[Mod]Tardus Venatus Spatio

[Velorian]

I've set up an excel arc to calculate the accumulated survival chance depending on which modifier we pick.

Here is at 0.0025 meaning 0.25% (quarter of vanilla):

Spoiler

So the chance for a character to reach 90 years is 0.3%. Which is much too little. According to a retirement site I found males of age 72 have a 22% chance to reach 90, female have 35%.

Here is at 0.00055 meaning 0.055% (one eighteenth of vanilla):

Spoiler

Here the chance to reach 90 is 28.4% which I feel is a nice compromise between the official male/female age ratios.

Also it doesn't lead to unrealistic results later either, only 5.6% reach 100 and only 0.6% reach 110. Sounds plausible to me.

I haven't tested the numbers yet though, I just hope the game file will accept such a low modifier..

 

[hyme]

I will give it a test then.

 

[Velorian]

I've been thinking of a couple ideas for changes.

• I'm annoyed at how few leaders we can have, it feels like I always try to skirt by with 1-2 admirals and 1 general, and I don't have enough administrators for even the original cap of 5 worlds plus the sectors.
  Frankly I'm not even sure why we are so strictly limited.
  
  So I'd like to buff the base leaders, maybe to 20. Possibly make the techs give more each.
  
  
• High level leaders are too powerful, long-lived species are already much better than others for keeping their good leaders, now they also get to have them become much better.
  
  So I think I'd prefer reducing it to 5 again, that also gets around the graphical error where it won't display how many levels you have. It's also a problem when Assist Research can give twice as much bonus as it was originally meant for.
  
  If we want leaders to matter more then lets have events allow them to develop traits and make the traits matter more. We can also increase the benefit each skill level and slow down the progress but I think the old 5 limit is fine unless we plan to adjust a bunch of other stuff as well.

The rest are related to ethics.

I'm a bit unsure why you reduced the materialism tech bonus, did you feel they tended to get too far ahead or did you just want to slow down overall tech speed? Because if it's the latter I'd rather the techs just all cost more points.

​

Spiritualism vs Materialism​

I feel spiritualism is much stronger than materialism. You get special techs and the happiness bonus translates to a direct bonus to everything including research on most of your worlds. So ironically they often perform better at research than the materialists..

Also they get a rather overpowered government for enslavements. I'd be tempted to reduce the Transcendent Empire to 90% slavery tolerance. That way there'd be at least some unhappiness among non-collectivists.

In terms of lore, being a materialist means you are willing to pursue any research opportunities by any means regardless of most ethical/moral limitations. They need to have more advantage from this, I'm tempted to double their tech bonus to 10/20 but I guess that could be too powerful. Then again I'm not sure, other factors can already get it quite high and currently materialists don't actually do research all that well.
Edit: I'll just go with 5/15 I think.

In terms of lore, being a spiritualist means intentionally barring yourself from certain methods or paths based on dogma or out of concerns for whatever is spiritually correct. This would justify a research malus, at the very least enough to cover the bonus they already got from happiness.

Beyond that I'd suggest making their psionics tech-line non-exclusive and instead just let them have early access.
The way to do that would be include a new physics tech placed late game, after completion you qualify for getting the Psionics Theory tech. It makes sense that non-spiritualists can get the tech as there actually IS very reliable evidence that the phenomenon is quite real in the Stellaris setting, researching the physics tech allows you to partially understand how it might work scientifically as opposed to being seen as some kind of magic. Also Materialist Fallen Empires have psionics, just saying..

Collectivism vs Individualism vs Xenophobia​

First things first, collectivism is plain overpowered. It has everything xenophobia has just with less disadvantages and more extra fluff. Individualism isn't all that bad really, it's just hard to compete with collectivism.

Xenophobia's alien slavery tolerance doesn't stack with regular slavery tolerance for some reason, so unless you are fanatically xenophobic forget about implementing alien slavery. Meanwhile a spiritual collectivist does fine with the regular version and isn't limited to aliens, he can enslave his own people without objections.

A collectivist regime can even legalize Purges (Sanctioning genocide of billions of citizens) without unhappiness. I think that that particular policy should generate unhappiness regardless, perhaps reduced for the fanatics. For Xenophobes the "xenophobes only" option should be better than the universal option as it appeals to the Us-vs-Them line of thinking, so their own citizens shouldn't be unhappy at the policy, other races should though. Then again maybe only fanatics should be completely fine with it.

In terms of lore, a collectivist regime is quite totalitarian, even if potentially well-intentioned. Clearly free speech is not a given. In light of that it seems appropriate to me that they get a disadvantage in tech from all the suppression they are doing. Also all pops who are NOT a collectivist should be somewhat unhappy about the regime.

Individualists are already a fairly worthy ethic though you are also signing away any ability to do slavery. I'd give them one decent buff, a bonus to happiness that only applies to individualist pops who are ruled by an individualist government. It wouldn't make sense if they were happy by themselves, they should be happy about all the rights and freedom they are getting. This will also serve to indirectly increase tech.

To improve Xenophobia I'd suggest improving the governments Despotic Empire and Martial Empire by giving them 50% alien slavery tolerance. That way provided your pops are at least regular xenophobes they'll be ok with any amount of slavery.
Edit: I think it should be 25% for despotic and 50% for the upgraded version.

Beyond that xenophobic regimes are fairly harsh so maybe they should qualify for Frontier Commissars? Or should that remain collectivist exclusive?

Militarism vs Pacifism​

I think all pops should be given 10% unhappiness whenever you are at offensive war. Then militarist pops should get 5%/10% bonus to happiness (what they already have) which mitigates the penalty. The thing is I don't think it makes sense for a militarist to be outright happy at being at war, at most a fanatic might be indifferent about it. This way they are only given a real happiness bonus if fighting a defensive war, but that actually makes sense as that would provoke patriotism.

For pacifists they should get an extra 5/10% unhappiness for being part of an offensive war. Buff-wise they should get a happiness bonus for being at peace. I haven't really played pacifists so I'm not sure how balanced they are.

 

[calake]

This mod looks great, exactly what I've been looking for. I'll play for a while, and comment later with some feedback.

 

[calake]

I'm still in early game and my initial response is everything seems a little too slow, I'll continue playing and see how I feel about this as things develop. Wouldn't be so bad if there was more stuff to do; Do you have any further plans?

Re-balanced traits seem good, I have no complaints in that department really. Some things could be better balance to fit the new rate of progression e.g Industrious is now a very potent choice, vs Rapid Breeder which is now less useful.

Additional station HP, Ship HP, and tougher space monsters are all welcome changes.

I don't want to overstep my bound but I am more than willing to help in a more practical sense. I have extremely limited modding experience in EUIII and EUIV, but plenty of real world programming experience.

 

[hyme]

I'm annoyed at how few leaders we can have, it feels like I always try to skirt by with 1-2 admirals and 1 general, and I don't have enough administrators for even the original cap of 5 worlds plus the sectors.
Frankly I'm not even sure why we are so strictly limited.

I too would like to change the leader cap, but I need to think of some why to off set the change. I was thinking about increasing the leader cost to 100 Influence or making leaders have a monthly energy cost.

So I'd like to buff the base leaders, maybe to 20. Possibly make the techs give more each.
High level leaders are too powerful, long-lived species are already much better than others for keeping their good leaders, now they also get to have them become much better.

So I think I'd prefer reducing it to 5 again, that also gets around the graphical error where it won't display how many levels you have. It's also a problem when Assist Research can give twice as much bonus as it was originally meant for.

I would like to keep this the way it is, I don't think there is a reason I long-lived or 25+ exp species should stop learning after level 5. Maybe we can make some events that randomly lowers or raises exp/level for leaders. I would like at sometime to fix the error. Maybe I can cap the level at 7 or 8. I have never seen a leader pass level 6, so its never been a problem in my games. Have you seen long-lived leaders make it to level 7?

If we want leaders to matter more then lets have events allow them to develop traits and make the traits matter more. We can also increase the benefit each skill level and slow down the progress but I think the old 5 limit is fine unless we plan to adjust a bunch of other stuff as well.

See above.

I'm a bit unsure why you reduced the materialism tech bonus, did you feel they tended to get too far ahead or did you just want to slow down overall tech speed? Because if it's the latter I'd rather the techs just all cost more points.

Even one seems to think that Materialism is the best Ethos that you can pick and its overpowered, that is what is must pick for MP games. That is why I lowered it. I did keep Spirit of Science in that gives 20% to all Research. In my game I found that with out the change to Materialism the AI with Materialism just out classes the other AI's in 500 years. And they seem to be the main powers.

​

Spiritualism vs Materialism

I feel spiritualism is much stronger than materialism. You get special techs and the happiness bonus translates to a direct bonus to everything including research on most of your worlds. So ironically they often perform better at research than the materialists..

We should test out lowering the bonus for happiness, but in my test games with Spirtualism I am normally lower tech then the AI around me. I don't think we should change them that much, but it is something I am willing to test changing.

Also they get a rather overpowered government for enslavements. I'd be tempted to reduce the Transcendent Empire to 90% slavery tolerance. That way there'd be at least some unhappiness among non-collectivists.

Sounds like a good change. I do know with the next patch slaves will be able to revolt so that may change how powerful that is. I have never used the spiritualism government yet in any of my games when I have played a fanatic spiritualism government.

In terms of lore, being a materialist means you are willing to pursue any research opportunities by any means regardless of most ethical/moral limitations. They need to have more advantage from this, I'm tempted to double their tech bonus to 10/20 but I guess that could be too powerful. Then again I'm not sure, other factors can already get it quite high and currently materialists don't actually do research all that well.
Edit: I'll just go with 5/15 I think.

How did your testing go. I know my test with vanilla rates show made me think it was too powerful.

In terms of lore, being a spiritualist means intentionally barring yourself from certain methods or paths based on dogma or out of concerns for whatever is spiritually correct. This would justify a research malus, at the very least enough to cover the bonus they already got from happiness.

Beyond that I'd suggest making their psionics tech-line non-exclusive and instead just let them have early access.
The way to do that would be include a new physics tech placed late game, after completion you qualify for getting the Psionics Theory tech. It makes sense that non-spiritualists can get the tech as there actually IS very reliable evidence that the phenomenon is quite real in the Stellaris setting, researching the physics tech allows you to partially understand how it might work scientifically as opposed to being seen as some kind of magic. Also Materialist Fallen Empires have psionics, just saying..

I know they are removing the happiness bonus that Spirtualism is getting in the next patch and giving it a -5/-10 Ethics Divergence. They will be giving the happiness bonus to pacifist along with all the bonuses it has now.

Collectivism vs Individualism vs Xenophobia​

First things first, collectivism is plain overpowered.

I am hoping that slave revolts in the next patch will fix that and would like to wait to make that change.

It has everything xenophobia has just with less disadvantages and more extra fluff. Individualism isn't all that bad really, it's just hard to compete with collectivism.

Xenophobia's alien slavery tolerance doesn't stack with regular slavery tolerance for some reason, so unless you are fanatically xenophobic forget about implementing alien slavery. Meanwhile a spiritual collectivist does fine with the regular version and isn't limited to aliens, he can enslave his own people without objections.

I think that xenophobia needs some bluffs, they are too weak. What are you ideas to make it stronger?

A collectivist regime can even legalize Purges (Sanctioning genocide of billions of citizens) without unhappiness. I think that that particular policy should generate unhappiness regardless, perhaps reduced for the fanatics. For Xenophobes the "xenophobes only" option should be better than the universal option as it appeals to the Us-vs-Them line of thinking, so their own citizens shouldn't be unhappy at the policy, other races should though. Then again maybe only fanatics should be completely fine with it.

Agree

In terms of lore, a collectivist regime is quite totalitarian, even if potentially well-intentioned. Clearly free speech is not a given. In light of that it seems appropriate to me that they get a disadvantage in tech from all the suppression they are doing. Also all pops who are NOT a collectivist should be somewhat unhappy about the regime.

Are you thinking -1%/-2% change for tech would be good?

Individualists are already a fairly worthy ethic though you are also signing away any ability to do slavery. I'd give them one decent buff, a bonus to happiness that only applies to individualist pops who are ruled by an individualist government. It wouldn't make sense if they were happy by themselves, they should be happy about all the rights and freedom they are getting. This will also serve to indirectly increase tech.

Agree

To improve Xenophobia I'd suggest improving the governments Despotic Empire and Martial Empire by giving them 50% alien slavery tolerance. That way provided your pops are at least regular xenophobes they'll be ok with any amount of slavery.
Edit: I think it should be 25% for despotic and 50% for the upgraded version.

I would improving Xenophonia without changing the governments. What if a xenophobia was different government. The change to Despotic Empire and Martial Empire make sense, but I still would like to make Xenophonia more powerful for ones that do not have that government.

Beyond that xenophobic regimes are fairly harsh so maybe they should qualify for Frontier Commissars? Or should that remain collectivist exclusive?

Agree

Militarism vs Pacifism

I think all pops should be given 10% unhappiness whenever you are at offensive war. Then militarist pops should get 5%/10% bonus to happiness (what they already have) which mitigates the penalty. The thing is I don't think it makes sense for a militarist to be outright happy at being at war, at most a fanatic might be indifferent about it. This way they are only given a real happiness bonus if fighting a defensive war, but that actually makes sense as that would provoke patriotism.

I guess I see fanatic militarism as the orks in 40k and they love war. I agree with the 10% unhappiness for offensive war. So I think that 10% and 20% would be a better change. Militarism would get no happiness change for being at war, but a fanatic militarism would get a 10% happiness bonus for being at war. All the others would get -10 happiness for being in a offensive war.

For pacifists they should get an extra 5/10% unhappiness for being part of an offensive war. Buff-wise they should get a happiness bonus for being at peace. I haven't really played pacifists so I'm not sure how balanced they are.

In the next patch they are planning do something like this and pacifism are not allowed to pick Cede Planet war goal.

I think the first part of the game is a little slow. I was think of spawning more Space pirates and even giving them a planet so they are a threat. Making so that when get a new leader/ruler a civil war may happen.

 

[hyme]

I'm still in early game and my initial response is everything seems a little too slow, I'll continue playing and see how I feel about this as things develop. Wouldn't be so bad if there was more stuff to do; Do you have any further plans?

Re-balanced traits seem good, I have no complaints in that department really. Some things could be better balance to fit the new rate of progression e.g Industrious is now a very potent choice, vs Rapid Breeder which is now less useful.

Additional station HP, Ship HP, and tougher space monsters are all welcome changes.

I don't want to overstep my bound but I am more than willing to help in a more practical sense. I have extremely limited modding experience in EUIII and EUIV, but plenty of real world programming experience.

Thank you for your input. I also think the early game is slow. I would like to add new space pirate events. I would like to spawn new space monsters in systems. New rogue factions that will fight you in the early game or whole game. Yes you can help if you like.

 

[calake]

I think events and new technologies are the way to go. More technologies and late game content will extend the game, meaning you could theoretically condense things slightly with the same affect of extending a single game. Alternatively you could fill in the early game with more events, i.e. Pirates.

I have a few thoughts to add to the above discussion.

Materialism:
-Materialism gives one of the better unique buildings, which in combination with "Spirit of Science", makes it still a balanced choice with your changes in mind.
-Remember that ethic choices affects AI personality, and this may be whats influencing AI power dynamics, rather than the tech bonus itself.
-I'm unsure on this but materialism may slightly affect random tech generation, like pacifism, and I believe militarism too.

Leaders:
-I haven't gotten anywhere the stage where my leaders are dying yet, or past level 5, but I have a few ideas anyway.
-Leaders cost small amount of influence p/month. Bureaucratic government types should have an easier time managing multiple leaders (-influence maintenance cost). Collectivist leaders should be more willfully compliant (-influence maintenance cost). Would give you a reason to fire leaders, rather than always keep them around.
-More negative leader traits, such as "Senile", again to incentivise firing/ replacing leaders.
-Leader centric events. I'm assuming these are possible since there are events that give leader traits. Example: Keeping rebellious leaders around may trigger event chains, such as slave rebellions, regime changes (government shift, or faction leader replacement). Again, no idea if that AI can handle this.
-With Egalitarian ethics pops may 'retire' themselves. It would make them more interesting, as highly talented leaders make their way to power, but they may not reliably be available due to freedom to choose occupation, changing position etc.

Xenophobia:
-To balance Xeno-slavery it should give a happiness bonus to xenophobe pops, vs normal slavery which just doesn't upset them.
-Purges should also increase xenophobe pop happiness.
-Make purge require fanatic militarism, fanatic xenophobia, or xenophobia + militarism.
-A tech which increases purge speed (?), or a unique building "work camps", which gives a huge bonus to mineral production on that tile, but consumes pops.

Pirates:
-Maybe it would be possible to spawn them a colony ship, with a special pirate ethic, after a certain period of time rather than spawning them with a planet.
-Could possibly add a special ethic to your own pops, "Known Smugglers", that you have to get rid of somehow. It would reduce their efficiency in everything, since they could be illegally selling minerals, fuel, or technological secrets.
-MTTH to change constructor ownership, as though they have been commandeered by infiltrating pirates, as a minor inconvenience.

Edit: (Some more thoughts on Pirates).

You could make a new planet type using the already existing graphics for pirate bases. It should have limited tiles (2*2, 1*3, etc). You could spawn it in a new system, which would give you more control over what you can do with it, such as where to spawn it, and what to include in that system.

 

[Velorian]

I would like to keep this the way it is, I don't think there is a reason I long-lived or 25+ exp species should stop learning after level 5. Maybe we can make some events that randomly lowers or raises exp/level for leaders. I would like at sometime to fix the error. Maybe I can cap the level at 7 or 8. I have never seen a leader pass level 6, so its never been a problem in my games. Have you seen long-lived leaders make it to level 7?

Eh, I've had them reach level 10.

My admiral made it to level ten by killing space vermin and conducting a war. The game is at 95 years into the timeline. My scientists are 1 lvl6, 1 lvl7 and 5 lvl8, one of them a few hundred xp from lvl 9. They are humans but I gave them venerable before they died so they are a bit over a century old by now.

My governors are only lvl 5-6. As for admirals I have the lvl 10 guy who's ancient by now but got to 10 at a pretty young age. Then a lvl 5 and a level 8 who is 56 years old. Started in the middle of his thirties as I recall.

Anyhow the admiral gets 40% reduced upkeep and 50% fire rate, plus 2 traits. If we allow up to level 10 the effect of each skill level should be reduced, perhaps excepting scientists/governors. For scientists however there is the problem of "Assist Research":

Note that it's the bonus from the first tier of the tech. The next tier doubles the effect, so it's possible to get 100% bonus.

Note that my race is neither Intelligent nor Materialist. Those 5 or 10 percent would not have a big impact compared to the other numbers however. I haven't even been milking it for all it's worth, a fully dedicated science world with those bonuses would be pretty impressive.

Even one seems to think that Materialism is the best Ethos that you can pick and its overpowered, that is what is must pick for MP games. That is why I lowered it. I did keep Spirit of Science in that gives 20% to all Research. In my game I found that with out the change to Materialism the AI with Materialism just out classes the other AI's in 500 years. And they seem to be the main powers.

I don't really care about multiplayer, it often creates metagame strategies and players making picks to counter other players.

The strongest Ethics by a wide margin is in my opinion collectivist and spiritualist. So I'd say the strongest combo for multiplayer ought to be collectivist, spiritualist and militarist.

Anyhow it's not even like they are really 5 or 10 percent better, it's a percentage from the base value so it is worth increasingly less the more other modifiers you can pile on.

We should test out lowering the bonus for happiness, but in my test games with Spirtualism I am normally lower tech then the AI around me. I don't think we should change them that much, but it is something I am willing to test changing.

Well there's nothing about vanilla spiritualism that would explain your being lower tech. The 5%/10% happiness bonus translates to a direct 5% or 10% boost to science for planets that reaches over base happiness.
Which should be all the important ones.

I would improving Xenophonia without changing the governments. What if a xenophobia was different government. The change to Despotic Empire and Martial Empire make sense, but I still would like to make Xenophonia more powerful for ones that do not have that government.

Well I think giving the despotic governments that bonus is a smaller change than creating an entirely new government, not that I'd be opposed. I just think it's a good solution for now, and it fits the bonus it already has which tends to be rather useless if you are not either fanatically collectivist or fanatically xenophobe.
Rather too limiting I'd say.

I guess I see fanatic militarism as the orks in 40k and they love war. I agree with the 10% unhappiness for offensive war. So I think that 10% and 20% would be a better change. Militarism would get no happiness change for being at war, but a fanatic militarism would get a 10% happiness bonus for being at war. All the others would get -10 happiness for being in a offensive war.

That sounds fair enough.

In the next patch they are planning do something like this and pacifism are not allowed to pick Cede Planet war goal.

Wait, what!?

I certainly hope they still get to pick Cede Planet if its got their race on it, or if it's a planet causing serious border tension.

Anyhow as I understood it, it was just increased cost for Cede Planet, to discourage and limit it.

 

[Velorian]

-Leaders cost small amount of influence p/month. Bureaucratic government types should have an easier time managing multiple leaders (-influence maintenance cost). Collectivist leaders should be more willfully compliant (-influence maintenance cost). Would give you a reason to fire leaders, rather than always keep them around.
-More negative leader traits, such as "Senile", again to incentivise firing/ replacing leaders.
-Leader centric events. I'm assuming these are possible since there are events that give leader traits. Example: Keeping rebellious leaders around may trigger event chains, such as slave rebellions, regime changes (government shift, or faction leader replacement). Again, no idea if that AI can handle this.

I like all of these ideas. If leaders are to have upkeep it should definitely be in influence as well. Not a high amount though.

-To balance Xeno-slavery it should give a happiness bonus to xenophobe pops, vs normal slavery which just doesn't upset them.
-Purges should also increase xenophobe pop happiness.

I disagree, only the Fanatical Purifiers want to actually exterminate all aliens. The fanatical xenophobes might also be ok with purges but the regular xenophobes are mostly just bigots who might be ok with enslaving them but might balk at the prospect of killing billions.

 

[calake]

@Velorian The idea is that in slave societies they would rather it be xenos than their own race, and they benefit from all of the slave labour while they live luxurious lives.

Fair point about purges, I'm just trying to think of practical game-play benefits for the Xenophobe ethos. I think of fanatic xenophobes as the most extreme Nazis. If the real life Nazis could rationalise what they did by dehumanising how might they have reacted to literal non-human intelligence?

Also to balance it against Xenophiles, who get +happiness for each migration agreement, which aren't hard to obtain.

 

[Velorian]

@Velorian The idea is that in slave societies they would rather it be xenos than their own race, and they benefit from all of the slave labour while they live luxurious lives.

Fair point about purges, I'm just trying to think of practical game-play benefits for the Xenophobe ethos. I think of fanatic xenophobes as the most extreme Nazis. If the real life Nazis could rationalise what they did by dehumanising how might they have reacted to literal non-human intelligence?

Also to balance it against Xenophiles, who get +happiness for each migration agreement, which aren't hard to obtain.

Well as long as their alien slavery reaches 100% then enslavements becomes a pretty powerful benefit. Then maybe it'd be balanced if we just combine it with a bit of a nerf for the collectivists.

I'm leaning towards the nerf being that seeing as the collectivists are totalitarianists they should suffer a 5%/10% penalty to research because they suppress fringe viewpoints.

How did your testing go. I know my test with vanilla rates show made me think it was too powerful.

Well I didn't test by actually playing a materialist but I had no problem out-researching the materialists as a spiritualist. Which makes sense given that we had the same bonus (happiness equaling the research bonus). By observing the AIs I also wasn't given a strong impression that the materialists were out-researching the other empires, and most of the strong empires were spiritualists like myself.

As for who rises to the top we'd need to run a lot of observation games to say anything for certain as starting positions, positions relative to potential allies/enemies and sheer chance makes a lot of difference.

I would improving Xenophonia without changing the governments. What if a xenophobia was different government. The change to Despotic Empire and Martial Empire make sense, but I still would like to make Xenophonia more powerful for ones that do not have that government.

How about making regular xenophobes have 75% xeno slavery tolerance by themselves.

Then all the autocratic government types gets 20% tolerance at tier one and 25% tolerance in their improved versions. That way either of the autocratic governments get to reach 100% tolerance and the 25% won't mean much to the other ethics as it's not enough to make a difference.

 

[Velorian]

I would like to keep this the way it is, I don't think there is a reason I long-lived or 25+ exp species should stop learning after level 5. Maybe we can make some events that randomly lowers or raises exp/level for leaders. I would like at sometime to fix the error. Maybe I can cap the level at 7 or 8. I have never seen a leader pass level 6, so its never been a problem in my games. Have you seen long-lived leaders make it to level 7?

Alright you've convinced me to retain 10 skill levels but we need to halve the effect of some of the leader classes. At minimum the admirals.

Incidentally I found out why the game doesn't display over 5 stars, it draws from an interface image in the GFX folder. So I'll be editing that image later.

How should it appear though, ten tiny golden stars looks rather suboptimal. I'd rather it was 1-5 of one color, then 6-10 the stars change color one at a time.

So should they start another color than gold and then turn gold, or should they retain their color until 6+ and then turn some other color, and if so which? Red/Blue/Green? Any ideas?

 

[calake]

1-5 Silver, 6-10 Gold would probably work best imo, or the reverse would be fine too.

-Alternatively you could have 1-3 Bronze, Silver, Gold and cap at 9, or even 12. Or 4,8,12 for that matter.
-You could scrap the stars all together and have different symbols.

 

[hyme]

Alright you've convinced me to retain 10 skill levels but we need to halve the effect of some of the leader classes. At minimum the admirals.

Incidentally I found out why the game doesn't display over 5 stars, it draws from an interface image in the GFX folder. So I'll be editing that image later.

How should it appear though, ten tiny golden stars looks rather suboptimal. I'd rather it was 1-5 of one color, then 6-10 the stars change color one at a time.

So should they start another color than gold and then turn gold, or should they retain their color until 6+ and then turn some other color, and if so which? Red/Blue/Green? Any ideas?

Silver 1-5
gold 6-10

Or roman numerals Like this
Level: I
Level: II
Level: III
Level: IV
Level: V
so on to
Level: X

Thoughts?

 

[calake]

If 10 is the agreed upon level cap then I think 1-5 Silver, 1-5 Gold makes sense since the stars already fit the GUI. It doesn't have to be, it can be 5,6,8,9,10 or 12, or any number at all if roman numerals are used.

@hyme I have a few thoughts on the colonial/ terraforming game. I will share them with you later when I have time to write everything up. If you would like I could get working on them right away, or maintain them as a submod for your later consideration. See what you think anyway.

Edit:

On second thought I do quite like the Roman numerals idea, but for that you'd have to edit the GUI, or just have lots of blank space which may look ugly.

 

[Velorian]

Alright I'll try making it work with first silver stars then golden ones, probably some time tomorrow.

When you reach 6 skill should it be one golden star or one golden and 4 silver?

 

[calake]

Alright I'll try making it work with first silver stars then golden ones, probably some time tomorrow.

When you reach 6 skill should it be one golden star or one golden and 4 silver?

One gold would be best in my opinion, and much clearer to see.

 

[hyme]

One gold would be best in my opinion, and much clearer to see.

Agree

 

[hyme]

@hyme I have a few thoughts on the colonial/ terraforming game. I will share them with you later when I have time to write everything up. If you would like I could get working on them right away, or maintain them as a submod for your later consideration. See what you think anyway.

Go ahead and write them up, but please tell us your ideas. I know @Velorian made some changes to terraforming that I have yet to try out.