Bacon Mod

[elvendeathknight]

Awesome !

[Hattori Hanzo]

a useful change, thanks Roger [&o]

[DasTactic]

I thought I'd spend a couple of hours to see if I can get the Bacon Mod to run on my Win10 computer. I tried the suggestions above by Uncle Lumpy but none of the suggested solutions would work, unfortunately.

I ran the task manager and DistantWorlds.exe (the Bacon version) runs as a background process instead of as an App. If I right-click and 'Go to details' then right click again and go to 'Analyse wait chain' it tells me it is waiting on svchost.exe (PID: 1216). Running Process Explorer, svchost.exe 1216 controls RpcSs (Remote Procedure Call) and RpcEptMapper (RPC Endpoint Mapper). I tried ending this process but it made my computer restart. I don't know what these do but it may give one of you a clue that could lead to the answer.

When I look at the Stack for the DistantWorlds.exe thread I get the following if this also provides a clue:

ntdll.dll!ZwAlpcSendWaitReceivePort+0x14
wow64.dll!Wow64ShallowThunkSIZE_T32TO64+0x9f
wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x153
wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0xb
wow64.dll!Wow64KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x3686
wow64.dll!Wow64KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x40d
wow64win.dll+0x43de
ntdll.dll!KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x24
wow64win.dll+0x10e34
wow64win.dll+0x4a67
wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x153
wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0xb
wow64.dll!Wow64KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x3686
wow64.dll!Wow64LdrpInitialize+0x120
ntdll.dll!LdrInitShimEngineDynamic+0x306d
ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0x19e
ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0x5b
ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0xe

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: WanderingScholar

(One more thing I should mention the "spyBaseValue" doesn't seem to apply to other empires when they capture my spies as they frequently ransom them for 300k-400k despite me having the base value set to 100k which only seems to affect me.)

"Base" value is just that. If you have a lot of money the final value will be marked up. In short, the other empires will try to get the very most they can out of you. As long as you have more money than the base value the final value shouldn't be more than you can afford however.

[RogerBacon]

Are you weary of having the weight of an interstellar empire on your shoulders? Do you long for a simpler life but shy away from the violence and danger of being a pirate? Introducing…

Bacon Free Trader!
Set your empire on full auto and take command of a single freighter… YOUR freighter. Try and make a profit buying and selling commodities. As a free trader you have full control over what you buy and sell but don’t think it’s going to be easy. The galactic prices are for the big boys. You don’t have the clout to negotiate deals like that. You will have to find deals on the individual commodities markets where prices can vary quite a bit. Buy low and sell high. Also, don’t expect the state to pay for your maintenance. You have to make those payments yourself. At least gas is free.

Access with alt-ctrl+right click menu


This is the screen you will see if you are not within range of a commodities market (range = 300)
Note that using the right click menu cancels your ship's mission so if you want to check cargo use the existing ctrl+enter hotkey. Also, ctrl+enter will now show a ship's cargo regardless of whether or not it is currently on a cargo mission.


This is the screen when trading with a commodities market


Details

Creating your free trader

Select a STATE-owned freighter and use the input menu (ctrl-E with the command !freetrader X where X will be your initial capitalization (i.e. starting cash). The default is 10000. This money will be drawn from your State funds. To repay it (once you have made money) use the same command with a negative value for X. To retire and end your trading career use the same command with a value of zero for X.
Please note when starting a new game you will have to wait at least 90 days for the trade system to initialize and up to a year before you start seeing prive variations sufficient enough to make a profit. Also, when founding a new colony a commodities market won’t appear for at least 90 days and maybe as long as a year.

Market prices:
Market prices are based on the current galactic price but many factors influence the local price. Taxes are paid when commodities are sold but not when bought. So it is more profitable to sell at planets where the tax rate is low.

Market Liquidity
This is simply the amount of money the market has in which to make purchases. On smaller colonies, and especially asteroid colonies, it may be necessary to buy something to inject cash into the market before you will be able to sell something.
Market prices and market liquidity are adjusted approximately every 90 days.

Trade History
The last 100 trades and/or maintenance payments are listed here. The list is fully sortable so you can quickly find out how much you paid for something.

New BaconSettings.txt value
// This is the difference between a commodity exchange's buy and sell price. Higher numbers make for a harder mercantile experience. Also, 1/2 the tax rate will be added. Valid range is 0.1 to 0.9. e.g. tradeTax = 0.1 and the local tax rate is 30% will result in about a 25% difference between purchase price and sell price.
tradeTax=0.1

A note about how freighters work in the game:
Freighters move cargo with little to no economic effect in the game. Their primary purpose is to make sure goods get to where they need to go. Any economic activity is abstracted and can be assumed to be part of the planet’s GDP which creates the civilian economy. So, if you find a way to pick up cargo without paying for it (like ordering an Alt-1,2,3 command to your free trader) just realize that s breaking the abstraction and not really in the spirit of the free trader system.

[elvendeathknight]

I'm really glad of that new feature !

Would it be possible to use a military ship with sufficient cargo this way ?

Also, using your empire trade system, is it possible to buy a colony ship from another empire ?

Thanks !

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: ArchMike

I'm really glad of that new feature !

Would it be possible to use a military ship with sufficient cargo this way ?

Also, using your empire trade system, is it possible to buy a colony ship from another empire ?

Thanks !

Yes, using a military ship with cargo holds should work fine. Remember, with the Bacon mod your freighters can have up to 10 weapons.
No, it is not possible to buy colony ships from another empire but you could sell them one.

[RogerBacon]

I've extended the free trader system to include mining ships (free miners). The system works the same except for these changes:
1 Miners don't buy resources. They only sell them.
2 The sales price is reduced by the galactic market price for that resource.

An explanation on point #2.
It may seem like miners produce resources for free but clearly that can't be the case or else the price of every resource in the game would approach zero. It must be that the costs of mining are factored into the price but that is hidden from the player's perspective. Since with the free miner you can now sell those resources, the cost of extracting them must be taken into account. That's why the price will be adjusted by the galactic market price for that resource. That means that many times you will see negative returns at some commodities markets. You can, of course, choose not to sell there and try to find a better price. However, eventually you will have to sell somewhere to empty your cargo holds. Doing so represents paying the costs associated with mining. It's hard to make a profit with a mining ship but it can be done.

[elvendeathknight]

How does the game identify a mining ship ? Is it with the role associated or the presence of ore extractors ?

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: ArchMike

How does the game identify a mining ship ? Is it with the role associated or the presence of ore extractors ?

You guessed correctly. It is the presence of extractors.

[elvendeathknight]

Thanks !

[BlindOne]

Omg Bacon you're back! (for the time being)

Can I make a request?

I'd like to see increased tribute for protectorates and subjugated dominions. Preferably a setting that can be entered in the baconsettings file if possible.

Currently you only get a paltry 10% of an enemy empire's income. If you consider that often times the AI only has a ~30% tax on its economy then 10% of that 30% is only 3%. I can't build a wall with that little money![>:] I need mexico to pay me more![:@] Like 25 to 50% seems much more reasonable.[8D]

It'd be really great to get something like an economy going simply on subjugating enemy empires and creating protectorates but it is impossible with the current system. In my personal mod I've been using a very very slow population growth race and while they are very strong early game, their growth makes them very hard to expand with late game and they weaken considerably but it is my hope that this is mediated by being able to subjugate other races and thus have others pay for their expansion [:'(] Since they are xenophobic I don't want to play them as an inclusive race or one that takes on other races into their empire.

So 2 seperate options that set the tribute % for these 2 diplomatic relation types (protectorates and subjugated dominions) would be amazing. This would allow players to create empires based on these diplomacy types and it would create interesting scenario's when half the galaxy revolts against your rule and you find yourself without any money all of a sudden because you over relied on foreign tribute and now have to face an emergent rebellion and crush it before your funds run out.

Thank you so much for your work so far! [&o] I hope you find a new employer soon (though I'm schizophrenic on this one, I want to keep you around modding for as long as possible too ... ahhh Kami-sama, why do you make me so conflicted? I can't have it both ways [:(] )

Take care and love the idea of the Bacon Trader. Haven't played around with it yet but it is just what i need next time I get bored and have the game run simulated galaxies for fun. I really enjoy making my own stories as I play. Often times I'll just pick a small fleet and play around with that fighting against the AI's my empire is at war with.

Oh that reminds me of a possible 2nd feature ...

Could you disable/modify the % requirements for Resupply Ships, Carriers and Constructors? Especially with Refueling ships I often find myself placing unnecessary Cargo and docking modules on them to fit the requirements. Completely useless at some point ... Again a possible defining value in baconsettings would do wonders for these ship types. Just another humble suggestion from a loyal and happy customer. [&o]

[RogerBacon]

Hi BlindOne,

Excellent suggestion about the Subjugation percentage. It was straitforward to make the change and it will be in the next release of the mod.
// This is the percentage of income a subjugated empire must pay to its master 0.1 (i.e. 10%) is default.
SubjugationTributePercentage=0.1

I couldn't find any reference to protectorates paying money though. Neither in the manual nor in the code. Are you sure they are supposed to pay? Have you seen the effect in game?

Finally, as for the three ship types Constructor, Carrier, and Resupply Ship, they all allow building past the 100% size limit. For balance purposes they have those restrictions you mentioned. Without them it would just be too tempting to use "Construction Ship" for every mega-warship one wanted to build. For that reason, I think its best to leave those restrictions in place.

[RogerBacon]

Just a quick update: testing is going well. Expect a release tomorrow or Monday if nothing unexpected pops up.

[Janus99]

Man, this mod is so good I had to make an account just to comment here[&o]

I certainly hope devs are paying attention here, because some of its features should have been in the game right from the start.
I specially like terraforming and the experience system. Shakturi capital ships with legendary xp are seriously scary.
Having state passenger ships sure is convenient but it kinda feels like cheating, so I don't use too many.[:-]

The Bacon Stats Viewer is the one thing I had always wanted, back in older games like Age of Empires and Civ III you could see a graph of how well you did throughout and that was awesome. I only wish it was clearer to what half of the stats mean, like the "Economy" which doesn't seem to correlate to anything in the game [&:] Maybe you could change to the terminology used in-game to compare empires, like strategic value and number of colonies.

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

Happy New Year!
Version 1.65 released!

A new sort order for the shiplist screen! If you have not sorted your shiplist screen AND you have a ship or planet selected, the sort order for whatever you pick from the shiplist screen will be sorted by DISTANCE from the selected object. If you have sorted your shiplist it will continue to use the sorted order you selected. If you have nothing selected it will use default behavior. If you have sorted the list and want to go back to default sorting (which is based on build time) click on the column header with the empire flags. You will see the new distance sort order the next time you open the shiplist screen or change selection with the dropdown box.

Please, this and every new feature should be announced in the first post, I was confused at first by this until I read the thread.


Now I have a request, maybe you could help and make our lives easier:
A longstanding quarrel I have with the game is how other empires ask for certain stations as part of a trade. But, how am i supposed to know where is the station they want from me?[&:]
Can't you do something to make it easier to find them?

Now about current features, is there a way to disable the new Hangar behavior? I just want the old 50/50 fighter/bomber ratio, I'm not really interested in the new components. Could you make that an option?

I should also mention some bugs I've been getting:
- The game freezing with 100% processor use forcing me to reboot, pretty rare but I've lost some gametime between autosaves because of this. Most of the time it happens after zooming into a system
- The game crashes if I try to change themes while using your exe

Also pirates are still broken, and the lack of pirate freighters harm AI empires in the beginning.
Aaand sometimes empires still build asteroid colonies even if you disable them, to avoid it I've simply changed their price way up. But you might want to look into that.

Thanks for everything and keep up the good work, you got me hooked on this game again [8D]

[RogerBacon]

Hi Janus99. Welcome to the forums.

The terms used in the Bacon stats viewer are taken from in-game variables. I supposed they don't map directly to what's displayed on the screen. For example, I'm pretty sure the "ships destroyed" might be something like "total size of ships destroyed" because I see some really large numbers in some of my games. I thought "Economy" corresponded directly to the "Economy" tab in the Empire comparison screen though.

The sort by distance default setting for the shiplist screen is explained in the readme.doc file. The first post of this thread is already pretty verbose and I'm afraid I'll run up against the max post size pretty soon. Also, if I make it too big people won't read any of it.

Yes, I agree that the trade bases dialog was always irritating. You never knew how badly the AI was trying to screw you on the trade. The Bacon mod helps a lot here already. When the trade dialog is open you can upen the ship finder (ctrl-E) and type in the name of the base being offered. Then, starting with the next release, you can use ctrl+enter to see the current cargo in the base. The cargo that it has a lot of will usually be what is mined there. It's still not perfect but its better than nothing.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to disable the fighter bomber components. I may try to do that in the future but I never though it would be difficult for peple to add a couple of components to their game. I guess I was wrong because a lot of people have asked about how to do it. So many, in fact, that merged files have been posted for most of the popular mods.

ORIGINAL: Janus99
- The game freezing with 100% processor use forcing me to reboot, pretty rare but I've lost some gametime between autosaves because of this. Most of the time it happens after zooming into a system
- The game crashes if I try to change themes while using your exe

I'm sorry to hear about those crashes. Send me a stack trace the next time it happens and I may be able to find something. I haven't experienced that though. I just tested changing themese while writing this and it changed without incident.

The AI should definitely not be building asterout colonies if you've turned that feature off. Keep in mind that the BaconSettings are read in dynamically everytime you resume a saved game. That means that if you turned asteroid colonies off in your old save but later turned them on for another game you would have to turn them off again before resuming the old saved game. This is true for all settings.

[Janus99]

I'm afraid there's no stacktrace, it kinda just closes down immediately without any error message [:(]. I assume it's an out of memory error, since I'm admittedly playing on a toaster but I figured 4 GB should have been enough. I don't remember getting any crashes on vanilla while it did freeze at times it always came back after a while, maybe my computer can't keep up with all the additions you've made [8|].

The asteroid colonies are a complete mystery to me, because the only time I edited the config file was at installation and I disabled them. Suddenly, when invading another empire I started seeing them around, went to double check and they were still disabled [&:].

[RogerBacon]

Version 1.68 released
Free traders - Earn an honest living buying and selling.
Modifiable subjugation tribute value in BaconSettings.txt
Usability Improvement to ship design component selection list

[sintez98]

Hello! I have a small question about mod installation with Extended Universe&AI Improvement Mod.
What is the correct installation way?

1. replaced two original txt's with new from "Haree78 Extended Universe 1.03'-archive in Extended Universe&AI Improvement Modfolder.
2. Copied exe and "Bacon settings", "passengers" to DWU folder
3. Chaged string "9, Terraforming Facility"
Is this correct?

And I have a little probleme with Science Ships."Alt + Ctrl + right click menu" has only one option - "hold here", but no specific research project. What I did wrong?

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: sintez98


And I have a little probleme with Science Ships."Alt + Ctrl + right click menu" has only one option - "hold here", but no specific research project. What I did wrong?

I'll let someone else with more experience with that mod confirm the steps to integrate them. As for science ships...

Make sure you explorer has at least one lab.
Be sure to hold down the alt key before the control key.
Allow a little time to pass between the construction of a science ship and picking what it will research. One in-game month should be enough.