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

[Dukinson]

Excellent. I've been playing the old version.

I would request the galaxy be even colder. With huge galaxies I tend to have an unpleasant number of colonies to manage. I would personally prefer it if there were slightly fewer planets. Perhaps slightly better/interesting planets to offset that. The number of stars is good.

Smaller icecold galaxies have problems too (vanillas problem really). The star systems are too close together (too many stars). You can almost hopscotch everywhere with standard fuel cells.

 

[Rocco.40]

Duke, lemme play around a bit with the mapmod based on your suggestions and will post another version here to try in a few.

 

[Dukinson]

I happen to notice the pm about artemis net. Was it fixed and what was the problem? I'd be curious to know what caused the repulsion effect.

 

[Rocco.40]

artemis net.

Artemis System Net Defender Wins Bug
Artemis System Net will no longer grant wrongful win to defending side in
strategic combat. This happened when Artemis System Net managed to destroy
at least one attacking ship before the combat. In such case defender was
declared a winner even if the whole defending fleet was destroyed. No prompt for
bombardment or invasion was presented to the attacker and his fleet was forced
to flee.
{from patch manual}

 

[Dukinson]

Hahah, I see. I'm glad it was fixed. It felt unfair when I used it and frustrating when the AI used it. I also happened to notice my ship specials in strategic scan were changed.

Very interesting stuff, did you play a hand in these changes? If so, kudos. I can't wait to actually get to play it.

- Food replicators still seem like a "booby trap" technology. Perhaps a static food bonus like a hydro/sub farm to help make them more appealing. As of now they only seem useful in siege defense. If this tech stays as it is, I would advise removing it from the game.

- Advanced tech still useless in strategic. Maybe unfixable.

- Takes too long for leaders to level. I have no memory of having a leader with max skills.

I've had a few other thoughts over the months, they'll come back to me.

 

[Rocco.40]

Hahah, I see. I'm glad it was fixed. It felt unfair when I used it and frustrating when the AI used it. I also happened to notice my ship specials in strategic scan were changed. Very interesting stuff, did you play a hand in these changes? If so, kudos. I can't wait to actually get to play it.

Yes, it was really an unfair outcome of combat due to that nasty bug. I haven't done those fixes myself; we are a team of three working on the game.

- Food replicators still seem like a "booby trap" technology. Perhaps a static food bonus like a hydro/sub farm to help make them more appealing. As of now they only seem useful in siege defense. If this tech stays as it is, I would advise removing it from the game.

Replicators workings is still on our (long) list of things to look at..

- Advanced tech still useless in strategic. Maybe unfixable.

I'd say you're right.

- Takes too long for leaders to level. I have no memory of having a leader with max skills.

This can actually be modded in Config now.
These are the relevant lines to change:
LEADER_DATA Level_2 = 60;
LEADER_DATA Level_3 = 150;
LEADER_DATA Level_4 = 300;
LEADER_DATA Level_5 = 500;
LEADER_DATA Level_6 = 1000;
These values represent the #experience points of a leader (not the #turns) and lowering the values will make them level faster. As an example in ICE i have chosen this set;
LEADER_DATA Level_2 = 60;
LEADER_DATA Level_3 = 140;
LEADER_DATA Level_4 = 240;
LEADER_DATA Level_5 = 360;
LEADER_DATA Level_6 = 500;

 

[Dukinson]

I'm trying to recall if there are any ways to boost leader xp gain. Are there any? Instructor and space academy would come to mind but the wording is quite clear. If there are ways, they've somehow eluded me.

If there are none, even ice values are too low. Once in a blue blue moon my specialist navigators will get +2 in that skill and those games are always tedious. I research every tech in the game with doom star fleets against vicious impossible ice-x AIs... in strategic. Even against these insane opponents, if I've survived to where I can build a handful of doomstars, I already have a large fleet of titans to escort them and it's usually game over by that point. Even then, I usually won't have +2 navigation even on Aquasarrious.

Oh wait, there are battles right? Don't leaders get xp in battle? Would colony leaders get xp when defending a system? Either way, even Aquasarrious acquired early game and present at every key battle will almost never have +2 navigation before I've taken over a huge galaxy.

Think how people who play on small galaxies feel.

 

[Rocco.40]

I'm trying to recall if there are any ways to boost leader xp gain. Are there any? Instructor and space academy would come to mind but the wording is quite clear. If there are, they've somehow eluded me.
[...]
Oh wait, there are battles right? Don't leaders get xp in battle? Would colony leaders get xp when defending a system?

"Colony leaders gain 1 experience point per turn, while Ship Officers gain
additional experience in combat equal to the halved sum of size classes of
destroyed enemy ships. An instructor does not give leaders XP."
{also from our manual}

 

[Dukinson]

I'm starting to think your manual is more useful than google.

Perhaps I should actually start using it.

 

[Dukinson]

Oh it's mostly just changes. I was imagining a rewritten user manual with all of the actual facts consolidated. That would be nice though.

 

[Dukinson]

Your point system may have changed but this is the race I find myself coming back to with your mod in my recent games:

+2 Prod
Aquatic
Large HW
Heavy G
Warlord (I know, you're shocked)
+50 Ship defense
-50% Pop growth
Repulsive (for challenge)

This is a very "point powerful" race. The point cost of this race in vanilla would be over the top. Only slightly slow to get started but that won't be the case if you find a rich ocean early. Find a ultra-rich huge/large ocean with your first colony ship, it's basically game over even on strategic.

- So you might notice one thing about this race, it has almost the highest starting defensive stats you can have on a ship. You forced me to do it! I'd have to say issue #1 I've had with this mod is the "ship attack giveaway" as you might remember me calling it. I've distilled my complaint about this issue down to one simple point I know you'll understand coming from me. It trivializes crew levels. As a warlord, I rely on my ship training levels for an early game advantage when warlord doesn't really provide an economic bonus. To help justify it's selection, I must attack. The problem is, all my enemies have battle-scanners equipped on every ship/station and my +15 defense is overtaken more than 3 times on turn 1 by everyone on the map.

Changing ship attack balance has wide reaching effects. I always felt there was an easier way to re-balance the relationship between beams and missiles. My advise was and is the same, weaken the missile sufficiently and restore attack values.

That aside, I am loving the challenge. I've had to develop strategies I haven't considered in many years.

- I believe I remember mentioning this before and it may be impossible but one of my major complaints about Moo2s interface is how difficult it is to see who is spying on you. Everyone who's played this game knows how annoying it is to monitor enemy spies. One idea could be a number put on or next to the headshot of the offending empire in the diplomacy screen (or main screen around where hyperspace flux would be writen) denoting the number of spies being sent against you. This would be a major improvement if it could be done.

 

[Rocco.40]

I'd have to say issue #1 I've had with this mod is the "ship attack giveaway" as you might remember me calling it. I've distilled my complaint about this issue down to one simple point I know you'll understand coming from me. It trivializes crew levels. As a warlord, I rely on my ship training levels for an early game advantage when warlord doesn't really provide an economic bonus. To help justify it's selection, I must attack. The problem is, all my enemies have battle-scanners equipped on every ship/station and my +15 defense is overtaken more than 3 times on turn 1 by everyone on the map.

Don't want to spoil your day, but crew levels have no effect in strategic games. So Warlord does not contribute in that area also...

Changing ship attack balance has wide reaching effects. I always felt there was an easier way to re-balance the relationship between beams and missiles. My advise was and is the same, weaken the missile sufficiently and restore attack values.

I have taken this approach in Vmod, where nukes do 6 damage instead of 8 and mercs 12 instead of 14.

[...] how difficult it is to see who is spying on you. Everyone who's played this game knows how annoying it is to monitor enemy spies. One idea could be a number put on or next to the headshot of the offending empire in the diplomacy screen (or main screen around where hyperspace flux would be writen) denoting the number of spies being sent against you. This would be a major improvement if it could be done.

Agree with your observation and clicking race report just to get the active spies is tedious. My initial idea was to add it to the Turn Summary report, but many ways are possible here..

 

[Dukinson]

Don't want to spoil your day, but crew levels have no effect in strategic games. So Warlord does not contribute in that area also...

You didn't spoil my day, you spoiled my life! In my time conversing with you I've learned the strategic scan screen is nothing but lies!

Are you sure crew levels have no impact in strategic? It would make some of my battles in vanilla hard to explain without ultra-elite status affecting the fight. I have fought battles with two identical ships of differing crew levels and gotten worse results with the more novice crew. Was that just luck or change of random seed?

I do have to admit, the crew bonuses of warlord (often around +15/+15) was always difficult to quantify after reviewing battle results. Perhaps it was always the larger fleet.

I might have to quit playing this game over this. I feel quite betrayed I payed my money and time in a game Microprose didn't bother to finish properly. That was 50 bucks when I was a kid too. Do you realize how many lunches I skipped to pay for that game? Oh! It's makin' me mad!

 

[Rocco.40]

there is always the option to go tactical, Duky boy

 

[Dukinson]

NEVER!

My god it takes an eternity to finish a game and if I play a small game on tactical (to save time) then it's over before I get phasors.

Moo2 you will be missed. We had some good times... but you lied to me the entire relationship.

Joking aside. You've done a great job making this game more fun. So long Sweet Rocco. It's been interesting.

 

[StarTrooper2]

hiya rocco,
you are a busy guy! thx for the work you did on conquests!
I see you also worked on the best game of all time: moo2
I got everything downloaded, but I don't see how/where to enable ICE in the Orion2 cfg file?
can you provide an enabled copy of the file?
call it orion2_ICE.cfg, than I can just rename it.

or what I need to do to enable the ICE mod.
this is only my second attempt in using the hex editor stuff.

btw, I just down loaded the editor you recommended and its 100% better than the one I was using in conquests.
still don't see what to enable though.
thx

 

[Rocco.40]

hiya rocco,
you are a busy guy! thx for the work you did on conquests!
I see you also worked on the best game of all time: moo2
I got everything downloaded, but I don't see how/where to enable ICE in the Orion2 cfg file?
can you provide an enabled copy of the file?
call it orion2_ICE.cfg, than I can just rename it.

or what I need to do to enable the ICE mod.
this is only my second attempt in using the hex editor stuff.

btw, I just down loaded the editor you recommended and its 100% better than the one I was using in conquests.
still don't see what to enable though.
thx

Hi!
Tx for your note.
Hopefully this vid can help you with the install:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii7HPny_kL0
(hex editor is not needed at all for install)

ps. i am not sure what conquests is. only working on moo2 atm, together with Alex & Darza ...

 

[StarTrooper2]

great
didn't see it could be opened with text editor too!
much easier to work with.......
got it working!
thx

 

[Rocco.40]

great
didn't see it could be opened with text editor too!
much easier to work with.......
got it working!
thx

Great!

ICE just upped to 12c: compatibility update with the new 1.50.4

 

[spacht]

To play the ICE-M mod do i have to enable both "ICE-M.cfg" and "set150.cfg" in the ORION2.cfg or just the former?