DW2-XL v1.11.7 Available

[fruitgnome]

@Mordachai GameEvents.xml is a little broken, search for zzkk in your file and compare it to original.

zzkk.png (1.84 MiB) Viewed 1064 times

[Nyku]

any plans to touch characters and character traits?
especially for leaders, there's only so much variation and you often end up with very similar leaders, due to the ever-similar traits they get...

[Airbourne]

I see you now include an increased selection of flags in DW2-XL. I am eager to get my hands on this . I see it is availabe on Steam as a separate download but I don't get along with Steam. Is there any chance you could let me have it or point to where I can get it outside Steam?

[mordachai]

any plans to touch characters and character traits?
especially for leaders, there's only so much variation and you often end up with very similar leaders, due to the ever-similar traits they get...

Sadly, not something I can access - all hard-coded atm

[mordachai]

I see you now include an increased selection of flags in DW2-XL. I am eager to get my hands on this . I see it is available on Steam as a separate download but I don't get along with Steam. Is there any chance you could let me have it or point to where I can get it outside Steam?

Talk to @salemonz over on
https://discord.com/channels/8115849768 ... 6642557018

He's the author, and I'm pretty sure he'd be open to posting his mod on the forums here.

XL is of course available through Gitlab - so you can d/l and copy in the XL subfolder into your mods creating mods/XL (don't copy anything else).

I'm removing the built-in flags that he made since he's now making his compatible with both vanilla and XL without any conflicts -- it's purely a resource bundle -- so no need for a special version in XL. Folks will just need to load his mod in addition to XL going forward.

Glad folks are enjoying it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I hope it is OK to comment on balancing issues I have found playing the XL mod. I have not played it for a while but did so this weekend.

The Battle Droids seem to be in a strange place... they are worse in every regards now as their maintenance are almost as high as the infantry. They are worse at both offence and defence now. They weigh less but the maintenance on ships are low enough to compensate for that and if you intend to assault there are the issue that only one unit can deploy at the same time so a small units take up one assault pod the same as a large one. The Battle Droids are not very usable unless I'm mistaken.

For reactors then Plasmatic seem to be completely useless as the other two are more effective in terms of power to fuel ratio and weight to power ratio is the same for all. Smaller might need more slots but that is quickly eaten up by needing more slots for fuel cells instead so makes not a whole lot sense. You are likely to end up using the same number or less slots in total for the two first ones and using less fuel or having better range or both.

Similar issues I find with engines. Acceleros engines are just better in all ways versus the compact drive, the nimble drive are not that attractive either but at least it have something in its favour. The compact drive have less power per weight and will take up more slots. Given that I also find that weight is not a huge issue on most ships especially later on in the game even if the compact drive had better weight to power ratio it would be of very dubious value.

Ships volume versus the amount of stuff you can put into them is way off, especially the longer into the game you get. It becomes increasingly hard to find ways to fill up the hulls. In my opinion this take away the choices you have to make and every ships seem to be exactly the same, more or less. There need to be some constraint so you need to make SOME choice as if you want more weapons, defenses or internal component etc... this does not seem to be the case.... I can just fill everything up with everything I want and no compromises.

Overall I find the mod very good and I have enjoyed it very much.

[mordachai]

I hope it is OK to comment on balancing issues I have found playing the XL mod. I have not played it for a while but did so this weekend.

Of course.

The Battle Droids seem to be in a strange place... they are worse in every regards now as their maintenance are almost as high as the infantry. They are worse at both offence and defence now. They weigh less but the maintenance on ships are low enough to compensate for that and if you intend to assault there are the issue that only one unit can deploy at the same time so a small units take up one assault pod the same as a large one. The Battle Droids are not very usable unless I'm mistaken.

It is up to you to design your invasion ships to have > 1 assault pod per troop stasis module, especially if you're going to use droids in numbers.

Especially as the game progresses, and your stasis tech advances, you'll end up with more and more troops for fewer modules - and to get those down to the landing site efficiently and in force - you need extra assault pods.

I tend to go for 3:2 early game, 2:1 later space allowing.

For reactors then Plasmatic seem to be completely useless as the other two are more effective in terms of power to fuel ratio and weight to power ratio is the same for all. Smaller might need more slots but that is quickly eaten up by needing more slots for fuel cells instead so makes not a whole lot sense. You are likely to end up using the same number or less slots in total for the two first ones and using less fuel or having better range or both.

Plasmatic can make the critical difference between only needing one reactor vs. two. If you have a design where that is critical, then plasmatic makes all the difference.

But they're larger in total space and less efficient, so unless you go with power hungry designs, then you're typically better off with a more efficient reactor. That's the trade-off.

If you're using a combination of power-hungry weapons, shields, and hyperdrive, you can be better off with plasmatic, as they cover the energy requirements in one go. Especially on DD, CR, TT, where that extra slot can be crucial, depending on your needs, or the Race's paucity of slots.

And efficiency of fuel doesn't matter if you're a race and using a govt. that mines very efficiently - you just have more fuel to throw around. e.g. The Mortalen tend to have restricted slot-count, good mining, default good mining government, so for them, that slot is worth it's weight in spades.

Similar issues I find with engines. Acceleros engines are just better in all ways versus the compact drive, the nimble drive are not that attractive either but at least it have something in its favour. The compact drive have less power per weight and will take up more slots. Given that I also find that weight is not a huge issue on most ships especially later on in the game even if the compact drive had better weight to power ratio it would be of very dubious value.

Personally I think the nimble are by the best. Acceleros is a decent engine, and for races who are engine slot starved, they're a good choice. But that extra nimbleness is often a winning attribute plus better countermeasures.

The compact can be a useful trade-off for space. You use several engines - so that space savings adds up quickly - and can be an entire extra weapon. You give up some countermeasures and speed - but if you're doing a longer range design - who cares? Bigger / better guns is sometimes a better strategey.

Ships volume versus the amount of stuff you can put into them is way off, especially the longer into the game you get. It becomes increasingly hard to find ways to fill up the hulls. In my opinion this take away the choices you have to make and every ships seem to be exactly the same, more or less. There need to be some constraint so you need to make SOME choice as if you want more weapons, defenses or internal component etc... this does not seem to be the case.... I can just fill everything up with everything I want and no compromises.

I never have enough space for everything, and am always having to make choices between alternatives. By maybe the Tier 3 versions of ships it's basically a no-compromise scenario, depending on how you measure no-compromise.

by III type designs, I can have all max size weaponry, and max hangar bays, plus full sensor arrays, full engines, and some extra general slots left over, probably. Depends on the class of design. The FF and DD often are full throughout the entire game - and I sometimes have to compromise on the smaller hulls between general electives like ion shields, psy shields, quantum capacitors, more fuel, etc.

Overall I find the mod very good and I have enjoyed it very much.

I'm glad you're getting enjoyment out of it. If you'd like to share some specific situations - screenshot a design that's tier I where you're able to do "no compromises" - I'd be curious to see what you mean by that?

Even all of the initial discussion:
* Reactor line choice is compromises
* Engine line choice is compromises
* Hyperdrive line choice is compromises
* How many fuel cells is compromises
* L vs. M vs. S weapon load-outs is compromises
* More stasis modules for fewer assault pods (or vice versa) is compromises

The thing about droids is that
* you get 2.5:1 by volume

Which for offense is a fantastic advantage, especially early game, where you can churn them out rapidly and go overwhelm some targets with sheer numbers even with very restricted troop transport tech / capacity.

They're garbage on defense unless you leave piles of them, and then they quickly become economically unviable in that role. They're a great pool to use for offenses - as shock troops - but then IMO - you want to backfill and release them to offense again with hardier meatbag troops, which are much more efficient in terms of a guard force (unless you're one of those radicals who simply leaves no defenses behind)

There's a lot of ways to play and a lot of strategies and tactics to explore (where by tactics I mean how your ships perform on the battlefield with various compromises - per all of the factors mentioned here and more - since there's also the balance between long range short ranged weapons, whether you set your ships to aggressive or neutral or cautious, whether you lean into strike craft heavily or mid-range beams or point blank blaster or some combination?

For me, what keeps things interesting is trying out new ways to play a given race - hell - even varying the start conditions radically changes up the game and how it unfolds.

Lastly, if you have ideas for elements you wish existed, I'd be interested. I can't do anything outside of what the engine provides (and within that - a smaller subset of what actually works). But I do like new ideas to keep things interesting.

[mordachai]

One other thought about reactors...

I personally prefer either the fusion or the harmonic lines - but that relates to the races I tend to play most often.

When I'm Mortalen or Boskara, Plasmatic is my friend. Again, great mining skills and sparse slots.

But when I'm Human, Ackdarian, I tend to favor either of the smaller ones. Both races do well with either of the others, but fusion means you're pretty much committed to 2 reactors per design for DD+, sometimes even FF.

Don't mean to imply Plasmatic is awesome always use it. Use it conditionally, when it's necessary.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Let's take one thing first, the reactors.

I just created two destroyers at tech level three using the humans... they both use the Hyperstream hyperdrive as that needs allot of power, perfect for a single Plasmatic Energy Core and with three fuel cells the ship has a range of 431 using a total of four slots. The second destroyer instead use the Fusion Energy Core and two fuel cells for 451 range also using four slots.

It would be an extremely niche reason to go for the Plasmatic Energy Core and never worth it unless you for some reason research both options. The second ship uses up only 2/3 as much fuel and will always be the better option.

Even at one fuel cell the second Destroyer has a range of 226 and the first then has 288. So in actuality it is only if you put a single fuel cell on the first one for a range of 145 it is worth it... perhaps you design a system patrol craft with an engagement range of 50.

It can become a bit more interesting later on if you can get the range up a bit with a single fuel cell, but you still consume more fuel and fuel is a strategic resource that is as important as anything else and must also be taken into account.

I found that Harmonic seem to be the best when you mainly use destroyers and cruisers (and not hyperstream warp drives) as that can power those ships on a single reactor and they also are very fuel efficient. For larger ships you either just go with the harmonic as well or if you have the research go with the Fusion as they will save both slots and fuel consumption.

I also think it gets worse as technology increase as reactors give more and more energy versus say the hyperdrive needs and for larger ships like battleships and carrier the hyperdrives are no longer the measuring stick so tailoring the energy around what you have becomes a bit easier which also makes low fuel efficient reactors worse as well.

Outside of a single use of very low range system patrol craft the Plasmatic reactor make little sense. The others are just strategically much better in all other cases.

[Jorgen_CAB]

For Troop transport I just tried a tech level five heavy transport. The most efficient design I could find with decent defences, speed and range had a troop capacity of 60000 and six assault pods, I basically had a total of ten slots to work with so not that much can change here. I can remove two troop compartments and add two assault pods but that makes little difference. The first one can drop all infantry in two drops so quite efficient.

Twelve infantry have a maintenance (without savings) of 3000 and the ship has a maintenance of less than half that.

If we just disregard the extra research you need to invest into robotic troops and assume that is free you need about 2 robots for each infantry in attack for the same result on the battlefield, actually a bit less. But as we just ignored the cost of research let's put this somewhat in favour if the infantry.

You could build the same ship with two troop modules and eight assault pods. Two cargo can hold 15 robots and drop them in two waves.

15 robots are 3000 in maintenance cost and the ship are basically the same as the above.

The issue is that 15 robots are not even nearly as good as 12 infantry in the attack... you need almost twice the amount of robots AND more research invested as you will need infantry no matter what anyways, robots are even worse at defending.

for 12 infantry you need at least 20 robots to be at parity and that is a middle of the road infantry species, you are likely to recruit the best species in your empire to do the heavy lifting not the middle of the road which make infantry even more attractive.

Battledroids would be interesting if they were actually more efficient to attack with, that was my main point. But they need to be substantially better as if they are only marginally better it is not worth the investment of research to use them.

[Jorgen_CAB]

When it comes to this size of ship that is mainly in the later stage of the game say second half. The larger capital ships might need to be balanced a bit better as I seem able to fit almost everything I want in them. I have not played that far but was mainly experimenting with advanced tech, so I might be wrong about that.

The AI frequently leve several hundreds of space unused as well (on late tech capital ships), but that is probably an AI issue in general though. I have done allot of modding trying to get the AI to design good ships, mainly using the templates. Since everything are so standardized in your mod using the templates to get the AI to build good ships would be really easy actually.
When I modded this I had AI carriers actually using ALL slots for hangars for example making them truly scary like human designed ones.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I also had one other remark and that was in the S, M and L version of weapons. Outside of missiles it seems that for the most part S are worse than M and M are worse than L. That is they have the same DPS and power draw etc per weight but smaller weapons deal less raw damage and often less range too.

I just assumed this was a design choice. I'm fine with that large slots are more valuable than small ones, so I just wanted to ask.

I did something similar in my own mod but I also reduced the weapon arcs on most large mounts to offset the overall effectiveness of larger weapons RAW damage potential.

[mordachai]

I also had one other remark and that was in the S, M and L version of weapons. Outside of missiles it seems that for the most part S are worse than M and M are worse than L. That is they have the same DPS and power draw etc per weight but smaller weapons deal less raw damage and often less range too.

I just assumed this was a design choice. I'm fine with that large slots are more valuable than small ones, so I just wanted to ask.

I did something similar in my own mod but I also reduced the weapon arcs on most large mounts to offset the overall effectiveness of larger weapons RAW damage potential.

your choice is closer to what vanilla chooses for L mounts.

this makes no sense to me, personally.

but to each his own.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I also had one other remark and that was in the S, M and L version of weapons. Outside of missiles it seems that for the most part S are worse than M and M are worse than L. That is they have the same DPS and power draw etc per weight but smaller weapons deal less raw damage and often less range too.

I just assumed this was a design choice. I'm fine with that large slots are more valuable than small ones, so I just wanted to ask.

I did something similar in my own mod but I also reduced the weapon arcs on most large mounts to offset the overall effectiveness of larger weapons RAW damage potential.

your choice is closer to what vanilla chooses for L mounts.

this makes no sense to me, personally.

but to each his own.

I think this depends... I had five different weapon size classes rather than three so it was quite different with super large weapons sort of was spinal mounted and with restricted arcs. Smaller ships might also have larger mounts but not the biggest one on more stricter arcs for the same reason, they were suppose to be spinal mounted.

This depended on the ship design, some had better arcs than others but perhaps less of those type of sized weapons and so on.

More restricted arcs also make slower and less manoeuvrable ships more interesting too versus more nimble and faster ones. As I designed templates for the AI to use they actually could design proper ships for the proper purpose in this regard. It was time consuming to do this but it was fun to see the result and the AI use these together with individual fleet templates for different factions etc..

I would advice you to take a look at fleet designs for different factions. Can make the mod even better in my opinion. I always add my own policy, fleet templates and a few design templates to the mod. To make the AI build more efficient ships, fleets and economy. But that was the main focus of my own modding so I have some experience in that area.

[mordachai]

I'd love to see actual spinal mounts - a larger than large with weapons that require it - only one on a ship, obviously centerline (or maybe two, for wings).

Obviously you can do this now if there is a hardpoint where you need on the 3d model, but only then, and only meticulously since you need to update the XML for those designs to set the firing arcs and so on (and again, the weapon must be firing centerline or it won't make sense).

I've had on my list of possible fun ideas to add super heavy weapons - in particular a huge class of weapons only mountable on stations. It's a fun idea, but requires a significant time investment to bring it all together.

it's worth noting that although you can do this now mostly, it does rely on simply being bigger and having bigger slots. You can't have two different classes of larger weapon with larger slots because the smaller will always fit in the larger, so your ability to define them well is quite limited

[Foraven]

I tried this mod for the first time yesterday and I am impressed with all the balance changes and improvements. The game seem to progress more smoothly, though I am not sure the AI knows how to play with the changes.

Some issues I ran into:

At the start of the game my advisor made me build a troop building before I started to build the spaceport: this caused me to struggle to save up the funds to build it as the AI would constantly pester me to build other stuff instead. I an sure the AI players would have had the same problem and may explain why they were so far behind me later on.

I had 2 pirate spaceports in my home system; the AI would constantly try to send my ships to attack it (I had to form a manual fleet early to avoid my ships to commit suicide). I had nowhere the firepower to take them out, especially since I had no PDs to deal with the fighters. The treat level of those stations were deceptively low, I guess the fighters were not counted in the power rating. I am sure this would also hurt the AI empire if they ran in a similar issue.

--------------------------

Some thoughts about the balance.

I do agree with most of the changes, the vanilla game does have a lot of redundant techs that just waste research and give way too many options. The standardized module sizes does help making ship design less of a puzzle and I don't have too many weapon and modules options I have no use for. So far I like it.

However, I love making alternate ship design, have alternate hull types allowed me to have more specialized ship designs for different purposes. Unfortunately, in this mod we have one hull per size (at least until I unlock the more advanced versions). I wish I could still unlock a secondary hull variant so I could still experiment with ship design without replacing my general purpose design. Yeah, I know I can make multiple design regardless, it is just a pain to keep them updated without the auto-retrofit messing things up. I can live with it, but I miss that vanilla choice.

[mordachai]

I appreciate the feedback, Foraven!

Yeah, i hate not having the ability to really, truly have multiple ship classes per role.
But the way that vanilla achieves this - and the amount of micro management necessary to make that work - doesn't work for me. Many of the changes in XL are to make my play-experience less of a drag, and that's definitely a major drag on my fun factor (fighting fleets to be correct, upgrade paths to be correct, etc.)

If they ever really allow multiple classes of ships - with no ambiguity of what upgrades to what by default (i.e. within a class, things should just upgrade linearly, not across classes) - then I'm happy to restore that to XL.

Same with many of the troop types I've removed - it's all about reducing the times when I want throw my computer through the nearest giant window and light myself on fire in protest. I can't handle, so I make fewer - but working - choices.

So many things are unnecessarily broken that shouldn't be, aren't hard to fix, but until they do - XL will do without.

And that's a trade-off. Not saying my choices are always better - and definitely not for everyone - but they're what give me greater joy and less frustration, so they're my choice.

Glad you're enjoying it to whatever degree you do - and you'll have vanilla there with all of its choices to play as well.

cheers!

[aldehyt]

Game crashing on GOG version, Error is about impossibility of loading hulls for Atuuks and Wekkarus, i tried two branch 1.31.1 and dev.

Changelog show that latest compatible version should be 1.30.11, but i cant find that version.

Any advice ?

repo: https://gitlab.com/coyote-wolf/DW2-XL

[aldehyt]

Silly I, i think git reset --hard <commit> was enough to get 1.30.11 version without any trouble

[mordachai]

Silly I, i think git reset --hard <commit> was enough to get 1.30.11 version without any trouble

Glad that worked for you!