So, I have BTS now, and first thing I did was fire up Final Frontier and check it out. And I have to say, as a mod, it's pretty smurfing cool :). I'd like a little more explicit queueing of buildings per planet, but, hey! I can deal :).

Sadly, though, I've come across a few issues with Final Frontier :/. The tech tree is remarkably bland/vanilla. The techs come too fast compared to the pace at which buildings and units are constructed. Space Pirates are crazy rare, even on bury me in bandits mode. Not so many types of resources, which is "compensated" for by making the ones defined *really* (too) good. But most important, good god the AI can't play this mod :(. Anyone have any tricks for getting the AI to compete?

I have to say that I found similar on this mod, I was really looking forward to it, but although it looks great, especially when you'd got a star system built up there seems to be little point in building on other planets as by the time you've got one planet finished, you've pretty much reached the end of the tech tree and can either smash the AI with a conquest or gate victory.

I agree. You just seem to race through the tech tree. I built up my home planet a little and colonized three surrounding systems, led no wars yet. Capital Ships were still very slow to build (10 turns or so).

One of my new systems was slowly coming into it's own, the other two were still very weak. But I had already gone through two thirds of the tech tree. It's too short. You are already about half through when you got the basics to build a sucessful space-empire (Factories, Shipyards, Capital Ships).

I built an Omega Battleship too, apparantly all I need is one of them as I took a AI system without sustaining any damage at all.

I also built a Starbase and that starbase was able to hold it's own against a brief onslaught from the single computer AI that decided to declare war on me.

I'll admit I was playing at settler difficulty, but even at that difficulty I tend to get more trouble from the AI and more effective barbarian attacks.

I think all it needs is for someone to flesh out the techs more, perhaps make buildings a bit faster and techs slower too.

Although as the Star Wars mod is likely to be build off the FF mod perhaps that'll do. I have to admit I treat soem of the mods as tech demos for what BtS can do, rather than them being pure mods.

I think FF has great potential, but the AI needs to learn how to play it :(. From what I've seen, the AI is just terrible in that mod :(.

The other problems can be fixed easily enough.

The pathfinding is horrible too, i dare you to set a scout on auto explore, they seem to think if they don't believe in black holes, they don't exist

I downloaded the BTS demo - The Final Frontier. Is this also in the full game? Or is it different? It is not some mod you have to do, is it, because I don't know how to mod.

Love the graphics, but have no idea how to play.

stwils

Final Frontier is included with the expansion pack, so when you reach the main screen, all you have to do is go to 'Advanced', 'Load Modification' and then select Final Frontier.. You can then play the mod for as long as you want..

It takes some time to get used to, but in general it's very exciting!

Also, regarding the pirates: they drove me completely crazy! I was actually spending more time keeping pirates away from my civilization than spending time building new buildings and expanding my Civ.. So, in the next game, I disabled the barbarians and pretended that all spaceships were owned by governments and militaries instead of private persons (as would be the case if pirates existed in that day and age).. Finally I was able to concentrate on war..

I hope that there'll be a boatload of mods based on Final Frontier.. Fortunately there's already one based on the new Battlestar Galactica in development!

Sadly I've been out of the modding community for too long, or I'd try to get some folks together to fix the AI.

Making a mod to expand the civs, techs, ship design and a more thematic/scenario like mapscript all would not be too hard, but I'm woefully ignorant of the methods available to rework the AI. In one game, there was an AI who never got his capital above size 1 and just built dozens of ships which every turn would step one square out of his cap and then step right back in. *sigh*.

The pathfinding is horrible too, i dare you to set a scout on auto explore, they seem to think if they don't believe in black holes, they don't exist

The scouts on auto explore in the epic game seems to be pretty terrible as well... I don't know what happened! But basically they just run around the same plots of land that have already been explored as if they're somehow afraid to venture into the blackness.

Also, I think Final Frontier was more of a proof of concept mod than anything else. It was done to show the true modding power of BtS! And trust me... I'm now a believer :worship:

FF is the best mod which comes with BTS but AI is stupid on this mod :(

If some folks wanted to get together to try to fix it, I'd being will to help with what I could. Even if that only looked like reworking the techs/civics/units to expand the tech tree. I think it could really do with a more thematic/story oriented map script (as could most all civ4 mods, truth be told).

I have some ideas, but I have no Modding experience or knowledge, perhaps I'll just present my ideas and see what people think.....

1. change the beginning of the game to make the difficulty of space travel more obvious, so the first few units will be 0 move defensive units or weak and slow space probes (possibly with a % chance of being destroyed as they get further from the primary star system).

2. change it so that until the appropriate tech is discovered only the "home" planet can be built on and then with a tech that could be called "Interplanetary Travel" you'd then be able to build "Colony Hubs", which would be a pre-requisite for all other buildings on that planet.

3. Remove the colonisation ship (maybe make it a transport instead with a pick up 1 pop button this would reduce the star's pop by 1 and disable this button and activate a drop 1 pop button, which would add 1 pop to the star's pop.

4. use the constructor to settle with, the idea being that the constructor can build starbases anywhere, however a starbase build over a star and then provided with the transport ship can then be used to populate a planet. To level the playing field Starbases would have to be considerably weaker than in the current FF build and would perhaps require components to be delivered to them to become more effective, however even then a starbase should never become too powerful (unless a counter unit exists).

These are just some thoughts, and i have no idea if they are possible, but I suspect with the power of the new modding ability of BtS they probably are.

I also admit that everyone has differnt idea on what they like to see in the game, in the end any mod that adds stuff is good for me, the more stuff the better!!

Well, I have to admit, I had been thinking along different lines. But the real question to me is if there might be enough interested and experienced or capable modders to create a modding team for the mod. Otherwise we can talk about what we'd like to add, but we're really just day dreaming :).

So, I have BTS now, and first thing I did was fire up Final Frontier and check it out. And I have to say, as a mod, it's pretty smurfing cool :). I'd like a little more explicit queueing of buildings per planet, but, hey! I can deal :).

Sadly, though, I've come across a few issues with Final Frontier :/. The tech tree is remarkably bland/vanilla. The techs come too fast compared to the pace at which buildings and units are constructed. Space Pirates are crazy rare, even on bury me in bandits mode. Not so many types of resources, which is "compensated" for by making the ones defined *really* (too) good. But most important, good god the AI can't play this mod :(. Anyone have any tricks for getting the AI to compete?In my first game - which i am still playing - the pirates are not rare and have taken many systems from the AI - I just had to take a pirate system to stop the frequent attacks on an outlying system of mine. I am now involved in a 5 civ war(of 9) and we are all fighting pirates at the same time. I may turn off pirates(barbarians) the next game of this I play.

I am Hearing a lot of complaints about pirates, but i have seen none of this in the game. after playing for almost 200 turns and have seen only 4 or 5 pirate ships.

I belive that this mod has enormous potential, so if anyone makes a mod, please post it:scan:

I have found that the AI is only decent at or above Monarch level.

I have found that the AI is only decent at or above Monarch level.

Your right, the AI is nothing like the regular epic game AI.

The game is kinda lacking here too, there is no future tech where you can get rid of the unhappiness and the sickness... I can't max out all my planets with people cause of this, there more ship units then they are good technology that helps increase both happiness and sickness. I think I have to edit the xml files to make sure it does just that.

We need an add-on to this game to enhance this game a bit, and make it more fun and stable.

The game is kinda lacking here too, there is no future tech where you can get rid of the unhappiness and the sickness... I can't max out all my planets with people cause of this, there more ship units then they are good technology that helps increase both happiness and sickness. I think I have to edit the xml files to make sure it does just that.

We need an add-on to this game to enhance this game a bit, and make it more fun and stable.

I couldn't agree more

The game is kinda lacking here too, there is no future tech where you can get rid of the unhappiness and the sickness... I can't max out all my planets with people cause of this, there more ship units then they are good technology that helps increase both happiness and sickness. I think I have to edit the xml files to make sure it does just that.

We need an add-on to this game to enhance this game a bit, and make it more fun and stable.

3 sports arenas and 20% culture = 6 happiness = 12 pop
Temples are more expensive
you could have 6 of each (24 happy at 20%) in a system

Health just doesnt matter. You grow plenty anyway (18 pop without health buildings is np).

Pirates? turn off barbs in options

AI too stupid? change to the harder difficulty levels, prince (AI still not to smart) or monarch (AI gets a little smarter). Moving to the higher difficulty level in this mod is NOT like the civ games, it doesn't effect how long it takes to tech something, build something, etc - but only makes the AI smarter.

Scouts? on auto, they do bring you some results with finding goodie-huts/wreckages, but as soon as you've explored the area immediately around your first planet build for additional planets to expand on, just put them on auto and change to building Stealth Ships (comparatively, the change from scout to explorer in Civ). Additionally, as a prelude to attacking an AI, having several stealth ships INSIDE their borders destroying warplanes(roads) and killing construction ships is KEY to beating the AI on the higher difficulty levels.

Colony Hubs? Starbases do exactly that by using a construction ship; put them BETWEEN your established planets next to resources

Unhappiness and sickness? Discover the advocates (survival, wealth, knowledge, power, religion) and help get rid of that. As well, each of the "civs" seem to do better under different civics
(note that some of the civics which are GOOD in Civ, may not necessarily be good/do the same thing in Final Frontier)

BEST GUIDE and game/mod walk-through? http://gaming.download-warehouse.org/civ/

it doesn't effect how long it takes to tech something, build something, etc - but only makes the AI smarter.


This is silly. On higher levels the AI is not smarter, but just given more discount with the same level of stupidity.