Ack! Mediafire upload failed last night... says it uploaded but hasn't appeared in my file list ready to share. Sorry folks!
I've gone back to good old trusty Dropbox for now. Uploading again as we speak... will advise once it's live.
Sea Of Stars - development thread
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
Ok download links have been sent.
I have included a second OPTIONAL download which provides a NON-blanked-over races folder, so that you have the option of playing with diverse (NON BALANCED) races. I haven't worked on any races (ship designs etc) other than Borg, so it's entirely possible that other races will be crazy broken... like far too few reactors and so on. But that's up to you.
The original download has every race set to the exact same settings as Borg, so that they're all balanced equally.
Thanks again for being involved. I hope you enjoy what I've worked on so far, and I look forward to completing this to a point where we can release it to everyone as a nice self-contained finished mod.
I have included a second OPTIONAL download which provides a NON-blanked-over races folder, so that you have the option of playing with diverse (NON BALANCED) races. I haven't worked on any races (ship designs etc) other than Borg, so it's entirely possible that other races will be crazy broken... like far too few reactors and so on. But that's up to you.
The original download has every race set to the exact same settings as Borg, so that they're all balanced equally.
Thanks again for being involved. I hope you enjoy what I've worked on so far, and I look forward to completing this to a point where we can release it to everyone as a nice self-contained finished mod.
-
Premislaus
- Posts: 26
- Joined: Wed Jun 11, 2014 4:23 pm
- Location: Poland
- Contact:
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
ORIGINAL: Drybreeze
Ok download links have been sent.
I have included a second OPTIONAL download which provides a NON-blanked-over races folder, so that you have the option of playing with diverse (NON BALANCED) races. I haven't worked on any races (ship designs etc) other than Borg, so it's entirely possible that other races will be crazy broken... like far too few reactors and so on. But that's up to you.
The original download has every race set to the exact same settings as Borg, so that they're all balanced equally.
Thanks again for being involved. I hope you enjoy what I've worked on so far, and I look forward to completing this to a point where we can release it to everyone as a nice self-contained finished mod.
Hi! Thanks! I played a few minutes and I have first thoughts. I should play more through the weekend, and I'll send you my observations. I already have five notes, currently only in Polish.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
I'm very much looking forward to your input.
I have been playing my 12th trial run, and I have the following improvement notes:
Overall I'm finding this game quite enjoyable, although it's a bit hum drum with everyone being Borg... I might bump up the priority of creating a few different races so that I don't have to be playing against clones.
I am coming up against significant Uranium shortages due to the above-mentioned upgrade fail which I'll fix pronto.
Also I was going to make the next alpha release (v0.2) into a shared dropbox folder, so that I can alter one or two files at a time, and all that needs to be re-downloaded by testers are the altered files... regardless of what they are... rather than having the entire mod as a single zipped download.
How are you going with playing it without any help files...? I have an understanding of the techs and components required of course, but I imagine playing blind must be a bit confusing at first without any means of looking things up...? I think that Galactopedia entries for the final release are kinda important... yer thoughts?
I have been playing my 12th trial run, and I have the following improvement notes:
28/05/16
- Alter upgrade to fuel cells to reduce volume. It upgrades from 2 to 80. Results in fuel shortages and en-masse refueling missions when the tech is researched.
- Alter late-game hyperdrive to fold space from origin to destination, resulting in almost instantaneous travel. This should be easily achieved by making the warp speed crazy-fast. Experimentation required. It'd be nice if ships could travel across entire sectors in half a second or so. Large launch time to compensate.
- Look at fuel relay tech chain... illogical order to things.
- Coolant Heat Exchange; increase reactor output, but change fuel type from Hydrogen to Uranium
- Compact Fission Systems; change fuel type from Hydrogen to Uranium
- Solid Fuel System Improvements; increase thrust output to followon from previous tech's thrust outputs.
- Articulated Combustion Systems; increase thrust output
- Lossless Energy Conversion; increase thrust output
- Energy Overloading; increase thrust output and change name of research entry
- Intense Manuevering Thrusters; decrease thrust
- Increase missile damage throughout tech chain
- Space Command; reduce maintenance savings benefit to 3%
- Coordinated Control; increase maintenance savings benefit to 5%
- Multiple Shield Networking; swap parents around so that arrows don't cross over each other in research window.
Overall I'm finding this game quite enjoyable, although it's a bit hum drum with everyone being Borg... I might bump up the priority of creating a few different races so that I don't have to be playing against clones.
I am coming up against significant Uranium shortages due to the above-mentioned upgrade fail which I'll fix pronto.
Also I was going to make the next alpha release (v0.2) into a shared dropbox folder, so that I can alter one or two files at a time, and all that needs to be re-downloaded by testers are the altered files... regardless of what they are... rather than having the entire mod as a single zipped download.
How are you going with playing it without any help files...? I have an understanding of the techs and components required of course, but I imagine playing blind must be a bit confusing at first without any means of looking things up...? I think that Galactopedia entries for the final release are kinda important... yer thoughts?
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IFailAtGaming
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2016 9:33 am
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
I'd be willing to help test.
If you're going for hard sci-fi i'm certain i could figure most things out.
If you're going for hard sci-fi i'm certain i could figure most things out.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
You're very welcome to test it, the more the merrier.
I've sent you a PM with the link in it, let me know how you go.
I've sent you a PM with the link in it, let me know how you go.
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Premislaus
- Posts: 26
- Joined: Wed Jun 11, 2014 4:23 pm
- Location: Poland
- Contact:
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
I played a few quick games yesterday and today, and I have some thoughts. This mod is playable in its current state. I think you can go ahead and post version 0.1.
My settings:
15x15 with 1400 stars and 11 empires.
Prerwarp, chaos, extreme.
Very expensive research cost, many space creatures, none pirates (bug).
No tech trading, normal alien life and planet prevalence.
Borgs only.
http://imgur.com/a/ye79n
1. You can not play with enabled pirates due to an error in designs files. Without them there is no challenge in early and mid game.
2. I had a break with Distant Worlds, but I remember that in a normal game, I could set that empires are at some distance from each other. I tried to be in the center and on the edge of the galaxy, always draws civilizations at a vast distance from me, and in a group. This is with automatic generation of empires, and when I set them manually distance.
3. Lasers with high range and low damage is a great idea. I don't have problems with space monsters. However beam graphics is too microscopic, something about one pixel.
4. I think that concrete should be used in very large numbers, hundreds.
5. Development paths are poorly done. Really. First presribed techs are: Ship boarding, Integrated Magnetic Control (another shields) and Countermeasures. Empires not prioritize the warp drive, engines, and components such hab life and batteries.
6, 7, 8. Ships don't consume fuel and don't use static energy during flight. This is strange behaviour, because you can send explorer ship to another star system without warp drive. In some big types of star systems, early constructor ship is too slow. However, lower speeds are not bad, but it is a bit boring (without warp).
9, 10, 11. Maybe this is Borg specific, but I got lucky with nearby planet, five ship captains. I'm swimming in cash from start. The Borg have high production bonus, perhaps 70%.
PS. I like new music and new names for techs and resource.
My settings:
15x15 with 1400 stars and 11 empires.
Prerwarp, chaos, extreme.
Very expensive research cost, many space creatures, none pirates (bug).
No tech trading, normal alien life and planet prevalence.
Borgs only.
http://imgur.com/a/ye79n
1. You can not play with enabled pirates due to an error in designs files. Without them there is no challenge in early and mid game.
2. I had a break with Distant Worlds, but I remember that in a normal game, I could set that empires are at some distance from each other. I tried to be in the center and on the edge of the galaxy, always draws civilizations at a vast distance from me, and in a group. This is with automatic generation of empires, and when I set them manually distance.
3. Lasers with high range and low damage is a great idea. I don't have problems with space monsters. However beam graphics is too microscopic, something about one pixel.
4. I think that concrete should be used in very large numbers, hundreds.
5. Development paths are poorly done. Really. First presribed techs are: Ship boarding, Integrated Magnetic Control (another shields) and Countermeasures. Empires not prioritize the warp drive, engines, and components such hab life and batteries.
6, 7, 8. Ships don't consume fuel and don't use static energy during flight. This is strange behaviour, because you can send explorer ship to another star system without warp drive. In some big types of star systems, early constructor ship is too slow. However, lower speeds are not bad, but it is a bit boring (without warp).
9, 10, 11. Maybe this is Borg specific, but I got lucky with nearby planet, five ship captains. I'm swimming in cash from start. The Borg have high production bonus, perhaps 70%.
PS. I like new music and new names for techs and resource.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
That's really excellent feedback. Thank you very much for your input!
You have played on very different settings to what I normally do, which is great. One of the main reasons why I appreciate the input of others into this thing. Your pictures also show that it resulted in a very different game to one that I have experienced with this mod so far.
I appreciate that you think it's playable however I disagree. I don't want to release this generally, until we've ironed out most or all of the bugs you've spotted and more.
I have had this error come up from time to time when launching. As you say it is a ship design problem - I think it's because the resulting designs result in ships above size limits, which in turn prevents empires from spawning ships or bases that are required to launch, so the game spacks out.
I have done a few trial runs now. One of the things I noticed when I blanked races over to make them all Borg clones for the sake of uploading v0.1 alpha to test was that suddenly there was a vastly increased percent of games where the other empires would spawn in the same system as my own empire.
Yes I am also enjoying the "star wars style" of lasers darting between fleets with terrible accuracy doing little damage and resulting in epic battles. The starting lasers do very small damage, and the game automatically rates the size of a weapon's ammunition image by the damage that it does. As you upgrade them they become much larger and obviously visible. However I agree the starting ones are very puny... to the point of almost being invisible. I will try widening the base image in the ammunition file, this should in theory make all instances of it wider, both starting and larger more damage instances later in game.
For reasons I can't get around the game tries to make the Concrete Bunkering a more highly rated armour than Plate Steel... I will try a few work-arounds to solve this. As a result of that, it automatically assigns it as the "latest armour" for ship designs which is not the purpose of it. I'm pretty sure that I can make it the most basic type of armour and this will be avoided, but then that means that AI players will ignore it as obsolete armour and not clad ships OR bases with it.
For this reason concrete bunkering may be a fail as armour, and I might need to remove it again... since all that it would achieve even if I could get it to function correctly is that you as the player can use concrete resource as armour for bases (and so relieve demand for other resources like steel) which the AI does not, giving the player an unfair advantage.
Development paths I have not touched. They are still as were set in the Picard Era mod which this mod has been editing from the start. What HAS changed is the research path... with research IDs moving in relation to each other, being removed completely, and sometimes being assigned to an entirely different area of the research tree, or even a different industry altogether (from weapons to high tech for example).
As a result the pre-existing development paths (what techs the AI chooses to research and in what order) are thoroughly butchered, I'm sure. I haven't noticed this due to manually researching everything, so this again is an excellent example of how great it is to get feedback from you as an alpha tester. Thankyou!
Fuel is either Uranium or Hydrogen (or Nitrogen in the really super-advanced reactor late-game), for Fission (nuclear) and Fusion reactors respectively. They produce large amounts of energy from a single unit of fuel, to make it a bit more realistic from a scientifically accurate point of view. Nuclear reactors on naval vessels can burn their fuel for years at a time without needing to be refueled.
I have found that I am still refueling fleets reasonably often - probably about every 3 game years... and that is for 8 units of Uranium per ship... The problem is that the fuel to energy ratio is so small that the research tree shows it as 0, as your screen shot shows. However it is still burning it at the rate I've set in the game. Play for say 10 game years and you'll see your fleets need refueling once or twice in that time.
I do however agree that the fuel rate for both impulse and hyperdrive engines needs to be increased... maybe doubled. I'll test it out and see if it is better.
The early constructor ship is a ship design that needs improvement. Wack another fission reactor or two on it in the designs menu and its warp speed is much higher. I'll do that in the designs for the next release.
You did indeed get VERY lucky. I've never had that happen in any of my trial runs, or while playing any other mod. Nicely done.
Also I have found the opposite now that I've reduced the warp speed early game my income is far from juicy. I'm curious why your game was so very different... perhaps something to do with no pirates?
The music is entirely that of the Picard Era mod, I take no credit for that. I will probably replace it, however that's not on my radar just yet.
Thank you very much for your input Premislaus. Feel free to provide more, and I encourage you to play a game for a few game years and try to re-launch with pirates. I get that error maybe 1 in every 10 launches. I just close it and try again and it works fine. I'm found that I bumped that ratio up to 10 in every 10 launches when I edited ship designs too agressively, so it's almost certainly to do with that. Ship designs rely on the component weights and outputs being settled and agreed on, so it's been a lower priority for me than making sure for example that warp core, reactor, or weapon outputs are settled into a nice balance... otherwise I'm doing ship designs over and over again which gets tedious.
Thank you again!
ORIGINAL: Premislaus
I played a few quick games yesterday and today, and I have some thoughts. This mod is playable in its current state. I think you can go ahead and post version 0.1.
My settings:
15x15 with 1400 stars and 11 empires.
Prerwarp, chaos, extreme.
Very expensive research cost, many space creatures, none pirates (bug).
No tech trading, normal alien life and planet prevalence.
Borgs only.
http://imgur.com/a/ye79n
You have played on very different settings to what I normally do, which is great. One of the main reasons why I appreciate the input of others into this thing. Your pictures also show that it resulted in a very different game to one that I have experienced with this mod so far.
I appreciate that you think it's playable however I disagree. I don't want to release this generally, until we've ironed out most or all of the bugs you've spotted and more.
1. You can not play with enabled pirates due to an error in designs files. Without them there is no challenge in early and mid game.
I have had this error come up from time to time when launching. As you say it is a ship design problem - I think it's because the resulting designs result in ships above size limits, which in turn prevents empires from spawning ships or bases that are required to launch, so the game spacks out.
2. I had a break with Distant Worlds, but I remember that in a normal game, I could set that empires are at some distance from each other. I tried to be in the center and on the edge of the galaxy, always draws civilizations at a vast distance from me, and in a group. This is with automatic generation of empires, and when I set them manually distance.
I have done a few trial runs now. One of the things I noticed when I blanked races over to make them all Borg clones for the sake of uploading v0.1 alpha to test was that suddenly there was a vastly increased percent of games where the other empires would spawn in the same system as my own empire.
3. Lasers with high range and low damage is a great idea. I don't have problems with space monsters. However beam graphics is too microscopic, something about one pixel.
Yes I am also enjoying the "star wars style" of lasers darting between fleets with terrible accuracy doing little damage and resulting in epic battles. The starting lasers do very small damage, and the game automatically rates the size of a weapon's ammunition image by the damage that it does. As you upgrade them they become much larger and obviously visible. However I agree the starting ones are very puny... to the point of almost being invisible. I will try widening the base image in the ammunition file, this should in theory make all instances of it wider, both starting and larger more damage instances later in game.
In stations it is used in much higher quantities.4. I think that concrete should be used in very large numbers, hundreds.
For reasons I can't get around the game tries to make the Concrete Bunkering a more highly rated armour than Plate Steel... I will try a few work-arounds to solve this. As a result of that, it automatically assigns it as the "latest armour" for ship designs which is not the purpose of it. I'm pretty sure that I can make it the most basic type of armour and this will be avoided, but then that means that AI players will ignore it as obsolete armour and not clad ships OR bases with it.
For this reason concrete bunkering may be a fail as armour, and I might need to remove it again... since all that it would achieve even if I could get it to function correctly is that you as the player can use concrete resource as armour for bases (and so relieve demand for other resources like steel) which the AI does not, giving the player an unfair advantage.
5. Development paths are poorly done. Really. First presribed techs are: Ship boarding, Integrated Magnetic Control (another shields) and Countermeasures. Empires not prioritize the warp drive, engines, and components such hab life and batteries.
Development paths I have not touched. They are still as were set in the Picard Era mod which this mod has been editing from the start. What HAS changed is the research path... with research IDs moving in relation to each other, being removed completely, and sometimes being assigned to an entirely different area of the research tree, or even a different industry altogether (from weapons to high tech for example).
As a result the pre-existing development paths (what techs the AI chooses to research and in what order) are thoroughly butchered, I'm sure. I haven't noticed this due to manually researching everything, so this again is an excellent example of how great it is to get feedback from you as an alpha tester. Thankyou!
They do consume fuel, but very very slowly.6, 7, 8. Ships don't consume fuel and don't use static energy during flight. This is strange behaviour, because you can send explorer ship to another star system without warp drive. In some big types of star systems, early constructor ship is too slow. However, lower speeds are not bad, but it is a bit boring (without warp).
Fuel is either Uranium or Hydrogen (or Nitrogen in the really super-advanced reactor late-game), for Fission (nuclear) and Fusion reactors respectively. They produce large amounts of energy from a single unit of fuel, to make it a bit more realistic from a scientifically accurate point of view. Nuclear reactors on naval vessels can burn their fuel for years at a time without needing to be refueled.
I have found that I am still refueling fleets reasonably often - probably about every 3 game years... and that is for 8 units of Uranium per ship... The problem is that the fuel to energy ratio is so small that the research tree shows it as 0, as your screen shot shows. However it is still burning it at the rate I've set in the game. Play for say 10 game years and you'll see your fleets need refueling once or twice in that time.
I do however agree that the fuel rate for both impulse and hyperdrive engines needs to be increased... maybe doubled. I'll test it out and see if it is better.
The early constructor ship is a ship design that needs improvement. Wack another fission reactor or two on it in the designs menu and its warp speed is much higher. I'll do that in the designs for the next release.
9, 10, 11. Maybe this is Borg specific, but I got lucky with nearby planet, five ship captains. I'm swimming in cash from start. The Borg have high production bonus, perhaps 70%.
PS. I like new music and new names for techs and resource.
You did indeed get VERY lucky. I've never had that happen in any of my trial runs, or while playing any other mod. Nicely done.
Also I have found the opposite now that I've reduced the warp speed early game my income is far from juicy. I'm curious why your game was so very different... perhaps something to do with no pirates?
The music is entirely that of the Picard Era mod, I take no credit for that. I will probably replace it, however that's not on my radar just yet.
Thank you very much for your input Premislaus. Feel free to provide more, and I encourage you to play a game for a few game years and try to re-launch with pirates. I get that error maybe 1 in every 10 launches. I just close it and try again and it works fine. I'm found that I bumped that ratio up to 10 in every 10 launches when I edited ship designs too agressively, so it's almost certainly to do with that. Ship designs rely on the component weights and outputs being settled and agreed on, so it's been a lower priority for me than making sure for example that warp core, reactor, or weapon outputs are settled into a nice balance... otherwise I'm doing ship designs over and over again which gets tedious.
Thank you again!
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
To get a bit more organised with this mod development I have produced a publicly visible Google Docs spreadsheet showing issues identified with the mod, and their progress.
You can view the document here.
If you wish to be able to comment directly on the document (for example to make suggestions about entries, etc) please let me know by PM what email address you want me to send an comment-rights email invitation to.
EDIT>
Because this is an online spreadsheet, it updates instantly as I work on it... in fact it shows you what I'm editing as I edit it.
So you're looking at the very most up to date progress.
At the moment I've ranked everything by priority, and I'm working through from highest to lowest priority. When I've finished modifying things, I'll mark it from "To Do" to "Testing", and run the game to trial it. If it functions well it will be marked as "Done" and the entire line highlighted blue to denote completion of the task.
Once I've worked through everything marked as "Release 0.2" I will upload it to the Alpha v0.2 and invite others wishing to test it to download the release and provide feedback.
At the moment I'm working on altering "High" priority items, and will then test them before moving to "Medium" priority items.
You can view the document here.
If you wish to be able to comment directly on the document (for example to make suggestions about entries, etc) please let me know by PM what email address you want me to send an comment-rights email invitation to.
EDIT>
Because this is an online spreadsheet, it updates instantly as I work on it... in fact it shows you what I'm editing as I edit it.
So you're looking at the very most up to date progress.
At the moment I've ranked everything by priority, and I'm working through from highest to lowest priority. When I've finished modifying things, I'll mark it from "To Do" to "Testing", and run the game to trial it. If it functions well it will be marked as "Done" and the entire line highlighted blue to denote completion of the task.
Once I've worked through everything marked as "Release 0.2" I will upload it to the Alpha v0.2 and invite others wishing to test it to download the release and provide feedback.
At the moment I'm working on altering "High" priority items, and will then test them before moving to "Medium" priority items.
-
IFailAtGaming
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2016 9:33 am
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
Overall, it seems to be working very well, although there are some problems, for example as has been mentioned before concrete bunkering is weird with auto upgrading, as in giving ships concrete instead of armor, which I believe can't really be fixed, and the extremely slow fuel use kind of makes stellar energy collectors seem silly (although they are good for having the stations working as soon as they're built). May i suggest having fission reactors maintain a slow fuel burn rate, while fusion burns through fuel much faster, but having it be offset by how much more common fusion fuel is? Other than that i can't think of much else, but I don't think I've played enough to have an idea of possible later game problems.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
Thank you for your feedback!
Yes the bunkering is annoying. Even when I make it a pre-warp tech and another tech as a higher level (0, or 1) and they're both researched, it still picks the obsolete concrete bunkering as the most up-to-date armour and clads ships and stations with it.
I have done everything I can think of to have it work properly but it's just not playing ball, so I might remove it and possibly implement it later when I've figured out what's going on there. Maybe when the reactive setting to armour setting ratio is higher it considers it a more powerful armour, so picks it. Dunno. A fight for another day.
Regarding reactors, I have doubled their fuel consumption, which works well, but I think I'll double it again. Also I've made all thrusters and hyperdrives consume more energy, so therefore fuel is burned more quickly to replenish this energy. In my opinion and the opinion of a few "ship design how to" threads I've read, solar panels don't belong on a ship anyway, which I agree with. None of my custom designs use them, except Garrison Destroyers, which I use as mobile station defenses... slow and lumbering and the solar panels prevent them from having to periodically refuel and abandon their posts.
I will adopt your idea about Hydrogen (Fusion) reactors burning more fuel than Uranium (Fission) reactors... I like that idea, thank you.
I will be releasing another significantly more refined version soon (as shown in my development spreadsheet). I will release it as a folder so that further updates are only updated graphics or text files here and there, drastically reducing the download on updates... if you're interested I'll provide the link.
Thanks again for your input!
Yes the bunkering is annoying. Even when I make it a pre-warp tech and another tech as a higher level (0, or 1) and they're both researched, it still picks the obsolete concrete bunkering as the most up-to-date armour and clads ships and stations with it.
I have done everything I can think of to have it work properly but it's just not playing ball, so I might remove it and possibly implement it later when I've figured out what's going on there. Maybe when the reactive setting to armour setting ratio is higher it considers it a more powerful armour, so picks it. Dunno. A fight for another day.
Regarding reactors, I have doubled their fuel consumption, which works well, but I think I'll double it again. Also I've made all thrusters and hyperdrives consume more energy, so therefore fuel is burned more quickly to replenish this energy. In my opinion and the opinion of a few "ship design how to" threads I've read, solar panels don't belong on a ship anyway, which I agree with. None of my custom designs use them, except Garrison Destroyers, which I use as mobile station defenses... slow and lumbering and the solar panels prevent them from having to periodically refuel and abandon their posts.
I will adopt your idea about Hydrogen (Fusion) reactors burning more fuel than Uranium (Fission) reactors... I like that idea, thank you.
I will be releasing another significantly more refined version soon (as shown in my development spreadsheet). I will release it as a folder so that further updates are only updated graphics or text files here and there, drastically reducing the download on updates... if you're interested I'll provide the link.
Thanks again for your input!
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
When it comes to energy collector, they certainly belong on my military ships.
I would suggest that you spend some time with a fully automated empire, and watch their ships. If they sit idle for a significant amount of time, they should have an energy collector to cover static cost. I seem to have noticed the civilians sitting around quite a bit. Exploration ships park when they are out of targets. But I am not quite sure if AI fleets are parked or patrolling, for instance. I seem to remember quite stationary pirates around their bases, though, which wake up when spotting enemies in the system.
If they got no energy collector and stay idle a lot, you could give the AI more fuel shortages.
I would suggest that you spend some time with a fully automated empire, and watch their ships. If they sit idle for a significant amount of time, they should have an energy collector to cover static cost. I seem to have noticed the civilians sitting around quite a bit. Exploration ships park when they are out of targets. But I am not quite sure if AI fleets are parked or patrolling, for instance. I seem to remember quite stationary pirates around their bases, though, which wake up when spotting enemies in the system.
If they got no energy collector and stay idle a lot, you could give the AI more fuel shortages.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
A good point, for sure. But when it comes to the AI, it will always have a disadvantage against a human player, because a human player can adopt different ship designs (for example) to suit specific tasks.
A basic example is making two types of destroyers, one that is slow but has low fuel consumption and is an off-base defensive vessel that escorts a mining base while it's in a dangerous region, and then moves on when the region is no longer dangerous (pirates cleared, for example), while another destroyer is faster, more lightly armoured, and designed to engage and retreat, but used more fuel doing so.
Another simple example might be having escort sized vehicles which have very high thrusters and turn rates, low weapons and armour to keep weight down, while having orders to retreat the instant they're attacked. Useless as one or two in a fleet, but form a wolf pack of say 10 or 20 and they become a formidable swarm that engages an enemy with guerilla style attack and retreat; death by a thousand pin jabs (yes, pricks is censored, but you get the idea).
The AI can't think like this and relies only on the single ship design structure provided for it for each hull type, which automatically gives the player an advantage.
A thread reader who I won't name in case they wish to remain anonymous (but you're welcome to respond if you wish - for now we'll call them "Bob") sent me a private message yesterday also along the lines of human player versus AI balancing. This was regarding item #33 in my development spreadsheet which is where I plan to make the late-game highest tech hyperdrive have the ability to fold space directly between origin and destination, resulting in almost instantaneous travel between points. "Bob" raised the very valid issue (known as "double dipping") where players would be able to exploit this feature by fitting ships both with this instant hyperdrive as well as a much faster-to-engage hypderdrive onto the same vessel, thereby bypassing the warm-up time for the space-folding hyperdrive. This is because the game uses the fastest speed, the fastest launch speed, and the highest energy consumption out of multiple different hyperdrives fitted to a vessel. "Bob" makes an excellent point, however my response is also that AI vs Human thinking is already very vastly different. If a player wants to "cheat" to beat the AI (which let's face it, is pretty lame and pointless), then you might as well do it by changing a setting the difficulty settings to super easy.
I was actually considering for awhile there making a special module that could be fitted to a ship which could be researched and would allow the player to fit it to their vessels. This module was going to be able to rapidly engage whatever hyperdrive they had installed... a kind of rapid trigger device... costly but clearly useful. In the end I decided not to create this component because the AI would have no way of fitting it, and this created a clear disadvantage that was actively ENCOURAGED by the SoS mod. Some players that didn't know about the double-dipping issue might use this cool new concept component and even be unaware that the AI was unable to match this ability. So... scrapped.
At the end of the day, someone that wants to cheat when playing against the computer player can do it in a number of ways that I can't control as part of the mod - for example by opening up the map editor and depriving the AI players of fuel resources on their home systems, or providing heaps of ideal planets, or making the distances between AI home worlds and nearby mining locations really large, etc.
So if a mod enables someone to alter the balance between themselves and the AI player(s) that is very different to it uncontrollably creates an imbalance... for example the concrete bunkering versus layered mass armour problem I'm having.
A basic example is making two types of destroyers, one that is slow but has low fuel consumption and is an off-base defensive vessel that escorts a mining base while it's in a dangerous region, and then moves on when the region is no longer dangerous (pirates cleared, for example), while another destroyer is faster, more lightly armoured, and designed to engage and retreat, but used more fuel doing so.
Another simple example might be having escort sized vehicles which have very high thrusters and turn rates, low weapons and armour to keep weight down, while having orders to retreat the instant they're attacked. Useless as one or two in a fleet, but form a wolf pack of say 10 or 20 and they become a formidable swarm that engages an enemy with guerilla style attack and retreat; death by a thousand pin jabs (yes, pricks is censored, but you get the idea).
The AI can't think like this and relies only on the single ship design structure provided for it for each hull type, which automatically gives the player an advantage.
A thread reader who I won't name in case they wish to remain anonymous (but you're welcome to respond if you wish - for now we'll call them "Bob") sent me a private message yesterday also along the lines of human player versus AI balancing. This was regarding item #33 in my development spreadsheet which is where I plan to make the late-game highest tech hyperdrive have the ability to fold space directly between origin and destination, resulting in almost instantaneous travel between points. "Bob" raised the very valid issue (known as "double dipping") where players would be able to exploit this feature by fitting ships both with this instant hyperdrive as well as a much faster-to-engage hypderdrive onto the same vessel, thereby bypassing the warm-up time for the space-folding hyperdrive. This is because the game uses the fastest speed, the fastest launch speed, and the highest energy consumption out of multiple different hyperdrives fitted to a vessel. "Bob" makes an excellent point, however my response is also that AI vs Human thinking is already very vastly different. If a player wants to "cheat" to beat the AI (which let's face it, is pretty lame and pointless), then you might as well do it by changing a setting the difficulty settings to super easy.
I was actually considering for awhile there making a special module that could be fitted to a ship which could be researched and would allow the player to fit it to their vessels. This module was going to be able to rapidly engage whatever hyperdrive they had installed... a kind of rapid trigger device... costly but clearly useful. In the end I decided not to create this component because the AI would have no way of fitting it, and this created a clear disadvantage that was actively ENCOURAGED by the SoS mod. Some players that didn't know about the double-dipping issue might use this cool new concept component and even be unaware that the AI was unable to match this ability. So... scrapped.
At the end of the day, someone that wants to cheat when playing against the computer player can do it in a number of ways that I can't control as part of the mod - for example by opening up the map editor and depriving the AI players of fuel resources on their home systems, or providing heaps of ideal planets, or making the distances between AI home worlds and nearby mining locations really large, etc.
So if a mod enables someone to alter the balance between themselves and the AI player(s) that is very different to it uncontrollably creates an imbalance... for example the concrete bunkering versus layered mass armour problem I'm having.
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IFailAtGaming
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RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
I thank for trying to keep me anonymous in this (seriously, how many people would do so?) and i'm very glad you're aware, and looking at your own explanation of it, I have to agree. Also your explanation also kind of exemplifies a problem with my own suggestion of varied fuel usages, while a player might have the idea of making, for instance, private ships fission powered, and possibly some fission powered escorts for convoys, while keeping their main strike force using fusion, while the AI would have no idea to do so. But again, this was a problem with the vanilla game, where to avoid fuel shortages players (at least the one I watched) would make private and public ships use different fuels, while the AI would likely use one or the other. It's something that can't really be fixed, and honestly would make the game worse by doing so. So it's probably for the best to follow your thoughts on this.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
Oh, hi Bob. [:D]
Yes I think there's no point limiting the options available to legit players that want to challenge themselves, due to the possible actions of players that want to cheat. They'll cheat regardless. All I'm doing is adding a feature that can be used both by legit players as well as exploited by cheaters using the double-dip exploit.
Meanwhile I am fast approaching a point where I'm going to release v0.2
Yes I think there's no point limiting the options available to legit players that want to challenge themselves, due to the possible actions of players that want to cheat. They'll cheat regardless. All I'm doing is adding a feature that can be used both by legit players as well as exploited by cheaters using the double-dip exploit.
Meanwhile I am fast approaching a point where I'm going to release v0.2
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
Alrighty then.
I've updated the first post of this thread to include release information. I will update this each time I've released a version. At this point in time I envision the following:
1) v0.1 (released pre-alpha)
2) v0.2 (about to be released alpha - express your interest in receiving a download link to this if you want it)
3) v0.3 (soon to be released beta - estimated delivery date some time mid to late July 2016)
4) v1.0 (not far off to be released first draft - estimated delivery date some time mid to late August 2016)
4) v2.0 (more distant improvements on the initially released mod - an as-yet unknown release date, will depend on feedback from v1.0)
Now the last thing holding me up from releasing v0.2 is bringing blank projects back into the research tree. Originally I was thinking that I'd use them to create item #73 in the Development Spreadsheet to include more phaser offshoot (new) weapons. But... more lasers... meh. Gotz heaps now. I will add more of all weapons EVENTUALLY, but for now there's a stack of lasers and phasers, so... then I thought I might as well use them to start laying the foundations of the new races I intend to develop. For now they'll be in the tree but isolated and non-functional ... expanded on in future releases.
So. Let's talk races.
Currently the mod uses the Picard Era Star Trek mod as most readers of this thread would already know.
I intend to replace all of these with my own custom races, including of course characters, ship designs, ship and base graphics, etc etc. For now I'll just consider the concepts to use the current Blank Projects as place-holders for race-specific techs.
Initial race ideas (your input at this point is very welcome):
1) Relateable ... as in... we as humans can relate to the technology. Not necessarily humanoid although most likely. It'd be nice to do something a bit different though. This is the race that I've been developing so far. All components and research in the current mod is based around this race. Some of it will be shared with other races.
2) Biotechnological. This race will be one of the first truly alien races that I develop. It will have base technologies that are "upgraded" or "evolved" throughout the tech tree. These evolutions will be expensive to cater for the fact that the humanoid techs will have more options to evolve (at least, to begin with). Weapons will focus on torpedos of living projectiles of hull-devouring miniature creatures, area weapons of telekinesis (based on graviton weapons) and ion weapons... including an inbuilt natural immunity to ion weapons due to their organic as opposed to metallic structure.
3) God-like race of not-quite-physical beings based on the biblical references of "Nephilim" who were supposedly the fathers of giants and heros of old by interbreeding with humans. Don't worry, that's as much of a biblical reference as it will have... the focus will be on their mastery of controlling the physical world with power of thought and belief... envisioning changes and technologies in an almost magical way. Power of the mind, effectively. Weapons will focus on area weapons and beam weapons, defenses will focus on the disruption of other races' technologies such as highly reactive armor and powerful shields and point defense weapons.
4)Machine race representing a single integrated organism with many individual aspects all serving the same consciousness. Think Borg minus the enslavement factor. Like Borg, this race will encompass both mechanical and organic aspects, however these aspects are all created internally from base components, as opposed to augmenting and enslaving other living creatures. Instead other living creatures are broken down into their constituent parts such as proteins, and recombined into other "useful" components. This race's weapons will focus on lasers, phasers, missiles, and beams, with very little focus on wasteful area weapons. I want the tech to look really extremely advanced but at the same time have a really mechanical look and feel to it. Not all dark and tubes and such like Borg, more structure and well-designed use of physical space. More compact and high-tech.
Any ideas are welcome and will be credited to the author in the final mod release.
This is the really exciting part for me. I'm very much looking forward to bringing this aspect to reality in the Beta version 0.3 which I expect to be able to release some time around mid-July to August, depending on how I go with graphics production which I expect to be the most time-consuming part of it.
I've updated the first post of this thread to include release information. I will update this each time I've released a version. At this point in time I envision the following:
1) v0.1 (released pre-alpha)
2) v0.2 (about to be released alpha - express your interest in receiving a download link to this if you want it)
3) v0.3 (soon to be released beta - estimated delivery date some time mid to late July 2016)
4) v1.0 (not far off to be released first draft - estimated delivery date some time mid to late August 2016)
4) v2.0 (more distant improvements on the initially released mod - an as-yet unknown release date, will depend on feedback from v1.0)
Now the last thing holding me up from releasing v0.2 is bringing blank projects back into the research tree. Originally I was thinking that I'd use them to create item #73 in the Development Spreadsheet to include more phaser offshoot (new) weapons. But... more lasers... meh. Gotz heaps now. I will add more of all weapons EVENTUALLY, but for now there's a stack of lasers and phasers, so... then I thought I might as well use them to start laying the foundations of the new races I intend to develop. For now they'll be in the tree but isolated and non-functional ... expanded on in future releases.
So. Let's talk races.
Currently the mod uses the Picard Era Star Trek mod as most readers of this thread would already know.
I intend to replace all of these with my own custom races, including of course characters, ship designs, ship and base graphics, etc etc. For now I'll just consider the concepts to use the current Blank Projects as place-holders for race-specific techs.
Initial race ideas (your input at this point is very welcome):
1) Relateable ... as in... we as humans can relate to the technology. Not necessarily humanoid although most likely. It'd be nice to do something a bit different though. This is the race that I've been developing so far. All components and research in the current mod is based around this race. Some of it will be shared with other races.
2) Biotechnological. This race will be one of the first truly alien races that I develop. It will have base technologies that are "upgraded" or "evolved" throughout the tech tree. These evolutions will be expensive to cater for the fact that the humanoid techs will have more options to evolve (at least, to begin with). Weapons will focus on torpedos of living projectiles of hull-devouring miniature creatures, area weapons of telekinesis (based on graviton weapons) and ion weapons... including an inbuilt natural immunity to ion weapons due to their organic as opposed to metallic structure.
3) God-like race of not-quite-physical beings based on the biblical references of "Nephilim" who were supposedly the fathers of giants and heros of old by interbreeding with humans. Don't worry, that's as much of a biblical reference as it will have... the focus will be on their mastery of controlling the physical world with power of thought and belief... envisioning changes and technologies in an almost magical way. Power of the mind, effectively. Weapons will focus on area weapons and beam weapons, defenses will focus on the disruption of other races' technologies such as highly reactive armor and powerful shields and point defense weapons.
4)Machine race representing a single integrated organism with many individual aspects all serving the same consciousness. Think Borg minus the enslavement factor. Like Borg, this race will encompass both mechanical and organic aspects, however these aspects are all created internally from base components, as opposed to augmenting and enslaving other living creatures. Instead other living creatures are broken down into their constituent parts such as proteins, and recombined into other "useful" components. This race's weapons will focus on lasers, phasers, missiles, and beams, with very little focus on wasteful area weapons. I want the tech to look really extremely advanced but at the same time have a really mechanical look and feel to it. Not all dark and tubes and such like Borg, more structure and well-designed use of physical space. More compact and high-tech.
Any ideas are welcome and will be credited to the author in the final mod release.
This is the really exciting part for me. I'm very much looking forward to bringing this aspect to reality in the Beta version 0.3 which I expect to be able to release some time around mid-July to August, depending on how I go with graphics production which I expect to be the most time-consuming part of it.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
Great ideas, am looking forward for this incredible mod
It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly, than to live somebody else's life with perfection.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
Thanks LordMM. I'm uploading version 0.2 right now... I expect it to be online tomorrow. Anyone wanting a link please let me know... this one is much more refined than v0.1...
I'm now working no version 0.3 while v0.2 is live and being tested by anyone interested.
Version 0.3 works on the functional mod by replacing all the races with the base-release races. I might make others in the future, but for now I'm going to focus on the few I mention above.
The first two I'm working on are the humanoid one and the biological/parasite one.
I've started with the biological one's race and character images, and then I'll move to make their custom technology which is already in v0.2's research tree in a very basic and locked place-holder form. It will be expanded significantly in v0.3 of course.
So far I've got the race image and several character images.
I've decided to call the race the Sedt'at, after a similar alien race I created in a short-story series I released a few years back called the Malreichi Events, on a private forum which I have since taken offline. The images I'm using sourced from various online sources. In the release game Sea of Stars all images will be custom-created for the game, but for the sake of this not-for-profit mod I am using public-domain images.
Some of the character images (might adjust roles assigned to each) are as follows:
Main racial image.
Colony Governer image.
Troop General image.
Scientist image.
These guys will have carapaced organic looking ships that fire tracking projectiles that are small drone creatures that chase down and impact the hull of their target, and then bore their way into the hull and detonate in an acidic explosion that destroys whatever it has bored into. The entire race is a great hoste of creatures all representing "limbs" of a single organism. They will have powerful armor and unique shields that are swarms of intercepting "suicide" creatures which intercept incoming weapons from enemy vessels, taking the brunt of the impact before their host vessel does.
Ships will have strong EMP weapons which are electrical discharges from Electrocytic Organs just like an electric eel but on a much grander scale. Conversely their own susceptibility to Ion weapons will be very small due to the make-up of their bodies not being anywhere near as conductive as metal technology is to electromagnetic pulses...
They will also use some limited projectile weapons which represent huge caustic shells fired through enemy shields to directly impact the vessel (it will use Rail Gun weapon settings).
Additionally they will employ telekinetic blasts that rupture and shatter enemy vessels and bypass all shields and armour. These weapons will have great range but will (until evolved during mid-to-late game) be quite weak. They will, of course, use the Graviton weapon settings).
They will have long-range boarding capabilities also, sending larger versions of the acid-exploding hull-borers, which don't blow up once they're inside the ship but instead move through the vessel consuming and slaughtering the crews until the vessel is brought under control of the Sedt'at by having their troops operate the vessel by parasitically controlling the crews' bodies and therefore the interface with their vessel.
They will have no access to energy beam weapons or lasers or phasers. I just don't see how these weapons could be achieved realistically by a biological entity.
The Sedt'at are highly aggressive, very intelligent, and their main goal is to spread, dominate, consume, and control. Their racial goals and technological options reflect this.
In short, these guys will be a scary bunch of dudes. It is recommended to eradicate them as soon as you find them, because otherwise you can count on them doing it to you.
I'm now working no version 0.3 while v0.2 is live and being tested by anyone interested.
Version 0.3 works on the functional mod by replacing all the races with the base-release races. I might make others in the future, but for now I'm going to focus on the few I mention above.
The first two I'm working on are the humanoid one and the biological/parasite one.
I've started with the biological one's race and character images, and then I'll move to make their custom technology which is already in v0.2's research tree in a very basic and locked place-holder form. It will be expanded significantly in v0.3 of course.
So far I've got the race image and several character images.
I've decided to call the race the Sedt'at, after a similar alien race I created in a short-story series I released a few years back called the Malreichi Events, on a private forum which I have since taken offline. The images I'm using sourced from various online sources. In the release game Sea of Stars all images will be custom-created for the game, but for the sake of this not-for-profit mod I am using public-domain images.
Some of the character images (might adjust roles assigned to each) are as follows:
Main racial image.
Colony Governer image.
Troop General image.
Scientist image.
These guys will have carapaced organic looking ships that fire tracking projectiles that are small drone creatures that chase down and impact the hull of their target, and then bore their way into the hull and detonate in an acidic explosion that destroys whatever it has bored into. The entire race is a great hoste of creatures all representing "limbs" of a single organism. They will have powerful armor and unique shields that are swarms of intercepting "suicide" creatures which intercept incoming weapons from enemy vessels, taking the brunt of the impact before their host vessel does.
Ships will have strong EMP weapons which are electrical discharges from Electrocytic Organs just like an electric eel but on a much grander scale. Conversely their own susceptibility to Ion weapons will be very small due to the make-up of their bodies not being anywhere near as conductive as metal technology is to electromagnetic pulses...
They will also use some limited projectile weapons which represent huge caustic shells fired through enemy shields to directly impact the vessel (it will use Rail Gun weapon settings).
Additionally they will employ telekinetic blasts that rupture and shatter enemy vessels and bypass all shields and armour. These weapons will have great range but will (until evolved during mid-to-late game) be quite weak. They will, of course, use the Graviton weapon settings).
They will have long-range boarding capabilities also, sending larger versions of the acid-exploding hull-borers, which don't blow up once they're inside the ship but instead move through the vessel consuming and slaughtering the crews until the vessel is brought under control of the Sedt'at by having their troops operate the vessel by parasitically controlling the crews' bodies and therefore the interface with their vessel.
They will have no access to energy beam weapons or lasers or phasers. I just don't see how these weapons could be achieved realistically by a biological entity.
The Sedt'at are highly aggressive, very intelligent, and their main goal is to spread, dominate, consume, and control. Their racial goals and technological options reflect this.
In short, these guys will be a scary bunch of dudes. It is recommended to eradicate them as soon as you find them, because otherwise you can count on them doing it to you.
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
They do consume fuel, but very very slowly.
Fuel is either Uranium or Hydrogen (or Nitrogen in the really super-advanced reactor late-game), for Fission (nuclear) and Fusion reactors respectively. They produce large amounts of energy from a single unit of fuel, to make it a bit more realistic from a scientifically accurate point of view. Nuclear reactors on naval vessels can burn their fuel for years at a time without needing to be refueled.
I have found that I am still refueling fleets reasonably often - probably about every 3 game years... and that is for 8 units of Uranium per ship... The problem is that the fuel to energy ratio is so small that the research tree shows it as 0, as your screen shot shows. However it is still burning it at the rate I've set in the game. Play for say 10 game years and you'll see your fleets need refueling once or twice in that time.
I do however agree that the fuel rate for both impulse and hyperdrive engines needs to be increased... maybe doubled. I'll test it out and see if it is better.
The early constructor ship is a ship design that needs improvement. Wack another fission reactor or two on it in the designs menu and its warp speed is much higher. I'll do that in the designs for the next release.
I have a problem with this, while a nuclear reactor needs little in the way of refueling, the Newtonian nature of the engines means they do need an additional fuel: Reaction mass.
Sure, the game engine is not capable of differentiating between both, but perhaps it would be better to shorten the refuel cycles to emulate the need to resupply reaction mass
RE: Sea Of Stars - development thread
ORIGINAL: Drybreeze
Thank you for your feedback!
Yes the bunkering is annoying. Even when I make it a pre-warp tech and another tech as a higher level (0, or 1) and they're both researched, it still picks the obsolete concrete bunkering as the most up-to-date armour and clads ships and stations with it.
I have done everything I can think of to have it work properly but it's just not playing ball, so I might remove it and possibly implement it later when I've figured out what's going on there. Maybe when the reactive setting to armour setting ratio is higher it considers it a more powerful armour, so picks it. Dunno. A fight for another day.
Regarding reactors, I have doubled their fuel consumption, which works well, but I think I'll double it again. Also I've made all thrusters and hyperdrives consume more energy, so therefore fuel is burned more quickly to replenish this energy. In my opinion and the opinion of a few "ship design how to" threads I've read, solar panels don't belong on a ship anyway, which I agree with. None of my custom designs use them, except Garrison Destroyers, which I use as mobile station defenses... slow and lumbering and the solar panels prevent them from having to periodically refuel and abandon their posts.
I will adopt your idea about Hydrogen (Fusion) reactors burning more fuel than Uranium (Fission) reactors... I like that idea, thank you.
I will be releasing another significantly more refined version soon (as shown in my development spreadsheet). I will release it as a folder so that further updates are only updated graphics or text files here and there, drastically reducing the download on updates... if you're interested I'll provide the link.
Thanks again for your input!
On the Concrete Bunkering (CB) issue, perhaps the solution would be to make armor techs unlock metal and CB at the samwe tech level (reasoning, the reinforcing of the concrete would be dependent of metallurgic technology) that way you have two components born out of the same research and might be enough to trick the AI.
Of course, the problem is that we don't know how the AI evaluates components and the problem might be there (and if so, probably unsolvable without touching the engine beyond what modding can do)