEL icon was used for the Research Academy (I think Frogboy made that change in v2.01 or v2.02). It does kinda fit. However, I can't say the same of the PainCoordGrid for the DEL. It's far too spiky for the Altarians, and the colour also clashes quite a bit.

I actually had a different idea for this: use the BasicFactory.png for the Traditional Factory, and the high-res ones for all the subsequent factories. So you start low-res, and then quickly move on to high-res for the rest of the game. Well, as far as the factories are concerned at least.

Well, that's the problem with having two temples for the Altarians. Pre-CU they had the Entertainment Network, Healing Pools, and the Drathian Temple. The only real issue was that those improvements were completely independent. I fixed that in Autumn Twilight by making the Entertainment Network upgrade into Healing Pools, and Healing Pools into Temples (both tech and building-wise). Maybe we could do the same in the CU?

There are no space monsters in GalCiv 2. The devs never implemented them, even though they were in GalCiv 1.

Yes, it's quite disappointing. I actually tried the unused proposals a while ago, to see whether I could use them in Autum Twilight (v1.0 at the time).

The only one that works as advertised is the ability-bonus-giving one. However, even that one has an issue. If a race with a racial-bonus to an abilitiy gets a a bonus to that ability via this proposal, then the value of their racial-bonus gets added on top of the bonus from the proposal. For example, the Korx currently have a racial-bonus to Economics of 15%. If they get a 10% bonus to Economics from the proposal, then they'll actually get 25% (15% racial + 10% from the proposal).

I never looked into whether that's the full extent of the issue, or if there are any other problems with that proposal. Nevermind, if all of the abilities work. Still, it might be worth investigating.

There isn't that much historical information available about them, especially the Korath. All we basically know about them is that they were the elite shock troops of the Drengin, and that they struck a bargain with the Dread Lords (which ultimately corrupted them both physically and mentally). We know a bit more about the Drengin, but that is primarily about their galactic dealings (contact with the Arceans, finding and coquering the Torians, etc.). However, we basically know zilch about their planetary history. I don't feel comfortable making any of that stuff up. Fan-fiction is okay in mods, but not in the official product.

what do you think of this? the red one would be the DEL...

Ok thanks, the changes are ok to me. But to re-introduce some of the unique techs - didn't that break the compatibility with the campaigns?

That's also ok although it was me advocating the change back then. MV play w/o planet tradeing is simply no contest...

I just wish Spinorial would be here, because some screens still look very awkward - esp. those where race-pictures are bizarrely stretched (like on first encounter). IDK why those simply can't be kept in a locked aspect ratio.

I even got my hands on DesktopX but... it's either me or that software is complete garbage, the user interface is hell of annoying holy crap.

(or maybe I should read the manual^^)

IMO the MaintGrid never really looked like the other unique Yor-structures, but it's sad that the EffCenter is turn into a GA. I actually liked it to have many 1PP (although some say that this creates problems for the AI - but matter of fact is that there are other races like Iconians for example who happen to have much more 1pps so....). Anyway, I'm planning ot bring this one back in my mod, and as a 1pp Lab (it kinda looks like a bizaar lab, in GC2 many labs have this "planets in orbits thingy" theme). I've currently added about 15 new high-res gfx, and more to come - I think you'll be amazed once you see some of those esp. some trade-goods

Nevertheless, working on this stuff I became aware of the fact that the ingame planetary screen only shows these icons in 100px - that is, about 25% of the information contained in the highres pix is actually lost. Or, in other words, the discrepancy from DL --> TA isn't so great than expected (that's why shiny &/ contrasty gfx like Shrinker/Harmony Crystals still look good in comparison)

you're right - I don't look much at those querries. What do you say on Torians StripMine? Could the MantleExcavation be the upgrade to it? They look very similar....

Maybe it was a deliberate design intent to let then have 2 moral improvements (in pre-CU). The Altarians are social & religious people, but from a RPG perspective a cinema or entertainment park is something completely different than a religious institute. And perhaps, if they have both items available more moral improvements would be build on their planets... the basic problem is if buildings loose out on the upgrade chain and stay low in bonuses, but that is actually something that can be solved.

But I share some of your feelings. The CU pressed too fast on some issues. One of the worst cases is actually the change of logistics & distribution points - those two changes did completely break compatibility with basically any race-mod/ customrace-mod that there is in the Library (if they don't come with a complete own set of the correspondending files....)

thanks for the link, I completely forgot about that. The anomaly stuff sounds promising. They took alot of features out - or, actually, never implemented them - but the changes to the individual ship should work. You know I always harped around the fact that the AI never build more Surveyors and in a game with many anomalies the player gets a tremendous advantage from them. But now I can see to it that the AI's starting surveyor becomes faster. That should level the field at least on not-immense maps.

the free-ship and monster are still resident in the file - care to comment it out? I wonder if less-anomalies are generated because of ill-entries....

I also wonder why not all models are currently in use?

BTW do you've got any idea how to open the .x-files which are used for models for basically alot of things? I'm trying to create new hulls. Everything is set but currently have to base them on tiny_bricks which look awful in the techtree. For that I need to work with these ominous x-files but I can't seem to find a app, my websearches brought only nagware of the worst kind and business software to the table...

Yes, but I already need to check them anyhow, because of the reintroduction of the Power Plants and Starbase Fortification techs.

Its original icon was never meant for the Yor. Stardock simply re-used the one of the Multimedia Center for the Maintenance Grid and the Korx Festival of Capitalism, because they didn't have enough new high-res icons. Yeah, it absolutely clashes with the general Yor-esthetic. However, that's also what I'm used to see when looking on a Yor planet, bringing us back to the whole bias-issue.

Err, the Efficiency Center is gone. Completely removed. The Maintenance Grid got turned into a GA. Still, it is sad that the Efficiency Center is no more, because the Yor now generate less money than they could otherwise. Having only racial bonuses to econ is literally less efficient, than having both planetary and racial bonuses to econ, due to the way taxes are calculated.

All new gfx? Sounds great.

Absolutely. I actually used it as such at one point while working on one of the veeeery early versions Autumn Twilight 1.0 (long before the mod had a name, or I even started posting on the forums).

I doubt it. The Krynn also still had access to Entertainment Network, despite being the religious fanatics of the game. Plus, the Altarians (and Drath) had three independent moral improvements, not just two. I got more the impression that the devs had an idea of what they wanted to do (just look at the tech tree concepts), but didn't fully implement it, because they either ran out of time and/or money, or ran into engine-limitations.

Don't remind me. That's something else I'd really like to undo. Especially the logistics change. It was a neat idea, intended to reduce the economic burden on the AI, due its constant building of starbases. However, the change didn't work out the way I hoped it would, because the AI simply doesn't research logistics as strongly as the player, which meant it didn't reach the necessary 100+ logistics as soon as I'd like it to (or ever, depending on how the game goes). This ultimately gave the player an unfair advantage, and removed one of the few money-sinks.

Based on what little I remember of my tests, some of the ship-buffs don't work. I'm not entirely clear on the details though. It's been five or six years since I tested the anomalies, and I was never good at taking notes.

Yeah, I could do that. I find it rather unlikely that those entries have an effect on the generating of anomlies, but you never know. Especially with this game. It's still surprising that the game actually works, considering that the engine wasn't written to be used for a space 4x.

Who knows? Though I'm wondering the same thing about the new weapon sfx and animations.

Sorry, no. I already looked into several programs, but they all only export Direct X files (usually via plug-in), not import them. Not even Blender, which I heard a lot of praise for, does it. Maybe one of the commercial programs can do it, but I can't afford them. Not that I'd be willing to pay a lot of money, just to get the necessary data to properly set up the weapon animations. It's not that important to me.

Disregard that. I forgot to remove those entries from the changelog.

The Korath AI doesn't research Invasion-techs. So, changing the Category of those techs to Invasion would make sure that the Korath would never research them. Which is good, because the AI can't use Fleet Modules. However, if somebody makes a Custom Race using the Korath tech tree and a different AI, then that could cause problems. So I decided to undo that change again.

They're not the only ones. Hyperion Starbases, the Krynn Jihad-techs, the Drengin/Korath influence-techs, and a couple others, also need another look.

Well, it depends a little on the tech-branch, but Starbase is one of the categories the AI researches the least often. So, not a good choice, if you want the AI to research the tech in a timely fashion.

Disregard that one, too. I copy/pasted the entries from the Drengin, and forgot to remove that line.

Bringin back the Efficiency Center is something I have in mind (along with so much else), but removing the Maintenance Grid is a no-go for me. I'm not going to remove features the races had in the vanilla game.

I'd remove the Government techs, and bring the bonuses from the Efficiency Studies techs from 70% down to 55%. That would mean less techs to research in order to get the full Econ bonus, and an easier time for the AI too. Getting the AI to research the whole ES line of techs alone is difficult enough as it is.

That really is impressive. I'm not artistically inclined at all. Just drawing some stick-figures is challenging enough for me. Making new textures or pictures would be completely beyond me.

The Example mod showcases this along with some anomalies that actually cost money, instead of giving it. I quite liked that.

Odd. I was pretty sure that some part of this didn't work. Maybe I thought of the ATT/DEF altering anomaly, but even that one does work. Granted, it's been years since I had a look at this, so my memory could very well be faulty (and apparently is). It's still pretty dis-heartening to constantly get proven wrong though.

The anomaly gives XP, same as combat. However, ships don't seem to level-up when getting XP this way. It's possible that only combat triggers the necessary checks for level-ups. However, a ship needs to be armed before it can gain levels. Even a simple Maser is enough. I usually give my Flagship some weapons and defences as soon as I can, just to prevent it from getting blown up by a stray bullet.

Well, making new ones isn't a problem. As I mentioned above, you can use Blender to make new models and animations, and then use a plug-in to export them into .X-files. The DirectX SDK June 2008 contains the Direct Viewer, which allows you to, well, view .X-files. However, I still haven't found any means to actually look at the stats of .X-files.

Agreed.

The Thalan may look insectoid, but we don't know how much their biology actually resembles that of insects. What we do know is, that they came from a dying universe, where they lived underground, because it's impossible to survive on the surface. So, space was a premium, making rapid breeding rather dangerous. They probably had a rather strict birth-control in place. The Thalan also only brought "a single strike force" to this dimension, according to the description of Temporal Mechanics. I don't know how much that is in actual people, but I'd be surprised, if the number even approaches one million.

Also, while stereotypes can be nice, especially when used well, they can also get boring rather quickly. I actually like that the Thalan aren't your typical fast breeding insects. Makes them stand out more.

So, no objection if I change the logistics values back?

Sorry, no idea.

One of the ideas I had during the original work on the CU, was to remove all customizations points from the stock Major Races. They would all just have a certain set of starting abilities, based on their background, and that's it. I didn't follow through on this, because people love customizing the races, and would get rather pissed if I take it away from them. However, that would certainly have fixed the homogenisation of the races. It would have also made Custom Races a bit stronger. Right now, the stock Major Races have about 100 customizations points worth of starting abilities (some races even more), plus another 100 points freely available. The Custom Races, however, only have 150 points available to them.

I've uploaded a new version (changelog). Here are the biggest changes:

• changed Logistics back to the original values
• re-added the Efficiency Center
• made some adjustments to the Maintenance Grid, Charging Stalks, and Advanced Charging Stalks
• adjusted the Efficiency Studies techs
• removed the Government techs from the Yor tech tree
• changed the starting abilities of all the Major Races back to the original values, with some exceptions: the Korath still have a Diplo-penalty (albeit at -25%, instead of -30%), and their Hit Points and Soldiering-bonuses are still switched; the Iconians don't have their 100% Espionage-bonus back (would be counter-productive); the Krynn still have a Research-penalty (albeit only -10%, instead of -15%) and lost their Diplo-bonus (getting +50% from one of their techs is enough)

The last change was done to provide a better baseline for any adjustments to the race-abilities (whether directly or via pre-assigned customisation points) we're going to do.

If I remember correctly, you want the AbilitiesDescription to give an overview of the main strength and weakness of the tech tree, instead of the race. I adjusted some of them accordingly, but there are still several left where that is not the case yet. (I'm also not entirely sure whether that is a good idea, or the intention of the devs, because the description was added in DA where all races still shared the same tech tree.)
The main strength of the Altarian tech tree could be described as combat oriented, in my opinion. Most of the Altarian-specific techs boost combat related stats or grants access to combat related buildings or equipment. As for a weakness though, I'm not sure. The morale improvements are a bit weaker than usual, but not enough that I would consider them a major weakness.
In the vanilla game, the main weakness of the Korx tech tree was a lack of advanced morale improvements. The Korx only had the Entertainment Network and the Festival of Capitalism 1pp. The CU removed that weakness.
The Krynn also only had the Entertainment Network as spammable morale improvement. However, their temples provide very strong morale-bonuses, so I wouldn't call this a weakness of their tech tree. In fact, I'm not sure, if it even has a weakness. Research is definitely not it. It's just as strong in that area as most of the other tech trees. The bonuses added by the CU actually made it even stronger.
As for the Iconian tech tree, it's main weakness in the vanilla game was, in my opinion, high maintenance cost. The Iconian buildings were bloody expensive. Even more so than the Thalan ones, which started out expensive and became competetively priced over time (or dirt cheap in the CU). The Iconian buildings, however, started out expensive and stayed that way (or became even more expensive in case of the Industrial Replicators). The other two biggest weaknesses were the rather mediocre econ buildings (except for the Merchant Trade Complex) and the lack of Invasion-techs. Due to the significant reduction of maintenance costs in the CU, the first two weaknesses are gone now, which leaves the lack of Invasion-techs. However, I'd rather go back to the high maintenance, because the Iconian tech tree feels currently too good.

The Efficiency Center will be identical to the vanilla version. Ditto for the Maintenance Grid. However, it will still provide a pop-growth bonus (I guess we had the same idea?). The value is currently 10%. Which I find reasonable, considering that the building has no maintenance cost and is pretty cheap to build. The Charging Stalks and Advanced Charging Stalks get an increase to buildcost (50->75 and 75->150 respectively) and maintenance (1bc->2bc and 1bc->3bc respectively). They simply were too cheap for their current power-level. The same can be said for a lot of the other buildings too.

Overall, their possibilities are now the same as in the vanilla game. The only exception is that they no longer have direct access to the Aphrodisiac TG. Other than that, I consider the Yor better off now. By having their own line of techs and the ability to buy/steal the Xeno Biology line of techs from other races, they have a much higher potential Pop.-Growth base value.

I ended up using the MoraleImp2.png again (and gave the VR Center its original icon back). This decision was made purely due to bias. I'm just too used to see the Maintenance Grid with that icon (same with the VR Center). I also couldn't find a fitting replacement. The other icons neither fit the Yor, nor resemble a workshop (or something that could be considered one).

That's still more than I can do.

I know. If I'm not mistaken, we did this in some of the pre-release versions of the CU. However, my idea was more along the lines of how MoO 2 did it: stock races with unchangable abilities, and custom races with abilities that can be chosen freely.

And that is why I never followed through on that idea.

That could probably work.

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. For example, the only change to the Yor abilities between DA and TotA is a reduction to Miniaturization (again). In other words, the Yor didn't get those bonuses to Loyalty and Soldiering to compensate for lost techs. They already had them since DL (though Soldiering was only at 20% at that time).

That's how it originally was. The only exception were the Yor, Korath, and Krynn. In case of the latter two, it really didn't make sense to me. Because it made them quite overpowered.

Again, I'm not seeing that. The Korx are Evil. Yet they have access to all of the diplo-techs, and have no Diplo-penalty. The Iconians and Torians, on the other hand, are Good. Yet they lack the best two diplo-techs. In the vanilla game, the Altarians, Drath, and Iconians lacked even more diplo-related techs.

Yes, that's something we could bring back again.

Fixed.

We'd need to completely re-write all of the techs to properly fix this, because they all mention that "higher logistics = more starbases" bit. I really don't feel up to that task. Plus, I always understood this as "higher logistics = cheaper starbases = being able to afford more starbases". I know, that's most likely not what was actually meant, but that's how I interpreted it when I first began playing, and it stuck with we since then.

It wouldn't be one of my updates, if there wasn't at least one error in it. Fixed.

Curious.That's the bonus originally used by the Gravity Accelerator. If I'm not mistaken, this bonus either only works for TGs/SPs/GAs or is hardcoded to only work for the Gravity Accelerator. Either way, it should indeed be safe to use. It's an interesting workaround, and removes the necessity to spell out the bonus in the building-description. The only downside is that modders might get confused as to why those buildings have two seemingly identical bonuses, but I'm not too bothered by that. If necessary, we can simple add a comment explaining the reason behind this.

I wonder, if we could do something similar for ResistanceBonus. It's currently not used by the CU, but I want to bring it back (more on that in another post). The only somewhat fitting bonus for this is Loyalty. However, I'm worried that people might get confused, because planetary loyalty and the Loyalty-ability would be using the same name and icon.

Okay, I've switched the values back.

The Korath already get a Loyalty-bonus from Corrupted Genetics. Plus, I rather like their current set-up as it is. The Korath are basically Super-Drengin, and their abilities reflect that. However, I wouldn't be opposed to make them start out with some of their points pre-spent in Loyalty.

Their Pop-Growth seems fine to me as it is. They get +55% from their techs, have access to Aphrodisiac, and can get Xeno Biology and Fertility Acceleration from other races for 20% more (and access to the Fertility Clinic).

True, I've noticed that too.

Seems reasonable. Maybe 10% or 20%? I don't want to make this too high, because the robots used by the Iconians aren't supposed to be as efficient as the Yor (though it could be arqued that this is represented by the lack of a Military Production bonus).

I don't know. The Iconians already get a PQ-bonus from a tech, which I'm not particularily fond of, because it doesn't fit the design of their tech tree. Plus, PQ and terraforming represent ways to make the planet adapt to your needs, while Super Adapter and the extreme colonization techs are about you being good at adapting yourself and your equipment to a new environment. Those are diametrically opposed ideas. Still, maybe 5%? As you said, it would be unique. I'm a bit wary of going any higher than that though. In the campaigns, races sometimes don't have a Starport (or even the Capital) on their planets, if they start out with Soil Enhancement. It's possible that having a high PQ-bonus could cause this too.

14 is the vanilla value. The CU originally dropped it to 12, but the update raised it 14 again.

I'm a bit torn regarding the buildcost. Yes, some improvements were clearly too expensive, so reducing their cost is fine. However, a lot of improvements, especially high-tier ones, feel too cheap to me now. As for the maintenance imbalance, I wasn't even sure whether to bring it up in the first place, because the way I would fix it would result in some major changes. Not just to the maintenance, most likely, but to a lot of other things as well.

Okay, that's how I understood the point of the AbilitiesDescription too. Maybe I was mis-remembering one of your post, or confused it with something else. Anyhow, that's moot now.

I know. I was talking specifically about the tech tree, though.

It's tempting to give it the same purpleish colour as the Stalks (the Query Graphic would also need to be adjusted). I'm just a bit worried that players could confuse the Maintenance Grid with the VR Center, because they still share the same design. However, I guess we could give it a try. If it doesn't work out, then we try something else, and maybe use the new icon for the VR Center and move the MoraleImp2.png back to the Multimedia Center.

I have to disagree with this. Yor planets do rebel. It may take longer than it does for other races, but it does happen. The Yor also can flip other planets. I don't build any influencer starbases, but am still flipping planets once I conquer one in the area to create a beachhead. Sometimes, the beachhead isn't even necessary. The culture produced by my high population-count, combined with one or two influence resources, is enough to achieve that. Granted, it's possible that the resources play a bigger role in this than the population. That doesn't really matter, though, because the results are the same.

I still disagree with the first part, and would strongly argue against the second part. You could make your Custom Yor start out with 25% Influence. With the 10% from Biological Studies you'd end up with a higher bonus than either the stock Drengin (25%) or the stock Korath (10%) can get from their techs. Sure, you don't get the Propaganda Machine, so your influencer starbases may be weaker. You also don't get the Dark Influence improvement, so your planets may produce less influence than the Korath'. However, unlike Slave Pits, your Collectives don't have an influence-penalty, so you're still better off than the Drengin and Korath in that regard.

All in all, I really don't understand your argument. Culture is the primary weakness of the Yor tech tree. Yes. That's by design and working as intended. However, unlike the major weaknesses of other tech trees, you seem to treat this like an insurmountable problem for Custom Races. Which I just don't get. There are enough ways to address this deficit either while making your Custom Race or during the game. Yet, you seem to completely ignore this. I get the feeling that I'm missing something here, but I don't know what it is.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that them being Evil was the reason for the penalty. If anything, I'd say that the background and general outlook of the races had more to do with it.
The Drengin/Korath believe themselves to be the only truly sapient race, and treat all the other races accordingly. Would you call someone evil, just because they treat chimpanzees and dolphins like animals? Also, the Korath didn't have a diplomacy-penalty in the vanilla game, making them better diplomats than the Drengin.
The Yor are isolationists. Sure, they are willing to make deals with other races, as long as it furthers their goal. Beyond that though, they don't wan't any contact. Well, maybe to carve meatbags into little pieces, but that's all really.

What has that to do with whether the design is that "Evil = bad diplomats and Good = good diplomats" or not? Just because the AI doesn't research a tech soon enough (or ever), doesn't mean that the tech isn't there anymore, or that the design suddenly changed.

Well, I'll give it a try. No promises though.

By the way, I've reduced the customization points of the races that didn't start with the max number in the vanilla game to an equivalent value (Torians 80, Thalan 80, Iconians 70, Krynn 90). I'm also still wondering whether we should change the scale of the points back to 10. Yes, using a scale of 100 makes balancing easier. But, as you said, that change also broke compatibility with a lot of races from the library.

No worries, we'll sort this out. DMF is also here now

If I'm not mistaken the ShipsSpeedBonus-tag was the reason why the GravAcc didn't work. I've tested this on a few improvements - not all - but that tag did never work, albeit the tooltip info did always show up. The ShipMoveBonus so far did work on all improvements I tested (so the info in Cari's guide is definitely outdated) so I guess using this combo for 1pps and <AbilityType>3</AbilityType> for TG/GA should give enough variations that things will indeed bring the bonuses.

I once tried to do this by exchanging the Influ-penalty of the Drengin-facs to a loyalty-penalty (that way their facs wouldn't depreciate their Tourism-income, or sphere-of-influence - which is evaluated for diplomacy hits). It, however, doesn't work. (Or, at least, I don't know how to do this...) I even tested with buildings increasing a planetary resistance to over 3000 but had it go rebellious and subsequently flipped a few turns later...

ok, BTW don't you think the FC is a bit misplaced? Alot of AIP aren't particularily interested in biology (except AIP7) and the FC is sort of lackluster once planets are crowded. It's more needed during the colony rush when the game still needs to establish a positive economy.

20% SP + 5% PQ would be fitting. The PQ boost only kicks initially on +20 planets. Taking the current outlay of the distr points that would equate to 60 points, not counting in their higher than normal logistics (which perhaps equates to another 40 points - or even more). So +100 points in total. Considering their reduction in available distr points from 100 to 70, that'll then make a total of +170 in comparison to a Custom Iconian that has 150 - but the benefit of picking a stronger SA. It's hard to evaluate the strength of the Iconian SA because it's so heavily based on the ExtremePlanets-frequency. Overall I find this fair. 

The way I see it is this:

- In vanilla some improvement-lines, among them factories & moral impr, were too expensive and the AI never finished them. Some AIP simply turn to increased MP during endgame. That shouldn't happen and the CU did a good job preventing it. Though I find the endtier improvements too cheap, because once facs are at tier3 etc the planetary production is raised wih it naturally so errecting the endtier impr can happen swiftly, too. Increasing those buildcost a bit should still be possible without re-causing the former "unfinished planets" AI issue, don't you think?

- Maint is too low currently. In vanilla it may have been a bit too high but the CU did increase alot of base stats (mostly incorporated by techs) to morale, econ, trade, popgrowth etc where races actually profit positively in the long run. Currently maint is a non-issue. And I especially find it awkward that Civ-wide improvements such as TG, SP & GA are maint-free - if something needs to be transmitted throughout the galaxy it surely must be accompanied by some costs.

I'm confused now - in the latest testversion the VRC still uses the old DL icon.

Anyway, here a few icons, I've started by increasing the blue hue, then subsequently increasing contrast, last one did remove a lot of other colors. The last one is more in line with the Yors (crude) factories, while the first more with the Shiny Stalks or ElectrolyteGarden.

I personally like the #4 & #1 (although #2 is very similar to #1, just the 2 lights are a bit less shiny) most. Please give me some feedback esp. if you find something distracting.

Here's a quick sample of the querry:

I can easily accomodate that to whatever outlay is finally picked.

I take the bases from my arguments from 2 empiric sources; the first being how a player is able to use influence if he wants to actively go for Cult Victory, and the second how the AI uses this.

#1. If you're player then errecting Inluencer SB directly at alien planets and maxing them out to 360% is usually enough to flip the whole system. This is very efficient even against friend/allies and esp. if you're playing a non-war game which tries to circumvent all wars by diplomacy you can easily mount the constructor load because you don't have to build that many warships. Once this type of victory start rolling planets will flip more & more swiftly. For sure Infl-resources are going to help, but I'm not really counting them to a specific strategy or to a specific race or tree because they're freely available to anyone.

As a Yor-player you can't do this. 40% or 60% Infl per SB isn't enough to flip planets via SBs alone.

#2. I've conducted a large-number of AI testplays where Yor are fighting against a Yor-copyclone - with the only difference in that the clone had the +100 loyalty removed). I've also deleted all troop-mods from the game so I could observe the game infinitely (ie. no crash or hang once PIs are initiated). Result: The +100 loyalty basically wins the game for Yor in many instances. The effect is striking. The amount of lost/flipped planets is directly proportional to the loyalty rating.

I would disagree with you that a CustomYor-planet is better off than a Korath planet - the DI gives +200% [!!!] once errected they could build 50 Slave Canyons and still generate more influence than a CustomYor planet (IF said Yor planet uses the same buildlogic and errects 1 infl impr and the rest only facs....)

Also, the +25% infl perk is freely available to any race, so I don't see this as a special advantage of the CustomYor.

But I'm really not trying to compare the Yor or CustomYor to the Drengin or Korath. I'm compareing the CustomYor to the Yor. If I wanna mimick the current Yor racial setup I'll have to - at least - spend 130 points and I would stil be short of 80 Loyalty. The last remaining 20 points wouldn't buy me those if it were available - not even close. The only advantage is being able to pick another SA, but that has not really much to do with the influence-issue in the first place.

Thing is, even lacking base influence, or strong infl-improvements or loyalty as a player may not be a huge problem because you could choose to go for 18b-20b planets universally which may on their own thwart off foreign influence. (I always do that anyway because of economic & defensive reasons...) But the AI doesn't consider this in its general plans... So, just fire up a number of AI testgames and try to evaluate the strength of Loyalty versus Influence-ratings on your own - you'll see that one of the 2 is needed otherwise a race always falls to "friends" or "allies" in the long run.

Maybe I'm phraseing this not in the right way to the point I'm having in mind. Whenever I tried to build myself an interesting robotic custom race using the Yor tree I constantly discard any builds because the SA + 150 points seemed so inferior to what you can do with an Isolator-Yor+100 points in terms of its starting strength.

The opposite problem actually occurs with the current stock-Torian outlay where a Breeder-custom-Torian approach has better (or same - dependant how logistics are evaluated in terms of distr points...) starting stats (and, lacking Cartography in exchange for 120 starting RP to be spend elsewhere...)

Again, the argument is already moot. The orig CU design had 3 of 4 evil races starting with a penalty to diplomacy. It's irrelevant how that is ultimately reasoned up or deriven from, but its sole existance simply had a negative implication on the gameplay itself and would automatically point out the conclusion that evil-alignment is generally bad in diplomacy. That boring desing is gone now, I'm quite happy how the current oulay is. 

IDK - you were the one pointing out that Iconians & Torians lacked Total Majesty to construct an argument that they're diplomatically also not well versed. That may slightly nerf a player playing a heavy-diplo game, but IF the AI doesn't research this technology in the first place then I don't see how that could be called a handicap? Or the other way round - how a tech can be considered a bonus in its unresearched state?

I've just completed a number of autoplays, all of them, at least, advanced beyond 800 [!] turns, in order to see how Total Majesty is gained by AIs:

- Korx: not even Advanced Diplomacy, nor Alliances [BTW Korx totally ignore defense-techs, thus also their unique Starbase-Victory/Supremcy techs (which shouldn't be labelled defense as they're incorporating MSB Ship-Assist mods as well...)

- Terrans & Drath were the only 2 to have Adv. Diplomacy - but not Expert

- Iconian, Torian & the rest: not even Adv. Diplomacy.

Suffice to say some of them were currently in the works to complete the toptier weapons. All them were already multiple times at war with their neighbours. At that point diplomacy isn't really much worth anyway, [because of distrust] so even if they'd get to Majesty (etc) in another 500 turns it won't matter much. And in a real competetive play involving a player many maps wouldn've been solved already (at least, that's what I do, I never have these kinds of longplays...)

Nevertheless, don't wanna get too much into an argument, so if you can't see the problem re: CustomRace let's just attribute it to the language-barrier and move on to a more constructive subject. 

It should be doable. The vanilla version wasn't 100% finebalanced either, and I believe for good reason. The current design penalizes specialization. So whenever I build a config I usually just pick the basic +10% increases to moral, econ, SP, MP, Def + Weap etc until points are drained. That way you get the biggest bang for the buck, in terms of raw number of stat-increase. But it's boring.  Donno... what are you guys thinking of it?

I see. Well, the error was on my part because I looked at the "Stats & Grapsh" info where no increase to the speed-ability followed the build of the GravAcc. Though your own ships did indeed get +1 in speed, so apparently that TD worked similar like a Navigation Center - just on a global scale. Just went back to TA 2.042 to do some additional test in order to ensure we're not including something buggy with the addition of said tag. Didn't find anything. BTW the bonus from the GravAcc DID transfer if you gained the planet where it's build upon by whatever means; and the civ loosing it lost the speed-bonus as well the next turn.

Well, you weren't specific about it at all but the way I interpretate your posts is that you're trying to use the

<AbilityType>27</AbilityType>
<AbilityAmount>10</AbilityAmount>

taglines (which doesn't work on normal improvements...) to create the missing icon for the

<ResistanceBonus>10</ResistanceBonus>

tagline.

Is this correct?

Sure go ahead. Popgrowth is one of the most important stats foir building an economy. It should be available as early as being reasonable.

I also don't quite get the current design of StellarCartography. This tech is very important from a player-standpoint because you can then decide to colonize without scouts - not totally into the blue but to systems which at least do hold planets. This tech is sort of only important during the colonial rush. As of now, every stockrace has it but the customrace not. And the placement in the techtree (2 additional techs to gain) prohibits to get it early, at least, at any reasonable techspeed-setting. So we either say, let's make this tech a nobrainer and set costs to 0 or 1 so anyone gets it or reduce the availability of it to certain races while placing it that early in the trees so a player may get it within the first half-year (if he aims for it). For the AI this tech is completely useless so I'm considering solely player-options here... I'd put it very early to research or sensors maybe.

Yeah my bad I was just crudely counting from head aware of the fact that the calc was bogus right from the start because we have no set definiton to count logistics at all. Nevertheless, I'd still consider the 185 points to be fair, do you?

Currently it's 40-->80-->120-->160-->200 = 600 for labs

Your design 40, 60, 100, 160, 240, 340 amounts to 940 - that's more than 50% the buildcost [!!]

Vanilla was 40, 60, 100, 150, 350, 275 = 975 - just a tiny bit more and there a lot of improvements never got finished and your reduction of total -35 won't be enough to remedy that.

However, the CU reduced the base-lab strength roundabout by ~~25%, DiscSphere from 16 to 12 as an example. Having labs equally expensive but far less productive would only result in an effective nerf to overall research of all races. The question is why should that be imposed in the first place?

If you wanna keep cost & correspondending output in line with the vanilla ratio, just take the vanilla increments and crop by 25%. The relative value of your numbers seem fine as they are, just adjust them to a total buildcost of ~700-750.

Moral:

CU:  55 110 165 220 275 = 825

New: 50, 75, 125, 200, 300 = 750

I like this. They could be even more cheap in my opinion, because moral gets so heavily depreciated once pop raises (and we've included proper farming again). I once did a relative strength-comparison of econ-impr vs. moral-impr and not even the strongest Torian moral-impr (+50) was a match for a conventional StockMarket. Moral is a weak stat and even creates its own sets of problems if the AI handles it chaotically - dangers that will never arise form econ buildings at all.

Factories:

CU:  35 70 105 140 175 = 660

New :50, 75, 125, 200, 300 = 750

That's ok.

I'm somewhat puzzled that the CU didn't correct the obscene moral-buildcost - even facs are deadcheap in comparison. If you ask me the moral impr only were designed that way with the mindset that high-moral = high production, as it were in GC1. That design got scrapped but to adjust the improvements then accordingly was carelessly forgotten.

What's so special about those two subjects? If I have a planet building a special resource or tradegood etc, let's take Xin Hull Plating which is a metal used in shipbuild, then it's not unreasonable to think of that this particular metal has to be delivered to all your planets in your empire and that could be 100s. If you then add in the fact that you can even trade that good to virtually everyone that planet-count may even rise to 1000 - potentially involving hundreds of ships and thousands of crews that need to be paid. It's hard to see that a sole factory giving only a minor increase to a single planet sees more maint than something working galactic wide on hundreds of planets....

I'm slightly impaired in red/green-color so I need to ask which parts you're refereing to? Are these the one located at the top ring in the center-up of the icon?

You're right. Racial Range is really weak, a 10% gives a single parsec and isn't even enhancing the range from mods at all (IRRC). And because even the basic range mod is so small the AI can stack it greatly on cargos he virtually can reach half the map with constructors right at gamestart. I think range needs to get increased and reduced in cost by a decent amount. 

I also agree on Luck. The only thing I harp about with the current outlay is that Universalists + Luck-perk only give 45% - which is a frustrating number to work with if you wanna utilize luck in your strategy. To explain: Luck works on rolls of each individual shipmodule, so if you pick 50% and go for Missile Weapons a +2 Stinger will roll 1-2 while other weapon-types still roll 0-2. In other words, "Luck favours big weapons". But currently that is broken because of the truncation - so if you're not gifted with a unique luck-bonus somewhere around your tree a Luck-focused player won't receive any bonus whatsoever for goinf full-mongo on luck on any Tier1 weapons and even Tier2 beams & MD are unaffected just Harpoon gets +1 to their rolls. [<-- omitting for now any weapon-bonuses....]

If you'd ask me restore +5 to Universalists and accomodate the racial luck-perk in terms of distribution points, perhaps 3 points for it. We shouldn't patch out the fun from the game, if it comes at a reasonable cost let's still have it.

Such a design may also unknowningly grant big boost of an AI having this if they pick the right weapon (which they pick randomly, so that only adds to replayability IMO)

Yes, that was the idea. However, I'm not so sure about actually implementing it anymore, because having the bonus be called "Loyalty Bonus" in the info box feels a bit off.

I brought that up, because I want to change the Propaganda Center back to its old self, but with a bigger bonus (25% instead of 10%). Having the building give a Loyalty bonus is nice, because you only need to build it once. However, it's only 20%, which isn't very much. Also, only one race can get it, because the building is a GA currently. The way the Propaganda Center used to work was better in my opinion, because all Evil races could build it. Sure, it also wasn't exactly friendly to the AI, because it can't use the building like a human would. However, I think it would open up more options for Evil players. For example, you can stack the building on a threatened planet to reach 100% resistance or more. Sure, that doesn't prevent the planet from rebelling, but it should give you enough time to handle the underlying problem (like conquering the neighbouring planets). Once they are no longer needed, you can simple replace the buildings with something else.

The Secret Police Center is in a similar situation. It gives 20% Morale to one Evil race. That's nice, and certainly better than the original version of the building, which gave 20% morale to one planet. However, what if we make the SPC give 20% approval instead? Wouldn't that be more interesting? You could actually handle a ultra-high pop planet more reasonably, because you wouldn't need to build tons of morale improvements to reach the same bonus.

Even if we ignore my proposed changes for a moment, my biggest issues with the design of Evil in the CU are twofold. The first is that Evil is trying to copy Good (Loyalty) and Neutral (Morale) bonuses directly, instead of doing its own thing. The second is that the bonuses available to all Evil races got significantly reduced. Only the Evil weapons, free starbase modules, and the small econ bonus for foreign freighters in your territory are left. Everything else is a GA now (or given away to the Drengin/Korath, in case of the Artificial Slave Center).

Okay.

I'll see what I can do about that. At the very least I can make Custom Races have Stellar Cartography pre-selected.

It's a bit close to the other Major Races. The Iconians are supposed to be an intrinsically weak race, with access to powerful tech to compensate for that weakness. However, I think 185 points are still tolerable.

If I remember correctly, morale improvements were a lot more powerful in DL 1.0. I think the VRC originally gave 120%. Or was it 80%? Anyhow, those values got reduced significantly over time, but the cost of the building remained unchanged.

In any case, I'll take a closer look at the buildcosts, based on your feedback. It's going to take a while though. I don't have much time to work on the update this weekend.

Yes, it's those parts of the ring, the dome on top, and the small domes on the wings of the building. Let's see, if I can make a visual aid.

Err, I hope that helps.

Isn't it 40% at the moment? 20% from the pick and 20% from Universalists?

Agreed.

We should probably wait a little with that. The tech trees are still in flux, and some of the new techs may get cut.

Alright, here are 11 newly styled MaintGrids numbering 5-15 [the ones posted above also included for direct comparison numbering 1-4]

Wasn't good enough to eliminate the malcoloured regions specifically - they're too small and devolve into other colored fields much too sharply (which would have only blured the areal) - so could only adjust colors of the whole icon. In some cases affected the 2 flood-lighters to be more opaque, which may be a feature to diversify it from its original but may as well look awkward. Hence there're a few others which won't affect the lights.

http://www.xup.in/dl,13526257/Icons.7z/

Thanks for the new version, this is nicely done 

let me just point out some oversights:

- Creativity-perk still uses 10 distr. points

- MP+50-perk still uses 50 distr. points

- the Anti-Matter PowerPlant needs to upgrade the Fusion PowerPlant (otherwise you can build both)

- the ResearchCenter needs to upgrade the XenoLab otherwise this one will stay forever under "Newest"

- The PropagandaCenter shows a bogus *morale*-bonus [change 4 to 27 in AbilityType]

Well, almost every entry in vanilla TA is identical to DL but the game changed considerably from then, so I guess that may reward a rebalancing.

--> Diplomacy in DL was a much stronger rating because there was no contact-lockout in place, not even after war-declaration. I suggest either increasing the boni or reducing points-consumption accordingly.

--> base popgrowth in DL was somewhat slower, and since DA we have more bonuses from techs, improvements & SA in that regard. That makes the reduction from 70%-->40% understandably. However, the first option is too weak/costly, and the 4th option consumes too much points.

--> The former sentence could be minted generally on Influence as well.

ok I'll take that. The option to have this additional stat and make buildings with it is too intriguing to discard... 

Because the morale deprecitation on 25+ b worlds are risen to insane numbers. I've not even a single time encountered an AI planet that high in pop, 18b-20b is more what the AI generally achieves on his high-pop planets. But then you don't have any guarantee that the AI is even considering to place this improvement on only high-populated planets I'm quite sure that w/o normal moral-bonus, this improvement must be looking void for the AI. They may as well put it on a 8b world. If we take an average of 12b pop on standard AI worlds then a VRC is still 60% stronger but at only 40% of its price - that makes a VRC ~250% more efficient than the SPC in terms of cost/benefit-ratio.

What perhaps could be done is to also let the SPS introduce a strong planetary moral-bonus - 30% if you ask me - that way it'll always be better than the best moral improvement regardless of how the actual population numbers are - although its strength will not shoot through the roof on superpop-player worlds (because one part of its bonus will get deprecitated); and perhaps the AI will get an idea what this impr is all about. There would still be a downside - its enormous buildcost.

Well it depends on what precisely you mean with mind-control. That improvement isn't really specific about what or how it does, but deducing from the game-mechanics it's not injecting new thoughts into foreign citizens or turning them into brainless zombies - because that would mean you could culture-flip any world. All it does is - once a colony decided *on their own* to become rebellious to reduce the time to act on that decision, ie. it makes people more bold. That could be by simply disseminating certain information, it mustn't necessarily involve a criminal act. Our todays TV, marketing ads etc also involve greatly manipulating people to form "own opinions" and none of this is actually down by law.

In the end, it's just my personal view that the good-aligned factions should rather try to win the game by cultural victory or alliance, the neutral by tech or ascension, and evil by conquest. [although the real influence-monster civ = Krynn are neutral, but it is debatable if religious states - that even go on a "Jihad" can remain [or are seen as] neutral. Such a thing can swiftly turn evil or, in the case of pacifistic Buddhism, even turn good.

Nevertheless, I made that remark solely because that improvements has the least strength in the hands of evil-aligned players. The same could be said from the propaganda machine but then again, that may be in order to prevent a single improvement becoming too strong on a galactic scale (once a certain influence threshold is breached....) so it's fine with me but I may try to play with this around in my mod at one point^^

Perhaps the tech-editor is responsible for that line, at least, the editor gives you the option to select this (although it doesn't have any effect)

Sure, fine with me 

***

So that was just a quick examination of the current rev ingame + a response to your post. I'm gonna go through all the changes now in the files, but that may take some time.