[DWU] Balance Mod v0.9 (extended TechTree) [Cancelled in protest]

[Locarnus]

ORIGINAL: Ardryn

Also Multiphase Capacitors has the same stats as the Zenox Pure Energy Discharge.

Tehlongone asked on the last page to tone down the racial weapons in the end.

So this is a start in that direction (engines and hyperdrives still excluded).
The racial techs start overpowered but get on standard levels in the late/endless versions.
I tried to preserve some differences though. With all the shield/weapon rebalances the Zenox exactly matching the non-racial tech is, just a temporary measure until I get the rest sorted out.

They were quite OP before.

edit: The DW:U version of this mod seems to be compatible with StarTrek Universe 1.3.3 as both mods edit different files as far as I can see. Only tried it for a short test run.

[AnddyiRaynor]

ORIGINAL: Locarnus

It is in no way needed for everything. But there are many interdependencies.

- First of all, the whole point of this balance mod is to rebalance the tech tree.
Currently a late game escort/freighter is grossly overpowered in terms of reactor output, which puts a maintenance/resource burden especially on ai empires (which tend to use small escort designs).
- Second, I cant rebalance the hyperdrives/expansion speed if I can not rely on a working mechanic regarding energy balance.
- Third, weapon energy consumption (which is a main part of weapon balance) can not be rebalanced, because they wont get enough energy without this mechanic.
- Fourth, in a later stage I think reactors should make up more of a ship size then it does now. The first step to achieve that, is to make reactors more flexible (0.9), the second step (after hyperspeed and weapon rebalance) would be to increase the size of the reactors again, without increasing the output and rebalancing this with the maximum ship sizes.

Generally I can only mod when I can rely on the statements of the devs about the games mechanics.

But how is it balancing the late game resource burden when you need more reactors than before but since you would have needed 3 more reactors compared to the one before. I didn't notice in the 0.9 version that they required less resources by much anyways. It's really the ai of the game that is to stupid to handle the resources, it's less noticeable after you get a few colonies and you don't already have a good stockpile.

I can't really agree that more advanced reactors would be bigger than their earlier counterparts sure there would come a point they'd be bigger but then you'd hit the peak and they'd get smaller as technology advanced, similar to batteries and the like of the present.

[Locarnus]

In the late game with 0.9 (in which I missed the racial reactors, and some other stuff, corrected that in 0.86 as well) you would need eg 1 small reactor (which costs 1/3) to power a freighter.
Compared to 1 large reactor in vanilla and 0.86.

Then in a later version I would have increased the size and costs of reactors again, while keeping their 1/3 output.
This would have made more of a difference between energy hungry weapons and weapons with lower energy requirements (would have adjusted the energy consumption of weapons then as well).

To the point where it would make a difference concerning fuel consumption and ship sizes. An empire with less fuel available/longer distances/more aggression/less techy and thus a tendency to lower sizes would benefit from less energy dependent designs.

Then you adjust the racial techs files, where races having efficient reactors would use more beam weapons, while more aggressive/spread out/stupid races prefer fuel efficient techs because they dont have enough fuel/ship size to compete.

[Way2co0l]

Just wanted to chime in. I understand it's frustrating and I don't blame you for it but I hope you don't let it deter you. I think the mods reception proves that there's a desire for what it provides and I'd love to see it progress. They will eventually find a way to fix the underlying problem and this mod will be something that quite a few of us enjoy. Thank you.

[Locarnus]

@Way2co0l:

For the moment it only affects a fraction of the mod, so 0.86 (the version downloadable now) only has minor differences to 0.9 (the version I had to remove).

But it is a requirement for further development of this mod. I really hope they fix this bug.

Thanks for your support, really appreciated.

[PWOFalcon]

I 100% agree with this. ANd since it adds the other races I will be getting it.

Here are some of my ideas:

1) Add some more facilities for planets. The idea is invest and develop your empire internally more.
Examples: Space Elevator, Schools, Capital buildings, Markets, hospitals, etc.
2) More/diverse resources. I think there are not enough resources in the game. Maybe some resource you have to tech up on the tech tree before you can mine them?
3) Each Race has their own special tech.
4) Tech up to new different kinds of government options to make your government more effective in some areas
5) One tech path will make another cost more?
example: IF I am researching Rail gun, Missiles, Energy weapons should take longer and harder to research. Because your Empire is focused on this kind of tech, going to a brand new one that's very different shouldn't be easy to switch to. If your researching amazing armor, shield tech should be a lot harder to get. If you work on amazing shields, Armor should be harder.

[Unforeseen]

ORIGINAL: AnddyiRaynor
I can't really agree that more advanced reactors would be bigger than their earlier counterparts sure there would come a point they'd be bigger but then you'd hit the peak and they'd get smaller as technology advanced, similar to batteries and the like of the present.

I don't completely agree with that. I don't think you entirely realize how much power it would theoretically take to power an FTL drive, let alone have enough left over for weapons and such. Ships would most certainly require larger reactors to compensate for increased power usage. The only exception to this would be if we were to implement power saving methods on the devices that utilize the power put out. But such methods will only go so far, not far enough to have smaller reactors IMO.

Do we know if the current version has any balance issues at all? I've been putting off playing a standard game waiting for version 1 of the mod but since it's basically on hold.. didn't want to start a game cuz i'm playing with research costs set to maximum on pre warp, colony ships construction at just 2O% of it's original speed and possibly ship construction dropped tremendously. Going to be a VERY long game. It'll probably take days to get warp tech researched real time.

[Sithuk]

@locarnus: Glad you're sticking with it. Elliot is typically quite good at correcting issue such as the one you have raised with the reactor design load out.

You mention a few upcoming changes to weapons and reactors that I'd like to explore. The ship design templates are set for a race regardless of how a game plays out. Factors such as colony distances and fuel availability make no difference to what ship design is built. How well will the AI as currently coded adapt to your proposed changes?

ORIGINAL: Locarnus

To the point where it would make a difference concerning fuel consumption and ship sizes. An empire with less fuel available/longer distances/more aggression/less techy and thus a tendency to lower sizes would benefit from less energy dependent designs.

Then you adjust the racial techs files, where races having efficient reactors would use more beam weapons, while more aggressive/spread out/stupid races prefer fuel efficient techs because they dont have enough fuel/ship size to compete.

[Ardryn]

For all my bug reports I would like to add that I am really enjoying the mod and how it changes the pace of research.

[Hawkeye_BF]

A dream comes true. Thank you so much [&o]

[Locarnus]

@PWOFalcon:
1) At the moment there is not much you can doo with the facilities.txt besides changing the values of existing stuff and copy pasting existing stuff. Dwaine (who made a facilities mod) also complains about this in his mod thread. I asked for some changes last week, to make it more moddable/usefull, but didnt get an answer so far.
2) After all the bugs/limitations I encountered so far with regards to modding, I keep this in mind for the future, but I m reluctant to do that before modding is take more seriously by the devs.
3) I try to keep this mod compatible with other mods (eg StarTrek) and leave the racial balancing to them.
4) There is currently no way of interdependency between tech and gov. Very unfortunate, it is a great idea. Eg you could improve the gov effects over time (Way of Ancients/Darkness is just so OP). But I doubt they will allow us to mod this, I cant even make new weapon types or change the values of existing ones (eg the 10% accuracy bonus of phasers or the characteristics of railguns).
5) I like that idea a lot, unfortunately as with 4) I can only change some existing values, modders cant introduce new relationships.

@Unforeseen:
Aside from the level 0 and 1 countermeasures/targeting and medical research projects mistakes Ardryn mentioned, I m not aware of problems so far.
That said, I can only test so much in a given time. I havent really played the last version with high research cost settings so I m not sure about the dynamics, especially in regards to colonization.

Also be aware that after starting a game you can edit some values of the research.txt (eg weapons get more damage) and it is updated when you reload, but other stuff like research paths only affect new games.

So it is a risk, if you really set out for an epic game.

@Sithuk:
I m not setting out to massively alter the stuff. It should be noticeable but not gamebreaking. I guess it is as much an immersion type of thing as it is a gameplay one. At the moment the racial choices of research priorities (beam vs railgun) seems arbitrary. With those changes you can see a connection and if you play the race yourself it might even get clearer. Now it does not make a difference which race you play for the weapon type you choose (except if they have racials).
The AI should not have too many problems, if their templates match the race and take the proposed changes into account.

@Ardryn:
Feedback and bug reports are very welcome and much needed to develope this mod, thank you.

@Hawkeye_BF:
You are welcome .

[Locarnus]

Just checked the files again, seems the reactors do not have all values reverted. Must have mixed up the components file I was editing.

They are on 1/3 the size and 1/3 the resource costs (so on 0.9 levels), the important values (energy production and all that stuff) are correct though.
So for the moment they just take up less space and less maintenance.
I will correct this within the hour and update to 0.87.


edit: 0.87 uploaded

v0.87
- fixed reactor sizes and costs
- fixed level 0&1 countermeasures/targetting/medicine values (minor fixes)

[ChildServices]

Engine problems aside preventing you from doing much more with reactors, you can still definitely at least balance the other aspects of this mod.
[ol]
[*]Shields:
The Zenox racial shield has the exact same stats as the stock "fast" shield at the final upgrade for both, the only advantage the Zenox one has over the regular fast one is that you can get to the end slightly quicker. You could possibly make it one or two points smaller in size, rather than just outright buffing its speed and endurance.
And also, maybe it's just my own preference for ship-building, but the balanced shield seems to be simply a superior choice to any of the other paths. It's not that much slower than the fast one and it's not really that much flimsier than the tough one. I don't think this should be fixed with a nerf though, rather a minor buff for the other three shields instead. You should also position it in the middle of the two other non-race specific lines on the tech-tree, because it just seems sensible that the balanced shield would be inbetween the two extremes.

[*]Colonisation:
The final colony module only has two required techs, when the second colony module has three.

[*]FTL:
Add just one or two more tiers to each of the three engine types.
It's also good to see that the one that "turns on quicker" is still completely useless, and now that the advanced FTL is gone completely, I don't have to waste time researching it as a stepping-stone. Although, at least the efficient one is a choice I'd genuinely consider now.

[*]Construction:
Some of the construction techs are slightly redundant in terms of ship size gains (I.E, there are no ship-size gains).
My personal preference for fixing around this doesn't really fall in the realm of game-balance; but it'd be nice to see the overall ship-size in the game increase, with an exponential rise in size for each of the later-end techs. Possibly to a maximum of 1750 or even as far as 2000.
[/ol]

[Locarnus]

@ChildServices:

1. In vanilla DW:U the race techs were outclassed by the wrap up techs.
Now without the wrap up techs, Tehlongone asked on the first page of this thread to make the racial techs about equal to the standard ones. I tried to balance it by making the racials faster to research.
My aim at the moment is to preserve some differences, but make the equal overall (eg reactors, beam weapons so far).
I consider the Zenox being totally equal just temporary until I figured out a working balance of the now 3 shields for all.

The Shield rebalancing is in no way finished, and I need feedback like yours!
That said, the non standard shields are not so useless. At the moment it would take 58 seconds of fire (and recharging) for the standard shields to be better than the high capacity ones. So if the enemy focus fires on smaller ships, they tend to die in less than 58 seconds, making the high capacity ones a better choice.
On the other hand, the fast recharge shields are better than the standard shields, if it takes more than 44 seconds. Especially with bigger ships and repair bots the fight may take that much longer and thus the fast reload versions are better.

Of course these values need to be tweaked, they are just a starting point.

2. Will take a look at that!

3. Aside from the first 2 jump engines I didnt touch the hyperdrives so far. Still hoping that Foma (who already did a mod on that) wants to merge/collaborate in this respect.
I actually prefer the fast initiation ones for my defensive ships (to react faster to system incursions) and put both a fast initiation one and a high speed one on my capital ships, to get out of dangerous situations and thus keep admirals/captains alive.

4. I will keep that in mind, havent touched them yet (just filled in/divided projects). I wanted to rebalance the sizes when I rebalance the reactors in terms of size/output. Also keeping an eye on the template rebalance by Wanabe and if he needs more space/size to optimize those. I dont want to stray too far, to keep compatibility with mods based on vanilla, like the StarTrek mod.

[Unforeseen]

It's not as epic of a game as it could be. I was originally going to make a galaxy with at least 2k stars packed into it with every planet modified to match realistic planet sizes. I quickly realized that it would take years to finish such a thing, and would require me to quit my job and get divorced. Lol.

I'm going to put it off for a bit and test some of the features out on a pirate game or two as soon as i get my weapon graphics from msnevil set up the way i want.

[Wanabe]

Shame about the various issues you're coming across from modding the research tree. I hope the devs are paying attention to all the various factors that are limiting modders in various areas of the game. I think they could really make an effort to enhance the modding we have to keep with the theme of the latest expansion. The potential is great.

I hope with policy changes and/or core AI changes the AI can deal with researching specific lines a lot further/better rather than researching a bunch of potentially redundant items. Having the AI capable of picking a line of shields for example and going through that line instead of going through all the shield lines simultaneously would be pretty sweet.

More space at the end of the construction tree could be quite cool if the AI can concentrate on certain lines a bit better and has the design templates for it. Due to the design templates being pretty much designs you define for "end game sizes" with a couple of exceptions (it will always drop armour in favour of other modules, there are a couple of other rules there of modules it will drop sometimes as-well) that I've noticed it is kind of difficult to get a variety of ship types early game due to severe size restrictions and not being able to prioritize what modules the AI should drop to get it to fit.

Please do keep up the good work, it's fantastic and I'll be sure to start playing with your research mod in my next game.

[Enderbou]

When we are talking about tech balancing, i think that one of the most strange things is a size and maintance of hab and life support systems - they are very little comparing to other parts, and costs nothing in terms of energy and maintanance. In fact I think that these components, if adequatly balanced, could make a great difference in ship sizes, power and maintanance costs ratio - it should prefer smaller sizes. Now if you build bigger design it costs you nothing to just add new LS and Hab. But if that would have to really pay for that, it might prevent from using always largest designs available.
It might be possible to create different sizes for these components, not always better.

Other thing is that passanger compartment and troop compartment doesn't use any energy [&:], and don't know how energy of assault pods works.

[Unforeseen]

Passenger and troop compartments are just that, compartments or "rooms". That passengers or soldiers sit in/live in for transport. They don't need energy because their needs are supplied by the life support systems including energy for lights and such. It would be silly for them to pull energy from the reactor on their own.

I'm personally a bit confused by the first bit of your post though. Your saying that life support and habitation should be larger? If so, from my personal experience on a naval vessel; crew quarters(Habitation]are cramped areas with very little space used. It's just a place for crew to sleep, store a small amount of personal items and uniforms and a place to shower/bio etc. Not much space to be taken up there. Life support systems are not going to be huge either. Certainly it will take up 'some' space for the equipment to properly regulate gravity if that is even simulated in DW, and for O2 tanks and probably something that reproduces O2. And a distribution system. But still not going to be tremendously big. Certainly nothing that will cause any significant effect on ship size.

[Tehlongone]

So I've mostly been browsing the tech tree but it looks really good, definitely what I'll be using for my next game. Heck, makes me want to start my next game now.

I like what you've done with the racial techs, but if people wants them to be slightly better even at max tech I wouldn't mind. Something like Zenox shield being size 9 or something. Or that they maintain slight superiority in their specialty. The problem before was that Zenox shields were better in all categories, if they'd only been higher regenerate and similar power to the conventional regeneration shields I wouldn't have minded. I also don't mind that they end up similar to conventional techs though...

It's pretty damn awesome that conventional techs can get you the good stuff eventually, like with countermeasures/targeting.

[Unforeseen]

I'm in the 'hate racial tech's' boat to be honest.

Also am i getting the concept correctly? The Stinger Beam is a long range version of the phaser cannon, while the phaser lance is high power version of the phaser cannon? If that's correct shouldn't the stinger beam be a branch off from the phaser cannon tech tree?