Bacon Mod

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: LongshotX

I don't see the link or file to download this file in the first post. Am I being daft?

Each update has a link under the date of the update. Look for the last update under
Update 2018-07-24

And welcome to the Bacon Mod.

[paraboxx_slith]

Soooo, the Boskara Hive, one of the top five empires in my game, just offered me their homeworld for enacting some random trade sanctions. Is this expected behavior or something that might be the result of the numbers being read wrong from BaconSettings when I first started the game?

Another thing I don't understand is !infrastructure. At all. Am I supposed to do anything with it? Is the AI doing something with it? Is it automated for me? I had only 1% of galaxy GDP while being one of the larger empires around. Is this related?

Apart from that, I'm going to quit this run again. As much as I like the early game, I really dislike how I have to babysit everything wrt refueling when the empire gets stretched out a bit. Most of my refueling points along major routes are unused since it seems all ships just fuel up before and after missions, but never during. That seems to be an issue I've always run into when playing the game and made me quit.

[sotthata]

Yeah, paraboxx. I agree that refueling in this game is garbage. If I tell you to refuel, I mean refuel. I don't mean, well, kinda refuel as much as you can and then call it quits.

And since fuel is the single most important resource, your gas haulers should have fuel priority, followed by your military ships, followed by everything else that's yours, followed by foreign ships. Because without fuel, you have no military. Or more specifically, you'll have someone else's military.

Modding fuel harvesting and storage to high rates helps, and still allows some strategic gameplay by taking out enemy refueling stations.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: paraboxx_slith

Soooo, the Boskara Hive, one of the top five empires in my game, just offered me their homeworld for enacting some random trade sanctions. Is this expected behavior or something that might be the result of the numbers being read wrong from BaconSettings when I first started the game?

Another thing I don't understand is !infrastructure. At all. Am I supposed to do anything with it? Is the AI doing something with it? Is it automated for me? I had only 1% of galaxy GDP while being one of the larger empires around. Is this related?

Apart from that, I'm going to quit this run again. As much as I like the early game, I really dislike how I have to babysit everything wrt refueling when the empire gets stretched out a bit. Most of my refueling points along major routes are unused since it seems all ships just fuel up before and after missions, but never during. That seems to be an issue I've always run into when playing the game and made me quit.

Hi. When you say 'Homeworld" I assume the planet named after the race but not necessarily their capital, right? It is my understanding that a race NEVER trades or sells their capital. I once used the editor to give myself one billion credits to test this out and even a crappy empire would not sell their capital for any amount of money (they had other planets too so it wasn't their only one).
That being said, I think what may have happened is this: Assuming you started this game at lest one version of the mod ago, when ther ewas no cap on infrastructure, some of the AI races probably went wild with infrastructure and that raised the global money supply. The calculated value of thigns seems to account for inflation and so that trade sanctions were over valued. With the cap on infrastructure now you should not see that again. I've only once saw the Ai offer a planet in trade for trade sanctions and it was a pretty crappy planet.

Infrastructure was my attempt to find something for the player to do with excess money. Some games I'd have 3 or 4 or 10 million sitting around and nothing to burn it on. It's good to raise happiness after conquering a planet. The default setting in the settings file may make it too good. Perhaps lowering the durability a bit will make it more balanced.

[RogerBacon]

Version 1.74 released.
Added tags so users can define what a fighter bay caries by name.
In the settings file you have

fighterBayLabel=fighter
bomberBayLabel=bomber
mixedBayLabel=assault

When a ship builds fighters it will build 4 fighters if the component name contains the fighter label, 4 bombers if the name contains the bomber label and 2 of each if the name contains the mixed label.
Hopefully this will make it easier for people to play with the vanilla fighter/bomber mix. For users that are happy with the split bays you don't have to change anything. Note that the game checks the labels in order so you can't have your mixed bay called "FighterBomber bay" because the game would math it to "Fighter" unless you changed the fighter label to something else.

Also, some minor fixes.

Also, one new command from the Bacon input window that I will reveal shortly.

[elvendeathknight]

In my current game, I’m using gravity wells for the first time. It is a different experience.

I had the bug where a system is not visible even though an explorer is there. I tried moving the ship. I also tried CTRL F. In the end, my explorer got killed by a kaltor.

Thanks for the new labels about starfighters !

[StarLab]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

Version 1.74 released.
Added tags so users can define what a fighter bay caries by name.
In the settings file you have

fighterBayLabel=fighter
bomberBayLabel=bomber
mixedBayLabel=assault

When a ship builds fighters it will build 4 fighters if the component name contains the fighter label, 4 bombers if the name contains the bomber label and 2 of each if the name contains the mixed label.
Hopefully this will make it easier for people to play with the vanilla fighter/bomber mix. For users that are happy with the split bays you don't have to change anything. Note that the game checks the labels in order so you can't have your mixed bay called "FighterBomber bay" because the game would math it to "Fighter" unless you changed the fighter label to something else.

Also, some minor fixes.

Also, one new command from the Bacon input window that I will reveal shortly.

Well poop! I guess I should have checked this thread before recording today. Oh well, I'll upgrade before next recording session. [:D]

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: ArchMike

In my current game, I’m using gravity wells for the first time. It is a different experience.

I had the bug where a system is not visible even though an explorer is there.

Sometimes that happens. I have a check in there where it will fix itself after a few seconds (usually less than 10 on normal speed).
When you used ctrl-F did you get a message saying your ship was in or outside of the system? You did have the ship selected when hitting ctrl-F, right?

[elvendeathknight]

If I remember well, I had a message in the top box saying the ship was in the system. I was playing at 4x, so maybe I was not patient enough and got killed by the kaltor before the fix got applied. I pretty sure I had the ship selected before hitting ctrl-F, but it was the first time I got that bug. If it happens again, I will save my game and be more thorough in my testing.

Anyway, it was a rather small annoyance. Thanks again for your mod and your support [:D]

[paraboxx_slith]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

Hi. When you say 'Homeworld" I assume the planet named after the race but not necessarily their capital, right?

Nope, that was their capital. Because right after the trade I owned all their ships and got the wipe-out-an-empire achievement. But as I said, I started the game with non-US regional settings so all the numbers in BaconSettings were interpreted horribly wrong.

Infrastructure was my attempt to find something for the player to do with excess money. Some games I'd have 3 or 4 or 10 million sitting around and nothing to burn it on. It's good to raise happiness after conquering a planet. The default setting in the settings file may make it too good. Perhaps lowering the durability a bit will make it more balanced.

Ok that explains what you wanted to achieve with it. What I still don't know is if I have any disadvantages vs the AI if I ignore the feature while it is active. I think the docs could use some hint if the AI is using infrastructure spending and also if there is any automation for my own empire for it. Because if AI uses it and I don't I will fall behind. Right?

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: paraboxx_slith

Ok that explains what you wanted to achieve with it. What I still don't know is if I have any disadvantages vs the AI if I ignore the feature while it is active. I think the docs could use some hint if the AI is using infrastructure spending and also if there is any automation for my own empire for it. Because if AI uses it and I don't I will fall behind. Right?

If you have it enabled and you don't use it then you might consider yourself at a slight disadvantage as there is no provision for the AI to use it for your empire. However I wouldn't consider it a real disadvantage because the AI won't be very smart about what planet it uses it on. If it uses it on a low development world the only read advantage will be the increase in happiness and that's not worth the cost in my opinion. You can see how much the Ai is investing by selecting one of their planets on the map and hitting ctrl-enter if you are really curious.

[Smellfungus]

Hi Roger, thanks for your mod, you've done an excellent job! I've had a number of issues I've mostly managed to resolve myself, although I've now lost ctrl+p functionality. I get notifications that spies have been captured and ransomed, but tbe dialogue just doesn't open. Unfortunately, I don't know which change precipitated this or if it's unconnected to my fixes. I believe it may be something to do with turning off gravity wells (which mostly fixed my issue of intermittent 3-5 second freezing to my surprise as it happened even when paused and/or menus were open). I'm pretty much stumped now. Any other info that might help to diagnose the issue?

Also, if playing without Bacon World then only fighters are produced by AI. Doesn't affect me but thought it worth mentioning.

Edit: One other thing - occasionally !spy stops working. It's just happened to me now, it may be to do with alt+tab from full screen, though I don't see why. That being said it seems all keyboard controls only respect left ctrl, not right. I doubt this is intentional.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Smellfungus

Hi Roger, thanks for your mod, you've done an excellent job! I've had a number of issues I've mostly managed to resolve myself, although I've now lost ctrl+p functionality. I get notifications that spies have been captured and ransomed, but tbe dialogue just doesn't open. Unfortunately, I don't know which change precipitated this or if it's unconnected to my fixes. I believe it may be something to do with turning off gravity wells (which mostly fixed my issue of intermittent 3-5 second freezing to my surprise as it happened even when paused and/or menus were open). I'm pretty much stumped now. Any other info that might help to diagnose the issue?

Also, if playing without Bacon World then only fighters are produced by AI. Doesn't affect me but thought it worth mentioning.

Edit: One other thing - occasionally !spy stops working. It's just happened to me now, it may be to do with alt+tab from full screen, though I don't see why. That being said it seems all keyboard controls only respect left ctrl, not right. I doubt this is intentional.

Hi. I'm gald you are enjoying the mod. A few thoughts based on issues previous posters have mentioned...

Is your keybord setting set for English/ US localization? I just found out that users in countries where they use the dot like we use the comma in numbers were getting totally screwed when the BaconSettings were read in. It might affect your right alt, ctrl keys as well. I use the right keys often since I am left handed and use the mouse in my left hand.

The most common issue for the prison form appearing to not open is because its already open and BEHIND the game window. This can happen when you open in and the game is not paused and then the game pops up a notification which brings focus back to the main window. Try using alt-tab to see if the prison form is open and then bring it to the front.

Regardless of whether or not you have added bomber bays the AI will always use a 50/50 split of fighters and bombers.

If !spy is not sending a spy out it could be because your setting for % of spies to keep on counter-iontel is too high. Or it could be because none of your available spies has the espionage skill.

[jurassic_v]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon


Is your keybord setting set for English/ US localization? I just found out that users in countries where they use the dot like we use the comma in numbers were getting totally screwed when the BaconSettings were read in. It might affect your right alt, ctrl keys as well. I use the right keys often since I am left handed and use the mouse in my left hand.

Hi! looks like this was the problem with my games as well. i did a little bit of testing and the problem seems to go away if I change all "." to "," in decimal numbers in baconsettings and put my localization to us/eng. when I just changed my localization nothing happened.

[Smellfungus]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

Hi. I'm gald you are enjoying the mod. A few thoughts based on issues previous posters have mentioned...

Is your keybord setting set for English/ US localization? I just found out that users in countries where they use the dot like we use the comma in numbers were getting totally screwed when the BaconSettings were read in. It might affect your right alt, ctrl keys as well. I use the right keys often since I am left handed and use the mouse in my left hand.

The most common issue for the prison form appearing to not open is because its already open and BEHIND the game window. This can happen when you open in and the game is not paused and then the game pops up a notification which brings focus back to the main window. Try using alt-tab to see if the prison form is open and then bring it to the front.

Regardless of whether or not you have added bomber bays the AI will always use a 50/50 split of fighters and bombers.

If !spy is not sending a spy out it could be because your setting for % of spies to keep on counter-iontel is too high. Or it could be because none of your available spies has the espionage skill.

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, my keyboard is Norwegian but set to English. I'm not sure if that could be the reason or how to go about fixing it if so, but it's no big deal for me.

Regarding prisoners it seems that the dialogue box will only open after your first capture of an enemy spy. I'm not 100% sure, but in my latest game it's working correctly after said event. Previously I'd checked to see if the form was opening behind the main window but that wasn't the case. In one game I managed to have three open at once all with different ransom values, I didn't think to test it at that time but there may be an exploit there.

Since I got everything set up correctly going back to double check will be painful, but I know my auto designed carriers only ever held fighters so I assumed that AI empires only had fighters, too. I read somewhere that I'd need to manually update all the default designs to include bomber bays for the AI to use them, is that not the case?

When !spy works for me it sends out the best agents first but it will happily send out all of them if I keep ordering. My worst agent had the Corrupt trait and their only skill was in counter espionage, they were the last option but !spy sent them out just like I wanted. I was hoping they'd get caught and eventually turned so my enemies would have that liability, but instead they were caught by internal intelligence and I got a pretty sweet agent in exchange (I play Ketarov).

I've not been able to find a single cause for !spy failing, but it always does after 1-4 years and reload/restart doesn't fix it. I have spy automation turned off and always plunder the pirates for all their sweet tech from game start, so !spy is an absolute dream. The only improvements I can think of is checking to see what tech other agents are hunting to increase spread, and when faced with multiple empires to steal from choosing: pirates > hostile empires > least friendly. Not sure if the latter is already in effect as it's a rare day I have a choice about who to plunder!

Edit: !spy is working again for no known reason, and it's targeting Ancient Guardians. That kind of needs to not happen. [X(]

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Smellfungus
Since I got everything set up correctly going back to double check will be painful, but I know my auto designed carriers only ever held fighters so I assumed that AI empires only had fighters, too. I read somewhere that I'd need to manually update all the default designs to include bomber bays for the AI to use them, is that not the case?

Edit: !spy is working again for no known reason, and it's targeting Ancient Guardians. That kind of needs to not happen. [X(]

The Ai always uses a 50/50 split of fighters and bombers. Since Bomber bays are the same TYPE of component as fighter bays there is no way to set ship templates to design one or the other. Thus I made sure the Ai would always build 50/50 like before.

The !spy command targets the empire you have selected in the diplomacy panel (F5 I believe). If you use it from another screen it will remember the last selected empire.

[Kadaban]

Hey Roger. Really like your mod, but sadly I'm having a bit of a problem with it as well.

First thing: shipMarkupFactor
The description states that

This is a factor in determining ship purchase price. Defaults are 5.0 and 2.5 for pirates. It will not affect maintenance costs.

Well, thing is: it does modify maintenance costs. As I only just registered and can't post links I have to describe the situation. I have started the same mod pack (bacon, retreatue, das chrome - it's linked in the mod forum) once with 1x markup and then with 10x markup. The ship (Escort, size 233, standard design that came with the mod) with the same design had the purchase cost correctly scaled according to the markup value (from 452 to 4518 - rounding error I assume) , but the maintenance increases as well (from 259 to 910 which isn't 10x).
Is that working as intended and the description in the config is just wrong? I'd love to increase the shipmarkup for purchases but as I play pirate games as well, there's no way I can handle the increased maintenance at the start where you're grasping for every straw.

Second thing: Gravity wells
They are a good idea and I like the added complexity they bring, but they introduce a very weird bug when enabled. A "good bunch" (feels like 20%) are sometimes going nuts with the calculations to escape said gravity well and aim for 0,0 in the galaxy map. I know this has ben brought up before, but in the games I played it even happened with constructors that are currently immobile while building something. Also, and that's why I said "nuts", when this happens the FPS usually drops to an abysmally low 5-10 FPS. Sadly this also happens without the gravity well enabled (I had to disable it or a "whole" fleet with 50 ships would freeze the game for minutes) but at a far lower rate.

Third thing: Build order screen only counts non state ships
When I open the build order screen and look at the amount of ships and the recommendations (not really caring about the recommendations) the game only counts the non state ships. In my current game I have 13 gas mining ships but only 1 shows up in there and I only have 1 of them as a real non state ship which I have no control over. While I like being able to command around them manually, this feels weird and having to mark them all in the ships and bases screen just to count them is a bit tedious.

Last little thing: When you start the game with your modified exe it pops up the mod reminder twice. Can you reduce it to once or at least make the message nonmodal so the game at boots up while displaying the message? I sure as hell don't want to derive you of your work.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Kadaban

Hey Roger. Really like your mod, but sadly I'm having a bit of a problem with it as well.

First thing: shipMarkupFactor
The description states that

This is a factor in determining ship purchase price. Defaults are 5.0 and 2.5 for pirates. It will not affect maintenance costs.

Well, thing is: it does modify maintenance costs. As I only just registered and can't post links I have to describe the situation. I have started the same mod pack (bacon, retreatue, das chrome - it's linked in the mod forum) once with 1x markup and then with 10x markup. The ship (Escort, size 233, standard design that came with the mod) with the same design had the purchase cost correctly scaled according to the markup value (from 452 to 4518 - rounding error I assume) , but the maintenance increases as well (from 259 to 910 which isn't 10x).
Is that working as intended and the description in the config is just wrong? I'd love to increase the shipmarkup for purchases but as I play pirate games as well, there's no way I can handle the increased maintenance at the start where you're grasping for every straw.

Second thing: Gravity wells
They are a good idea and I like the added complexity they bring, but they introduce a very weird bug when enabled. A "good bunch" (feels like 20%) are sometimes going nuts with the calculations to escape said gravity well and aim for 0,0 in the galaxy map. I know this has ben brought up before, but in the games I played it even happened with constructors that are currently immobile while building something. Also, and that's why I said "nuts", when this happens the FPS usually drops to an abysmally low 5-10 FPS. Sadly this also happens without the gravity well enabled (I had to disable it or a "whole" fleet with 50 ships would freeze the game for minutes) but at a far lower rate.

Third thing: Build order screen only counts non state ships
When I open the build order screen and look at the amount of ships and the recommendations (not really caring about the recommendations) the game only counts the non state ships. In my current game I have 13 gas mining ships but only 1 shows up in there and I only have 1 of them as a real non state ship which I have no control over. While I like being able to command around them manually, this feels weird and having to mark them all in the ships and bases screen just to count them is a bit tedious.

Last little thing: When you start the game with your modified exe it pops up the mod reminder twice. Can you reduce it to once or at least make the message nonmodal so the game at boots up while displaying the message? I sure as hell don't want to derive you of your work.

1 I'll look at maintenance costs for increased ship prices again. I usually play at about 4 times normal cost and I didn't notice increased maintenance. I've been playing pirate a lot lately and I know what you mean about being strapped for cash early on.
By the way, since you are playing the Bacon + retreat + das combined mod and playing pirates anyway, be sure to check out my latest scenario "Pirates of Jupiter".

2 The ships shouldn't actually GO to 0,0 but when inactive (like a construction ship building something and waiting for supplies its short of) it will draw the lines pointing to 0,0. The slowness is tied to the range circles. If you turn off range circles it doesn't show the vector lines when zoomed all the way in and that should help a lot. That's why range circles used to default to off.

3 I'm looking in to a way to include state version count in the advisor suggestions on the build screen.

[Edit]
OK, I looked at ship markup factor. For empires, everything works as described in the BaconSettings file. For pirates its a little more involved. Apparently, pirates have an additional surcharge to their maintenance that empires don't have. It's based on the tech cost setting when you create a galaxy and also multiplied by the shipMarkupFactorPirates.
Additionally it seems when ship price is calculated it is multiplied by shipMarkupFactor for empires and by shipMarkupFactorPirates for pirates as one would expect. However when maintenance cost is calculated it is divided by shipMarkupFactor regardless of whether or not the ship is empire or pirate. This might be a bug in the original game or a design feature. So a pirate’s default maintenance without changing any values would be 1/2 an empire’s maintenance plus the surcharge. Raising the shipMarkupFactor by itself will slightly lower pirate maintenance costs while raising the tech cost or shipMarkupFactorPirates will raise their maintenance costs.
Since the Bacon setting values are read in every time you load a game you can play around with the numbers until you have something you like.

[sotthata]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon
2 The ships shouldn't actually GO to 0,0 but when inactive (like a construction ship building something and waiting for supplies its short of) it will draw the lines pointing to 0,0. The slowness is tied to the range circles. If you turn off range circles it doesn't show the vector lines when zoomed all the way in and that should help a lot. That's why range circles used to default to off.

Ahh, but they do sometimes. I've posted about this in the past. I was vindicated when I was watching Larry Monte's Bacon Mod series... and episode back from late October IIRC; he had one that was heading off (yellow-line) to 0,0. In my case, I believe it was related to "Explore Sector" and it going to a black hole first. And for Larry, I think he did do explore sector w/ a black hole in it. (But don't quote me on that. He didn't notice until an episode or two later.)

Edit: And it has happened again in Larry's series. He noticed in Ep026 at time index 8:45

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Kadaban

Hey Roger. Really like your mod, but sadly I'm having a bit of a problem with it as well.


Third thing: Build order screen only counts non state ships
When I open the build order screen and look at the amount of ships and the recommendations (not really caring about the recommendations) the game only counts the non state ships. In my current game I have 13 gas mining ships but only 1 shows up in there and I only have 1 of them as a real non state ship which I have no control over. While I like being able to command around them manually, this feels weird and having to mark them all in the ships and bases screen just to count them is a bit tedious.

I've modified that screen to now count both private and state versions of the ships in your empire. It will be in the next version.


Also, I've fixed a bug that would cause the prison form to not open if one of your spies was being held by an empire that you wipe out.