Mod Mix : PvK Balance and others (Expanded mainly)

PDF · #1 April 8th, 2006, 07:49 AM

Hi again,
After a mod catalog course I stumbled upon PvK Balance that is exactly what I wanted to have a more .. balanced race traits and abilities

But I'd also like to keep all the other nice Expanded mod changes (or at least TDM ones), and there are a lot of conflicting files...
I know about the various files usage, and could manage tweaking the Settings.txt, Abilities and Traits, planets/systems files and so on : what I'm rather ignorant about is how to handlke the possible conflicts in AI races and scripts (I'm planning to play SP mostly).
Could someone help about how I can merge the mods ?

Thx

Fyron · #2 April 8th, 2006, 01:40 PM

You need to edit all of the AI_General.txt files for each Race folder in the mod (Modfolder\Pictures\Races\) and alter the racial picks to match the costs for the new system. There are three different sets of racial trait/characteristic picks, based on the 2000, 3000, and 5000 point game setups. No love for 0 point games, sadly. It is probably easiest to choose the traits in-game, then type them into the files once you have them all worked out. Start with a 2000 point setup for a race, then write down the values in AI general. Then do the 3000 point setup, then the 5000.

Don't forget about the neutral races (in Picture\RacesNeutral), and the Generic_AI_General.txt file in Modfolder\AI.

Suicide Junkie · #3 April 8th, 2006, 01:56 PM

Note:
If you are going to choose racial penalties, keep in mind that *order is important*.
The AI will process the modifiers in the order they are present in the AI_General file, and if it hits zero points remaining, it will bail out.

Thus:
- Put all the penalties first.
- Characteristics happen before traits, so if you want some zero-cost traits, you need to have at least one point left over after characteristics are chosen.

PDF · #4 April 8th, 2006, 07:44 PM

Hi again,
I've already made some progress and was able to get a functional version of "my" Balanced Expanded mod, using PvK characteristics settings and traits and all the rest from Expanded. That is quite close to my "dreamed" SE4 setting

I've yet to review the AI files to have the AI races getting proper characteristics/traits, but am not sure of haw to proceed ... Too bad PvK didn't make them !

Thanks for the insightful advice Fyron !

PDF · #5 April 10th, 2006, 06:11 AM

Hello, me again ...
I'm now changing the race files to have them choose properly characteristics/aptitudes and traits, as per Fyron's advice.
Is there a way to "see" in-game the races setup done by the AI players, just to be sure there's no typo/calc errors in the AI file ?
Thanks.

Suicide Junkie · #6 April 10th, 2006, 09:38 AM

Start a new game with lots of random AIs.
Then you can go into the game menu, and set them to human control. When their turn comes up, the politics menu and the "Our Race" button should do it.