What do you think the biggest problem in Final Frontier Mod. Post suggestions, mods, mod ideas, etc.

Feel free to discuss!!!:scan:

well it ties into the tech tree being too short, but the map generator crowds too much, I would prefer vast open leagues of space,

well it ties into the tech tree being too short, but the map generator crowds too much, I would prefer vast open leagues of space,

I agree, the "settling phase" is kinda stupid since the AI will settle on completely idiotic spots close to you, far from them making them map a bloody mess.

well it ties into the tech tree being too short, but the map generator crowds too much, I would prefer vast open leagues of space,

Wouldn't Vast open leagues of space require a better movement system?

P.S. I Voted "ALL OF THE ABOVE":scan:

Runs way to slow! About 1,000x slower then my games normally run for Civ IV.

A.I and turn processing length.

I voted Not Enough Improvements, as your Construction Ships would be almost utterly useless if not for Starbases. However, I think the unrealistically crowded map is a big problem too (if systems were that close, they'd rip each other apart!)

Other (ok, several others) :)

In MP games the start is too random, your home system is created randomly, everything around it is created randomly, the wrecks are random your proximity to vacant systems and other players is all random. For single-player games it's fine as it adds spice, for MP games it's a bit rough as the common result is one player being in such a better position that the game is quite boring for the other while they sit and wait for the other player to finish their turn. This 'harsh randomness' also tends to give many of the AI players a poor start effectively crippling them.

Tech research is way too easy (fast) and there are too many free techs in the wreckage (all of them are potentially available). This leads to a lot of the other problems with movement speeds and production rates feeling too slow relative to tech discovery.

Some of the leader traits are obviously sub-par compared to the others, the AI has a harder time with this than human players. The Forge is probably the best example, if left to the AI they will always be in last or second to last place once everyone starts colonizing since the -1 food on all planets isn't exactly compensated for with +1 hammer per mine. The AI performs best with the civs that have no penalties such as the Red Syndicate and Avowers.

The ship variety is nice but in the end it boils down to a war between battleships and heaping stacks of cheap defenders. The battleships need some weaknesses to offset their immense power. As much as I hate the 'rock, paper,scissors' mechanic it is needed in a game like this or the variety is little more than fluff.

There need to be a few more resources with each resource having less effect than they currently do. For example, rather than crystals giving +3 happiness you could have three different resources, each giving +1.

I'm sure there's more, but those are my biggest issues with it.

I voted other. I like the short tech tree as you can finish it and get to just building ships and making gold to support a large army.

I think the biggest missing part of the mod is corporations. There are none and this mod I think gives great potential for scifi corporations.

There is a problem????

Seriously I think the inablility to play multiplayer with teams is the most serious to me at the moment.

Also I noticed someone else posted about horridly slow play and I had the very same issue when I tried to play with everything on sparce. Interestingly enough I have played several with different settings and never any slowness.

Not enough civs for a huge map without either doubles or setting up thru custom game and only running 8 civs.

I think the unrealistically crowded map is a big problem too (if systems were that close, they'd rip each other apart!)

I disagree. The map is attempting to portray 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional "board." The systems could be separated by who knows how much 3-dimensional space. Further, you can set the map generator to create more sparsely-populated galaxies, so that's no major concern.

My main gripe is the factions presented. Almost all of them are extremely poor choices. Does anyone play anything other than the Red Syndicate? I can't think of too many people who would deliberately play with leaders who reduced health and happiness. I also don't like how pirates work. There was an excellent scenario in the original Civ pack, the Mediterranean World one, as some of you may recall. It became unplayable because large numbers of barbarians would just appear out of nowhere, right next to your cities, and attack. This scenario has a similar problem with the pirates. Let them spawn like crazy in deep space (please!) where we can't see them, but having them appear from nowhere right on top of my solar systems is annoying as hell. Further, builder ships aren't very useful, and the better jump lanes appear too quickly.

Starting with 2 population in every city is immensely powerful for spamming colony pods, I won easily as New Earth just by expanding very early, hooking up a few +3:) and +3:health: resources, and bam all your starsystems max out in population with double the territory of any other civ, before you even start conquering. Put the population on those 0:food: 2:hammers: 6:commerce: or similar planets until you hook up some resources and you have a large amount of instant commerce turn 1 after the city is built to offset the maintenance costs, something you can't have in the regular game with a rushed expansion.

City settling locations are much fewer in this than a standard game of Civ, so an early land grab is powerful if you can keep your economy up. There's no where else for your rivals to expand.

Not enough technology :( hope there's more added in the patch.

Starting with 2 population in every city is immensely powerful for spamming colony pods, I won easily as New Earth just by expanding very early, hooking up a few +3:) and +3:health: resources, and bam all your starsystems max out in population with double the territory of any other civ, before you even start conquering. Put the population on those 0:food: 2:hammers: 6:commerce: or similar planets until you hook up some resources and you have a large amount of instant commerce turn 1 after the city is built to offset the maintenance costs, something you can't have in the regular game with a rushed expansion.

City settling locations are much fewer in this than a standard game of Civ, so an early land grab is powerful if you can keep your economy up. There's no where else for your rivals to expand.

Not to mention Hector starts with Polymers allowing him to convert 100% hammers into research, with his extra starting hammers from the extra pop it's easy to get ahead of your starting limit on units going into a deficit. I'm starting to like him the most. For an early run at the religions this guys takes the cake, I can easily get both Wealth and Survival if I get lucky and pop Exploration. Wealth is a guarantee either way. I can definately see why he gets -2 health & happiness.

My main problem with it is the music. Classical violin music and opera does not go well with space conquest. My second main issue is the lack of improvements. In Civ4, jungles cause problems. You can't really use them, and they make your cities sick. It seems reasonable that some things, like radiation clouds or nebulas, should be able to be destroyed. Similarly, it should be possible to mine asteroids, like chopping forests. You get a nice little production bonus at your nearest city, and the asteroid field goes away. A simple space station might be a good thing to include. It could act like a fort, allowing fighters and bombers to launch from it, and providing added defense to ships which are in the same tile.

A possible building to include later in the game might be a warp gate, or teleportation device, or wormhole, to send your units from one city to another, or to a starbase, very much like the airports in Civ. The space elevator technology should also let you build a space elevator. A space elevator might, for example, increase your production rate of units by 25% because you can get them up into space more easily. The bonus would not apply to buildings because you generally don't need to put them in space.

Another big problem is that the resources are much too restricted to current technology. At the bare minimum there should be some exotic matter, if only to facilitate the construction of the warp lanes that the game already features. As an example, any particle with negative mass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_matter#Forward.27s_analysis) would be attracted to normal, positive masses, and repel them. This would create a form of acceleration that requires no energy. Simply holding such material in the back of a ship would push it along. It could also be used to generate the unique form of gravity required to create a warp field, to allow faster than light travel (not movement) within the laws of relativity. Such matter would attract itself, so it could be expected to exist in clusters out in space, or gathered around regular matter as well. Strange material like this is exactly the kind of stuff you'd expect to be mining and using in a futuristic warp driving game.

I wonder why nobody above (and the poll) mentioned this problem:
- not enough civs

I tried playing Final Frontier (mod) three times now. In each game (epic - big size) I was encountering one or two of the civs twice! Almost with the same color... I really could not even distinguish them. One was in war with me, the other my best friend.

That's definitely a party popper!

I disagree. The map is attempting to portray 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional "board." The systems could be separated by who knows how much 3-dimensional space.

Not really. The 2D approach actually makes somes sense, as the galaxy is basically a 2D structure. Our disk-shaped Milky Way Galaxy is some 100000 light years across, but only up to some 2000 lightyears thick. There are way, way more galaxy stars in the directions that are in line with this disk plane than in other directions (Actually, that's the Milky Way band you can see in a dark sky).
Simplifying this disk to a plane is not that for off from reality, if you just say the few 100 light years or so in the direction perpendicular to the galactic plane is not so relevant.

Then again, a star system like ours is some 0,001 lightyears across, while the distance between star systems is more in the range of several to several dozen lightyears. So yes, the map is extremely crowded compared to the real galaxy. But whatever :shrug:

Then again, a star system like ours is some 0,001 lightyears across, while the distance between star systems is more in the range of several to several dozen lightyears. So yes, the map is extremely crowded compared to the real galaxy. But whatever :shrug:

As a few people mentioned, depending on how you look at it it's not crowded at all.

The graphical scale of Suns versus Planets is already changed to be exponential, rather than linear, or most planets would be a pixel in size compared to their sun.

Likewise, the distance scale of near vs far planets is shrunk to an exponential fit, so inner-planets aren't crowded together visually with vast distances between outer planets.

It's the same with the scale of systems vs distance between systems, the system is simply made to appear larger for gameplay purposes. Note that all effects of the system, including the +50% defense shield, only take place in the tile the sun is on, not the entire area of graphical representation of the defensive shield. The system only exists within the bounds of one tile, and the distance between systems is actually quite large.

My biggest problem is that I can't play the **** thing. CTD every time I load it.

my complain is it is very hard to tell how much potential a solar system has...
just how do i figure out how valuable my enemies system are and which to invade 1st?

my complain is it is very hard to tell how much potential a solar system has...
just how do i figure out how valuable my enemies system are and which to invade 1st?
More planets = better
Bigger planets = better

The individual planet yields aren't as important as the size and number of planets. There may be some exceptionally rare cases where you have several large planets and none of them produce any food without farms but it's so unlikely that simply going for more or bigger planets will be a sound rule to follow.

Needs variety in tech tre compnents available to diffeent CIVs. Should all have all branches of the same tree.

The game is too short. There's not enough time to really build up some of the solar systems! Also, it was relatively easy to hit the pop cap, so we need more ways to increase the pop cap. And I think the way the building costs scales is a tad too much. Perhaps the first should be 100%, then 150%, then 200%, instead of 100%, 200%, 300%, etc.

Oh, and culture has almost no purpose in the game. It limits the time before a city can use the third ring of planets, but that's it.

The ships are also a bit too hyper-specialized. Defense ships rule everything, even invasion ships, until battleships arrive, at which point a few of them supported by destroyers dominate the battlefield.

Cultural Victory is far too easy (5000 culture points)

And im really no fan at all of doubling the cost of buildings on a new planet.

and Alpha and Omega line of ships cost too much to build. Omega Battleship itself is 700 or so hammers.

About resources; could have them spawn ontop of the star systems instead so you dont need to mine way into space. and trade routes can be connected using an airport like building (which doesnt need direct route, just a recieving building) which can be done by renaming an existing one 'Space dock - enable routes' eg.

I also thought that pirates were a really big annoyance in the game. I never had anything to fear from them in terms of taking over my system, but they were always disrupting trade lanes. The biggest culprit to this end, I think, was in how woefully small the culture radius was. There's so much "unseen" territory within an empire that provide spawn points for pirates.

I am nearly ready to release a Mod that addresses a number of these issues.

- Increased ship movement, starting at 2 for early ships except PDS and topping at 6 for Omega Scout.
-Increased planet populations, from 1-2-3 to 2-4-5.
-Increased growth rate.
-4 New Propulsion Technologies and Increased general Tech costs.
-Redistributed Units accross the Tech Tree for more even progression.
-Added Trade Routes with Propulsion Techs so systems can eventually have up to 4.
-Added a New Hollywood Wonder and Interplanetary Network Building.
-Removed Missiles (except Doomsday) as the AI does not use them EVER.
-Reduced Red Factions bonuses

Also the systems are more like Sol. Terras only in the first 4 orbits, white planets only in the last 4 orbits, Gas Giants only Medium or Large and mostly Large, other planets only Medium or Small, and other similar filters.

I don't like how they move. In 'real' space, you can't spend years just wandering the galaxy in a little ship...I think that only the scouts should have been able to do that, and that everyone else should have only been able to move for a certain amount of turns, before they all died of starvation/suffocation.

"The ships are also a bit too hyper-specialized. Defense ships rule everything, even invasion ships, until battleships arrive, at which point a few of them supported by destroyers dominate the battlefield."

I don't see it like this at all. Ok I'll grant you that the planetary defence ships in defencive mode in a "city" can hold their own against most ships, but I have no real problem with battleships once I get squadrons. AND even with the destroyers intercepting some squadrons I generally use missles first and seem to use up their intercepts before using my squadrons. AND those planetary defence ships are useless outside of a "city" in my opinion.

That's their downside, I think. Why is the ship so useless outside of it's element? Heck, my city defense ships were attacking pirate invasion ships most of the time just to stop the pirates from destroying my trade lanes. Simply because the invasion ships are so weak outside of a city attack. If one cannot afford to move around a stack of units, one might as well be throwing their units away.

Oh, and culture has almost no purpose in the game. It limits the time before a city can use the third ring of planets, but that's it.


If you build 2 interplanetary beacons (early), you will find you have culture extending 5-6 tiles from your sun before an enemy can reasonaby attack. This gives you advanced notice of approaching enemy (without constant recon) and means that they have to spend several turns in enemy culture during their approach (not healing) while your squadrons attack. Unless they have spent ALOT of hammers on squadron defense, they will be trashed before they get to your sun.

Its really easy to win culture victory, and 100% defensive bonus to systems is great. my borders are something like 8-10 tiles away from the Star :D

It crashes after maybe to 5 turns until 30 turns so i couldnt really enjoy this scenario.

The heavy micromanagement put me off. You have to colonise every single little world in one city. It got annoying and got rid of my interest in the game.

Also an AI sent a small force at me (I knew it was coming and prepared a bigger defence for the heck of it) and delcared war. I wiped it out after their ships sat outside one of my systems doing nothing and then declared peace. That was stupid of the AI.

1. The tech tree is to short and to slim.
2. AI is stiupid.
3. Ships are to slow.

Those are the biggest issues. More wonders would be nice but that is rather a request, not needed to the core of the game.

In any game other than epic+huge map the research tree is too fast.

In such a large+slow game, the turns take ages to process and there are clones ruling the universe. Duplicate civs are no problem, as long as they have different names.

I like the simplified units and their super specialization.
It's only a minor pity there are no wonders or faction specific stuff.

Barbarians are fantastic, they are great for getting EXP.
If anything, I'd like them to be more powerfull and attack in waves.

Please post any liks to mods on this thread.

Also, If any modders need ideas...
I have some.

PLease share! :D brainstorming is fun.

Just dont expect me to work miracles though, I'm no Kael.

I'll post what I altered so far later tonight, I just tinkered with some python and buildings and now the game crashes when I open the eventsdialog box...also the setup options are messed up now. :crazyeye:

okay....i'll just upload th current zip, without any prestige stuff for stations or squadron-missions (save the buildings).

...gotta...
-move flightschool to fleet academy tech, for clarity.
-get missions to trigger python pretige upgrade for unit.
-get auto prestige gain for sarbases to work properly.
-write alternative txt for new factions. some factions need revising.
-new leaderhead animations...from other mods?
-really new factions.

I am nearly ready to release a Mod that addresses a number of these issues.

- Increased ship movement, starting at 2 for early ships except PDS and topping at 6 for Omega Scout.
-Increased planet populations, from 1-2-3 to 2-4-5.
-Increased growth rate.
-4 New Propulsion Technologies and Increased general Tech costs.
-Redistributed Units accross the Tech Tree for more even progression.
-Added Trade Routes with Propulsion Techs so systems can eventually have up to 4.
-Added a New Hollywood Wonder and Interplanetary Network Building.
-Removed Missiles (except Doomsday) as the AI does not use them EVER.
-Reduced Red Factions bonuses

Also the systems are more like Sol. Terras only in the first 4 orbits, white planets only in the last 4 orbits, Gas Giants only Medium or Large and mostly Large, other planets only Medium or Small, and other similar filters.

second that.

yesss, I just can't wait. ;)

I actually like the lack of cultral control. This is space afterall, pirates are going to be able to screw around with the authorities a lot.

How about ways to capture enemy starbases? UU's? UB's? New units like gunships, frigates, Multipurpose ships...

Those are good ideas for an expansion mod.

Although the 'everybody has access to everything' ideal in this mod I like.


-marine :mad: Invasion ships are a cool idea to capture starbases. and other ships for that matter. (capital ships only) [free assaultMarines-upgrade]

Marines that can hop aboard any ship that has 'assaultMarines-upgrade'.
Having the upgrade enables the unit to carry marines, that act like Anti-Ship-Missiles as far as target selection in stacks goes.
(I guess the most powerfull unit in a stack)
Once launced, the marines either capture their target or die.
Capture succes defenders level and whether the ship has any marines of it's own. Marines give +100% chance to defence. (or should there be combat between them? complex!)

Spies?:mischief:
can be transported to enemy targets by Stealth-ship.
can perform a number of spy missions once on an enemy planet/starbase.
can bribe solitary units not belonging to own faction.

I can't really see the what a gunship, frigate would add.
a cheap anti-capital ship light ship? a powerfull shortrange bomber?
Multi purpose ships are already there... if you get the right upgrades.

UU and UB. Could do, but that would involve new art.:cool: An Alien faction would be fun, as a random event. AArgh! aliens are invading! :cry: or Argh! the Inhabitants of planet X have turned into mindless teknozombies! :scan:

Hmm, maybe a mystery barbarian planet where it's got a lot of cool things if captured, but is defended by a Guardian.
Something like Master of Orion, where you can find Orion and there's a Guardian defending it and if you take it out, you get Orion...
I have no idea what Orion does, because I haven't played the game.

So yeah, a mystery Orion system that has a lot of cool things would be good (maybe call it Planet X?)

No Alien Civs. Instead, Why not add colonies that have rebeled from the PDE?

Multi-purpose ships would be ships that can attack, defend, and carry missiles and squadrons. For gunships and Frigates, let the following list clear it up.

Top=Most Powerful in stength (Special Properties shown in ())

Battleship
Dreadnought (1 squadron, 1 Missile)
Frigate (can carry 1 squadron)
Heavy Cruiser (10% Interception, 1 squadron, 1 Missile)
Cruiser (2 Missiles)
Man O' War (25% Interception, 1 Missile)
Destroyer (50% Interception)
Destroyer Escort (70% Interception)
Gunboat (90% Interception)
SuperCarrier (6 squadrons)
Carrier (3 squadrons)

P.S. "arexack heratic" your mod that you posted did not work. Unknown problems with XML.

But an Orion system would be awesome! It needs to be in the game

Even Earth could be added, what's left of it that is (is there Earth in the scenario?)

sorry about that tinker. I'm not in a position to check the mod right now, but will as soon as I get home.
It worked for me, but maybe I forgot to include a file when I packed it.

[edit: Oh wait! I have BtS installed on a laptop here, I can DL and Install the mod.]
[edit2: Installs fine. works ok. only to many options in the worldtype setup. Could you post the error you get? You DID copy the final frontier folder and overwrite the files into the assets folder right? (I just packaged the altered files.)]

As for those multi-purpose ships, thanks for clearing that up.
I don't think units are able to carry more than one type of domaintype group/unittype of units though, so combining missiles with fighters is probably not possible. (IIRC)

@StylerSj: Or a Raxxla planet defended by hordes of very experienced (elite) barbarian units! (If you know what I am referring to, you are showing your age. ;) )

@tinker again: No Alien Civs. Instead, Why not add colonies that have rebeled from the PDE?
lol haven't we all?...except for the newEarth faction.

Anyhow to ADD factions, we need good ideas to distinguish them from the other factions.
One idea could be a fighter oriented faction:
-starbases producing fighters iso missiles.
-no access to the capitalship or lightship doctrines.
-All ships start with the cargobay +1 upgrade.
-a UU in the form of a battlecarrier. (a cruiser that carries airunits i.s.o. missiles.)

idea 2:
Would it be possible to partially revive the old city mechanics and introduce an asteroid dwelling faction/race?
using the starbase as a city and small (maybe constructors reduced in size) animations to signify worked asteroid belts. (production)
-maybe other benefits from other features (power from radiation clouds, food from water?)
-add SpaceDweller trait: no damage from radiation. (add line in radiation damage routine to check for this)
-Needs new improvements: biodome asteroids for foodproduction, power sats for power(money) extraction.

By Rebeled Civs I mean a Civ that rebeled from the PDE before the Timeframe of the game. And why not and the PDE?

I like the asteroid civ idea. but how about they can build both asteroid and star system settlements. I also like the fighter civ idea but you should be able to shut off production. as for the multi-use ships, just make squadrons and missiles share space. also, how about more squadron units and playable barbarian civs. also include the colony system from epic. the game also needs starbases that produce culture and other starbases that act like mini-cities/planets. there should also be different terrain features too.

P.S. Please no Alien Civs/Races!!!!!

The time it takes during end of turn.

I agree with almost all of the points that the poll says, but I voted other.
This is because in the table of contents for the latest BTS patch, it seems that they are going to address problems of the diferent scenarios too. But also because the thing that anoyed me the most was that many of the features that where introduced in BTS have been take out for this scenario.
There is no active Espionage and no corporations, it seems that there is also no Blockading option to interupt trade among other things.

This is why i haven´t played the scenario any more scince the first day.
I don´t want to play Civ IV in space, I want to play Civ IV BTS in space.

I agree that there is a problem with the exclusion of the BtS features, and I hope that the modders will adress that problem.

I want wormholes! they connect two distant parts of the map and allow for more dynamic gameplay. maybe make a tech to reveal them and a bit later on to use them, maybe you ( or rather any player) need a starbase or some other structure on it to work it out.

To solve the Transportation problem, we should not include wormholes but in clude two things:

1. "Hyper lanes" Like jumplanes but movement of 40 instead of 8. They would be availible at the tech level that jump lanes are at now, and jump lanes would be lowered.

2. "Hyper Lane Portal" Works like the epic game's airport and can tranport any ship.

Another suggestion, we should bring back great people. Perticularly great generals (Fleet commanders). there should be different types of fleet commanders as well (fleet commanders that can be assigned to any type of ship but specialize in one kind of ship. there would still be generic commanders, though.

We should also make more values and each value should have it's own UU in addition to a UB.

As a final note, we need to make corperations and allow colonies. we need to include more BtS concepts.

Scouts really need to have 2 movement.

Who says the people guarding Orion have to be aliens? Perhaps rebels with really cool tech that was used to destroy Earth and now they're hiding on that planet, ready to fight again

make one of the asteroids a hidden "magic bean" that you have to transport back to your home planet and cultivate before the others.

after the right technologies, you have to get the beanstalk to grow to the top of the universe where you can then climb the magic astro-beanstalk and slay the evil giant that lives there.

of course - this won't be cheap; it will cost you an astro-cow

Perhaps make it a quest. Oh and you can only defeat the giant with the Omega Battleship as he's quite powerful (sort of like that dragon in the Age of Ice mod)

Here's a patch for the pirate problem. Pirates can only spawn in plots that are at least 5 plots away from any visible plot. This should be enough to stop them from spreading in your empire. With iNoBarbRange you can modify the range.

Edit in CvFinalFrontierEvents.py the function doPirateSpawning. The comments say what to replace.
#MOD BEGIN

#Original Code

# Loop through all teams to see if anyone can see this plot
#for iTeamLoop in range(gc.getMAX_TEAMS()):
# if (gc.getTeam(iTeamLoop).isAlive()):
# if (pPlot.isVisible(iTeamLoop, false)):
# bPlotValid = false
# break
iNoBarbRange = 5

def clipToMap(x, y):
w = CyMap().getWidth()
h = CyMap().getHeight()

if x < 0:
x += w
if x >= w:
x -= w
if y < 0:
y += h
if y >= h:
y -= h
return CyMap().plot(x, y)

def isValidPlot(x, y):
for team in range(gc.getMAX_TEAMS()):
if (gc.getTeam(team).isAlive()):
center_x = pPlot.getX()
center_y = pPlot.getY()
for x in range(center_x-iNoBarbRange, center_x+iNoBarbRange):
for y in range(center_y-iNoBarbRange, center_y+iNoBarbRange):
if (clipToMap(x, y).isVisible(team, false)):
return false
return true

if not isValidPlot(pPlot.getX(), pPlot.getY()):
continue

#MOD END

I have also a patch which removes junk systems. It also values hammers a lot more than commerce so the overall tech speed should be slowed down and building speeded up. I'll have to play a few games to see if this addresses the problems of a too small tech tree and a IMO too slow game.

I've just been thinking, why not have Final Frontier-esque mods that are theamed after sci-fi movies and games. How about a Star Wars space mod? A Nexus: Jupiter Incident mod? Or how about a Halo mod?

If anyone would like to endorse or follow up on these ideas, please let me know on this thread.:scan:

I can't believe people complain about pirates. I'm on turn 300 of a non-tech-trading agressive-AI raging barbarian Prince-level marathon game on a Large map. Three planet defenders in a city ALWAYS prevents pirates from taking a planet. A bomber + a fighter +city defender prevents pirates from pillaging your warp-lanes. Yes, your planet defenders should fight when they have too.

My settings also keep the map large enough so it feels like a universe. It certainly doesn't feel like prince level. No tech trading keeps the tech race from going crazy. On marathon, you really have to be careful on the techs you choose to research.

Anyways, I'm still a newb who's yet to finish a game because I've been having lots of fun playing early games on these settings. Once I adapted, I've seen no real problems with the game so far. The late game is worrying, though. I see this "Doomsday" weapon coming up soon in the tech tree...

But, one of the reason I haven't installed the latest update is that it says they dimmed down the pirates. Why?

Time loading between turns. Its beyond human comphrension that it can take so long. must be all the colours/textures used on the eye candy.

damn shame.

The time between turns is due to all the python changes. The pirate change is due to the fact that before, the pirates were as advanced as the most advanced civ, giving all other civs lots of trouble.

I don't like how you can get multiple Civ's of the same civ which can be really confusing. The game needs more leaders with different traits.

Plus, I'm still waiting for the Civ IV Alpha Centauri mod to come out. Why couldn't the loot some of the Civs from that?

One thing I always like about Babylon 5 is they had hypersapce that ships can use if they have the jump engines for it, but it would be cheaper for most commerce to have sub-light ships using Jump Gates. So if you captured a system that has a jump gate, you'd definitely get a economic boost. Expensive to build, but cheaper than every Tom Dick and Larry having to have their freighters equipped with jump engines.

I said all of the above... The main problem I thing is the vastness of space itself... It is soooooo incredibly barren. I think the scale should be on the planetary level instead of solar level for one.

Space is supposed to be big. After all, it is just a huge battlefield. The upgraded transportation system I talked about along with better movement values for units would help bridge the space. If your talking about a lack of features, well it kind of is supposed to be like that, but if you need features, add abandoned space stations and star bases that produce culture.

P.S. Has anyone given the mod ideas i presented earlier any thought?

I put down wonders and tech tree as problems, but both I think are more a matter of scope (and development time) rather than true game play problems. I mean, it would be more fun to have more scifi options to play with and wonder races to compete in.

The AI, though, is a problem. First issue is exploration -- units will happily move into hostile/lethal terrain if exploring. I'd guess this is due to looking many moves ahead and not testing for moves which leave units in lethal terrain. OTOH, fast units can safely traverse black holes, so part of the problem isn't lethality, but movement speed. A unit with two moves, which finds itself in a bad square, could move one more space to safety. This presumes that the movement routines can cope with newly spotted hazard terrain.

The second is the AI inability to use squadrons and missiles on carriers, starbases, and cruisers. This cripples its combat capability compared to a human. The game's AI can't cope with land units (which is what FF spacecraft are) operating as carriers, at least for now.

A last issue is stealth ships. The AI can use them, but does so rarely, and has no defensive strategy against them. A simple solution would be to deny them pillaging -- they'd still be a hazard, but wouldn't be able to go about destroying infrastructure so easily. If they AI did use them, as a human can in a multiplayer game, intelligent scouting defenders would limit them, but they'd still be a pain to cope with.


Another issue is balance. First, between the factions. Different but equal is a tricky goal to achieve. Having more factions wouldn't totally eliminate this, but would offer more combinations of allies to perhaps weaken strong factions.



Second, the combat balance and price to performance values of the units isn't ideal. The delta upgrade is generally worth the double price of the unit, but the omega upgrades tend to be expensive. They are too expensive for the top three units -- omega cruisers, battleships, and carriers are simply not worth the price. And given that you must spend a lot of research to get them, that is a serious game balance issue. A smart player can simply build two delta units and get more bang for the buck. The omega squadrons and light ships are fairly decent in balance -- 6 for delta vs 9 for omega (and generally a point of speed/range).

If delta to omega is a 50% increase, then the omega battleship should be 36 x 1.5, or 54, at least. But given that it is the ultimate brute force weapon, and is extremely expensive, an even greater advantage is justifiable. As it is, you are usually better off using two delta battleships. It needs something more to be worth the cost (plus research) of two of those.

Carriers are the worst off. The delta carrier is just slightly better as a squadron platform than the basic model, with a gain of speed which is nice but not essential. The omega doesn't offer a speed edge over the delta, nor does it give twice the squadron firepower. Overall, you are better off with four basic alpha carriers than either two delta or one omega. Twice the squadrons of an omega, and able to be in four times the places. The cargo promotion only amplifies this edge, as your early build carriers can fill all your needs.

As galactic domination is the ultimate and very expensive military tech, it is a shame that the unit you get isn't worth getting.

Cruisers are relatively weak units, compared to destroyers which tend to do the same basic job. You need few of them to deliver missiles, because you'll only have so many missiles to play with. Their basic combat power isn't hot enough to justify their cost. Their position in the tech tree is fairly close to the destroyer advances. A delta destroyer is generally more useful than an alpha cruiser, and likewise for omega vs delta cruiser. The Omega cruiser is nice in combat power compared to the delta cruiser (unlike the omega battleship), but its missile carrying power isn't that special.

All in all, it makes the top three military techs of dubious utility. You should be able to win a military campaign without them, and beat up someone who does go after them.


I've been testing mods to change the combat values. I'm not quite done yet. My current thought is like this:

#1: omega to delta combat ratios are generally 1.5:1, with other bonuses factored in.
#2: omega should be one movement more than delta. This is the case with some units now, but not all.
#3: cruisers should be half battleship strength. That's enough to blast destroyers and lesser ships of one generation higher, and helps justify their cost without missiles. Missile capacity should be 50% higher per generation, roughly, though higher combat power could reduce that for balance.
#4: carriers aren't cool enough (or useful enough) if all they effectively gain is squadron capacity. Rather, let them evolve into hybrid direct combat ships. delta is like a destroyer/cruiser combo, omega like a delta battleship/destroyer combo (or battlestar). Coupled with speed gains (move 3 for omega), this gives them a strong place on the end game battlefield, and a strong reason to get and use them. A 4x squadron capacity (12!) doesn't mean much if you can't field that many squadrons, and can't let your carrier actually engage in close combat.
#5: I'd like to give at least the omega battleship a starbase-type ranged attack. If I don't do that, i think that a move-2, strength 60 unit, while fair for balance, will still be overwhelmed by squadron defenses. Giving it more raw combat power or speed would also work, but not be quite as good at representing the "death star" idea of slow but lethal.
#5a: If I can give the omega battleship a ranged attack, I'd boost the cruiser speeds to 2 (delta) and 3 (omega). Omega cruiser should require alloy, just like omega destroyers, which would slow the tech tree on the military side.

A side note on speed: The mobility promotion reduces the need for speed upgrades, as your move-1 units will move 2. I try to give that to my battleships, so that I'll have a fleet which can move at 2. Even if I get speed 3 capability later, it is difficult and expensive to make the entire fleet move that fast. Because of that, move 3 isn't as impressive as it could be. You need to use only fast units in a fleet to take full advantage, and that means the latest and most expensive. Otherwise, they are limited in effect to a move of 2. The AI doesn't seem to use the movement promotion much, but it really helps battleships.

I have an idea regarding promotions and alpha-delta-omega upgrades. It is an upgrade system. You would be able to purchase weapons, engines, shields and other improvements without expirience (Expirience promotions would still be present but would be harder to get and have more of an impact). With this system, you would be able to upgrade an alpha-class ship to the equivilent of a delta-class by picking "delta" weapons, shields, and other ship components. Or you could choose a variety of different components and "make" your own custom class that is tailor-made to suit your needs. The different choices of components would also include upgrades that would allow ships new abilities, like a ranged attack.

Don't think about it, do it. ;)

Don't think about it, do it. ;)

Unfortunatly, I can't Mod. Sorry.

@Arkham4269
Have you tried the B5 mod we are working on, it still needs a lot more work but we are slowly getting there. We need ship models more than anything else just so it looks the part but if you can ignore the current model problem it is a playable mod for the most part. We need lots more feedback to make sure we have everything working the way it should.

@Arkham4269
Have you tried the B5 mod we are working on, it still needs a lot more work but we are slowly getting there. We need ship models more than anything else just so it looks the part but if you can ignore the current model problem it is a playable mod for the most part. We need lots more feedback to make sure we have everything working the way it should.

I have, but haven't gotten too much into it as I figured the new BtS patch would break save games.

As for help, I wish I could but alas alack, the last programming language I used was BASIC (yes, I'm showing my age) - Feedback, however, I can do!
Some quick thoughts since I could easily write a novel (17 years as a military intel analyst will do that to a guy - these also aply to the basic game as well as the Star Trek version of this basic mod)

1. Not enough to do! To me it feels that once you get all the available systems colonize, the game 'degenerates' into combat. Not as much diplomacy, culture wars or trading.
2. Better 'monsters' - Pirates are easy, but they get boring. How about some Beserkers (Saberhagen or the planet killer from 'the Doomsday Machine' episode. Space dragons or what ever. I'm sure Sci-Fi has enough to work with. With B-5, renegade Shadows could be used.
3. More Random events. This also includes the 'goody huts' in that better B-5 flavor (something like: A wandering band of Techno Mages upgrade you sensors to X)
4. What's up with the planets? Some mods have you able to colonize all the planets/moons in a system, some don't. It's confusing.
5. My standard complaint: BETTER DIPLOMACY! Why is it that the AI can threaten (I get tired of Catherine slapping me) but for the most part the human can't. Plus, why oh why hasn't Civ picked up the best Diplomacy option from Alpha Centuari? I hate it if I'm at war with X with my ally Y and I'm beating on X and they cry "Uncle!" and want peace. However, in Civ you don't have the option of saying, "Okay, I'll sign that peace treaty on the condition you also have peace with Y or else it's game on!" Without this, X will now get a break from you and could run over your ally, which you don't want.

Anyway, I think the space mods suffer from lack of Corporations/guilds and the like. Of course I'm biased as I'm generally playing Fall from Heaven and get used to things like the Guild of Hammers or the Cult of the Dragon.

Final Frontier breaks some stuff for corporations and random events (more for corporations; events work fine as long as you don't add a unit via python).

@DeaneJ,
I haven't had a chance to look at your Star Trek variation on FF as (last i read) you hadn't got it compatable with 3.17. What i can do though, with your permission, is have a look at what you've done with the events and see if i can port them over to the B5 mod and either B5 theme the events or add to them. Are your events purely xml or do they also involve python changes?

Final Frontier breaks some stuff for corporations and random events (more for corporations; events work fine as long as you don't add a unit via python).

When I first got BtS and looked at the FF code, I notice that corporation code was left out of the mod. Maybe they wrote FF before corps were added to the expansion.

@PsiCorps: I got it working with 3.17 - the problem was a change in CvAdvisorUtils. It's virtually impossible to do events without python. I would look at the stuff from beta 2 - of the ones I got in after that point, 1 was similar to the first event, and the rest of the working ones were adapted from the epic game. I since removed them in beta 3, so I don't have the code itself for the later ones (XML only - the later python ones broke).

It indeed looks like corporations were not implemented at the time. They are not in the theme at all (search for "Three Interface Questions" or something like that. It covers the theme part, though it will have to be added back to CvMainInterface). Also, stuff like +1 (yield) per consumed resource does not work at all.

It would be nice if planets and stars could be added through the world builder. My game had a gigantic nebula taking up the center of the map, so I thought I would break it up and add a couple of systems, only to find that it can't be done.

You need to make a worldbuilder save and reload. Your systems will then have planets. I can also be done via the python console, check this site for the tutorial.

You need to make a worldbuilder save and reload. Your systems will then have planets. I can also be done via the python console, check this site for the tutorial.


I can't load a world builder save. It either crashes or hangs up.

The python looks complicated, and I haven't found a step-by-step tutorial for editing systems in this mod for someone who knows nothing about python. It would be so much easier to use the world builder.

I don't think it's even possible to do it with worldbuilder alone. The reason is that the solar systems are done exclusively through python and are actually stored, again in python.

it s just boring it s an amasing mod but the fact that you only see some stars and void gets boring.i like to see landscapes and terrain like civ.
thabks.

:D anyone tried the mod with raging barbarians? It's ridiculous! I'm around 300-400 turns in my marathon game and I've destroyed some 400 defence ships and invasion ships each, some 200 destroyers and 100 battleships. :lol:

Only one AI civ still stands and I never met 4 that died first (and I've had only one war and pirates killed my opponent before I did anything). Only reason I still stand are that I removed xp restrictions and managed to build star bases in vital choke points. They still get thru as assaults consist of some 25 - 100 ships and I have few systems outside my protective ring of star bases.

Largest civilization is the pirates controlling aprox 50% existing star systems :crazyeye: compared to my measly 10% :lol:. Last remaining AI holds 3 systems down from its height of 10 and won't last another 100 turns.

It and other now dead civs could have lasted longer, even indefinitely if they had dug in when they started losing ships and systems to pirates but they didn't seem to understand the peril they were in. They continued to build colony ships and send out their ships to die and leaving their worlds defenceless more or less.

I have my own problems as well as I have tax rate of 80% and it barely covers my upkeep. I'm only starting to get more income because commercial buildings seem to come so damn late and wealth was discovered by one of now dead civs (the reason I have some of those outer colonies was to take over the former homeworld of civ that founded wealth so I could spread it to my cities. Took 100 turns to get some to my home systems because they cant cross the damage zones and had to instead go around half of pirate infested galaxy :p. For same reason those colonies do not have star bases; my builders can't get there alive at least.)

To sum up problems:
Long turns
Hard to make cash early (or even mid game) without having wealth. And there's not that much you can do to improve cash flow.
Not much to build with workers
Not much to do at start (I'd expect to be able to construct some buildings etc. at start.)
Too slow movement.
More diverse civics and make them available from start and preset for each civ plus more costly to change. It makes no sense to have to develop democracy or monarchy or what not when they've been around centuries before mods timeline.
Too easy to get epic culture level (I'm nearing 10.000 in couple cities and may get 3rd to 5000 before pirates kill the last AI empire. Do I win then btw with no AI's left?)
It costs too much to build second etc. buildings and its boring to micromanage a system as it's hard to tell what’s build where.
AI is moronic. It does not seem to even notice pirates or what’s the idea of moving out their battle ship when system is assaulted by two dozen pirate ships. As far as I could tell (from spying or them being vassals), AI did not build according to situation it was in. It just tries to get more colonies and workers even when assaulted from all sides instead of building useful buildings or defences..
Too few civs for huge map and mostly just bad choices (too much negatives, same with civics).

Pirates are their own category:
they spawn too close your systems; one unseen tile seemed to be enough as there was only one asteroid tile and pirate BS came from it and wasn't damaged so it did not come from damage zone.
They seem to advance at your pace but because their units just spawn, I ended up being attacked by 6 pirate Battle Ships after I'd just researched them. (why couldn't they make game pregenerate some pirate bases at start that would generate pirate ships as time goes by and maybe allow to capture/loot ships and worlds (instead of taking them) to boost their ship production capability and quality of their ships.)
Pirates should only raid my bases/colonies/mines/ships for cash and resources and then vanish to come back stronger later. Not run around pillaging my road network!

Also what's up with no PDE. I was expecting something like New Orionians from Moo3 that would tax us dry and push us around in United planets conferences in order to build an armada or something to retake earth (Moo2 Antaran base would fit right in here. Btw. Can you find earths fate in this mod anyway, its too early in game and its almost over for me due to pirates destroying all other empires).

PDE could have been given single highly developed system but no capability (interest due to ripping all needed resources from poor colonists) to get more, significant tech lead good fleet and defences. The colonies would first have to build up enough strength to defy/over rule his decisions in UP gatherings, usurp their rule and either make new empire here (or gain other normal victories) or solve mystery of earth (by building massive fleet and sending it to earth to investigate). Closer to games time limit what ever had happened to earth could start happening here as well intensifying closer the time limit you get forcing players to race to victory of their choice or face annihilation.

Now how’s that for mod concept? Any volunteers to make it happen? :D:p

How about trying the mod with normal barbarians? I didn't even know that the barbarian options even had an effect (maybe they don't). Barbarians spawn much more frequently in FF than the epic game because there is so much more fog. You can't fogbust in FF, so you actually have to deal with barbs. The AI is acting like it always does and doesn't understand FF at all... it wouldn't even be able to play it except for a bunch of python overrides.

The PDE does not exist as a faction in the game. All accounts of Earth in the game are in the tech quotes, but Jon Shafer did post the story somewhere on this site shortly after BtS came out.

EDIT: I should also mention that your research was probably lagging. The barb ships that spawn are based off of what 1/3 of the game you're in. You can't overexpand in FF. An early game REX is probably not wise.

The PDE does not exist as a faction in the game. All accounts of Earth in the game are in the tech quotes, but Jon Shafer did post the story somewhere on this site shortly after BtS came out.

Yes, I know. I'm playing the mod you know ;). I was just commenting on what kind of picture I had and what I was expecting after reading the scenario description. Having it like I described above would have been so much more interesting :(

EDIT: I should also mention that your research was probably lagging. The barb ships that spawn are based off of what 1/3 of the game you're in. You can't overexpand in FF. Oh and here I tought that pirates were actually researching techs in those 30+ colonies they've captured thus far :p


An early game REX is probably not wise.

I had little choise in the matter as barbarian rampage forced me to expand to push back the fog of war and to to be able to force the barbs to enter thru the chocke points in nebulae (and not all directions like they used to when I had my first four colonies. Also only places I could defend were the colonies as any ship cauch outsive was swamped by hordes of pirates. I tried building space stations early but I just could not protect the workers). Then again I only had about 15 colonies at my height. 3 outermost were lost after pirate BS's began to arrive.

I am leading the science race usually having 2-3 more tech than any AI nation has/had in game. I even had 3 vassals at one point (they begged to become one as soon as I met then :p). I did not have problems with reseach, there were enough buildings and civics to boost it. How ever there were not much I could do about taxes until about 100 turns ago when I got the banks(?) and now the building from wealth. I can convert production to cash too but my colonies produce too little (20-30 at 15 size) to make difference when I need 500+ to upgrade a ship or rush build a second or third building of a type. As I said, I had tax at 80% just to get by (just to support fleet of 2 defence ships in each planet, 10 star bases (do they cost upkeep?) bit over dozen combat ships and half dozen worker ships and half dozen ships covering space between colonies and in corners so pirates would not spawn there.

Btw, I know expansion is expensive but why then was the 10 colony AI my most direct opponent in tech race or does AI cheat again (difficulty warlord should not give bonuses to AI)? I had tech brokering off to prevent AI tech swap fever it usually has (in normal games I even have tech trading off).

Oh and is there a setting I can change in xml to make pirates spawn 5 tiles away in FoW rather than the 1 its now?

Wow... 30 barb systems. You were probably facing a mixture of spawned and built ships. I think the AI cheats on city upkeep no matter what even in the epic game. The spawning may be a global define value... or python. Hard to say for sure as FF overrides a lot of the game framework with python components.

The biggest problem is I can't it to load :(

Raging barbs is rough. To cope with it, you have to adapt your anti-pirate defenses. The AI isn't so good at that, and as a result tends to get beaten up. Playing marathon speed is also bad. I'm not sure of the exact effect, but since the players' ships take longer to build, and the pirates still spring up like always, it is easier to get overwhelmed by numbers.

It is possible to fog bust, but it requires squadrons and ships (scouts work OK) to do it. Keep patrolling around your systems, and you can spot and hammer pirates. Starbases also help a lot.


As for early builds and making money, FF has a very different way to work things than the regular game, but I always find something for my workers to do. You can always be building roads. The road network supports trade routes, mobility for defense, and in general is never bad to have more of.

If you have the current patch, the game should play better.

The biggest problem for me is that this game is way to easy to win with cultural victory. I even try the Duel at Emperor level and won before turn 200.
On the other hand, I'd never been able to win a diplomatic victory but, that's my case with all the Civ games.

To cut down on pirates you should play a game with lots and lots of civs.
Since other civs fogbust, it helps. But then you have to worry about their militaries instead of barbarians. I've never played with Raging Barbarians and I don't play super-high difficulties, but lots of civs, about atleast 1 copy of each civ and sometimes 2, definitly makes things easier barbarian-wise but the other civs replace that threat.

Playing marathon in this mod is frustrating because the early-game takes so long to begin with (20 turns to build a ship on normal) and the longer it gets to make ONE ship equals more frustration (on marathon its like 70 turns to build one ship)

Moving on, Has anyone come up with any mods of this mod? Like a Halo-themed mod or Star Wars-themed mod? Anyone?

Ok, here are the edit's I've made to this mod

==done==
+1 trade toue with simple economy, domestic developement and commerce theory
-1 trade route for red sydicate
reduced red sydicate's production bonuses to 10, 10, 10, 10 and 25
anti-ship missile's don't require military support
new text for chanes to trweade routes, to techs and civics
gave planetary defence ships see invisible, and raised costs by 5, 10, 15 (and advanaced start costs by 4, a little, abut 5)

Good, but isn't the Red Syndicate now underpowered?
We need more units in this mod-mod too.
Good job on the changes though!

Good, but isn't the Red Syndicate now underpowered?
See all those extra trade routes I've dotted around? They still get +1:food: & +1:hammers: from them. Haven't played around much, but I think they still should be strong as ever.
I am considering giving them back +1 trade route (or possibly a special building that gives them +1? Special stardock?) And wiping out the +1:food: & +1:hammers: . Then I'd finally make trade routes give you +1:food: +1:hammers: per 4 (or so) commerce, (not in vanilla, but there is an option) so everyone gets that sort of bonus, but the RS get more. Unfortunitly, giving civs more trade routes suffers from diminishing returns- the nth trade route is less important than (n-1)th. Possibly giving them a trade-route multiplyer might be better.
Unless of course the :food:&:hammers: give per i commerce on a trade toute is given on the 1st, (i+1)th etc commerce, rather than the ith, (2i)th etc.trade routes
If anyone wants the files, I'll upload them (though the changes are pritty simple) - when I work out how to upload files.

its a bit disorganised in that forum, so: does anyone know of a mod that improves FF's gameplay elements? not so much a TC like the MoO thingy or purerly grahpical changes, but like ... stuff to give FF more flesh, like more wonders, more civics, more units, more resources, buildings. or any additions. I wouldnt even know how to search for it.

Well, these are the files I edited- all xml and one python. I don't know what the proper way of presenting them is, but if anyone wants to try them they can.

They,
+1 trade route with simple economy, domestic development and commerce theory
-1 trade route for red syndicate
reduced red syndicate’s production bonuses to 10, 10, 10, 10 and 25
anti-ship missile's don't require military support
new text for changes to trade routes, to techs and civics
gave planetary defence ships see invisible, and raised costs by 5, 10, 15 (and advanced start costs by 4, a little, aboutt 5)

They make the trade part of the game a little bit 'fuller', and reduce the effect of one expoit; stealth ships on AIs.

Why did you bother with the advanced start costs? It's disabled in Final Frontier as the mod is incompatible with advanced start (even with it re-enabled and the option checked you still get a normal start with a city and a planetary defense ship).

EDIT: It's also better to put the modded files in the same structure as the default ones and zip that up.

Why did you bother with the advanced start costs? It's disabled in Final Frontier as the mod is incompatible with advanced start (even with it re-enabled and the option checked you still get a normal start with a city and a planetary defense ship).

EDIT: It's also better to put the modded files in the same structure as the default ones and zip that up.
The short answer, is becuase I forgot that. The long answer is that I wnated to be prepared for all eventualities.

Ahh ok, I'll do that next time. What about the fuiles I didn't change: do I include them or leave them out?

Leave those out, as there is no need to include them.

One thing that I don't like is that when I build a colony, I often receive a message that the colony is asking ("rightly", it says) to be released to a different empire, one turn after -I- founded it! They're never any closer to the cultural influence area of that other power than me, either! So weird.

The AI has the oddest tendency to build warp lanes in a 5x5 area around their systems...IMO there's no actual advantage to this, if you ask me, and this comes from a guy who ideally paves two laned routes between colonies when he can.

Next, I haven't bumped up the default difficulty levels yet, but in every game, the pirates capture multiple civilized systems. I just really think it's unfeasible for pirates to churn out Battleships out of thin air before they've even captured a planet. Mostly, a treat pirates as a sort of prestige-building resource, but it would be nice if they had asteroid starbases that could be disposed of to lessen their constant nagging raids. Alternatively, it would be nice if they didn't have access to capital ships except from shipyards on planets they conquered!

I love this mod for what it is though: a mod. Shafer's probably marked this project completed long ago. Ah well.

also: What are UU's and UB's?

UU = unique unit
UB = unique building

both of which concepts that apply to civ IV proper, not final frontier. would be nice to have some though, but it does seem a bit difficult with the unit balance system there is.

One thing that I don't like is that when I build a colony, I often receive a message that the colony is asking ("rightly", it says) to be released to a different empire, one turn after -I- founded it! They're never any closer to the cultural influence area of that other power than me, either! So weird.

It does this in the regular game too. You can ignore these messages. The logic is that a city which is closer to another civ's influence than your own may fall under its culture and "flip" if you don't set it free.

In the regular game cities are often built within the cultural influence of another player, but more often are close enough to your territory to count automatically as "yours". In FF, colonies are rarely built within the cultural borders or influence of anyone.

Fortunately, you just ignore this message as irrelevant, unless you were planning to build a colony to give away. I don't see much incentive to do this in FF.

The roads everything thing is probably a holdover from regular civ land development. It isn't horrible, because it does make it harder for raiders to rip up the warp lines around important planets, and ensures that your defense reaction force, which sorties out of the colony to wipe out intruders, always gets movement back to safety because it never leaves the roads.

But there are usually better uses for construction ships than paving space over.

Pirates are tough against the AI, which doesn't use squadrons or missiles enough as defense. A pirate battleship on its own will die if the player has enough squadrons to stop it, and that is pretty common. If the pirates couldn't turn out battleships without planets of their own, they'd cease to be any threat at all in the later game.

I tried pirate starbases, and unfortunately they inhibited the appearance of new pirate ships. They can handle owning star systems, but not starbases. I don't know why this is, but no new pirate ships appeared once I gave them starbases.

May be a bug.
The pirates seem to just randomly come out with battleships even if they control no cities. What bugs me about the pirates is that they just destroy planets instead of capturing them.

The pirates bug me too, thinker. Are they in the backstory? I tend to engage way more of them than of any other faction, in a typical game.

Can somebody link me to that backstory? I know that Jon has posted it before and I can't find it, for the life of me.

I am unhappy with the way influence works in FF. I don't play the influence or cultural games, yet I am always stuck in the later game stages with having to keep churning out wealth to pay for influence.... and the slider is set to 0%.

I don't know if this is a bug or an intentional setting.

I really enjoy this mod... space is my favorite frontier... but there is a-lot missing from it.

I have just DL'd the latest patch, so I will have to play the FF mod with the patch... but from what I've experience so-far, here are the problems:

Biggest problem: Not enough units and techs. It is too easy to get omega battle ships and when I researched the Omega destroyer I was pretty surprised how quickly it occurred... so I didn't even build a battleship until I got to omega class, then I pumped a few out and dominated way too easily.

2nd biggest problem: AI: it seems too easy to molest them with stealth ships.

- No aliens!! How can there be no aliens in space? This is very weird. There should be alien civs, maybe even a robot or cyborg civ, and also (but not as important) alien barb's that can be either peaceful (give you a free resource or scout or something), war-like (self-explanatory) or a rare, super-advanced alien (from another galaxy) that says something profound just to confuse you.

- Not enough improvements to terrain (maybe there should be asteroid belts on some systems)

- I thought it would be interesting if you could have a ship that could enter a black-hole (or wormhole?) and be transported to another hole.

ALSO: There is a glitch when ships battle, sometimes they disappear... I hope the patch fixes this.

Maybe to help fix movement concerns, you could add a fuel meter to each ship, and they automatically refuel at starbases or star systems... or with a refuel ship. until you research Zero Point Energy whereby all new ships with ZPE drives don't need fuel.

"I am unhappy with the way influence works in FF. I don't play the influence or cultural games, yet I am always stuck in the later game stages with having to keep churning out wealth to pay for influence.... and the slider is set to 0%."

I think this is because in each star system you can switch which planet you build improvements on. You should build an interplanetary beacon on your most distant planets to increase your cultural borders faster... unless I have misunderstood your problem.

"I am unhappy with the way influence works in FF. I don't play the influence or cultural games, yet I am always stuck in the later game stages with having to keep churning out wealth to pay for influence.... and the slider is set to 0%."

I think this is because in each star system you can switch which planet you build improvements on. You should build an interplanetary beacon on your most distant planets to increase your cultural borders faster... unless I have misunderstood your problem.
The speed with which my cultural borders increase is not an issue.

In my most recent game in this mod, toward the end of the game almost all of my star systems were producing Wealth to pay for 350+ Influence points per turn, but the slider was at 0%.

That's TOTAL influence, not just influence from the slider. You can get it from buildings too. It's been a long time since I've played Final Frontier, but I'm pretty sure that there are no buildings that reduce city maintenance in the mod, so you shouldn't over-expand.

That's TOTAL influence, not just influence from the slider. You can get it from buildings too. It's been a long time since I've played Final Frontier, but I'm pretty sure that there are no buildings that reduce city maintenance in the mod, so you shouldn't over-expand.
OK, that makes sense. However, since I can set each star system to produce Wealth, Influence or Research, it would make more sense to me that setting the Influence slider at 0% would work the same as it does for Wealth and Research. It doesn't.

It actually does, but there are no ways of getting raw research/gold in Final Frontier. If you run specialists in normal civ you'll see the same effect. Influence is Final Frontier is just culture renamed.

as it is in many mods. :)

So what I am seeing as a problem is "working as designed?"

I think micromanaging every planet is horrible. This should be changed ASAP.

I think micromanaging every planet is horrible. This should be changed ASAP.
I have never seen the need to micromanage every planet. I treat every star system as though it has a single planet.

If someone could give me some solid input, I'd be willing to change my approach.

The maps are so crowded and small even when you make them sparse, and your ships are so slow that it seems more like island to island battles. Also, the ships are not very creative when compared to Alpha Centauri which was made over a decade ago.

I don't mind micromanaging the cities too much but it's TEDIOUS switching BACK and FORTH between stacked cities because Sid's Streamlining VERY helpful suggestions don't work when there are 5 cities in one, so it's like playing Civ I with 5 cities stacked.

?Instead if perhaps the planets were each separate cities unto themselves somehow rotating around the star?

If Sid ever wanted to make an online WoW Massively Multiplayer game he could combine Final Frontier and Civ IV. It could start as Civ IV with everyone on planets fighting for conquest, and once one person on each planet had conquered, then it would become Final Frontier. The servers could control how fast each battle went by control the map settings, i.e. slow-fast, tiny-huge.

What do you think the biggest problem in Final Frontier Mod. Post suggestions, mods, mod ideas, etc.

Feel free to discuss!!!:scan:

worst problem is there are not enough civs, as well as pirates who spawn from nowhere.

I dislike the micromanagement of planets. I just feel that it could have been presented in an easier to manage fashion. I have a hard time planning what buildings to build and where. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool concept, but I think the implementation was poor.

Well, the AI is really not effective at this at all, so you can just ignore it and do fine.

Just like the AI is not effective at a lot of things in this mod. That's the problem. This mod is best for a human vs. human game.

The micromanaging I can deal with. The tech tree is my issue. I would like it improved. Not necessarily longer. It could do with some more techs, but also maybe like in FFH2, specializations. A branch for someone to use capital ships, squadrons, or the in-between. Also, certainly engine technology in the later tree so that lanes become obsolete for the navies (but still needed for commerce). The map script (which one can edit) needs and even sparser and sparsest settings.

Pirate hunter ships.

The ability to clear asteroids for production on planets, build farming colonies on asteroids to provide either food bonus to closest city (colony having to be in border of city), or one to grow food resources that provide small health bonus.

For help with managing, like in Orbis of FfH2, the option to avoid bad health and unhappy, instead of checking and then avoid growth.

And for aesthetics, the choice to rename planets, or no names for planets at all. Having 5 planets named RC-1 or Colombo is really draining from the game play.

And of course, as always either a few more civs (like a Final Frontier micro expansion), or extra leader for each group. Aliens or not I don't care, maybe aliens can come a hundred turns later.

Not enough vespene gas.

Not enough vespene gas. Lol, you need more plyons.

:sad::sad:I think, the greatest problem in Final Frontier is: No Wonders!:(:(
:sad::sad:I like wonders.:(:(

I think one problem is that the AI doesn't use squadrons or missles enough.
One thing is, that if their ships appear close to one of your star systems you still got 2-3 turns at least to prepare for this attack. You can just collect every squadron and missile you can find in your empire, station them in the threated system in a single turn and just bash away at the attackers. Defense was really easy for me that way.
On the other hand, if I attacked their systems and for example used cruisers loaded with missles I didn't have much problems with the opposing defense because they hadn't anything to counter it. The same goes pretty much for the use of squadrons with their supprinsingly large action radius (especially compared to the slow movement rates of the bigger ships) and their decent effectiveness.

Another problem for me is too much micromanaging. I really like how the systems are developed, and switching through their planets to enhance them doesn't disturb me at all.
Just that there are too many little things happening every turn once the game gets really going. Each turn some star bases (or how they are called in the english version) would dish out a new missile. You then need to restation that missile and/or set it asleep, then bring the base to defense mode again. Just as an example. There are many of those little things that make this mod much more tedious to play compared to the original civ.