Clearing Up Mod Confusion

[Dogberry]

Proportions... Omni... TDM ... all the Mods available, confuse the hell out of me.. & perhaps the rest of us poor newbies. If you guys are willing .. along with any other interested parties, you can use this thread to explain in a generalised, straightforward fashion what these mods do. In the end .. if this works out .. I will consolidate all the information in a notepad-type document that can be passed around. Also... vote for ( 5 votes allowed ) for your favorite ones... double & triple voting..etc. is allowed. This will give me some idea.. which ones are most popular/used.

I would like to put some info into this, on race characteristics esp. advanced ones, so info on this would be welcome. If you can point me to places where this info is already available in a more-or-less consolidated form.. that would be welcome too. I realise that some of this is in the original user's manual.. but if you wish to add to what is already there.. feel free.

woof !!
Dog

[PvK]

Since Gold, most mods have a file called modinfo.txt which explains what mods are like, appears automatically in the SE4 launcher program that comes with Gold, and there are descriptions in the back of the Gold manual.

Proportions makes large changes to the proportions of economy and development in Space Empires IV. The scale of several aspects of play have been made more realistic, along with many other changes. Best played multi-player.

More specifically, homeworlds are very powerful and important, and remain so throughout the game. Colonies take a lot of time, effort, and population to develop into something that can make a large contribution to an empire's production. Many other changes have been made to improve the balance and design options available, and several new technologies and component types have been added. Troops, fighters, and small ships have been made much more viable and interesting.

Some mods have borrowed some aspects of Proportions, especially the planetary development aspects.

One thing to keep in mind though is that Proportions slows down the "progress" of the game in terms of research and empire growth dramatically. The homeworld strength provides enough to build a fleet quickly, but everything else is greatly slowed down.

The AI in Proportions is also still undergoing a lot of tweaks to get it to competantly deal with the changes.

For more information see the Proportions mod web page.

PvK

[ May 19, 2002, 07:44: Message edited by: PvK ]

[pathfinder]

TDM mainly twaeks the AI so it is a btter challenge.

Devnull mod add a number of ship sizes and infantry (troops) plus additional/different weapon mounts. There may be other things but thse are the ones I noticed.

B5 Mod is a conVersion to the Babylon 5 TV series. It incorporates some of proportions mod, plus it adds different race abilities/characteristics for each race, unique weapons and facilities and other other components unique to each race.

The others I am not familiar with.

[Dogberry]

er.. voting is probably not appropriate for these things at this time. After a little reflection, I realised that most of the authors are at this forum & I can find out the frequency of their use by other means.

I am cracking open the readme files on them & they have lot of good info. I do have some further questions.

Alot of the Mods say for use with ver 1.58 only ( TDM) ... I take it this means, they will not work properly w/ my Gold ver 1.67 ?

What exactly is a hyperzone .. as in the Hypermaze Mod ?

Using the utility given in the Gold edition extras,( I think ) is it easy to switch these Mods on/off... or do you essentially need a installed game for each mod/Version that you are playing. ( I have had some Win 98 SE registry probs w/ trying something similiar w/ other games.)

Woof ! ... Dog

[ May 19, 2002, 15:25: Message edited by: Dogberry ]

[pathfinder]

I use several mods in my gold SEIV folder...no need to have a separate install for each one. The utility allows you to pick and choose which mod or standard..

[Alpha Kodiak]

Originally posted by Dogberry:
Alot of the Mods say for use with ver 1.58 only ( TDM) ... I take it this means, they will not work properly w/ my Gold ver 1.67 ?

Actually, for the most part they should work fine. That was the Last Version the AI author tested against, but many Versions fly by, especially when you are on the Beta team.

I just checked and the read me for my Hevordah AI still says it is for 1.57, but it is working quite well (painfully well, in one case) against me in 1.67.

[capnq]

Any SE IV Version number from v1.50 up is for Gold; v1.49 was the Last non-Gold Version.

My Hypermaze mod adds a new quadrant type. The "Lite" Version of the mod is a lot smaller, because it doesn't use the custom backgrounds I made for the "full" Version.