A Babylon 5 Mod for the Final Frontier Mod

[AbsintheRed]

Agreed on the ODPs. They should be stronger, or rather all defensive structures should have special promotions with +100% star system defense
Also experienced the bug with starbases, only alpha was accesible throughout the whole game
And found another similar bug with worker actions: whenever a construction ship started to build a jump gate, the game crashed
Btw, I never got to opportunity to build whitestars either...

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Agreed on the ODPs. They should be stronger, or rather all defensive structures should have special promotions with +100% star system defense
Also experienced the bug with starbases, only alpha was accesible throughout the whole game
And never got to opportunity to build whitestars either...

ODPs have a 200% bonus defending starsystems. The problem is their low base strength.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I meant additional promotions. On top of that 200%

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

I did give 1 ODP all promotions in WB and it still got easily destroyed by pirates. I'm going to play a game where I double their base strength this weekend. And see how that works out.

 

[PsiCorps]

According to this site http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Valen_class_cruiser it was built for the ISA by the mimbari.

I stand corrected, i'll take this into account when i start the reorganisation of the OOB for the fleets.

Maybe switch it with the velarian, and give it some extra promotions like the whitestar?

Now i've got a stable version i can start looking at doing more Unit balancing.

Is it possible to build whitestar ships? Im trying to get them, but they never show up in the build menu.

As i've never got far enough in the game to see them on my build list i don't know if they appaear correctly. Something else for me to check.

About the O.D.P: Im going to double their strength and give them acces to some of the improved batteries promotions and see how that plays out. As it is now, even the lowly raider is to strong for them.

I've already looked at this and what i've tried is this. Made the Raiders immune to first strikes. Playing as the Centauri when i tried this i lost a full str 9 unit to a raider. Expect to see this feature in the next version.

The veteran ECM promotion is a bit to powerful. It gives immunity to first strikes. And with all the first strikes you can get with all other promotions, you can even fight much stronger ships with ease. I gave 1 sharlincruiser the ecm promotions and 2 combat promotions, and created a barbarian Victory cruiser, gave it al the combat promotions. And it will usually take only 2 sharlins to destroy it. When I give the sharlins only combat promotions the victory is almost untouchable.
Perhaps the immunity should be a separate promotion given with the stealth technology.

That sounds like a reasonable suggestion, i'll factor that in.

Another bug? I've seen is with the starbases. I can only built the alpha starbase. the other ones are not being built when giving order to build a base.

This has already been corrected and will be in the next version.

And found another similar bug with worker actions: whenever a construction ship started to build a jump gate, the game crashed

Again, didn't get this far in a test game to try this out, guessing it's something in the Python that needs to be amended, i'll see if Premier can take a look as he wrote/created that little piece of code.

Btw, I never got to opportunity to build whitestars either...

See previous note.

After reading your other notes i can see you are really wanting the ODS/PDS & ODP unit strength & abilities boosted so i'll put that on my to do list.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

The thing wiht ODS units is, that a simple frigate is more effective in defending a city then an ODP unit.
Will only be the raider immune to first strikes? or all the other barb vessels too? Making all of them immune would be a bit to much.

 

[PsiCorps]

The thing wiht ODS units is, that a simple frigate is more effective in defending a city then an ODP unit.

At the moment that is true but there will be some changes to that in the next version.

Will only be the raider immune to first strikes? or all the other barb vessels too? Making all of them immune would be a bit to much.

Only the Raiders are immune to first strikes.

RL is preventing me from getting too much work done on the Mod at the moment but i've had a few ideas that i want to test out and see how they work.

 

[Premier Valle]

Hello everyone,

Long time since I last posted, these last days have been pretty hard (RL), but things are returning to normal. I haven't even tested the last version.

Anyway, hopefully I'll soon have something to show, the 2nd Brakiri carrier is already into the making.

I read about a CtD when building the Jump Gate, I'll take a look at that also.

 

[PsiCorps]

Hello everyone,

Long time since I last posted, these last days have been pretty hard (RL), but things are returning to normal. I haven't even tested the last version.

Glad to hear your RL problems are going away. Let us know what you think when/if you do get a chance to try it.

Anyway, hopefully I'll soon have something to show, the 2nd Brakiri carrier is already into the making.

Can't wait for the next ship.

I read about a CtD when building the Jump Gate, I'll take a look at that also.

Hope you manage to resolve this so i can put it in the next version.

 

[Premier Valle]

Hello everyone!

Still no ship, but I found the likely reason for the CtDs related to the Jumpgate, and while I don't remember it being mentioned, opening a Jump Point should also make the game to CtD.

The cause?, ArtDefines and 3D models for the JumpPoint/JumpGate are missing in B5 v2.2.

Hope you manage to resolve this so i can put it in the next version.

In the mean time, here is a small patch correcting this (v2.21), I only tested it using WB and the fixes worked, please try it and let me know how it goes!.

View attachment B5 V2.21.rar

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Before I forget to mention it: Am I the only one who gets python errors when double-clicking a sun to view the planets circling around it?
Also why can I build half a dozen different types of colony ships, which are all identical?
(I believe I was using v2.0 when testing)

 

[PsiCorps]

Hello everyone!

Still no ship, but I found the likely reason for the CtDs related to the Jumpgate, and while I don't remember it being mentioned, opening a Jump Point should also make the game to CtD.

The cause?, ArtDefines and 3D models for the JumpPoint/JumpGate are missing in B5 v2.2.



In the mean time, here is a small patch correcting this (v2.21), I only tested it using WB and the fixes worked, please try it and let me know how it goes!.

View attachment 282042

Thanks Premier, i've incorporated that fix, don't know how i didn't merge it over when i was going through the files. Still, it's fixed now for the next version.

Before I forget to mention it: Am I the only one who gets python errors when double-clicking a sun to view the planets circling around it?
Also why can I build half a dozen different types of colony ships, which are all identical?
(I believe I was using v2.0 when testing)

Yes, i've been getting it too, also get a similar problem if you go into world builder and add something, like a resource. It's not game breaking but it does need to be fixed. Going to look into that now in fact.

 

[God-Emperor]

The system preview problem is probably entirely due to it checking for the BUILDING_PBS in the addPlanetCustomization function. In FFP this is a UB for a Civ but in B5 it doesn't exist.

So changing from

			# Commercial Satellites or PBS (UB for Brotherhood)
			iCommercialSatellites = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getBuildingInfo,gc.getNumBuildingInfos(),'BUILDING_COMMERCIAL_SATELLITES')
			iPBS = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getBuildingInfo,gc.getNumBuildingInfos(),'BUILDING_PBS')
			if (pPlanet.isHasBuilding(iCommercialSatellites) or pPlanet.isHasBuilding(iPBS)):
				szPlanetArt = aszPlanetCommercialSatellitesSizes[pPlanet.getPlanetSize()]
				szFilename = ArtFileMgr.getFeatureArtInfo("ART_DEF_FEATURE_SOLAR_SYSTEM").getFeatureDummyNodeName(0, szPlanetArt)
				screen.addToModelGraphicGFC(szWidgetName, szFilename)

to

			# Commercial Satellites
			iCommercialSatellites = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getBuildingInfo,gc.getNumBuildingInfos(),'BUILDING_COMMERCIAL_SATELLITES')
			if (pPlanet.isHasBuilding(iCommercialSatellites)):
				szPlanetArt = aszPlanetCommercialSatellitesSizes[pPlanet.getPlanetSize()]
				szFilename = ArtFileMgr.getFeatureArtInfo("ART_DEF_FEATURE_SOLAR_SYSTEM").getFeatureDummyNodeName(0, szPlanetArt)
				screen.addToModelGraphicGFC(szWidgetName, szFilename)

should fix this.

 

[PsiCorps]

The system preview problem is probably entirely due to it checking for the BUILDING_PBS in the addPlanetCustomization function. In FFP this is a UB for a Civ but in B5 it doesn't exist.

So changing from

			# Commercial Satellites or PBS (UB for Brotherhood)
			iCommercialSatellites = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getBuildingInfo,gc.getNumBuildingInfos(),'BUILDING_COMMERCIAL_SATELLITES')
			iPBS = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getBuildingInfo,gc.getNumBuildingInfos(),'BUILDING_PBS')
			if (pPlanet.isHasBuilding(iCommercialSatellites) or pPlanet.isHasBuilding(iPBS)):
				szPlanetArt = aszPlanetCommercialSatellitesSizes[pPlanet.getPlanetSize()]
				szFilename = ArtFileMgr.getFeatureArtInfo("ART_DEF_FEATURE_SOLAR_SYSTEM").getFeatureDummyNodeName(0, szPlanetArt)
				screen.addToModelGraphicGFC(szWidgetName, szFilename)

to

			# Commercial Satellites
			iCommercialSatellites = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getBuildingInfo,gc.getNumBuildingInfos(),'BUILDING_COMMERCIAL_SATELLITES')
			if (pPlanet.isHasBuilding(iCommercialSatellites)):
				szPlanetArt = aszPlanetCommercialSatellitesSizes[pPlanet.getPlanetSize()]
				szFilename = ArtFileMgr.getFeatureArtInfo("ART_DEF_FEATURE_SOLAR_SYSTEM").getFeatureDummyNodeName(0, szPlanetArt)
				screen.addToModelGraphicGFC(szWidgetName, szFilename)

should fix this.

Thanks God-Emperor, this will help a great deal.

Edit: Fix incorporated for next version.

 

[God-Emperor]

I just did a search for BUILDING_PBS in all the Python files in B5v2.0 and a similar issue also exists in both CvSolarSystem.py and CvMainInterface.py.

 

[PsiCorps]

I just did a search for BUILDING_PBS in all the Python files in B5v2.0 and a similar issue also exists in both CvSolarSystem.py and CvMainInterface.py.

I did the same search but thanks for posting the info, it may well help others who don't want to wait for the next version.

 

[The_Mike]

Hello. I've recently got into Babylon 5 at the insistence of a friend (and I'm glad he pushed me), and I enjoy CivIV so I was glad to find this mod. Unfortunately, and sorry to sound like a ridiculous newbie, but I cannot seem to install the mod correctly. The instructions in the ReadMe say to just run the .exe file which will install everything into the correct folders, but there is no .exe file in the .rar archive. I have tried creating a copy of the final frontier mod folder (I have CivIV Complete) and then installing the Babylon 5 folder on top of that, but everything I try seems to cause CivIV to crash whenever I try to boot the new mod. Any assistance would be much appreciated.

 

[PsiCorps]

First off, welcome to the forums and thanks for downloading the mod. Best way to install the mod is as follows. Right click on the unextracted file and select Extract Files. A new menu will open and you will then need to locate your civ installation on your pc. The path on my PC is as follows. F:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods
Once you have the correct path click ok and the mod will install to your mods folder. Once it's there all you need to do is boot up Civ, select the Advanced option, then Load a Mod and choose the Babylon 5 mod and load it up.
If you have interpreted what i've written here to match your pc's pathing for Civ4 it should work.
Hope this helps.

The instructions in the ReadMe say to just run the .exe file which will install everything into the correct folders, but there is no .exe file in the .rar archive.

This applies to the FF+ mod on which this mod is based, my bad i should have deleted that bit.

 

[God-Emperor]

There are two pretty common issues.

1) Make sure that in the B5 folder there isn't another B5 folder - it should have the Assets folder directly in it.

2) Make sure you are using BtS version 3.19. Do not rely on the in-game update function since it fails more often that it works and is known to sometimes claim that it has updated you even if it hasn't.

 

[The_Mike]

Thank you for the welcome, and the quick reply. When the instructions didn't seem to make sense to me, I thought I might as well just install it the way I usually install mods, by extracting it to the mods folder as you have described, but unfortunately even having done that, CivIV crashes each time I try to load the mod. My other mods work fine and CivIV:BotS works normally, but for some reason this particular one just will not load. Could it be something to do with me using Windows 7 x64?

EDIT: Thanks for those steps, God-Emperor, I will double check I have the latest update and the folders are done correctly.