Research Unleashed - Version 2.2

[Shogouki]

This is wonderful! I'm going to try this out next game.

[apd1004]

Hundreds of hours playing DW from the very beginning but this is the first major mod I've tried. I'm really enjoying it so far.

I especially like how ship speeds are lowered at least in the early game. Makes the universe feel a lot bigger. I think in the later game I will appreciate the faster speeds more.

One question - is there a way to mod when private ships trigger refuel, or is it hard-coded? With the slower speeds I've noticed that when a freighter runs out of fuel, now it takes forever to get to where it needs to go, to the point that I've contemplated just scrapping the ship in-flight and figuring the AI will just build a replacement. With state ships I can intervene but obviously you can't with private ships. In the vanilla game this isn't a big deal because even when out of fuel ships still move along at a decent speed.

[Shogouki]

Hmm, that I don't know.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: apd1004

Hundreds of hours playing DW from the very beginning but this is the first major mod I've tried. I'm really enjoying it so far.

I especially like how ship speeds are lowered at least in the early game. Makes the universe feel a lot bigger. I think in the later game I will appreciate the faster speeds more.

One question - is there a way to mod when private ships trigger refuel, or is it hard-coded? With the slower speeds I've noticed that when a freighter runs out of fuel, now it takes forever to get to where it needs to go, to the point that I've contemplated just scrapping the ship in-flight and figuring the AI will just build a replacement. With state ships I can intervene but obviously you can't with private ships. In the vanilla game this isn't a big deal because even when out of fuel ships still move along at a decent speed.

Glad you're enjoying it!

As far as I'm aware there is no way to mod when private ships trigger refuel, nor is there any way to set it specifically with an in-game option. If anyone knows differently, feel free to correct me.

This is unfortunately one of those trade offs that perhaps can't be avoided in order to have the lower speed and range. Possibly the specific setting for the speed and range might be tweaked to improve the situation. Personally, I tend to design all the ships myself: I limit the private fleets' access to their ship designs (by not designing them until I'm ready for them to use them) and I always give them plenty of fuel, and tend to favour giving them the more efficient drives and reactors.

Osito

[apd1004]

Interestingly, I've found myself upgrading my ships more often with the new tech trees, and that's ok because I like doing that. Since my last post, I have discovered it was just one version of freighter that was doing that behavior and after upping the number of fuel cells I haven't seen that behavior since. What I also noticed after my post is that none of the ships would reverse course to go back to a fuel point within the range circle but they would divert to one that was more or less in their current path.

[apd1004]

Today I also noticed something about research labs. I'm not in front of the game right now so I'll try to remember the situation the best I can.

I noticed in the research facility tab that all of my research facilities were short in the High Tech area. For instance, let's say a large spaceport has 10 of each of the 3 labs, it is putting out 400k research in Weapons and Energy but only 300k in High Tech. All of my technological research is at the same level. I double checked everything and noticed that in the design menu, each of the labs claims to be putting out 40k research but for some reason the High Tech labs were in reality only putting out 30k even though they were at the same level as the other labs. Not knowing much about how modding works, I assume this is just a number glitch in one of the mod files?

EDIT: Just checked in the game. All 3 of my research levels are Level II, so each lab component should put out 40K. In the design screen however, High Tech labs only put out 30K. I looked in components.txt and research.txt and can't find any reason why this would be happening as all the numbers appear to be correct.

[apd1004]

Ok, considering I have no idea what I'm doing, I was able to identify the problem once I figured out what all the values meant in the research.txt file. For all levels of the HiTech Lab component improvements, the "component improved" reference was actually improving the Weapons Lab (component #91) rather than the HiTech Lab (component #93). Because of this, the HiTech Lab never advanced beyond the initial level of 30K.

I figured this out when I completed research of HiTech to Level III and the Weapons Lab increased value from 40K to 45K, when it should have advanced the HiTech Lab. The question now is, will changing it on the fly correct everything in a saved game? I'm sure others know the answer to this but I'll have to go in and find out for myself.

[Retreat1970]

This mod has brought me back to DW, ty. Lots of fun. One typo, rail gun, I think 4th one in, has a range of 2000. Others have 1500. Good job on this btw.

[Osito]

Hi thanks to you both apd1004 and Retreat1970 for spotting and reporting those errors. Can't believe I missed the error with the Hitech labs!

I just want to reiterate that while I'm happy to make corrections to errors, I'm also open to suggestion for changes and improvements. I've been running a version which uses larger but more effective life support and habs, so you don't need as many on the ships and bases. I could incorporate that into the mod if people want it. Downside is that ships and bases don't get much boarding defense from habs, but as someone who designs all ships from scratch I prefer the convenience of not adding so many habs.

Osito

[Retreat1970]

I'm in year 32. Huge ring galaxy. Met pirates fairly early, but they tend to be a non-issue. Directly related to warp speed changes I think. Also I finally met my 1st empire. Also related to warp speed. A bump in speed may be warranted maybe 25% maybe more. Rail guns are a blast now. Who cares if most shots miss. When you have a fleet sending a wall of lead at a target at 1500 range, it's unbeatable.

[apd1004]

I'm still having a blast with it as-is for now. I tend to force myself into "appropriate" sized ship classes by purposely limiting the number of habs & LS as the core component to establish ship class size. You could easily build a size 500 escort but then why have different ship classes if you do that.

Here's a few things I've noticed, not complaints or even suggestions for change really. Just observations. Most revolve around the component improvement glidescope as I like to call it. In vanilla, certain upgrades to a brand new version of a component such as going from small fuel cells to standard is a significant spike in ability. It seems more realistic that way and is worth putting some effort into getting to the upgrade sooner than later. Here it seems the improvement graph goes up the same steady glidescope whether you're still in small fuel cells or moving to standard. Again, not a complaint. Not sure yet if that is the case with all components. A solution might be to make the glidescope more shallow in improvements to the same component, with a nice spike when going to a totally new upgrade of the same component, and then shallowing out again to further improvements to the same component. If that makes any sense...

I do like a few cases I've seen where upgrading the older component costs less research than it does to get a whole new component at the same level. I have noticed that is not the case clear across the board, only in some cases is it like that and I can't think of one off the top of my head.

I also like the trees in general, they seem much more logical now and more detailed. Splitting out Weapons, Energy, and High Tech research into their own paths and then linking a wonder to each was genius. Ditto for the colonization breakdown.

Another example somewhat related to the first one is I used to go to great lengths in vanilla to get Turbothrusters from the Ackdarians either through trading or espionage because they were a significant increase over protons and even early equinox. Here the equivilent level proton is not much worse than the first level Turbothruster. Solution here might be to make the Turbothruster available one or maybe even two levels earlier or even totally disconnecting it into its own path separate from the generic one, thus making it a more substantial catch if you can get it "when it first comes out". Hardly worth risking a seasoned intel agent trying to get it when it becomes available now because all I have to do is research one more level of proton and I'm pretty much there.

It may take many playings to tweak numbers for each tech and there are so many techs to tweak I think it might end up a whole new product.

Anyway, great work. This will keep me busy for quite a while.

[Tikigit]

Would love to see proper support for Extended Universe. It's very much the foundation for core play. [:D]

[solops]

ORIGINAL: Osito

Hi thanks to you both apd1004 and Retreat1970 for spotting and reporting those errors. Can't believe I missed the error with the Hitech labs!

I just want to reiterate that while I'm happy to make corrections to errors, I'm also open to suggestion for changes and improvements. I've been running a version which uses larger but more effective life support and habs, so you don't need as many on the ships and bases. I could incorporate that into the mod if people want it. Downside is that ships and bases don't get much boarding defense from habs, but as someone who designs all ships from scratch I prefer the convenience of not adding so many habs.

Osito

1.03 - corrected Hitech Research Phase I, II, III and IV so that they actual improve Hitech research instead of weapons research (thanks to apd1004)

You know, I thought there was something wonky going on with R&D, but I never could pin it down. Thanks!

[mordachai]

Awesome! Just... awesome!

I love the far more logical and interesting tech tree!

Very minor, but I would allow point defense from either fighters or missiles, as it's a useful tech against either lineage, so reasonable to develop in response to either.

Hyperdrive: I love the speed limits, and slow to engage early drives. But I would make the critique that there isn't enough differentiation in speed for the Fast Jump vs. High Speed vs. Efficient lines.
also, suggestion: have the Fast Jump drives have a static energy usage - like most modern equipment: we trade spending constant power to make things turn on faster (hot-on).

You could even have 4 lineages: Hot Start Fast-moving, Hot Start Efficient Energy, Cold Start Fast-moving, and Cold Start Efficient Energy. Prolly more work than is worth it - better is to help make it a more severe choice between Fast and High-Speed. I want to have to have a difficult choice to make!

[mordachai]

I keep thinking that bases shouldn't be such pushovers....

In SFB (star fleet battles - ancient pen & paper tabletop tactical battle game) - bases had weapons that only a base could have. They were way better than what you could mount on a ship. Lots of armor, lots of shields, plenty of power, and excellent guns. Made attacking one require a fleet.

DW doesn't make it a solo-job to take out a DFB, but ... well, too close, IMO. A base should be an expense, and a seriously tough opponent. Say - 2x shields & armor of capital ship, and big weapons that one cannot reasonably put on anything short of endgame capital ships - Ultra-heavy Beam weapons, Super-heavy rail-gun, Magnus-V torpedo launchers, etc. Weapons that do around 2x the damage of the same non-base version, require enough space and power that normal ships cannot feasibly load them, etc. (it would be nice to actually simply mark them as unavailable in non-bases, but I expect that's not an option to modders in DW).

[Osito]

I'll look at your point about the point defense, mordachai, as it sounds sensible. I'm also inclined to agree with your comments about bases, but is there anything that can be done about that with the present modding facilities?

A few people have commented on the hyperdrives, and I will also take a look at that. I have thought about including a static energy requirement for some hyperdrives, but I'm concerned about the effect that would have on the AI, because it doesn't necessarily design ships with enough reactors to achieve maximum speed; I may take another look at it.

I'll have a look at what apd1004 calls the Glidescope, too.

I'm happy to have this mod incorporated into other mods, if feasible. I'm thinking in particular of the weapons mod that people are looking at. In my own mod, however, I will retain all the weapon types that are available, simply because I like the variety. Also, I want to retained the overpowered end game techs: they really are end game and take some time to acquire.

I'd be interested in views on two of the weapons features in my own mod:
1. Use of so-called 'tachyon beams', which do increased damage with increased range (or, at least, they're supposed to).
2. Use of so-called nuclear missiles, which are very high powered weapons (but not a superweapon) that might take out a ship in the first salvo, but which has such a long reload time that it may not be usable for the rest of the fight.

Osito

[Osito]

I have today uploaded another update along with an alternative mod which incorporates all the Research Unleashed changes, along with a change to the effectiveness of habitation and life support modules (meaning that you need fewer of them on your ships and bases).

As always, comments and criticism are welcome.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback.

Osito

[Retreat1970]

I like using less hab/life modules. Good change. The speed update is better as well.

I liked nuclear missiles. I don't know what Caslon missiles is supposed to mean. Nuclear I understand.

I like this mod a lot good job.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

I like using less hab/life modules. Good change. The speed update is better as well.

I liked nuclear missiles. I don't know what Caslon missiles is supposed to mean. Nuclear I understand.

I like this mod a lot good job.

I changed the missile name because of a point made by Jammersam above, i.e., that it seems a bit strange that nuclear missiles would be a mid-game tech, given that any space-faring race is likely to have nuclear missiles right from the start. So I chose the name 'caslon missiles', which is intended to be connected to caslon, which is the fuel used for the initial reactors. I'm perfectly happy to change this name again, especially if someone can come up with a better one.

Osito

[mordachai]

Just my 2c - but I love the "glidescope effect". It's one of the draws to your tech tree for me. I much prefer a game where basic capabilities aren't missing at the start (or near start). That they're primitive abilities is fine.

I did some messing around with your files to begin to get a handle on how to mod research and components. Thanks for the mod - I'll be curious to see what your latest changes are