Bacon Mod

[RogerBacon]

Go fly a kite! No please don't. It's so boring.

So its recently come to my attention that "kiting" is both super effective and super boring in this game. "Kiting" is where you have faster ships with longer ranged weapons and you just string your opponent along hitting him until he's dead. You don't even need any shields or armor on your ship because, with a little micro-management, he'll never get in range.
In Das's combined mod this strategy is especially effective since the missiles have been extended to an uber-powerful range 1200. (I lowered them to 400 in my mod). Combine this with the fact that missiles don't lose damage over range like other weapons and there is little reason to research anything else.

So, I thought about missiles. They have a role but it shouldn't be to make all other weapons obsolete. In Starfleet Battles missiles, called drones, are mostly used to soak up enemy phasors and rarely hit. Of course if they do hit they do good damage, which is why you make sure to allocate enough phasors to shoot them down.

In the next version of the Bacon Mod there will be a setting to allow beams and point defenses to intercept missiles. Of course with enough missiles or enough ships you can still overwhelm your target but kiting will be much harder now. I'll put the details in the readme as usual.

[elvendeathknight]

Cool !

[Retreat1970]

Unsure about beams as PD since beam races will have an advantage. All races research PD though.

[Hattori Hanzo]

a welcomed change: kiting is too easy and yes, deadly boring after a while

[RogerBacon]

Version 1.75 Released

Additions
Ship targeting restrictions: A ship (or fleet) can be given a targeting restriction to avoid targeting certail types of targets. The command is notarget [type] where type can be any of:
Bases
Military
Stronger
Faster
Enter with no parameter to clear the setting. While the setting can be given to a fleet that just passes the setting to each ship in the fleet. There is no setting for the fleet so if you add ships to the fleet later you should reissue the setting. You can check a ship’s setting with Ctrl-Enter.

PointDefense and Missiles: With this option set to true in the settings file point defense and beam weapons can intercept missiles. The point defense weapons will fire their animation but the beam weapons won’t. Instead I added a small animation to show the missile has been shot down. The interception isn’t 100% and there is a myopic zone if you get too close. Also there is a bug that sometimes allows missiles to insta-hit their target regardless of point defense. It’s kinda rare. Maybe I can fix it but until then it’s a balance “feature”.

Prioritize troopships Bases above a planet will prioritize targeting troopships. In vanilla DWU troopships that did not have weapons were ignored by the AI allowing cheap tactics of slipping invasions through untouched.

Changes:
The name prefix for bases you don't want building ships was changed from # to -- since the # is reserved for fleet commands and it made searching for a base impossible if the base started with #.

[DasTactic]

Great additions Roger.

The kiting with missiles is something I actually like with my play style but this provides a lot more balance. Love that bases will now target troop ships. I guess the old exploit of invading planets while at peace by moving troop fleets over a planet will still be there. But that is a player-only exploit I think - unless an AI is blockading a planet then declares war.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Das123

Great additions Roger.

The kiting with missiles is something I actually like with my play style but this provides a lot more balance.

Yeah but if the AI was doing it against you you would hate it really quickly. Also, I love watching your videos but the battles are anti-climatic. It's like Apache gunships VS spearchuckers in Civilization.

Love that bases will now target troop ships.

Thank Larry for that one. I watched him use that trick in one of his videos and I was like, "WTF?" They don't target the transports at all?

[Retreat1970]

I'd like to argue something about missiles if I could. I don't play much anymore, but I do remember certain tactics I would use against them.

Armor - Double it and research it faster. Extra armor does help.

Engines - Go for proton faster than normal. I scripted RetreatUE so I know how fast the AI gets proton engines and it isn't fast. Get proton engines asap. Try and stay a step ahead.

Fighters - I would take fighters over missiles any day but that's my choice.

Missiles - Get your own I guess.

What I'm trying to say is I understand what missiles can do, but I use options given to me to counter.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

I'd like to argue something about missiles if I could. I don't play much anymore, but I do remember certain tactics I would use against them.

Armor - Double it and research it faster. Extra armor does help.

Engines - Go for proton faster than normal. I scripted RetreatUE so I know how fast the AI gets proton engines and it isn't fast. Get proton engines asap. Try and stay a step ahead.

Fighters - I would take fighters over missiles any day but that's my choice.

Missiles - Get your own I guess.

What I'm trying to say is I understand what missiles can do, but I use options given to me to counter.

The problem isn't so much the player getting owned by missiles. It's how tempting it is for the player to USE missiles to own the AI. As you said, the Ai doesn't get the faster engines very aggressively so its easy to get missiles plus a speed advantage and just kite the Ai to death. It's not much fun but its still tempting since it is so effective. This provides players with an optional way to play to make such tactics harder at least. I'm liking missiles in their new role as soakers of beam weapons and they can still get through and do damage occasionally. As with most things Bacon, its optional.

[noooooo]

Thanks for the mod Roger, lots of interesting features, can't really play the game without it now [:D]

One suggestion. This is kind of a developer oversight in one of the mechanics that was never fixed. Since you are pretty much the de facto developer for the game, I thought I'd just let you know especially since I would assume it'd be a pretty easy fix. It is in regards to troops in the game. The technologies which upgrade infantry/armor/specops attack and defense only apply to newly recruited troops; this really makes no sense because it does not even cost money to recruit new infantry (there's only a maintenance cost.) If I, as the player, want to maximize my troop strength I would disband each each of my troops and re-recruit them, this would not cost me any extra money but still cost same amount of maintenance. However, it's tedious and kind of an exploit since AI will keep even extremely outdated troops especially on their home planet since they were there since the beginning of the game.

The simple fix would be to make it so every time a technology that improves troops is researched it would also upgrade the strength of all existing troops of lower strength as well to the same strength as a newly recruited troop of that type.

[Tanaka]

Thanks for continuing to update this amazing mod! Does it require a new game for the new changes to take affect when updating versions?

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka

Thanks for continuing to update this amazing mod! Does it require a new game for the new changes to take affect when updating versions?

No. YOu can update and continue you game.

[Kingah]

Just a small thing I noticed.
When an asteroid colony is maxed out the passenger ships keep sending migrants to the colony even though it's full.
Effectively annihilating the people on the ship as there is no space for them.

Was using passenger ships carrying 24 million people to quickly fill up the colonies,
and as they continued shipping people out they had taken over 2000 million from my home-world before I noticed.

Lost Colonists ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY2gDOdx4K8

Not sure they do this with normal colonies but have never noticed it before.
Just wanted to let you know, as I found it funny.


Also, probably been proposed before, but is it possible to make barren worlds colonizable? Would add yet more possibilities for interesting gameplay. [:'(]
And this is a far stretch but also a really cool idea, the possibility to spawn in asteroids/small moons in orbit of planets for a cost as to simulate orbital habitation-stations.

Love this mod, can't see the game without it anymore. It opens up so many possibilities such as solar empires with dussins of asteroid colonies spread throughout the system.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Kingah

Just a small thing I noticed.
When an asteroid colony is maxed out the passenger ships keep sending migrants to the colony even though it's full.
Effectively annihilating the people on the ship as there is no space for them.

Was using passenger ships carrying 24 million people to quickly fill up the colonies,
and as they continued shipping people out they had taken over 2000 million from my home-world before I noticed.

Lost Colonists ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY2gDOdx4K8

Not sure they do this with normal colonies but have never noticed it before.
Just wanted to let you know, as I found it funny.


Also, probably been proposed before, but is it possible to make barren worlds colonizable? Would add yet more possibilities for interesting gameplay. [:'(]
And this is a far stretch but also a really cool idea, the possibility to spawn in asteroids/small moons in orbit of planets for a cost as to simulate orbital habitation-stations.

Love this mod, can't see the game without it anymore. It opens up so many possibilities such as solar empires with dussins of asteroid colonies spread throughout the system.

Hi. Thanks for the feedback. Once the asteroid colonies are filled up the extra people are being used as food since the colonies don't have any farmland. Just kidding. I'll look in to it and see if there is some hardcoded minimum value where the AI always tries to reach. Highly possible since asteroid colonies have such low populations.

OMG. I just watched your video. That was amazing! I laughed my ass off. I wish I had video skills like that.

I looked into making barren worlds colonizable when I made the asteroids and there was some problem with it. I don't remember what now though.

As for spawning asteroids as moons... check out my Bacon scenario "Pirates of Jupiter" and look closely at the "moons" of Saturn. Finding some way to do it in-game is certainly possible. I'll think about the implementation details over the next couple of weeks and hopefully something will spring to mind. At the minimum it will be a command you can do.

[wetpig]

Hi, i noticed you increased the max amount of stars in the galaxy is it possible to increase the physical size as well?

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: wetpig

Hi, i noticed you increased the max amount of stars in the galaxy is it possible to increase the physical size as well?

Unfortunately, that is not so easy. Behind the scenes the game groups things into areas, probably to reduce the amount of updating it needs to do. The number of areas is related to galaxy size. Increasing the galaxy size without finding every place they use those size parameters would cause an out of bounds exception as soon as it hit one of those areas.

[wetpig]

Damn that's a shame, though i was suspicious this would be the case. I might try and edit the hyperdrives in your mod to be much slower over all, I'm already a using a mod that does just that but you have added some QOL changes to the game that i cant pass up hehe.

Thanks for the prompt response!

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: wetpig

Damn that's a shame, though i was suspicious this would be the case. I might try and edit the hyperdrives in your mod to be much slower over all, I'm already a using a mod that does just that but you have added some QOL changes to the game that i cant pass up hehe.

Thanks for the prompt response!

The game comes with a setting to universally scale the speed of all hyperdrives. In Settings.ini se the following entry

'To increase speed of hyperdrives in the game set hyperdrivespeed below
' this setting is a multiplier for the default speeds. Must be between 1.0 and 3.0
' note that this setting only applies to new games - it will not alter hyperdrive speeds in previously saved games
'HYPERDRIVESPEED 0.33

I've never used it but it should work.

[wetpig]

Ok so we are assuming "Must be between 1.0 and 3.0" isn't a concrete rule and it can be set lower. Ill give it a shot and see if it works. thanks for that i wasnt looking forward to altering every hyperdrive!

Also you altered the speed of the gerax hyperdrive, i imagine id need to set that back to standard before i universally lower hyperdrive speed or it will be absurdly slow?

Thanks again!

Edit: I couldnt find the settings file, i looked in the game folder itself, the roaming folder and the DWU folder in documents to no avail!

Edit2: I found what you referring to, the setting was in the Startup config doc.

Edit3: I decided i didnt like the universal solution as it didnt nerf the fuel cells so i took the liberty of copying the drive and fuel cell values of the Lower Speed and Range Mod into your mod! I was expecting it to be more of a hassle but the game is nice enough to group the cells, drives, weapons etc etc together in the text file!

Just as an aside if you choose the Ugnari when doing a pirate run you can build mining stations from the start!

Edit5: After playing with your mod i found i really like the concept of a stars gravity well inhibiting hyperdrives but i found it too punishing; Larger, slower ships such as the pirates starter resupply vessel took 6 years to reach the edge of the gravity well. Is there some way i can decrease the size of the gravity wells universally?

[FlipsTheSlayer]

I was wondering, is this mod compatible with Unleashed Extended II? Sorry if this has already answered in this thread, it's just that the thought of scrolling through 27 different pages of posts to discern the answer scares me lol

Also, if there are extra steps to getting this to work with UEII, I would appreciate it if someone would elaborate [:)]