Bacon Mod

[RogerBacon]

Version 1.45 Released

Added Alt+Ctrl+Right Click menu for some ship actions
Added Terraforming (Required facilities.txt edit if used with another mod)
Science Ships now can be given specific projects
Lowest Galaxy star setting now customizable.
First pass at improving pathing for ships out of a gravity well.

Regarding the pathing out of gravity wells. Prior to this version ships did a beeline for their target even if it mean slowboating it across a large gravity well. I'm going to try and change that but everything with gravity wells is a real nightmare so it won't be easy or quick.
In this version I've got it so that ships that are ina gravity well and receive a new mission to a destination outside of the system SHOULD make a shortest path route out of the gravity well +3% and then turn towards their target and jump. If they travel back into the gravity well during the warm up for jump then they are going to slowboat it across the gravity well. Also, a ship's secondary mission target pathing is not improved (yet?). So picking up cargo or whatever from a planet deep in agravity well and taking it somewhere will still result in slowboating out of the gravity well. I'll try to improve that in future versions but no promises. Gravity wells are difficult and I don't want to break ship movement by doing something wrong.

[StarLab]

Ok, time to upgrade! [:)]

Does this version include the asteroid colonization mentioned further above?

[Hattori Hanzo]

in my opinion asteroid colonization can be a "tricky" way to do a form of "spam colonization" easily claiming for your race nearly all
the systems around your homeworld system building only one or two colonization ships.

it would be barely acceptable only if the AI races can do the same, but I doubt that they can do that.. [8|]

[Sabranan]

It does Larry, I've just tried it. You have to have your colony ship really quite close to the asteroid in question though.

I feel like it has limited usefulness at the moment, but I do quite like the idea of having an entire asteroid field covered in planetary shields and giant ion cannons!

Incidentally Roger a minor issue, I've just changed my terraforming facility to be able to do up to 100% quality (so 1000, 500 and 100 for the three values) and it's gone over 100%, currently looking at a 103% quality planet.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

in my opinion asteroid colonization can be a "tricky" way to do a form of "spam colonization" easily claiming for your race nearly all
the systems around your homeworld system building only one or two colonization ships.

it would be barely acceptable only if the AI races can do the same, but I doubt that they can do that.. [8|]

Yes, I considered that. Some things to consider:
1 Self control is essential in a game where an editor is only a click away.
2 The AI WILL colonize asteroids.
3 Asteroids should not generate a sphere of influence until they reach 1,000,000 population (which will require some major terraforming).

ORIGINAL: Sabranan

It does Larry, I've just tried it. You have to have your colony ship really quite close to the asteroid in question though.

I feel like it has limited usefulness at the moment, but I do quite like the idea of having an entire asteroid field covered in planetary shields and giant ion cannons!

Incidentally Roger a minor issue, I've just changed my terraforming facility to be able to do up to 100% quality (so 1000, 500 and 100 for the three values) and it's gone over 100%, currently looking at a 103% quality planet.

See, that's what I like. People thinking outside the box. Yeah, multiple colonies with overlapping defenses could be quire formable.

Rats about the terraforming exceeding the limit. I worked for awhile to get that formula. I supposed I screwed up somewhere. I'll take a look at it later. Hopefully it just went a little over and then will stop. Let me know if it keeps going up forever.

[Sabranan]

I think it's going up forever lol, my homeworld is at 165% quality right now and the four other worlds I currently have terraforming facilities on are pretty close to that too. Even the asteroid I've been testing has breached 100%.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Sabranan

I think it's going up forever lol, my homeworld is at 165% quality right now and the four other worlds I currently have terraforming facilities on are pretty close to that too. Even the asteroid I've been testing has breached 100%.

I found the problem. Habitability is really 0.0 - 1.0. The number you see is multiplied by 100. So the limit value should be 0.8 for 80% habitability limit. I'm not sure making changes to the facilities.txt file are reflected in saved game. If they are then you can just change your file and everything should be good. I'll make a note in the readme and change the default value for future versions.

[Edit]

Actually, it will require a change on my end because its an int value. If you put 0.8 in there DWU will crash on loading. I'll put out an update in a couple of hours.

[Edit2]
Fixed and re-uploaded. The new exe has today's date 10/7) Thanks for the catch Sabranan.

[Hattori Hanzo]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

in my opinion asteroid colonization can be a "tricky" way to do a form of "spam colonization" easily claiming for your race nearly all
the systems around your homeworld system building only one or two colonization ships.

it would be barely acceptable only if the AI races can do the same, but I doubt that they can do that.. [8|]

Yes, I considered that. Some things to consider:
1 Self control is essential in a game where an editor is only a click away.
2 The AI WILL colonize asteroids.
3 Asteroids should not generate a sphere of influence until they reach 1,000,000 population (which will require some major terraforming).

hi RogerBacon, thanks for the quick reply
I will give it a try: awesome work as ever [&o]

[Sabranan]

Yeah I was going to say I don't think I've ever seen a facility value use decimal numbers. That's good though, it means I shouldn't have to change anything for it to work.

[eu33]

Hey, i have your mod installed along with retreat's extended mod and i noticed a few bugs and inconveniences:
- exploration ships get stuck exploring gas clouds( they get better with "planet survey" research level 2)
- exploration ships' automatic explore takes them to very far systems instead of exploring the closest systems first
- some of the enemies don't attack at all. your ships just destroys them without any damage taken. i destroyed a legendary pirate faction with just one Heavy cruiser.
- enemy carriers continue the fighter attack even after you struck a deal with the faction that owns them (peace, protection etc).
- i play Boskara and even though i have researched their special torpedo weapons completely (n-fold energy pulsing), the automatic design does not use them into designing ships. it uses Energy Torpedoe Weapons (which is a lvl 1 joke).

I will edit more as i find more but a few of these are gamebreaking! would you please look into this ? i love this mod and i want to see it in it's perfect form

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: eu33

Hey, i have your mod installed along with retreat's extended mod and i noticed a few bugs and inconveniences:
- exploration ships get stuck exploring gas clouds( they get better with "planet survey" research level 2)
- exploration ships' automatic explore takes them to very far systems instead of exploring the closest systems first
- some of the enemies don't attack at all. your ships just destroys them without any damage taken. i destroyed a legendary pirate faction with just one Heavy cruiser.
- enemy carriers continue the fighter attack even after you struck a deal with the faction that owns them (peace, protection etc).
- i play Boskara and even though i have researched their special torpedo weapons completely (n-fold energy pulsing), the automatic design does not use them into designing ships. it uses Energy Torpedoe Weapons (which is a lvl 1 joke).

I will edit more as i find more but a few of these are gamebreaking! would you please look into this ? i love this mod and i want to see it in it's perfect form

Hi and thanks for the feedback. Some thoughts:

Did you, by chance, give the exploration ship manual orders? Specifically the order to explore a sector? I just recently found out this is possible and if "sector" is distinct from "planet" or "system" then I don't take that into account and it might cause strange behavoir. I'm looking into it.

Did you hit a key as soon as your game loaded? It is important not to wait beacuse the game is doing calculations (even when paused) and the gravity wells, as well as all other mod settings, are not present until you hit a key and the settings get loaded. This can cause undesirable AI behavior.

The ships not attacking at all is also probably due to your ship not being recognized as being "in the system". Threats are determined from ships in-system. If you ever click on one of your ships that is in a system and you don't see the gravity well circle then the game doesn't think its in the system. It is also probably related to loading in the settings late.

A fighter is considered a weapon, like a missile. It will finish its current attack shot even if the target is no longer hostile. You don't notice this in vanilla because their range is so short that making a deal with the pirates means they might only have one second for the fighter to take its shot. With longer ranges the fighter might still spend 20 seconds or so traveling to its target to take that shot. Did they continue fighting you for a long time or just a short while after you made the treaty?

I have no idea about the AI choices for weapons for auto-refit. I've never used that option and I didn't touch anything there with my mod.

[Kothyxaan]

ORIGINAL: eu33
- i play Boskara and even though i have researched their special torpedo weapons completely (n-fold energy pulsing), the automatic design does not use them into designing ships. it uses Energy Torpedoe Weapons (which is a lvl 1 joke).

Can't check this right now... but from memory the Boskara/Shakturi is available as a level 2 tech right?
Does the Energy Torpedo have a level 3 tech upgrade to it and have you researched this?
Because if it does then the auto-refit will still choose it over the the boskara torpedo, because it is further along the tech tree.

[eu33]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

Hi and thanks for the feedback. Some thoughts:

Did you, by chance, give the exploration ship manual orders? Specifically the order to explore a sector? I just recently found out this is possible and if "sector" is distinct from "planet" or "system" then I don't take that into account and it might cause strange behavoir. I'm looking into it.

Did you hit a key as soon as your game loaded? It is important not to wait beacuse the game is doing calculations (even when paused) and the gravity wells, as well as all other mod settings, are not present until you hit a key and the settings get loaded. This can cause undesirable AI behavior.

The ships not attacking at all is also probably due to your ship not being recognized as being "in the system". Threats are determined from ships in-system. If you ever click on one of your ships that is in a system and you don't see the gravity well circle then the game doesn't think its in the system. It is also probably related to loading in the settings late.

A fighter is considered a weapon, like a missile. It will finish its current attack shot even if the target is no longer hostile. You don't notice this in vanilla because their range is so short that making a deal with the pirates means they might only have one second for the fighter to take its shot. With longer ranges the fighter might still spend 20 seconds or so traveling to its target to take that shot. Did they continue fighting you for a long time or just a short while after you made the treaty?

I have no idea about the AI choices for weapons for auto-refit. I've never used that option and I didn't touch anything there with my mod.

THanks for your reply!

That explore ships' behavior is happening in auto mode. I play without the grav wells as it slows down the game a lot.
Regarding the fighters, they fight until the target is killed then they return to the carrier. they dont attack a new target.

ORIGINAL: Kothyxaan

Can't check this right now... but from memory the Boskara/Shakturi is available as a level 2 tech right?
Does the Energy Torpedo have a level 3 tech upgrade to it and have you researched this?
Because if it does then the auto-refit will still choose it over the the boskara torpedo, because it is further along the tech tree.

Boskara has the torpedo available when you start the game. in my case i havent researched any other weapons except for caslon misiles and the boksara special torpedoes (n-fold ... ) but the designer uses the lvl 1 torpedo(the one just before boksara's special torpedo tech) which is a joke.

[eu33]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon


The ships not attacking at all is also probably due to your ship not being recognized as being "in the system". Threats are determined from ships in-system. If you ever click on one of your ships that is in a system and you don't see the gravity well circle then the game doesn't think its in the system. It is also probably related to loading in the settings late.

how do i go about loading the settings in the most efficient way ? i pressed random keys while loading and at the exact time the game loaded and the systems still still didn't get explored by my ships ( i saw the explore ships going from planet to planet but i wasn't able to click any planet that was visited by it - especially independent colonies - like it was unexplored.)

[Kothyxaan]

ORIGINAL: eu33
Boskara has the torpedo available when you start the game. in my case i havent researched any other weapons except for caslon misiles and the boksara special torpedoes (n-fold ... ) but the designer uses the lvl 1 torpedo(the one just before boksara's special torpedo tech) which is a joke.

Wait, did you start of with the tech or did you research it?
I just started a game as Boskara (had to start with tech level 2 since it is a tech level 2 weapon). All my ship designs started of with the "shaktur firestorm" which is their special weapon.
None of them had any other torpedo weapon.

I will now start of a tech level 1 game and research the "devestating plasma charge" tech, the one that gives them their special torpedo and see what happens.

Ships have started of with the Epsilon Torpedo (because I still need to research their special torpedo).
Special Torpedo researched, auto-refit did not replace Epsilon Torpedo with the Shaktur Firestorm.
Now I will test the vanilla .exe (I am willing to bet money the result will be the same).
Oh yeh, I am using the Extended mod as well (but with the AI improvement - but that does not change anything that would affect things here. In the ship files all items are lumped together beams covers all beams, torpedos covers all torpedos etc).

Vanilla exe: Tech level 2 start, all ships have Shaktur Firestorm Torpedo.
Vanilla exe: Tech level 1 start, all ship have started with the Epsilon Torpedo (now the waiting for those lazy Boskara scientists to research their special tech... zzzz...).
Yay! My explorers discovered Fuel storage tech! At least their not lazy.
I fear I may have to execute a scientist or two to inspire them to research faster; this is the Boskara way (or maybe not, they do have a hive mind government after all).
45%... zzzz...
53%...
58%... *sips on his cup of tea*
65%... *nibbles on a biscuit*
89%... *just back from the toilet - washed hands - its the hygienic thing to do*
99%!
HUZZAH!

It is as I feared. Using auto-refit did not replace the Epsilon Torpedo with the newly researched, a big thank you to my hard working and under appreciated scientists, Shakturi Firestorm.

So this is actually stock game behaviour and nothing to do with the baconmod.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: eu33

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon


The ships not attacking at all is also probably due to your ship not being recognized as being "in the system". Threats are determined from ships in-system. If you ever click on one of your ships that is in a system and you don't see the gravity well circle then the game doesn't think its in the system. It is also probably related to loading in the settings late.

how do i go about loading the settings in the most efficient way ? i pressed random keys while loading and at the exact time the game loaded and the systems still still didn't get explored by my ships ( i saw the explore ships going from planet to planet but i wasn't able to click any planet that was visited by it - especially independent colonies - like it was unexplored.)

Just pressing one key when the game has finished loading is enough. "Finished loading" means when the keyboard responds to your input, like pause and unpause for example.

Did the system the explorer was in have the graphic overlay that is usually present when you don't have a ship in the system? With gravity wells being disabled I can't think of anything else that would cause exploration ships to not explore. The next time you see this behavior order the explorer manually t oexplore a planet and see if it works. If it does, put it back on auto and see if it continues to explore properly.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Kothyxaan

It is as I feared. Using auto-refit did not replace the Epsilon Torpedo with the newly researched, a big thank you to my hard working and under appreciated scientists, Shakturi Firestorm.

So this is actually stock game behaviour and nothing to do with the baconmod.

Thanks for testing this out for me Koth.

[BTAxis]

Hey, I just found this after some absence from DW, and it's amazing!

A few things though:
- When starting the exe the little credit popup appears twice. That's a bit annoying.
- When starting a new game, opening the ship design menu often causes an exception. It can be circumvented by saving, shutting down the game and then loading though. This is mod-agnostic, it happens with everything.
- The modded exe doesn't play nice with Starfall Corrected. I believe the root cause for that to be with that mod, because everything else seems to work fine with Bacon Mod, but maybe you can shed some light on this issue too.

Also, some ideas I'd like to run by you:
- Currently the A hotkey can only activate automation, it doesn't turn it off. Is this something you can change?
- Some time ago I brought up some bugs. Is there anything in that list that's within your ability to address? (Apart from the freighter item, you already did address that.) The area effect weapon thing and the refuel issue especially seem of note.

Regardless of all that, thanks for making this mod. It's really great.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: BTAxis

Hey, I just found this after some absence from DW, and it's amazing!

A few things though:
- When starting the exe the little credit popup appears twice. That's a bit annoying.

I know. It's not intentional. I might be able to fix it in the future.

- When starting a new game, opening the ship design menu often causes an exception. It can be circumvented by saving, shutting down the game and then loading though. This is mod-agnostic, it happens with everything.

Does this happen every time? Did you hit a key before opening the designer? It is VERY important to hit a key before doing anything. the onKeyboardEvent is the first chance I have access to initialize a global variable that I use throughout the mod. If that is not initialized then you are likely to get abnormal results. I have gotten in the habit of unpausing and pausing first thing when the game finishes loading.

- The modded exe doesn't play nice with Starfall Corrected. I believe the root cause for that to be with that mod, because everything else seems to work fine with Bacon Mod, but maybe you can shed some light on this issue too.

I address that in the other thread

Also, some ideas I'd like to run by you:
- Currently the A hotkey can only activate automation, it doesn't turn it off. Is this something you can change?

That should be possible

- Some time ago I brought up some bugs. Is there anything in that list that's within your ability to address? (Apart from the freighter item, you already did address that.) The area effect weapon thing and the refuel issue especially seem of note.

Regardless of all that, thanks for making this mod. It's really great.

Thanks.

[BTAxis]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon
Does this happen every time? Did you hit a key before opening the designer? It is VERY important to hit a key before doing anything. the onKeyboardEvent is the first chance I have access to initialize a global variable that I use throughout the mod. If that is not initialized then you are likely to get abnormal results. I have gotten in the habit of unpausing and pausing first thing when the game finishes loading.

Yeah, I read that in the documentation so I pause/unpause at the start of every game as well. And no, it doesn't ALWAYS happen. Just usually. But as I mentioned, it can be worked around, and the game survives if you just ignore the exception so I can always save and reload.