How close is anyone on the Nomad start?? anyone?? How about the use of equipment??.. Just askin'
I'm not far from being able to implement both of these BUT I don't want to do it until the rest of the mod is perfected first because once I do either one it would be a nightmare to see large changes in other areas requiring adaptation.
With every version I've made movements towards both goals. The major NPC split was a huge step towards the Nomadic start because I'll soon be able to start working with our more organic natural world to test food collection and population growth formulas on animals before looking at it for nomads.
The Statuses and Buildups have helped tremendously to define some issues I'll have to overcome for Equipment to work. And the above noted food collection and population growth systems require the inventory system that will have a LOT to do with Equipment. Equipment is largely held up by supply line considerations and supply line considerations are something I intend to weave into a unit supply need system that works hand in hand with food collection systems I intend to balance for the animals first and foremost.
Equipment also requires that I complete the combat mods because most of the equipment details are intended to play off those modifiers the combat mods still to come will introduce. I can complete a lot of them in one swoop here by completing the land and naval unit review processes.
At the moment, the worst problem the mod has is AI and unit balance and upgrade chain progression issues. We've GOT to get these taken care of to establish the proper platform for equipment upgrades to be staged meaningfully across the tech tree. Unit production factors are a major place of imbalance as well and that would be solved by the proper review not only of units and global production modifications but of buildings that affect these values as well. Such a building review is also going to be necessary to help make the implementation of the tremendously complex equipment system much smoother as I'll need to know exactly what buildings to work with there and how to resolve it when I find gaps in the needs that the equipment system introduces.
So a massive building review is also necessary here but it doesn't have to be quite as intense as the unit ones.
At the same time, I'm working diligently on getting a new trait structure defined that is both balanced and utilizes a non-tiered system and a tiered system depending on the options selected. That is nearly complete but the amount of time it's going to take to implement the traits into xml appears to promise to be truly staggering and may also require the first portion of that massive building review to be completed along the way so I know what building construction modifiers to apply to what traits.
So maybe Equipment/Nomadic Starts are going to be a number of versions out still but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I'd LOVE to hold off on ANY further AI adjustments until then but I fear that players aren't going to be so patient with the poor AI we have as I accomplish those tasks. I can do a lot to set up the AI to adapt to the combat mods along the way, and much of the reason to work on a supply line modification far before equipment is so that I have the foundation of an AI that will make the equipment mod an easier thing for the AI to adapt to than the player.
And of course along the way I'm sure I'll suffer through having to work further on streamlining the end turns, which always takes a lot of the percentage of effort of a given review cycle.
In short... we're getting there. I wish I could support the movement towards multi-maps more but some of the above does help me to feel more confident in doing so soon as well.
