[DWU] Balance Mod v0.9 (extended TechTree) [Cancelled in protest]

[Icemania]

Looks like they given this some focus in the 1.9.5.4 patch Locarnus, hope it does the trick!

[dwaine]

Indeed, they listened to you, just have to see if it WAD.
If you are interested, i can help with the fuel thing, i have some ideas for the higg tech branch.

[Icemania]

Locarnus, please have a read here: Distant Worlds AI

This may provide an opportunity of interest to you or one of our other Modders

Pretty please with cherries on top?

[Locarnus]

Just Saw the Update notes, but i ve very Limited Time this Weekend and the next, so only Chance for me to work on the mod is early next week. i can probably implement specific proposals.

So far on the to do List are Reactors and the Racial fuel cells as proposed.

Ps: this autocorrect is annoying as hell.

[Locarnus]

My response to the new modding feature that racial techs can now be defined in the research.txt as well, from the "Distant Worlds AI" thread.

In short, if the new feature is used by race modders, it removes the modularity of race mods and research mods and thus the basis for making the BalanceMod worth the effort.

It is therefore put on hold again, at the same time as the energy balancing was fixed...

This really feels like a paid beta for the "modding" expansion and I start to regret putting so much time in it.

ORIGINAL: Locarnus

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Locarnus

I like the Idea that the Research Projects themselves can be restricted to races, although i First have to Look at how it is implemented and can only do this monday.
I Hope it is only optional and the Old Way is still possible. With the current Way i can Mod the Research.txt with Restrictions, but it is compatible with all Mods using the Vanilla Research.txt. I ll have to Look at the New Way First.

Imho the only Way to have competitive Research from pre Warp Start for the ai is a totally different Research Points generating System. The current One is just massively exploitable.

If you look earlier in the thread I had a lot of difficulty getting Disallowed Components and Disallowed Research to work ... is that what you meant by the old way?

Either way, if we can get the AI to restrict weapon research to focus on one or two weapons, and also change the ship/base design template files to align with those restriction, we could see another good improvement in AI performance with weapons.

That said, I don't know what Matrix have cooking in coming patches. Erik/Elliot?

Yes, basically I meant with the old way, that race specifics are stated in the race files and not spread out to other files.

From what I saw in the research.txt, using the new way will remove the modularity of modding in research. It further shifts modding towards full conversion and is thus incompatible with my research mod.

A better way would have been to merge the tech foci and allowed/disallowed components into race component/tech modifiers.
Eg
15, 0.0, 87, 0.2, 114, 2.0, 64, 9.9
would mean that component 15 is disallowed, component 87 is avoided (1.0 would be normal), component 114 is a tech focus and component 64 is a racial component.

I will have to wait and see if and how much Haree78 and other race modders make use of the new approach (non-full conversion race modders will be severely handicapped by this as well, since it will become much harder to just add their race(s) to other mods).

I like to use different themes/racial mods myself and I liked combining mods.
If my research mod is thus effectively restricted to vanilla or a support role for a specific mod, it is not worth my time and effort anymore, so I ll have to stop development of my mod once again (just after the energy balancing is resolved) and wait how this is adopted by the race modders.

[hewwo]

Honestly, I think you might be overreacting a bit. Just because the option is there doesn't mean that everyone will jump on it to use it. Even in the event some mod uses these new options, it might not make them 100% compatible with your mod, but it should be fairly easy to merge them. So I really think continuing this mod and seeing making a new tech tree that is much more satisfying is the way to go. Once you're done other modders will incorporate your work. Don't worry about that:) I play mostly vanilla + extended anyway, so I'm happy to test your mod while you play around with it!

[Locarnus]

At the moment this mod had 2 versions.
One for vanilla and one for extended.

When I make a new version it works like this:

1. I mod the version compatible with extended.
2. I just delete the last couple of research projects to get the vanilla compatible version.

It took a lot of effort to bring the research.txt into a shape that allows such easy support for 2 versions.
To be fully compatible with the new version of Extended (Haree78 already stated that he will use the new "feature") I would need to edit the vanilla segment of the research.txt as well. Thus when I want to make a new version of the BalanceMod I can not just do the steps above because the vanilla segment would also be different.

Which makes supporting even the 2 current versions (vanilla and extended) a nightmare if I want to continue development.
So I would realistically need to decide between being a support mod for only 1 race mod, just modding for vanilla, or ignoring the race mod changes based on the new race tech modding.

At first glance the latter does not seem so bad, but there might follow a string of consequences, like adjusted templates based on the new race techs and so on.

The basis for this mod and the effort I put into it was, that I can (with a lot of work in the beginning) easily support 2 versions and the mods based on those versions. This basis was removed by the patch, so the mod is on hold (again).
Also I really dont like that this new "feature" was not first proposed in the forum and thus open for discussion by the active modders.

[Unforeseen]

Well i wouldn't go vanilla. Practically nobody plays vanilla that i know of. And there was noooo way you were going to be able to cater to EVERYONE anyways. New feature or not.

I think you could just focus on the Extended version, and you will still be catering to what the majority of players probably use if they aren't trekkies or something.

Just a thought, but It would be a total waste for you to quit now. You spent quite a bit of time on this and accrued a decent following. Give Haree a pm and ask him what exactly he plans to do with the feature, and see how much work it would be plzplzplzplzplzplzplz.

[Kizucha]

Here another "fan" of your mod, it will make me sad if you quit modding.[:(] But i will accept it if you quit, your right its hard work... but there are more like me that are to stupid to make mod's like your themself.[&o]

Ok the last bit its a bit high but i only hope you are not quiting because i have fun with your mod.[;)]

[Sirian]

I don't know how good you are at programming but if I were in your situation I would try to make a program that compiles your data (from a textfile or such) into 2 different description files according to a parameter (vanilla or extended)

Maybe its possible to just keep the extended version up to date and automatically delete all extended specific stuff for a vanilla version. I must admit, I haven't looked at these files, so I cannot say anything about the needed effort, but it would be worth a try.

[Tehlongone]

It's a shame about the difficult compatibilities but you shouldn't worry about the other mods they can just make themselves compatible with this one, or it can be looked upon in the future. I don't see any point in catering to vanilla as while many players are still playing it those same players are usually doing so because they don't use mods at all.

Hence you need not worry about any mods aside from the Extended mod and my impression of Haree78 is that he is pretty open to suggestions and even if not your files can simply overwrite his as per your wishes. You can essentially ignore all the other mods and do your own thing.

[Unforeseen]

I think Locarnus is more concerned about becoming what he called a "support mod". This i don't really agree with, as Haree's mod is a must have standard mod. It may as well be vanilla.

[Rol1983]

Little help to Locarnus:
I update Balance mod to the new Haree's Extended version 1.0.3(patch 1.9.5.4 Comp), if people like this i can do vanilla upgrade too.

[Locarnus]

Thanks @all!

It seems like the new racial tech feature is not used so far.
About vanilla vs extended, I dont really care about vanilla DW:U, but most smaller themed mods use the vanilla tech tree. So staying compatible with vanilla is aimed at those.

I think I put too much emphasis on staying compatible myself. I think I ll generally change that approach in a way that I provide 2 or so versions and other mods have to figure out how to be compatible if they want to. Not ideal, but workable for me.

Anyway, I cant look at stuff right now, I m off for the next days and start working again on this mod at the end of next week.

I ll try to incorporate the stuff which was planned for this week as well as the next stage.
So it can hopefully be bugtested together and provide a major improvement for people who want to start a new "long" game.

ToDo (afair):
- reactors
- racial fuel cells
- racial shields
- 1.9.5.4 changes
- cheaper first tier techs/hyperdrive to help the AI empires
- rebalanced hyperspeeds (eg 3k, 5k, 7k and so on) up to end game
- rebalanced construction sizes (180, 240, 300...)
- thrusters (optional)
- wonders again (optional)

Not sure at what speed the hyperspeeds should end.
Also not sure about construction sizes. Bigger sizes would need different AI templates and I want to leave those to the theme/racial modders.

Any suggestions to the above or other areas are very welcome.
This will probably be the last major patch for a while since I wont have much time in august and end of july.
Might as well call this 1.0 when bugfixed so new people know that it already works well.
Although it is far from finished, still lots of potential.

[danymatrix]

ohh yeahh!
when you think you can finish the patch 1.0?
award for best mod!

[Morolth]

I have been reading this thread for some time and had to create an account on the forum to tell you that it really looks great and I am looking forward to see when you'll be able to release the version with your To Do list. Keep going on, you are doing a great job!

[Efaferal]

The balance Mod has been a lot of fun to play. I would recommend to extend the range of missiles in order to offset the obvious superiority of the torpedoes.

just my two cents.

E

[Unforeseen]

/worships Locarnus

[Kizucha]

[&o]

Because i dont want to post a "smilie-post", i'm really looking forward to the new version of the mod. ^.^

[bugbear777]

[&o]