Adamant Mod 0.16.00 Released

[Fyron]

Do you have any requests for things you'd like to see?

[Atrocities]

I want to see a pacifistic race. You know a race that doesn't believe in killing at all. A race that is uber powerful but only uses non-leathal weapons. A trading powerhouse, with heavily shielded worlds and cultural influence that inspires other races to love them.

[Arralen]

Imperator Fyron said:
Arralen said:
I'm not sure if I like them (any more) - looks to me they don't really work out...

It seems to work as intended in the mods I've tried with leaky armor. ... Generally, leaky armor components have a lot more hp/kt than normal components (usually at least an order of magnitude). The component selection function is further biased towards hitting high hp components, disproportionate to the component's percent of total hp.

The size of leaky armor isn't so important; larger pieces actually generally work better due to having more hp/component. For example, in leaky armor setups like B5 Mod and Adamant, ships with heavy armor tend to defeat ships with (the same total tonnage of) light armor, despite the light armored ship having a ton more total hp. The lower hp/kt heavy armors tend to take more hits from the "internals" than the higher hp/kt light armors.

My testing suggests otherwise:
Using the Titanium Armor I (light: 1/10 kt medium 3/23kt heavy 10/50kt) and the Rail gun I (DAM 20),
a mix of 3:1 medium/light armor defeated all-heavy armor with the same "armor weight" every time.
Obviously, damage-"spillover" on the low-number-heavy-armor design and high amount of armor components on the other one outweights the tendency to target heavier components.
All-light armor seems to suck, though, but that's easily explained by spillover damage - which is sufficient to kill 2 full armor components in the test case.

This gets rediculous if some armor types stay 'hit first' .. 1 piece providing 100% protection ..

If you are refering to Adamant, the "dense armor" components come at the end of the tech tree, after all leaky armors.

Strangely, MONSTER SKIN and CRYSTALLINE ARMOR are "dense armors", yet they are not that far from the lower end of the tech tree ...
Especially MONSTER SKIN does not make sense as "dense armor" .. neither balancewise nor rationally: Monster seem to have very few internal systemsm, but lots of armor. Having to peel that completely off to even hurt them (and its regenerating!) is not only incredibly difficult, but illogical as well.
CRYSTALLINE ARMOR could need some changes anyway: It looks pretty much unchanged with non-leaky 30/100kt and a 2nd ability whose description reads "not depleted by weapon fire" but means "channels hits into shields"; obviously the same
ability is used to build the leaky shields, but somehow the armors' abilities description got changed to that of the shield - without need, as they are seperate entries.
Btw., its plain wrong anyway: A) it's not true for the shields and B) does not apply for the Armor
Only thing that really changed about the Crystalline Armor is the price: with 500/0/25 it's horribly expensive : to make the player use only 1 component per ship?

As troop armor, it does not work out that good, though:
- Titanium uses Troop Mount (results in "Troop Titanium Armor I" with 1/30kt, 20/0/0 cost)
- Crystalline doesn't (results in "Crystalline Armor I" with 1/6 kt and 5/0/3 cost)

I wonder why "dense" armor doesn't use a mount that scales it to the size of the vessel?


The MEDICAL BAY is problematical as well:
- to big for lots of ships (300kt,needs Frigate at least, what is a long way to go if you start with low tech)
- too expensive to be put on bases over every colony (5K/11K/3K ressources!)
=> plagues are guaranteed disaster; makes plague bomb 1 a very 'attractive' weapon


And last, but not least - the Puntherrain Empires RACE DESCRIPTION seems to come straight from Altavistas Babelfish ...

[Fyron]

Using the Titanium Armor I (light: 1/10 kt medium 3/23kt heavy 10/50kt)...

The example I spoke of was a ship with all light armor vs. a ship with all heavy armor. This saw the heavy winning, right? Medium armor is a happy middle ground. Fewer overall hp than light, but still more hp/kT than most other components, like heavy armor. Generally, light armor's main purpose is to fill in kT gaps, and to be used on units.

Especially MONSTER SKIN does not make sense as "dense armor"...

Monsters are meant to be particularly tough. At least their shields are not leaky, so you just have to take them down once (save the 10% regeneration per round).

CRYSTALLINE ARMOR could need some changes anyway...

CA is a bit of an oddball; its SGFD isn't particularly useful anymore, since shield generators have as many SGFD as shield points (except for magic shields, which have a few extra shield points). All it has going for it is the denseness. I could never really think of a better role for it, so I left it alone.

As troop armor, it does not work out that good, though...

D'oh; so many armors to create beefy troop versions for, looks like I missed CA.

I wonder why "dense" armor doesn't use a mount that scales it to the size of the vessel?

Due to the nature of SGFD, a high amount of HP per component on dense armor can result it invulnerability. With sufficient SGFD ability and shield point capacity, you can shrug off the damage from any weapon that does less than twice the HP of your dense armor. Take a look at stock CA III; it has 150 hp and 15 SGFD. Add 1 high level shield generator for 300+ hp. Let's say you have a weapon doing 140 damage per hit. In the best case, the CA target has 140 shield points currently. Your first hit drops the shields to 0. The next hit does 140 damage to armor, and generates 140 shields. The way that partial damage works is that it is just added to the value of the next shot. So, when you hit a second time, the 140 partial damage to the armor is added to the 140 damage your weapon does. 140 points of it depletes the 140 shield points. The remaining 140 damage hits the armor, causing 140 partial damage points to accrue, and generating 140 shield points. The next hit gets the partial damage added to it, for 280 damage against 140 shield points. Repeat ad nauseum.

This is why the dense armors like Neutronium are small, with low overall hp. It is impossible to create an invincible ship with Neutronium and leaky shields. Even the ruins-based Xentronium is not too much help; at 100 hp/comp, it is vulnerable to weapons doing 100 damage, of which there are plenty (especially with heavy mount) considering its rather high tech reqs. Plus, you can only mount 3 of them, so you probably will have a lot of Neutronium to round out your armor defenses anyways.

Btw., its plain wrong anyway: A) it's not true for the shields...

Conceptually, the shields represent a nebulous energy barrier that serves to reduce the energy of incoming weapons fire, as opposed to the impervious wall of force as perceived by the stock game. This barrier is not depleted by weapons fire; it remains active until the generators themselves are destroyed.

Yes, technically the shield point values go down as weapons hit, but then they come right back up. The shield point levels aren't what the description refers to.

The MEDICAL BAY is problematical as well:
- to big for lots of ships...
- too expensive to be put on bases over every colony (5K/11K/3K resources!)

Indeed.

Note that all races have access to system hospital facilities, which cure plagues on any planet in the system. Due to the nature of the ability, they allow one turn of damage from the plague before curing it, but they are still a sage investment. They even generate a bit of research to ease the pain of devoting a slot in every system to them.

Ship-mounted medical bays are meant to represent a huge investment of medical resources and personnel. Though, I could have sworn I had made them count as cargo for mounting on transports... hmm.

[Arralen]

Imperator Fyron said:

The MEDICAL BAY is problematical as well:


Indeed.

Note that all races have access to system hospital facilities, which cure plagues on any planet in the system.

Yes - at "Biology 2" - 150k research points, and much more than that if you want to cure level-3 plagues as I had them around turn 95.
In a low starting ressource/tech game with medium tech costs .. no way to get that. I was barely able to get to Med Bay III at turn 120 - and that one comes at the 100k research levelas well.

Ship-mounted medical bays are meant to represent a huge investment of medical resources and personnel. Though, I could have sworn I had made them count as cargo for mounting on transports... hmm.

Now THAT would really help. As would shrinking them to a size that they fit a tiny transport. Or make the hospital more easily accessible and leave the bays for later, when they can be fitted into large transports ...

[Theonlystd]

Imperator Fyron said:
Do you have any requests for things you'd like to see?

haha lots of things. But with Se5 out and this being rather old mod i was just curius if we could expect many more updates.

I was reading the old thread for this Mod. And well i liked alot of your ideas. The Weapons bewteen the Races do seem to be a bit alike just different names. And Energy and Machine Dudes bit more fleshed out?

[Kraftwerk]

Imperator Fyron said:
Do you have any requests for things you'd like to see?

Itd be nice if pirates could colonize planets but not move any population there or build anything, just use the cargo space, and prevent other races from colonizing..

If the engine allowed it, being able to use any planets cargo space regardless of the owner would be nice...

Also its a little hard to capture ships with the swashbucklers since the AI tends to use Bridges (3 defense) and Luxury Crew (5 defense) and the Swashbucklers are only an attack 5..

And boarding ships with no weapons flee...kind of frustrating, since I build boarding ships so I dont have to build ships with guns...

The first mining sats could do with 500 output a turn instead of 450...since the swashbucklers cant capture anything but neutrals ships, and it takes quite a while to get better boarding crews with the painfully slow research point growth, you need the extra minerals to build actual combat ships, since stealing them is nigh impossible...

Maybe the ability to convert resources on a higher ratio that default? Since pirates would be naturally better at trading and getting the best price..

Maybe a little easier to get along with diplomatically, since pirates are a bit more charismatic than the average bloke...

[Fyron]

If all enemy ships have shield points, boarding ships will flee. They only approach once all shields are down on at least one target. If the enemy has no shields, you might want to check that the strategy is set to board/capture ships for your boarding ship designs.

Note that civilian cruisers, though small and not too strong individually, get an 80% maintenance reduction. It's a lot easier to make an initial raiding force with them than normal ships.

Theonlystd said:
haha lots of things. But with Se5 out and this being rather old mod i was just curius if we could expect many more updates.

SE5 has a lot of issues that need working out...

The Weapons bewteen the Races do seem to be a bit alike just different names.

There is, I think, a fair bit of variety in weapon styles between the original 3 paradigms (physical, magic, organic). Part of what held up 0.16 so long was complete lack of inspiration for machine and energy weapons. I copped out on the machines, just giving them copies of the physical race weapons. Energy has the main bases covered, but not too much variety. Alas...

And Energy and Machine Dudes bit more fleshed out?

Other than in the area of weapons, what else needs more fleshing out?

[Arralen]

Most 3000point - AIs cannot build Colony Ships with 0.16.0.1 !!

I wondered why the scores in my games looked that odd - so I started a test game (large classic midlife, everything visible, medium tech, added 19 AIs by hand and set them to 'computer controlled, use AI from design').

Of all those races from 8472 to Pandoran Alliance, only Abbidon, Eee, Ghizerea and Manai managed to colonize 1-2 planets on turn 20.

To my surprise, when I switched over all the AI players to human control, I found that those 15 races simply didn't have a Colony Ship design. With their current tech, I was oc. able to design some without problem. And the AIs build and used the ships quite eagerly...

Savegame attached ...

ps: Looks like I'm in beta-tester mode again ...

PPS: Working races are -
Abbidon, Crysilonite, Eee, Ghizerea, Manai, Sonne Clan, Swarm Brood, Ticon Consortium, Tylmai, Vidrine.
Other than the Ghizrea (Ice, O2) all are gas giant inhabitants.

PPPS: .. things get even stranger:
The Ghizerea has both Gas Giant and Ice Colony Tech, but uses only the Gas Giant tech to build colony ships.

Effectivly, only GAS GIANT COLONY ships are working in this mod !! [/b]




I figured out whats gone wrong - just tested successfully:
The AI uses
Name := Atmospheric Probes
Description := Component designed to compel the AI to not design colony ships prematurely.

Strangly, all the "gas planet colonization" probes are marked with
Ability 1 Type := AI Tag 12
Ability 1 Descr := Can colonize a gas giant planet.
while the others use
Ability 1 Type := Ship Life Support <=replace: AI Tag 10
Ability 1 Descr := Can colonize a rock based planet.
and
Ability 1 Type := Ship Crew Quarters <=replace: AI Tag 11
Ability 1 Descr := Can colonize an ice based planet.


Default_AI_DesignCreation.txt uses:
Design Type := Colony (Gas)
Vehicle Type := Ship
Default Strategy := Don't Get Hurt
Size Minimum Tonnage := 330
Size Maximum Tonnage := 330
Num Must Have At Least 1 Ability := 1
Must Have Ability 1 := AI Tag 12

Design Type := Colony (Ice)
Vehicle Type := Ship
Default Strategy := Don't Get Hurt
Size Minimum Tonnage := 330
Size Maximum Tonnage := 330
Num Must Have At Least 1 Ability := 1
Must Have Ability 1 := AI Tag 11

Design Type := Colony (Rock)
Vehicle Type := Ship
Default Strategy := Don't Get Hurt
Size Minimum Tonnage := 330
Size Maximum Tonnage := 330
Num Must Have At Least 1 Ability := 1
Must Have Ability 1 := AI Tag 10


Abilities.txt and AI_Tags.txt do not accord with each other either. I guess there's some update needed for AI Tag 01-09 and some addition :

AI Tag 10 Colonize Rock
AI Tag 11 Colonize Ice
AI Tag 12 Colonize Gas

[Fyron]

Hahaha! In my efforts to fix troop design, I was toying with AI tag reqs for the "cockpits," to try to get just one per troop. I copy/replaced the abilities back to the CQ and LS ones after I learned what the actual problem was. I seem to have forgotten to record the AI tags used to make the AI design colony ships, and reused them in the troop testing.

As an interim solution, here is a file that will restore the AI's ability to make all colony ship designs: Components.zip. Note that this will break muliplayer savegame compatibility.