v10 feedback

[Lord Tirian]

Thanks!
Btw, there's a third issue with adding new ship types: graphics! While I feel modern submarine graphics can also fit fot futuristic subs (you can't go wrong with eg one of The_Coyote's black-coloured subs), I don't know of any fitting Cruiser graphics besides the ones already used.

I've attached an excel file with what I gathered - where you could expand a bit - it's mainly keeping foils around instead of ditching them for subs, but also other tweaks. Make sure to read the notes, there are quite a lot of them to explain the "why".

For the graphics: The big cruiser "Leviathan"-thing from the EE2 units is pretty cool. I think you're using it for a promo-graphic of transport ships right now, but I think you could give promoted transport ships some other graphics, as the leviathan has a couple of turrets on it and looks pretty much like a big military unit (though to reinforce that cruiser-theme, I could re-skin it to make it look more metallic like the current cruiser).

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

Posting this to make sure this former post won't get unread...

 

[Maniac]

Perhaps not exactly a cruiser, but did you know of the Skjold class model? Also, here is a modern-looking frigate, but it definitely needs to be retextured. And Xenomorph made teamcolored subs here.

Those textures look horrible. Can't really comment on the models - often I feel a model is poor, but then when it gets another texture it suddenly looks awesome.
The download page for the Skjold says there's only a shader version btw.

I've attached an excel file with what I gathered - where you could expand a bit - it's mainly keeping foils around instead of ditching them for subs, but also other tweaks. Make sure to read the notes, there are quite a lot of them to explain the "why".

Some thoughts:

Cruiser-Carrier-Leviathan are on the same tech line. For this I refer back to my comment I don't see the point in creating two ship lines which are enabled by the same tech theme. However I have an idea. Or rather I remember one of my previous intentions. More powerful submarines could be enabled by the Space and Enclosed Biosphere themed techs. I don't know if this makes any sense , but I figured the materials developed for the space industry, and the recycling technology with enclosed biosphere themed techs, would allow submarines to operate at higher pressure and deeper waters, and allow them to stay underwater longer without the need to rise to the surface or return to port for resupply. This could aid their combat usefulness.

Regarding foils, do this really make any sense in combat situations? I figured those are useful as cheap craft for exploration, but could foils function in combat?
A cheap craft enabled by Biofuel certainly makes sense though. What's the reason for Ecological Engineering enabling a ship though? And what's behind the name Dronefoil? Does the foil launch drones (ie, unmanned autonomous air vehicles I assume), or is the foil itself an unmanned ship?

Also keep in mind that Choppers and especially Gravships should be considered part of the naval combat model.

For the graphics: The big cruiser "Leviathan"-thing from the EE2 units is pretty cool. I think you're using it for a promo-graphic of transport ships right now, but I think you could give promoted transport ships some other graphics, as the leviathan has a couple of turrets on it and looks pretty much like a big military unit (though to reinforce that cruiser-theme, I could re-skin it to make it look more metallic like the current cruiser).

I think the WW2 transport for the transport cruiser looks rather lame in Planetfall's context. I was rather thinking to use the Leviathan graphic as the standard transport cruiser graphic.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Cruiser-Carrier-Leviathan are on the same tech line. For this I refer back to my comment I don't see the point in creating two ship lines which are enabled by the same tech theme.

I didn't want to touch the tech tree too much. For me, the ideal tech for the carrier would've been Silksteel Alloys, which is a different line (more the industrial than the physics/power line) - but then you could get carriers without getting subs first, if you don't get to silksteel via kinematics (and that whole line fits subs rather well, as it already deals with "deep sea tech") - so one would need to make kinematics->silksteel mandatory to avoid skipping subs - but as I've said, I didn't want to mess around with the tech tree. And it would mess up the rather neat idea of launching aircrafts with mass drivers.

Regarding foils, do this really make any sense in combat situations? I figured those are useful as cheap craft for exploration, but could foils function in combat?

Do you mean flavour- or game mechanics-wise? Game mechanics-wise, I laid out my case in the excel file, I think. Flavour-wise, I think units are representations of several actual vessels, so the foils are comprised out of several crafts that make hit-and-run attacks, using their smaller size to outmanoeuvre bigger, more sluggish vessels like the cruiser (hence the withdrawal chance as well - many small ships mean that even a failed attack allows you to escape with some of them).

...or is the foil itself an unmanned ship?

This was the original idea - I wanted to tie it to the mind-machine/AI techs, but they are not really connected to the other naval techs - plus I saw the niche at biofuel (and the idea of a terraformer-line for navals) and made this just a follow-up, carrying over the name from the original plan.

Also keep in mind that Choppers and especially Gravships should be considered part of the naval combat model.

Yes, that mainly came in with the latest patch (for choppers, at least), so I really haven't considered that.

Well, I hope the document at least gave you some raw material/ideas/inspiration you can work with or expand upon!

Cheers, LT.

 

[FlozenFresh]

Hi,

I just installed planetfall-v10 and patch"f" in addition to civ4-BTS v3.19. When I start the game it loads succesfully but in main menu i dont see any menu options. It seems to me like all the fonts are somehow "invisible".

I managed to start a game by clicking on 1st option and lower right corner all the time, though i couldnt read anything there.

In the game there are also most fonts invisible to me. I m really dissapointed because this mod looked so great and now i cant play..

Anyone ever had this problem or knows a solution?


Main menu:



Ingame:

 

[GeoModder]

Do you play on another language setting then English? That could be the cause...

 

[Maniac]

Yes. Switch your language to English. Or translate the Planetfall text to your language.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I understand the intention of the "Light" promotion in the way that you trade the possibility to specialize a unit for halved maintenance - however, in the case of having two special abiliy slots available, you can get away with sacrifing one of them, if you pick first a special ability and then "Light" (instead of choosing "Light" first)

 

[FlozenFresh]

This is it!

I played on german language setting & after changing to english everything worked great.

About the translation: where are the strings of the main menu stored?

I looked in all files in planetfall's xml folder but couldnt find them..

Maybe they are in PAK0.FPK?

I'll keep looking but for now: THANKS FOR THE HELP!

 

[GeoModder]

This is it!

I played on german language setting & after changing to english everything worked great.

About the translation: where are the strings of the main menu stored?

I looked in all files in planetfall's xml folder but couldnt find them..

Maybe they are in PAK0.FPK?

I'll keep looking but for now: THANKS FOR THE HELP!

The .fpk stores only graphic files.
Since no translations were made, you won't find those files in the mod, you must look for them in the main BtS assets/xml/text folder.
But I hope you realize it will be a tremendous job of doing a translation by yourself.

 

[Lord Tirian]

About the translation: where are the strings of the main menu stored?

Doesn't matter - if even a single German XML-tag in the entire set of xmls[/url] is missing, all German texts are missing. You would need to go through all XMLs in the Text-folder an make sure that each entry with an English-tag would also have the corresponding German-tag (and that's why *every* text is missing).

If you, however, do that, you could start with a German translation for Planetfall - I'd love to see that!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Ahriman]

Bunkers don't seem to be able to upgrade. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Maniac]

I understand the intention of the "Light" promotion in the way that you trade the possibility to specialize a unit for halved maintenance - however, in the case of having two special abiliy slots available, you can get away with sacrifing one of them, if you pick first a special ability and then "Light" (instead of choosing "Light" first)

The Light special ability doesn't really have any deep intention. I just added that because people requested the option not to pick any special abilities. So if people want to throw away a special ability slot, that's their choice.

Bunkers don't seem to be able to upgrade. Am I doing something wrong?

No. I had to change some code for that. Done for the next patch.

 

[Pfeffersack]

The Light special ability doesn't really have any deep intention. I just added that because people requested the option not to pick any special abilities. So if people want to throw away a special ability slot, that's their choice.

Now that you say I remember Nonetheless, I would prefer for the sake of consistency that the order of choosing has no impact here (= choosing "Light" as 2nd would remove any special ability learned before)

 

[Keeper_GFA]

Don't special abilities increase the maintenance cost? That's the reason for the need to have a "no special ability" choice.

 

[Ahriman]

Is it just me, or is enclosed biosphere civic really weak? It only boosts low-yield tiles that you shouldn't be working anyway.

And water-based improvements are pretty useless, because as soon as you get a fungal bloom the isles of the deep come in and pillage all your stuff in 2-3 turns.

 

[GeoModder]

Is it just me, or is enclosed biosphere civic really weak? It only boosts low-yield tiles that you shouldn't be working anyway.

Well, if most of your bases are in a low-yield area of the map...

And water-based improvements are pretty useless, because as soon as you get a fungal bloom the isles of the deep come in and pillage all your stuff in 2-3 turns.

Then you need to think about a naval strategy for defending your territorial waters.

 

[Ahriman]

Well, if most of your bases are in a low-yield area of the map...

All it does is have a worked tile able to support its own population. What does that achieve? There is no point in having another population point if all it does is work a 2-food tile.

Then you need to think about a naval strategy for defending your territorial waters

But having a navy doesn't even prevent the pillaging; a bunch of isles come in from outside and pillage, and then all you can do is kill them afterwards, but you've already lost the improvements.

 

[GeoModder]

All it does is have a worked tile able to support its own population. What does that achieve? There is no point in having another population point if all it does is work a 2-food tile.

Since the civic doesn't boost plots with a bigger natural nutrients yield the same is true for a faction that doesn't run the civic and has bases in more friendly terrain.

But having a navy doesn't even prevent the pillaging; a bunch of isles come in from outside and pillage, and then all you can do is kill them afterwards, but you've already lost the improvements.

It is more likely to prevent an initial pillaging if that same navy is guarding the plots themself. It won't stop it completely, but with a big enough navy not all your improvements will be pillaged at the first run.

 

[Lord Tirian]

All it does is have a worked tile able to support its own population. What does that achieve? There is no point in having another population point if all it does is work a 2-food tile.

Plots with a low nutrient yield are likely to have other yields. That way, you get a bit of extra production or energy. Furthermore, greenhouses get bonus yield later in the tech tree, so with them you can actually use enclosed to produce positive food (i.e. 3+) later on. And unlike Hybrid/Terraform, it doesn't demand the pro-/contra-Planet choice, which can be a diplomatic boon (though I agree that the enclosed route is a bit bland, as I've noted earlier).

It is more likely to prevent an initial pillaging if that same navy is guarding the plots themself. It won't stop it completely, but with a big enough navy not all your improvements will be pillaged at the first run.

My problem with navy is (that's why I pitched some ideas to Maniac earlier) is that native life is brutal on the seas (way more than on land) - since Psi combat on seas is 3-3, it means that you only win half the battles. And native life likes to come in stacks and to stay on fungus - if you attack, you get wrecked, if you defend, you get swarmed. And ships are a little more expensive than land units, making ship spam infeasible - and there's no terrain you can really use as defensive terrain (trenches for subs with deep pressure hull... but that's it).

On the other hand, pillaging isn't that bad, because it cannot cause starvation and aquaformers are only damaged, so after the combat is over, you're usually good to go and can quickly recuperate. Furthermore, I suspect that Ahriman's problems may be due to the fact that the BtS barbarians on sea are... piddly. Planetfall's sea natives are every bit as dangerous as raging barbarians on land.

In my experience, there are three broad approaches to naval: 1) Go Hybrid; 2) Use bunkers and ranged strikes to soften up native life; 3) Stay the hell away from water if you're not prepared!

Cheers, LT.