A Babylon 5 Mod for the Final Frontier Mod

[PsiCorps]

Hmmm, all I can tell you is that I am working on a new version which I am hoping will resolve the issues you are experiencing. As for a release date, I'm hoping to get it ready for the end of Feb. Maybe earlier as I'm off work next week.

 

[JohnDay]

I'm having the same problem as this fella reported, any help would be appreciated.

Sorry about my english, but this is maybee an old failer. If you put 9 rings of planets on a star system, the game could not handle this.
Only 8 rings are for planets and if there is a star system with 9 rings, the hole map will look like your Attachment 380005.
Maybee you have open the file (?) and wanted to create a real Sol System into the game with 9 planets? Sorry but his is not posible ...

Also something else could be wrong with a star system. Normaly it looks like this:

PlanetType=WHITE_PLANET, OrbitRing=8, PlanetSize=0, HasMoon=0, HasRings=0, PlanetName=Poseidon Kyanite, PlanetBonusType=NO_BONUS

Maybee you open the file and have a look at every star system to find the bug. There must be something wrong with it anywhere. Look out for the OrbitRings.

If this could not help you, forgive me, it is only a try to help you.

John

P.S. PsiCorps I can´t wait to get the new version . Sure you will need your time to make it, but I´am looking out for this every week. It´s a great mod .

 

[PsiCorps]

Sorry about my english, but this is maybee an old failer. If you put 9 rings of planets on a star system, the game could not handle this.
Only 8 rings are for planets and if there is a star system with 9 rings, the hole map will look like your Attachment 380005.
Maybee you have open the file (?) and wanted to create a real Sol System into the game with 9 planets? Sorry but his is not posible ...

Also something else could be wrong with a star system. Normaly it looks like this:

PlanetType=WHITE_PLANET, OrbitRing=8, PlanetSize=0, HasMoon=0, HasRings=0, PlanetName=Poseidon Kyanite, PlanetBonusType=NO_BONUS

Maybee you open the file and have a look at every star system to find the bug. There must be something wrong with it anywhere. Look out for the OrbitRings.

If this could not help you, forgive me, it is only a try to help you.

John

P.S. PsiCorps I can´t wait to get the new version . Sure you will need your time to make it, but I´am looking out for this every week. It´s a great mod .

Thanks for the possible solution to the problem being experienced by the other posters and thanks for the support.

I'm currently tweaking the events I've added in to make sure they work the way I want them to. Once that's done I'm going to upload the Mod for release to you all.

 

[ZartekMattlov]

Sorry about my english, but this is maybee an old failer. If you put 9 rings of planets on a star system, the game could not handle this.
Only 8 rings are for planets and if there is a star system with 9 rings, the hole map will look like your Attachment 380005.
Maybee you have open the file (?) and wanted to create a real Sol System into the game with 9 planets? Sorry but his is not posible ...

Also something else could be wrong with a star system. Normaly it looks like this:

PlanetType=WHITE_PLANET, OrbitRing=8, PlanetSize=0, HasMoon=0, HasRings=0, PlanetName=Poseidon Kyanite, PlanetBonusType=NO_BONUS

Maybee you open the file and have a look at every star system to find the bug. There must be something wrong with it anywhere. Look out for the OrbitRings.

If this could not help you, forgive me, it is only a try to help you.

John

P.S. PsiCorps I can´t wait to get the new version . Sure you will need your time to make it, but I´am looking out for this every week. It´s a great mod .

I haven't modified the game files in any way other than the fixes suggested in this thread to the problem.

 

[PsiCorps]

Good afternoon all.

I'm pleased to anounce a new version of the B5 Mod is now available HERE, or through the links in post #1.

Feel free to download and tell me what you think.

 

[Madventurer]

There is one VERY pressing issue in the current release.

Events fire WAY too often.
Starting turns during first colonies: All the time, extra food events. Max 1 turn break between each one.
When starting to build trade lanes, trade lane destruction event fires VERY often. You can be lucky to have a lane survive for longer than 5 turns.
Later on, Virus Outbreak event fires regularly though not as often as the others.

So, it's currently impossible to sustain a multi-system empire due to the insane costs of repairing all the problems.

 

[PsiCorps]

There is one VERY pressing issue in the current release.

Events fire WAY too often.
Starting turns during first colonies: All the time, extra food events. Max 1 turn break between each one.
When starting to build trade lanes, trade lane destruction event fires VERY often. You can be lucky to have a lane survive for longer than 5 turns.
Later on, Virus Outbreak event fires regularly though not as often as the others.

So, it's currently impossible to sustain a multi-system empire due to the insane costs of repairing all the problems.

Thanks for the feedback Madventurer.

I dropped the weight of these firing from 200 down to 10 so they don't trigger as often as they did when i was testing. I'll drop the weight to 0 and see how that affects them triggering. There are still more events I want to add so there will be a little more diversity in the events.

I put the repair costs up because in my test games I was making 1k+ credits a turn and figured most players would have the same surpluses. If this is incorrect I can easily tone down the costs.

I am also trying to come up with new events that are totally different to the standard civ ones. Not easy when you are looking for events that apply to a star system rather than a city. Events that affect units may be an easier option but if there are Python callbacks involved it gets a lot trickier.

If anyone has any ideas for events they feel would be a good fit for the B5 Mod please let me know, preferably in a PM so that others can be surprised by them should we get the idea in and working.

 

[Lelouch]

The damaged ship event (the one where you can either immobilize your ship for three turns, one turn, or destroy it is completely pointless, there are no penalties, benefits, or anything making any choice but immobilize for one turn the only choice that makes a modicum of sense. It should cost money, hurt the ship, something making it risky. Same for the three turns, albeit to a lesser extent than the one turn. The destroy option is the only one that doesn't need any additional effects.

 

[Madventurer]

I think a major reason why the events were a problem was that I was playing on Epic (or was it slow?) speed, so I got less money each turn but I still got those events often.

 

[Lelouch]

They fired every single turn for me.

 

[Lelouch]

Once I built mining facilities I had to get at least a thousand gold per turn to not let 20 something odd turns go to waste.

 

[PsiCorps]

The damaged ship event (the one where you can either immobilize your ship for three turns, one turn, or destroy it is completely pointless, there are no penalties, benefits, or anything making any choice but immobilize for one turn the only choice that makes a modicum of sense. It should cost money, hurt the ship, something making it risky. Same for the three turns, albeit to a lesser extent than the one turn. The destroy option is the only one that doesn't need any additional effects.

Thanks for the feedback Lelouch, this event was actually supposed to work slightly differently. Option 3 to keep the ship moving was supposed to do just that with an increased chance that the event would trigger again the following turn for the same unit. The second time the event triggers for the same unit you had less options available, keep moving or stop and repair. The second time the event triggers lines up part 3 of the event which, if you kept moving the damaged unit, would have an increased chance of the ship being destroyed by a catastrophic power systems overload/failure/meltdown.

Unfortunately there are no similar events anywhere in Civ that I could copy and modify to do what I wanted the event to do. Unless a Python coder can be found to get this event working the way I want it to I may well retire it.

 

[PsiCorps]

I think a major reason why the events were a problem was that I was playing on Epic (or was it slow?) speed, so I got less money each turn but I still got those events often.

All my testing was done on quick turns, play testing on epic wasn't possible with all the things I needed to test and correct. However, will now need to play test on epic and see what happens.

 

[PsiCorps]

Hi all, been doing a little more with the Mod, I've changed the credit costs related to the Mining Accident, Plague and Ion Storm events. I've also tried to reduce the number of times the events are triggering but reducing the weight to zero stops them triggering altogether.

I also noticed that one of the Galactic (World) Wonders I put in still uses standard civ artwork, haven't figured out yet what I need to do to stop it appearing so for the time being the Deep Space Defences wonder will, if constructed, give you a Great Wall around your star systems borders. Not the best look but everything else works for this.

Have a few more things to do in addition to fixing the 'Great Wall' graphic issue which after I'm done will mean I can upload a new version.

 

[JohnDay]

Thats really good news!

Greetings John

 

[PsiCorps]

Hi all
I've been doing a little more work on the mod. I was reviewing the leaderheads and spotted some inconsistencies. So, after a lot of work over the last few days I believe I have the leaderheads correctly set up so that everything works the way it should.

This has slowed down what I wanted to try and get done with the events. Namely adding some more and tweaking the ones already in.

The good news is, I have a week off next week and will try and get the events sorted out by the end of it.

I know I need to look at the way the economies are working. The playtest I was running got to 2245 and all my slider bars for science, culture and espionage were at 0. I was generating about 200 credits per turn and my research time was around 40 turns on a fast game. Granted I was supporting quite a large fleet and had maybe 30 to 40 starbases around my territory.

I may need to put a limit on the number of starbases that a civ can have so as to balance the economies a little more.

 

[Brench]

Thanks for this latest version, it's a lot of fun!

The already-mentioned issues of frequent events were a surprise to me too, but my game play style has been such that it's been easy for me to keep a stockpile of cash on hand so I can survive those expensive mine-explosions.

Another bug (or perhaps I'm still not understanding it) is the religion/value thing. From what you said earlier, if your civ already has the holy city of one value, it cannot found another. Previously, I thought that when you get a tech that should found a new value, it gets started in another civ randomly, but that hasn't been happening in the past couple games I've tried. Do I have to wait for another civ to research that tech instead?

And that brings me to another issue which was present in the previous version too: many of the AI civs just sit around and never colonize any other systems, even with their initial Colony Ship. The "major" races, in particular, are guilty of this. As a result they all lag behind in technology, so there's almost no hope of me founding Unity and building the awesome ISA ships

Despite the feedback, I really enjoy playing this mod! Thank you so much for your hard work... I used to do this kind of thing in Civ2, but things have gotten so much more complicated now beyond my capabilities.

 

[PsiCorps]

Thanks for this latest version, it's a lot of fun!

Thanks, glad you're enjoying it.

The already-mentioned issues of frequent events were a surprise to me too, but my game play style has been such that it's been easy for me to keep a stockpile of cash on hand so I can survive those expensive mine-explosions.

Well, I have tamed the costs quite a bit so whilst a mine explosion will still cost, it won't be as much.

Another bug (or perhaps I'm still not understanding it) is the religion/value thing. From what you said earlier, if your civ already has the holy city of one value, it cannot found another. Previously, I thought that when you get a tech that should found a new value, it gets started in another civ randomly, but that hasn't been happening in the past couple games I've tried. Do I have to wait for another civ to research that tech instead?

No, it's not a bug, you have to wait for another civ to research/discover the tech.

And that brings me to another issue which was present in the previous version too: many of the AI civs just sit around and never colonize any other systems, even with their initial Colony Ship. The "major" races, in particular, are guilty of this. As a result they all lag behind in technology, so there's almost no hope of me founding Unity and building the awesome ISA ships

I have improved this quite a bit. However, if you have the barbs setting as anything more than normal or none it will deter the AI from settling new star systems. The playtest I am currently doing is raging barbs and the AI has not settled any new systems, I on the other hand have over a dozen star systems and a large fleet that is destroying barbs as fast as they spawn. I think there is also a point where surplus credits suddenly vanish and you have to start placing systems on wealth production just to maintain the fleet. I have only managed to get to Unity once and even then I didn't get to build any of the ISA ships.

Despite the feedback, I really enjoy playing this mod! Thank you so much for your hard work... I used to do this kind of thing in Civ2, but things have gotten so much more complicated now beyond my capabilities.

I'm working on a few new events to add in for the next release, currently I can give no estimate as to when a new version will be ready.

Please keep posting your feedback, it helps me focus on aspects of game-play that make playing more enjoyable for all of us.

 

[Madventurer]

Hi there!

Hope you're still working on this, I'd love to check out a new version with fixed events and all.
I'll put up some feedback when it comes out, assuming you're not dead or anything!

 

[Parahacker]

I'm bumping this thread for great justice.

Also because I'm very fond of this mod, and I'm hoping the pile of issues the author and other players noticed (events firing, civs not expanding, etcetera) are fixed and just awaiting a sweet update from PsiCorps. Don't leave me hanging, bro! (or all those other players either. Can't forget them. (But especially me.))