[MOD] Galactic Ambitions

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm not sure I understood that. If armor penetration is a bonus instead of overcoming armor then how do you ever overcome 100% armor?

To clarify here's a design I made with your mod:

It's got 187% damage reduction. If it gets hit by a weapon with 70% armor penetration does it face an adjusted armor value of 187*0.3= 56.1% ??
My fear was that it faced 187-70= 117%, but I guess that's luckily not the case.

If it is the case then maybe the armor cap should be reinstated, just at 150/160%.

The cap is currently at 200% but I did contemplate to have it at 150%, I think that might be good enough. Perhaps a bit abusive to let it stray too high.

And yes... Armour Penetration is a multiplicative modification of the armor percentage value. So a stations with 180% armour and a 70% Armour Penetration give a total of 54%. I will be honest and admit I have not verified this 100% in the Heinlein patch... but Armor Penetration did work like that before... I will test this immediately otherwise I will have to change it.

That station will take allot of Battleships to bring down!!!

 

[Velorian]

That station will take allot of Battleships to bring down!!!

Yes, I expect so, especially as it regenerates near 3.6k pr month so 119 pr day.

With max armor penetration they'll do around half damage so it shouldn't be insurmountable.

Hmm.. I'm quite tempted to just discard my current game.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I can confirm that the calculation with Armour Penetration functions as before. It is a multiplicative modification of the actual damage reduction percent number.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes, I expect so, especially as it regenerates near 3.6k pr month so 119 pr day.

With max armor penetration they'll do around half damage so it shouldn't be insurmountable.

Hmm.. I'm quite tempted to just discard my current game.

Yes, you will need at least three or four battleships and/or a large swarm of corvettes with torpedoes to do much damage.

 

[Velorian]

I can confirm that the calculation with Armour Penetration functions as before. It is a multiplicative modification of the actual damage reduction percent number.

Awesome, thanks!

 

[Velorian]

Ok, I'm discarding my game and restarting with your mod... I've got a bad case of restartitis, I guess.

Everything is looking pretty damn good.

I went through the files and modified a few things, so I figured I'd offer them as suggestions, though of course I understand if it's not your cup of tea.

1) I dislike how many reactors are needed to keep the ships running, and from a lore-perspective I wonder why fancy stuff like anti-matter and zeropoint modules are only twice as good as primitive fission. So I made each tier increase by 10 instead of 5 and multiplied the values same as you had:

#############
#    POWER    #
#############

@power_S1 = 10
@power_M1 = 25
@power_L1 = 62
        
@power_S2 = 20
@power_M2 = 50
@power_L2 = 125
        
@power_S3 = 30
@power_M3 = 75
@power_L3 = 187
        
@power_S4 = 40
@power_M4 = 100
@power_L4 = 250
        
@power_S5 = 50
@power_M5 = 125
@power_L5 = 312

2) It's not that I dislike your long construction times too much, but I feel they impact the AI more harshly than the player and from a realism POV, which would be the main reason for quite so long construction times I'd like to point out that each space station can only make one ship at a time, which realistically needn't be the case when constructing ships.

So I reduced construction times to 1.5 normal for corvettes and doubling with each size increase. So 2 years for a Battleship.

- corvette 90 days
- destroyer 180 days
- cruiser 360 days
- battleship 720 days

3) I reduced opinion decay for genocide/terror-bombings to half and genocide vs "our species" to 0.1.
Reason: These things tend not to be forgotten fast. At all..

4) About the system_initializers I'd strongly suggest making Earth size 20.
Reason: Venus is size 20, real world Earth and Venus are nearly exact same size.

5) Set NDefines.NGameplay.LEADER_AGE_DEATH_CHANCE_INC = 0.0005 (yes, 1/20th)
Reason: Ever wondered why leaders start dying in droves right around the time they get to be considered old?
It used to be 0.01, which means 1% per month of dying for each year above the age it becomes possible.

I don't think Paradox realizes what that really means.. It means a man at 72 has (0.99^12)= 88.6% chance to survive or roughly 11.4% chance to DIE during his first year.

Second year it's 21.5% chance to die. So basically nobody gets to live to 80-90. Which doesn't exactly model the real world very well..

6) Pretty subjective but I'd prefer 2-3 times as high CORE_SECTOR_SYSTEM_CAP and LEADER_BASE_CAP.
Reason: It doesn't make sense to be so restrictive, especially about leaders. I shouldn't have to balk at the idea of having more than 1 admiral/general because then what about scientists/governors..

That's pretty much it for now. I'll let you know about issues I experience ingame. Thanks again for putting in the time to improve the game!

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have updated the mod with 1.3.1.

There was a serious bug that gave you a corrupted save game... I deleted some unused folder files which their unfortunately was a reference to left. So please use that one or you will get a corrupted save game. If you started a game with 1.3 it will unfortunately not start unless you open the save and replace all references of "ai_flag_neutral_personality" with either "ai_flag_aggressive_personality" or "ai_flag_defensive_personality".

You find how you do that on the Stellaris Wiki here...

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Ok, I'm discarding my game and restarting with your mod... I've got a bad case of restartitis, I guess.

Everything is looking pretty damn good.

I went through the files and modified a few things, so I figured I'd offer them as suggestions, though of course I understand if it's not your cup of tea.

1) I dislike how many reactors are needed to keep the ships running, and from a lore-perspective I wonder why fancy stuff like anti-matter and zeropoint modules are only twice as good as primitive fission. So I made each tier increase by 10 instead of 5 and multiplied the values same as you had:

#############
#    POWER    #
#############

@power_S1 = 10
@power_M1 = 25
@power_L1 = 62
      
@power_S2 = 20
@power_M2 = 50
@power_L2 = 125
      
@power_S3 = 30
@power_M3 = 75
@power_L3 = 187
      
@power_S4 = 40
@power_M4 = 100
@power_L4 = 250
      
@power_S5 = 50
@power_M5 = 125
@power_L5 = 312

2) It's not that I dislike your long construction times too much, but I feel they impact the AI more harshly than the player and from a realism POV, which would be the main reason for quite so long construction times I'd like to point out that each space station can only make one ship at a time, which realistically needn't be the case when constructing ships.

So I reduced construction times to 1.5 normal for corvettes and doubling with each size increase. So 2 years for a Battleship.

- corvette 90 days
- destroyer 180 days
- cruiser 360 days
- battleship 720 days

3) I reduced opinion decay for genocide/terror-bombings to half and genocide vs "our species" to 0.1.
Reason: These things tend not to be forgotten fast. At all..

4) About the system_initializers I'd strongly suggest making Earth size 20.
Reason: Venus is size 20, real world Earth and Venus are nearly exact same size.

5) Set NDefines.NGameplay.LEADER_AGE_DEATH_CHANCE_INC = 0.0005 (yes, 1/20th)
Reason: Ever wondered why leaders start dying in droves right around the time they get to be considered old?
It used to be 0.01, which means 1% per month of dying for each year above the age it becomes possible.

I don't think Paradox realizes what that really means.. It means a man at 72 has (0.99^12)= 88.6% chance to survive or roughly 11.4% chance to DIE during his first year.

Second year it's 21.5% chance to die. So basically nobody gets to live to 80-90. Which doesn't exactly model the real world very well..

6) Pretty subjective but I'd prefer 2-3 times as high CORE_SECTOR_SYSTEM_CAP and LEADER_BASE_CAP.
Reason: It doesn't make sense to be so restrictive, especially about leaders. I shouldn't have to balk at the idea of having more than 1 admiral/general because then what about scientists/governors..

That's pretty much it for now. I'll let you know about issues I experience ingame. Thanks again for putting in the time to improve the game!

You are welcome to do any changes you want... I will give my reason why they are as they are.

Ship construction time will be seriously reduced with yards and dock yards... time can be reduced by around 150% later on with the correct setup. The AI usually build yards just fine, I have made sure the AI actually prioritize dockyards in any place it has build a corvette, destroyer, cruiser or battleship yard.

The power modules are balanced so you will have to do compromises and not get everything on every ship. You either get a ship that are offensive or defensive. Some weapons require less power and you might decide to use little shields and more armor. The numbers are not really about the name but more for game balance and so you need to make some concessions here and there.

Number three is probably also more of a balance issue than a realism issue and could perhaps also be argued either way... there are places where grudges between cultures have been hold for very long times.

Number four and five are definetely something to consider. I could make Earth size 18 and Venus size 16, that would be more in line with reality.

For six I thin the planet cap is OK but I have contemplated increasing the leader cap some, but I will also need to balance any bonuses so they are not made too weak. I also think that leaders are implemented a bit badly in the game and scale rather bad with a growing empire. You should be able to easily recruit governor for all your core planets and sectors and be able to have a few generals and admirals and scientists out exploring. This should be more of an Influence problem rather than a cap... might change how this work in the future.
You could change it so bonuses lies in recruiting leader cheaper and increase the basic influence cost for them just a bit and more or less remove the cap, set it at 1000. Now it is more or less how much influence you want to spend on leaders. So Leader age would become much more important so those traits would need to cost more or perhaps even reduced in effect.

I recommend to play the game on at least Hard... Normal AI just is too timid overall, not much I can do about that.

 

[Velorian]

Ship construction time will be seriously reduced with yards and dock yards... time can be reduced by around 150% later on with the correct setup. The AI usually build yards just fine, I have made sure the AI actually prioritize dockyards in any place it has build a corvette, destroyer, cruiser or battleship yard.

Huh? How does more than 100% work? I would understand a 100% time reduction to mean instant construction.

Number three is probably also more of a balance issue than a realism issue and could perhaps also be argued either way... there are places where grudges between cultures have been hold for very long times.

Agreed, though to clarify I was arguing in favor of slower forgiveness. Because I don't think atrocities should be forgotten as fast as regular diplomatic dealings.

Number four and five are definetely something to consider. I could make Earth size 18 and Venus size 16, that would be more in line with reality.

Well Venus is around 5% smaller than Earth and 20% lighter. So if Earth is set to 18 then Venus should be 17.

Mars is size 15 yet about half the size of Earth. I wonder what criteria they used for planet sizes.

For six I thin the planet cap is OK but I have contemplated increasing the leader cap some, but I will also need to balance any bonuses so they are not made too weak.

Yes to not invalidate leader bonuses techs and such should be changed but the low leader amounts annoy me enough to just edit it directly. In my experience I can still use out my cap and as such still benefit from the techs. The government bonus is a bit weak though.

I recommend to play the game on at least Hard... Normal AI just is too timid overall, not much I can do about that.

Agreed, my last game was on insane. Gonna mod the difficulty a bit this time around though, for a mix between them.

A suggestion: Change their research bonus to be for the research screen (where the leaders are) instead of a tile-bonus. The tile-bonus means there's little difference between AI empires with high or low research pops..

 

[Velorian]

I found two bugs:

Spoiler

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Thanks I will fix those.

About the build bonus it is a positiv build bonus and 100% menas double build speed.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Mod is updated to support Heinlein patch 1.3.2, should be save game compatible.

Things that will be worked on in the immediate future is a re construction of the technology tree so there are more technologies to research, next step will be to add more tier of buildings so players/AI can take advantage of smaller versus a larger empire. Somehow also tie in how edicts can become cheaper while colonization and war more expensive if you choose more economically prosperous policies.

Want to try and make more effort into making small well developed empires able to stand up to large underdeveloped giants.

Will monitor closely what Paradox have in store for the next expansion though. Do not want to start working on features they will bring in soon.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Just a heads up that the Steam version of the game is up and running as well as the downloadable version...

 

[Velorian]

I just noticed the ringworld scale still isn't fixed. In case you haven't fixed it on your end yet I fixed it by scaling it to 7:

@ringworld_standard_scale = 7.0

pc_ringworld_habitable = {
    ringworld = yes
    entity = "ringworld_habitable_entity"
    picture = pc_tropical    # Use tropical portrait art for habitable ringworld
    tile_set = pc_tropical
    icon_frame = 1
    entity_scale = @ringworld_standard_scale
    enable_tilt = no
    fixed_entity_scale = yes
    atmosphere_color         = hsv { 0.50 0.2 0.8 }        #DONE
    atmosphere_intensity     = 1.0
    atmosphere_width         = 0.5
    city_color_lut = "gfx/portraits/misc/colorcorrection_desert.dds"
    extra_orbit_size = 0
    extra_planet_count = 0
    chance_of_ring = 0.0
    planet_size = 25
    moon_size = 1
    colonizable = yes
    ideal = yes
    starting_planet = no
    orbit_lines = no
}

pc_ringworld_habitable_damaged = {
    ringworld = yes
    entity = "ringworld_habitable_damaged_entity"
    picture = pc_ringworld_broken
    icon_frame = 1
    entity_scale = @ringworld_standard_scale
    enable_tilt = no
    fixed_entity_scale = yes
    atmosphere_color         = hsv { 0.50 0.2 0.8 }        #DONE
    atmosphere_intensity     = 1.0
    atmosphere_width         = 0.5
    city_color_lut = "gfx/portraits/misc/colorcorrection_desert.dds"
    extra_orbit_size = 0
    extra_planet_count = 0
    chance_of_ring = 0.0
    planet_size = 10
    moon_size = 1
    colonizable = no
    orbit_lines = no
}

pc_ringworld_tech = {
    ringworld = yes
    entity = "ringworld_tech_entity"
    picture = pc_ringworld_section
    icon_frame = 1
    entity_scale = @ringworld_standard_scale
    enable_tilt = no
    fixed_entity_scale = yes
    atmosphere_color         = hsv { 0.50 0.2 0.8 }        #DONE
    atmosphere_intensity     = 1.0
    atmosphere_width         = 0.5
    city_color_lut = "gfx/portraits/misc/colorcorrection_desert.dds"
    extra_orbit_size = 0
    extra_planet_count = 0
    chance_of_ring = 0.0
    planet_size = 10
    moon_size = 1
    colonizable = no
    orbit_lines = no
}

pc_ringworld_tech_damaged = {
    ringworld = yes
    entity = "ringworld_tech_damaged_entity"
    picture = pc_ringworld_broken
    icon_frame = 1
    entity_scale = @ringworld_standard_scale
    enable_tilt = no
    fixed_entity_scale = yes
    atmosphere_color         = hsv { 0.50 0.2 0.8 }        #DONE
    atmosphere_intensity     = 1.0
    atmosphere_width         = 0.5
    city_color_lut = "gfx/portraits/misc/colorcorrection_desert.dds"
    extra_orbit_size = 0
    extra_planet_count = 0
    chance_of_ring = 0.0
    planet_size = 10
    moon_size = 1
    colonizable = no
    orbit_lines = no
}

pc_ringworld_seam = {
    ringworld = yes
    entity = "ringworld_seam_entity"
    picture = pc_ringworld_section
    icon_frame = 1
    entity_scale = @ringworld_standard_scale
    enable_tilt = no
    fixed_entity_scale = yes
    atmosphere_color         = hsv { 0.50 0.2 0.8 }        #DONE
    atmosphere_intensity     = 1.0
    atmosphere_width         = 0.5
    city_color_lut = "gfx/portraits/misc/colorcorrection_desert.dds"
    extra_orbit_size = 0
    extra_planet_count = 0
    chance_of_ring = 0.0
    planet_size = 10
    moon_size = 1
    colonizable = no
    orbit_lines = no
}

pc_ringworld_seam_damaged = {
    ringworld = yes
    entity = "ringworld_seam_damaged_entity"
    picture = pc_ringworld_broken
    icon_frame = 1
    entity_scale = @ringworld_standard_scale
    enable_tilt = no
    fixed_entity_scale = yes
    atmosphere_color         = hsv { 0.50 0.2 0.8 }        #DONE
    atmosphere_intensity     = 1.0
    atmosphere_width         = 0.5
    city_color_lut = "gfx/portraits/misc/colorcorrection_desert.dds"
    extra_orbit_size = 0
    extra_planet_count = 0
    chance_of_ring = 0.0
    planet_size = 10
    moon_size = 1
    colonizable = no
    orbit_lines = no
}

I tried moving the orbit closer instead, but couldn't quite figure it out. This looks alright though.

I regards to balancing is it just me or are the gene warriors kind of overpowered?
I know they are end-game-ish tech but they are currently better in every way and not even expensive (not in maintenance at least). Maybe reduce their health to 2?

Also it seems to me android soldiers should be comparable in strength to a genetic warrior. They are fully sentient machines that you can arm however you want, and form into any shape deemed most useful for killing.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I will reduce the range of the Ringworld further...

I have not looked at the armies for a while, will take a look at the balance there for next update.

 

[Velorian]

Found another bug:
If you infiltrate and annex a primitive you get a planet with 5 pops and a planetary administration. It then is in permanent anarchy as it doesn't have the early capitals and has fewer than the 6 pops that the "main world" event requires.

Also while the defines says base terraforming takes 30 years; yet ingame I'm offered to terraform a tropical to a continental in 5 years for 1000 credits. That would remove all the tileblockers too, which on the world I was considering comes up to 5200 credits, with a volcano alone being 800.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Found another bug:
If you infiltrate and annex a primitive you get a planet with 5 pops and a planetary administration. It then is in permanent anarchy as it doesn't have the early capitals and has fewer than the 6 pops that the "main world" event requires.

Also while the defines says base terraforming takes 30 years; yet ingame I'm offered to terraform a tropical to a continental in 5 years for 1000 credits. That would remove all the tileblockers too, which on the world I was considering comes up to 5200 credits, with a volcano alone being 800.

Thanks... I will clear up those issues with the next update.

 

[Velorian]

Another minor thing:
Planetary Administration has localization stating that 6 pops are required (just 1 more than the Colonial Magistrate, which did seem weird), but game files reveal 8 is needed.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Another minor thing:
Planetary Administration has localization stating that 6 pops are required (just 1 more than the Colonial Magistrate, which did seem weird), but game files reveal 8 is needed.

Yes that is a resent change and just the localization part that has not been updated properly. There are more localization strings that need to be fixed and fleshed out a bit more.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Some ideas for the next major update of the mod...

Since en expanded technology tree is in the works I have also thought about how I want ship classes to fit better with the AI and combat behavior. My idea here is to make ships much less flexible in components but expand on the number of ship types instead. This way I can make a unique combat computer for each type of ship based on the weapon, speed and other characteristics a specific type of ship has. This would fix things such as Interceptor and Torpedo corvettes acting the same...

A human player will still be able to outwit an AI with mixing better fleets but an AI can be weighted to build or research certain classes over other classes of ships.

This would be a huge project but seem like a fun way to spice up space combat in an interesting way.

So far I have about 25 different classes in my design document... everything from basic corvettes to super carrier ships. Every ship would get different class bonuses and ship behavior characteristics. There would be very little rock, scissor and paper mechanic with ship classes but some ships will obviously be better against some other types of ships.

At the same time I will be able to fill the technology tree with lots of more useful technologies.

If you have any comment or ideas here then please share them with me.