[MoO] ICEMOD: mod design, race design, strategies

[neilkaz]

One thing I've noted in ICEx is that there aren't all that many options for getting to 21 negatives since most negs are even numbers.

Is there room to add -5 att or -5 GC at a cost of -1? This will make it easier to get to -21.

Next thing to try to fix is aesthetic. The +10 from powered armor, while calculated properly has never, since day 1 of this game, appeared in the attack or defense summary that pops up during ground combat.

Thx .. neilkaz ..

 

[Rocco.40]

- Yes good point, can take a look at picks for nxt iteration.
- Powered armor things bugs me in the same way as Colony info screen does not show planet maintenance for Tolerant races. Don't know how to fix unfort.

 

[neilkaz]

- Yes good point, can take a look at picks for nxt iteration.
- Powered armor things bugs me in the same way as Colony info screen does not show planet maintenance for Tolerant races. Don't know how to fix unfort.

Thx and just adding 1 of the two -1's I recommended will allow for odd even negative effects to basically not matter. I think there's room to add one of the two. I'd probably pick -5 att myself, but my style is very GC oriented.

I'll stress that no major changes are needed and just adding one or two small negs as I have specified will allow the player considerably more variety in choosing his 21 negs.

 

[neilkaz]

My Feudal Balanced super race game goes well. Gnols soon were close to hating me, but I was ready for them and their T138pw attack with 4 ships that were easily destroyed by my fleet which instantly went to attack them taking a nice system on T140

Then the Ants jumped into the war vs them as I rolled in Gnol and took their HW and the Ants took two more systems. This would've eliminated them but they managed to sneak towards the upper left corner and colonize two more systems which soon became mine after I built and outpost down a short worm hole.

T154pw and the Gnols have been conquered and I am doing fine with 11 systems now. Psilon are in the game and at war with the Ants (haven't met Psi) and this means a high overall AI tech level. Humans are at war with the Bears. I haven't met them either but certainly they also have a very high tech level. I think I can stay at peace for a while but must keep making BB up to my CP level. Gravity Control will be going in soon (LG negative) and then I'll get autolabs and then terraforming and then hopefully still peace unless I can pick off a weakish race. Then I can go for Confederation and my better tech and 1/3 cost ships should have me in good shape for a win.

 

[Rocco.40]

ICE players will know that the Construction branch has the tech field 'Launch Bay Construction' which has Assault Shuttles, Fighter Bays and Bomber Bays under one roof. Now, my question is which of the three do you prefer / always choose? Are Assault Shuttles and Fighters more popular? Has anyone tried to kick some a.i.'s butt with the Bombers?


+ Neilkaz... how did your Feudal game end?

 

[neilkaz]

ICE players will know that the Construction branch has the tech field 'Launch Bay Construction' which has Assault Shuttles, Fighter Bays and Bomber Bays under one roof. Now, my question is which of the three do you prefer / always choose? Are Assault Shuttles and Fighters more popular? Has anyone tried to kick some a.i.'s butt with the Bombers?


+ Neilkaz... how did your Feudal game end?

I always take Assault Shuttles unless I am playing a Telepathic race and therefore have basically ignored GC techs.

I'll finish my game this weekend I hope, as I have been tied up with rl stuff this week and no real time to play.

 

[Rocco.40]

I see the Psilons go down often in my Imp games. I have made some checks on what they are doing in a couple of games and sometimes I see a Psilon nation of 40+ pop that has 2-4 scientists active! All those research bonuses simply go to waste...

Anybody seen the Psilon take a clear lead in ICE games?

 

[neilkaz]

I see the Psilons go down often in my Imp games. I have made some checks on what they are doing in a couple of games and sometimes I see a Psilon nation of 40+ pop that has 2-4 scientists active! All those research bonuses simply go to waste...

Anybody seen the Psilon take a clear lead in ICE games?

One of the things that happens to Psilon and maybe another race or two is that they are inclined to be aggressive like some other races which are inclined to be almost hyper aggressive.

EDIT: To better judge I need more experience. Starting position matters for AI races and sometimes they spawn with plenty of room and/or don't encounter hostiles early.

I've progressed to T190pw in my Feudal game and am doing fabulously with expansion and growth now that the Gnols are mine. Psilon is IMP1 type but has taken a beating from Darlok and now the Bears may take their turn against them. Their tech level is not the highest but due to lost wars their pop lags as well.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that on T190 my gov't became a Confederation which is a huge plus for a Feudal start as now I can make ships at 1/3 cost and have only a small research penalty. I still have quite a few planets to colonize (mostly in conquered systems) and will spend 34 pp for an Outpost followed by 167 pp for a CS and have a big savings in PP vs a CB and have my new colonies start out with good moral.

AI tech level is extreme in this game with friendly Humans and Psilons as well as nasty Darloks to steal and spread techs. A-armor and T-cells are in possession of most AI's already! Mecks have no extra spy defense so I will see what my +25 spies can steal.

Mecks have been pounded back to the upper corner and are irrelevant. I am progressing my way with outposts and colonies towards what I think is Orion.

I am clearly dominant in pop and have enough BB that the AI's aren't keen to mess with me. Treaties with all except Meck and Darlok. My Tech level is fine.

 

[neilkaz]

Onward to T215pw in my Feudal game and good things have happened. Mecks seemed to have almost no spy defense as it isn't normal for 5 spies with a +25 rating to be able to steal a tech almost every turn vs a race with +10 rated agents. The fun stopped after a few turns when they and other races added Cyber Security Net for +20 spies.

I continued to build my economy and new colonies and terraform while also making more warships. I was framed a 2nd time for spying on the Bears and this time they broke treaties. Humans DOW's me out of the blue which is a typical stab, but they are also at war with the Bears and not much of a threat.

On T214 I reaped the benefits of having all the GC techs along with stolen N-armor.
Jump gates for good mobility between systems also allowed me to have 6 Capture 13 BB's waiting for the Antaran raiding fleet of 6 ships. All 6 were captured and 3 DD didn't explode! I got many nice techs when I scrapped them.

On T215 (I think my earliest playing ICE) 10 BB's with Maulers destroyed the Guardian. Now it was time for some serious tech trading. I happily traded Particle Beam, Spatial Compressor and Quantum Det, to as many AI's that I could get to take them. When I return home and load the game, I'll try again to trade with those that I couldn't get to take all 3 techs and will offer peace to the humans so I can trade with them as well. I doubt they'll accept but who knows? If they don't take peace, they will be hit extremely hard by my fleets. If they do take peace, I can attack the nuisance that is Darlok.

EDIT: T229 Humans were finished off and now at war with Mecks, Darloks, and Bears. Lost some ships to Bears making good use of assault shuttles and to Bear Star Fortress but took a couple planets and was working on more.

T234 GC comes up and while I had over 1/2 the votes myself, a friendly AI voting for me pushed me over 2/3 for my win.

This Feudal Balanced race is extremely strong if it can survive the early game.

 

[Rocco.40]

Darn, you are fast getting Confed. already at T190 PW.
You are in danger of become a Blitzer here

 

[neilkaz]

Darn, you are fast getting Confed. already at T190 PW.
You are in danger of become a Blitzer here

I went quickly for Confed after getting AutoLabs in most places. It is extremely important to be able to make ships very cheaply and to get rid of most of my research penalty.

Blitzer?!? LOL not me vs IceX. Just what do I blitz with? Fighters are well down the tech tree now with Assault Shuttles. It takes 3 chem techs to MIRV nukes. It takes 3 techs to AF Mass Drivers. By the time I can do this and get some ships, the AI's have also tech'd like mad and will have good firepower from their SB and may have a planetary defense building. If I attack quicker with basic nukes or other, the SB now has free Rhull and takes considerably more firepower to kill. Once I do kill it, I need many troops since fewer races have lousy GC and since there's more militia.

 

[Rocco.40]

That is a good summary of all the "benefits" of the ICE mod. Plus Autolabs generates 25 RP instead of 30, but stays an important building to go for, especially for Feudal as the research penalty does not apply to the +25 bonus.
Still, you have described couple games ending around the T250 mark (more or less) which a think is quite good. Couple of times checking out via GC, which I think is really fair if you have a dominant position. Sometimes, when I can get a GC win and I don't vote for myself to continue play, I regret it coz the endgame can be tedious in micromanagement. Other times I want to go for the Big Battle at Antares, but otherwise mopping up the map is not that much fun imho.

 

[Rocco.40]

I was just playing an ICEx game, starting a strategy to play against 8 opponents, and it took such a long time to meet somebody. Way past T100, I realized that accidentally I still had #players at 2!
Made me realize that it would be cool to play against a random number of opponents, so in early game you wouldn't really know what to prepare for...

 

[Rocco.40]

Running a H/I/8 game and at T197 I am second strongest player, with the Trilars taking the #1 spot by a good margin. Their fleet is massive and Neutronium armored, while I am still flying with Zortiums. Relationship is 'tense'. The point of the story: last turn a Space Flux started, which means I am dead in the water while the Trilars keep happily shifting their fleets around. Lets hope they don't take advantage. One of those times when Trans-Di is really valuable.

 

[Rocco.40]

Owhh what a nighmare scenario: T216, still in flux and Trils have declared war and are now destroying my colonies 1 or even 2 per turn.
I haven't gone down this way before. At least I can blame it on the flux...

 

[neilkaz]

Owhh what a nighmare scenario: T216, still in flux and Trils have declared war and are now destroying my colonies 1 or even 2 per turn.
I haven't gone down this way before. At least I can blame it on the flux...

This is a horror!! Can you get some planetary defenses up and can they at least kill a ship or two a turn? It does sd/lk they have enough to really ruin you however

 

[Rocco.40]

This is a horror!! Can you get some planetary defenses up and can they at least kill a ship or two a turn? It does sd/lk they have enough to really ruin you however

Did manage to take some of their BB's down, but unfort for me situation escalated as other a.i.'s declared war on me too, as they tend to do when you are weaker for whatever reason. This was quickly followed by armada's of neutronium and adamantium armored BB's heading my direction from 3 different a.i.'s. Two much to handle, although I managed to give some cool defensive blows to the Gnols and Trils, but sadly it was not sufficient and had to abandon game.

 

[Rocco.40]

Finally managed to manipulate the feudal code.
not all discount % are easily programmed.
i favour -25% / -50% ship discount at the moment.
(currently -1/3 / -2/3)
colony ships will then cost 375 BC instead of 334 BC.
(500 BC for all other governments)

To compensate in case of lower Feudal ship discount @ -1/4, decreased research penalty to -30% (-35%).
running various test games now...
one is comparison with Dictatorship, Research-1:
Feudal is -9 picks
Dict, Res-1 is -8 picks

to get flavour of impact, prepped this screen:

As you can see the delta in early game is small.
Feudal research penalty starts to make an impact in mid game, when research becomes more important.
As the penalty is a %, it is harsher than R-1 in the Supercomputer age.


Other ship discount options for Feudal are:
-25%/-40% (where i think Confed. is not so good)
-40%/-50% (where i think Feud. is too much)
also trying to program -1/3 / -50% but unsuccesful so far.. (need to be programmed as *4/6 and *3/6)
Alternatively, I could leave ship discounts at -1/3 / -2/3 and decrease Confed. research penalty from -10% to -25% for example.

Any case, the options are becoming more clear now.


PS1- No new ice version will be launched this month.
PS2- There is a text error in ship design of current ICE version 10h:
for Battle Scanner it still reads +25, but should read +50 Beam Attack.

 

[neilkaz]

I'm OK with Feudal being -9 with 25% ships and 50% ships for Confed and tech -30%.

As it is currently in Ice I don't think Feudal is as bad as -9.

 

[Rocco.40]

Am working to understand better how the MOO2 GUI is built.
Buttons/boxes/text etc are plotted on x-y axis with hard coded coordinates.

With this kowledge, i have been able to change the menu in the INFO section.
This change required changing the y-coords of the items and some graphical work, because the top button has a different rounding than the middle buttons.
Classic menu to the left and new one to the right. I like that Turn Summary is on top here and that History Graph and Race Statistic are next to eachother.

Q: would you like to see this in ICE?
(not planned to be in ICE atm)