A Babylon 5 Mod for the Final Frontier Mod

[Justicar333]

I"ll give that a try on my second match. For now, it's turn 339. First starbase will finish in seven turns. Dilgar just showed up, somewhere. Can't see them, maybe just flew by then back out of sensor range. Made me grin, remembering them from the storyline. Wonder if a Dilgar war is in the near future.

This restricted expansion is growing on me. Though yes, a deep space scout would open things up a little. Really it's a nice feel, bootstrapping up like this. My first base should put me on track to build a farther one in some nearby asteroids. Nabbing both gold and water resources. By then, next ring of culture will make it more practical to starbase into the two adjacant systems. With any good luck, they will be colonized well before actually developing space exploration. Raiders are being a nusiance, but when aren't they? Should probably develop fighters, or stock some missles. Will try both out to see which works best at keeping the pesky gnats away from the growing trade lane.

One thing, getting a lot of the same event. Some kind of power system malfunction on the Narn frigates. It's getting a little crazy.. it's 3 turns per event, though could try the other options maybe. I'm picking the stop and repair, and it keeps happening. Got one ship with 11 turns of not moving right now. Will continue to observe, might need a tweak somewhere to reduce frequency. Note it's not every single turn. But I am getting clusters of three-four same events in a row.

Update: Dilgar are back. They have space exploration. Time to build more O.D.S. it seems. They won't take Narn without being up to their necks in blood.

Got the base. It's working, sort of.. some weird ship movement restriction seems to still be in place. Even inside my cultural borders. Not just around the base. But the squares from the latest culture ring are only partially accessiable to ships also. Weirdly, the construction ships don't seem to be having a problem. Will see if building trade lanes through the inacessiable squares opens them up.

No, trade lanes aren't opening the inacessabile squares. I can't find any set thing that determines which ones work and which ones don't. Second base, even though it expanded borders. Isn't letting my millitary ships access any of the new terrotory. Even weirder. Checking the worker ships, they seem able to fly anywhere on the map, in or out of borders. Even into the squares not working for the millitary ships. Hope haven't broken something by trying to use starbases as a fast track to expansion over space exploration tech. Will check once I got a colonizer unlocked. If it can fly anywhere like the worker ships pre space exploration.

 

[PsiCorps]

One thing, getting a lot of the same event. Some kind of power system malfunction on the Narn frigates. It's getting a little crazy.. it's 3 turns per event, though could try the other options maybe. I'm picking the stop and repair, and it keeps happening. Got one ship with 11 turns of not moving right now. Will continue to observe, might need a tweak somewhere to reduce frequency. Note it's not every single turn. But I am getting clusters of three-four same events in a row.

The event you are experiencing is still a work in progress. I need to add some Python code so that once a unit is affected by the event the same unit is tracked for any subsequent chain of events. It will affect one damaged unit every turn at the moment. If a unit has been affected by the event and you choose the stop for 3 turns, if it is fully repaired by the end of those 3 turns it should be able to start moving again. What I wasn't able to track is if the same unit is causing the same event to trigger every turn thus resetting the 3 turns stoppage of movement.

As has been stated in numerous posts, it's a work in progress and I'm doing the best I can to test everything before I release a new version. Your feedback is invaluable, keep it coming.

 

[Justicar333]

Just tested the colonizer. It can fly outside the culture radius pre space exploration and colonize. But I still can't fly millitary ships in the mysterious dead zones, even to this new colony. If raiders don't hit it in fifteen turns, will have fighters built there. Will see if they behave any differently than ships from the homeworld.

Oh, don't take this as criticism. I'm not meaning it as such, I'm really enjoying this mod. Just figured as it was the latest testing version. You would want feedback on anything we come across bug wise. Or balance feedback. It's an awesome work so far. And the Dilgar, are really starting to get scary. Looks like they got 6 systems. I got two, Centari one.

Excellent mod.

Update: Took a break, and just came back. Restarted the mod to load save file.. and now the movement is fixed.

 

[PsiCorps]

Oh, don't take this as criticism. I'm not meaning it as such, I'm really enjoying this mod. Just figured as it was the latest testing version. You would want feedback on anything we come across bug wise. Or balance feedback. It's an awesome work so far. And the Dilgar, are really starting to get scary. Looks like they got 6 systems. I got two, Centari one.

Playing the Dilgar is a little easier as they start with advanced physics they can build a university quite quickly giving them the science boost to get to space exploration quicker. It all depends on what you prioritise in your build queues and research queues.

 

[PsiCorps]

Got the base. It's working, sort of.. some weird ship movement restriction seems to still be in place. Even inside my cultural borders. Not just around the base. But the squares from the latest culture ring are only partially accessiable to ships also. Weirdly, the construction ships don't seem to be having a problem. Will see if building trade lanes through the inacessiable squares opens them up.

No, trade lanes aren't opening the inacessabile squares. I can't find any set thing that determines which ones work and which ones don't. Second base, even though it expanded borders. Isn't letting my millitary ships access any of the new terrotory. Even weirder. Checking the worker ships, they seem able to fly anywhere on the map, in or out of borders. Even into the squares not working for the millitary ships. Hope haven't broken something by trying to use starbases as a fast track to expansion over space exploration tech. Will check once I got a colonizer unlocked. If it can fly anywhere like the worker ships pre space exploration.

This problem is resolved by saving and reloading the game. I'm looking into a fix for this issue at the moment.

 

[rtt4a]

Thanks for new version!

I started playtesting yesterday and noticed that there is something strange going on in maps. Save map in WB and start playing as an scenario gives possibility to build on planets outside cultural boarders. Some reason the game select build planet outside boarders and as long player dont change planet its possible to build there.

Im trying to find out whats going on and will report later.

And that new space exploration rules; There is something really strange going on in there.. How it should work? Could you tell something about the code you added?

Did some testing with WB and cant dind any logic in these restrictions. Some ships can go over boarders and some not and there are tiles that stay Blocked for some ships without any logical reason.. Adding 3 different ships in WB gives 3 different results about where they can move. Saving and reloading wont solve this.

 

[God-Emperor]

The movement restrictions are by "ship type category" (the unitcombat, listed in the civilopedia under Unit Categories: I think it is Frigates, Destroyers, and Carriers which are affected) by player for each plot. Only the categories that can actually be built in the early game, before the tech that can remove the restriction is researched, are actually checked for restriction so adding ships of other categories that are not available in the early game via worldbuilder won't tell you much.

Here is a simple workaround for not leaving impassible plots laying around inside your borders when they expand:
Do not try to move a ship of the affected ship types (Frigates, Destroyers, and Carriers) out of your borders until you get the restriction removing tech (Space Exploration). If you never try to leave your borders with one, it never stores data saying that the ship type can't move onto the plot that is outside your borders at that time.

The issue is that the data it stores is never cleared during a game. Once your borders expand, the plot that used to be past the edge of your territory that you tried to move on still can't be moved on by a ship of that category even though the plot is now inside your borders since that data saying so is still present. Saving, exiting the game, and loading the save fixes the problem because the data is not saved in the savegame file so it starts fresh with an empty list of restrictions.

Getting the Space Exploration tech should clear up all the issues too.

 

[rtt4a]

Thanks,
makes sense now. Tested saving and loading, wont fix movement for me without exiting civ4 and then loading save. As you told above, should read better

Nice addition maybe psicorps could post hotfix after solving this little problem.

 

[rtt4a]

about map problems I reported earlier..

Sorry, My Bad. this was because of my own modifications..

 

[Premier Valle]

Hello everyone!

Just to tell you that I'm working on the new jump point capability, however, I have run into a problem. It looks like the python "onImprovementBuilt" method/function is no longer being called by the new FF+ version.

Any ideas on how can this method be added back? (I suppose it has something to do with the BUG event manager, but I have no idea).

 

[rtt4a]

Hi Premier, cant wait your jump points coming back to game

I think you should sen pm to TC01 and ask him.. probably easiest way.

I am still fighting with maps, trying to do scenario but its not as easy with these FF maps.

 

[God-Emperor]

Hello everyone!

Just to tell you that I'm working on the new jump point capability, however, I have run into a problem. It looks like the python "onImprovementBuilt" method/function is no longer being called by the new FF+ version.

Any ideas on how can this method be added back? (I suppose it has something to do with the BUG event manager, but I have no idea).

With BUG, only the events actually being used are in the mod's event manager file. That file is now FinalFrontierEvents.py instead of CvEventManager.py, as in regular BtS, or CvFinalFrontierEvents.py, as in regular Final Frontier.

Quickest method: Near the beginning of the FinalFrontierEvents.py file, where the other similar lines are located, add a line that looks like this:

		eventManager.addEventHandler("improvementBuilt", self.onImprovementBuilt)

Then in amongst the other functions definitions for the class put in your onImprovementBuilt definition. It should start like the regular BtS definition:

	def onImprovementBuilt(self, argsList):
		'Improvement Built'
		iImprovement, iX, iY = argsList

		...whatever...

Alternatively, you could take advantage of the modularity given by the BUG event management system and create your own Python file (JumpPoint.py, or whatever) just for this (it would have a structure like the FinalFrontierEvents.py file, importing what you need and defining a class with some unique name which has two member functions: an "__init__" function that has just the necessary addEventHandler as above, and the onImprovementBuilt function) and load it via the BUG initialization process. That involves modifying the Config\init.XML file in that folder to add a line near the end to load your event handler (similar to examples earlier in that file), either directly or by loading a "mod" (which specifies an XML file in that same folder that has the instructions on what to load). The advantage to this is that it would be completely separate from anything else, removing any question of "did anything change for this" the next time FFP is updated. The disadvantage is that it is more complicated to set up and, should anything go wrong at some later date, a little harder to find where things are happening (especially if the person looking is not familiar with BUG spreading things across multiple files).

 

[rtt4a]

@God-Emperor
Do you know how to fix that saving movement restrictions forever bug? Just curious..

 

[God-Emperor]

@God-Emperor
Do you know how to fix that saving movement restrictions forever bug? Just curious..

Well, yes. It is being discussed in a thread up a level in the main C&C forum (the "Quick question" thread by PsiCorps, which has turned out to not be all that quick to answer).

 

[Premier Valle]

Hello everyone!,

@God-Emperor
Many thanks for that! .

I just noticed that by using a code similar to the formerly used one (using the onImprovementBuilt event) for the jump points, would not support saving games; on the other hand, using it would be the best for performance. I came up with another Idea, that would support saving games, but with poor performance (scanning the map every turn). I'll try to combine the best from both ideas.

 

[God-Emperor]

You can use the BugData facility to save data in the savegame file without much difficulty.

FFP uses this to store the tutorial data, so you can see how it is used in FinalFrontierEvents.py.
In essence, you just need to add the data to BugData in the onPreSave function (using a table name of your own choosing) and get the data back in onLoadGame. Looking at the Tutorial class's functions saveData and loadData will show you how it is arranging the data - it is the same as what it was storing in the CyGame object's scriptData (which it couldn't do anymore because the BugData is stored there, as it turns out). It is basically appending everything to a list to save it, and extracting it from the list when it is loaded, with the list fed to or retrieved from the BugData function.

 

[Justicar333]

Been delayed a little with D3 being out. Still tinkering on B5FF. Have yet to see any real imbalances, or bugs beyond the already under discussion movement restriction issue. Maybe the AI's seem a little lacking in interaction.. hard to get that sitting on B5 as events continue to spiral out of control feeling. rtt4a might have the right ideal though. Taken to setting up more customized games, to reflect "historial what if's."

 

[PsiCorps]

Been delayed a little with D3 being out. Still tinkering on B5FF. Have yet to see any real imbalances, or bugs beyond the already under discussion movement restriction issue. Maybe the AI's seem a little lacking in interaction.. hard to get that sitting on B5 as events continue to spiral out of control feeling. rtt4a might have the right ideal though. Taken to setting up more customized games, to reflect "historial what if's."

Ideally what I want to do is have the primary Mod as a generic everyone starts the same but then also set up some scenarios. The Dilgar War, Narn/Centauri War, Earth/Minbari War, Shadow War, Earth Alliance Civil War and the War against the Drakh/Centauri (although that wasn't much of a war). At present it's finding the time to ensure that the basic mod is current and up to date let alone starting work on a Scenario.

 

[rtt4a]

@psicorps

Are you going to release patch to fix that movement bug? Or are you waiting premiers jump points?

 

[PsiCorps]

@psicorps

Are you going to release patch to fix that movement bug? Or are you waiting premiers jump points?

I'm hopeing that Premier will have the Jump points ready before I upload any patches.