I've posted a new version of the mod with the changes I have described.  Also, the External Link at the top now points at the most up-to-date version of the mod.

So, new test game.

It's turn 103 and the colony share is as follows:

1. Drengin: 56
2. Torian: 40
3. Terran (me): 29
4. Yor: 24
5. Altarian: 15

I suspect that this is partly down to the Drengin having a good start position with lots of nearby planets to colonise, and partly due to switching them to AI 8.

So far nobody has weapons, but the Drengin are on track to obtain the technology, producing the most research at the moment.  However the Altarians have the most consistent research progress.

So I'm now on turn 167.  The Drengin have not researched their basic particle beam tech (they are the only race in the game that gets it) or their amazingly cheap planetary invasion techs.  I think this has something to do with them still building things up (as noted by the + to diplomacy from 'Too busy to risk war with us') otherwise they would have started churning fighters out.

The distribution of colonies is about the same as above, just a few more apiece, so the first colonisation phase has basically ended.

The Drengin are in the lead technologically, having finished Tech Progression I first, and now have the most consistent research progress.

It's turn 194.  The Drengin have begun producing fighters (crude things with Space Cannons mounted, but Ion Cannons are only a turn away).  Still no transports, but it's just a matter of time now.

Turn 196 arrives with a declaration of war from the Drengin.  They also delcare war on the Altarians, which prompts the Torians to declare war on the Drengin, even though they have no military to speak of.  Way to go, you green morons.  We're all screwed, at least for a few turns.

Turn 206, the Drengin begin researching Planetary Invasion.  The Altarians and Yor are busy researching Space Weapons, I'm still on Beam Weapon Theory, the Torians are a bit behind and still working on Universities, which will be their first research improvement.

Turn 210, the onslaught begins.  I've rush-built labs to try and speed things up (and besides, what with having no military, I have the cash to do so) but the Drengin squadrons are going to be free to shoot up the nighbourhood for a while to come.

Turn 218, I'm finally starting to build my own fighters.  But they're not quite as impressive as the Drengin designs, or the Super Dominator corvettes.  Thankfully, the Altarians are not far off having their own fighters, but I don't think they'll be much help since they had the worst start.  The Yor, yeah they're never going to help me, and the Torians are still way behind.

Turn 228, I have a new fighter design.

It's expensive compared to the earlier version but what the hey, I can afford to rush buy about five of them.  Unfortunately, I'm going to have to hope that I can manufacture enough to keep up with the Drengin death machine.

It's turn 233 and the Yor have declared war.  It's a good versus evil showdown, and the good guys are losing.

Turn 237 brings bad news as the Drengin claim one of my worlds.  What with the planetary bombardment, they take no casualties.  If this is the shape of things to come, best see if I can sue for peace.

As it turns out the Drengin would accept a peace treaty... if I hand over 5 trillion credits.  Now on the one hand, a war on two fronts is a bad thing, and I might just be able to stand against the Yor.  But, as one TotA reviewer has pointed out, buying peace is never a good idea.  Especially not when you're fighting the Drengin.  They will happily declare war the next turn if you're that gullible.

On the other hand, for a higher price (about 6 trillion credits) the Drengin will agree to a peace treaty and happily go to war with the Yor.  Hmm, not a bad idea to have those two shooting at each other.  I agree to those terms.

By turn 246, things are starting to look up.  I have completed research on Space Mining, which will allow me to draw more resources from asteroids.  And I'm building Advanced Factories to ramp up my production.  I'm still nowhere near a match for the Drengin but they have enough wars to fight right now.  I should be able to hold the Yor for long enough to make them think twice about having started a war with me.

It's turn 259 and the Yor are open to a negotiated peace.  But funnily enough, I don't much like the idea of making peace without a more substantial settlement.  Cough up some more dough, you tightwads.

As it turns out, the Drengin were playing me for a sucker all along, and they declare war again on turn 269.  Now that peace treaty with the Yor isn't such a bad idea.  They accept.

What I didn't realise is that all along the Drengin have been going after Medium Hull Construction.  The first of them that I lay my eyes on (in turn 272) has five ion cannons.  Ouch.  How screwed are we all now?  Very.

It's turn 287 and the Drengin have taken another one of my planets, and tried to take another but failed.  I am attempting to consolidate what forces I have on a few worlds, and I'm having a little bit of luck setting up military starbases to improve firepower, but teh Drengin are quite skilled at knocking them down even when I put a fighter screen in front.  I just don't have the numbers, and they know it.

However all is not lost.  With the Yor now in the fight against the Drengin and researching Advanced Logistics, it may be soon that the tide turns.  Or they may just switch sides and start wiping me out again, we'll see.

One sobering piece of information is that the Drengin have almost finished Tech Progression II.  With that out of the way, they'll be able to start researching big guns.  Though of course, they already have enough guns to wipe the floor with all of us, it would be silly if they didn't press their advantage, wouldn't it?

On turn 290, I'm finally ready to start researching Tech Progression II.  There aren't many options but to try and catch up with the Drengin.  Only trouble is, if I continue building fighters to try and stave off the assault, it will take at least 28 weeks.  If I shut down the factories completely and max out research, the earliest it can be done is 17 weeks.  But that will leave me utterly defenceless should the Drengin send transports at my worlds.  I decide for a compromise between the two, setting military production at a decidedly low level so that I can build basic fighters to prevent invasion, allowing research to be finished in 22 weeks.

Turn 312 arrives and with Tech Progression II completed I have an unenviable choice to make.  There's Advanced Space Weapons, which would take 14 weeks.  It would unlock more powerful weapons, something that I'm sorely lacking at the moment.  It would also add more offensive starbase modules (which cost a bit of cash to add, and require Battlestations II).  Or, I can go for Advanced Starbase Construction and Starbase Fortification afterwards, which unlock much less powerful starbase modules (since yours truly nerfed them) that are free and only need Battlestations.

At the moment, the Drengin are going to wipe out starbases either way.  Being able to manufacture more powerful fighters might keep me in the fight.

Enhanced Logistics would take 6 weeks and would do me little good because the Drengin have already finished Advanced Logistics.  I have to try and repel them at my planets, where I actually have a slight advantage, and then think about taking the fight to them.

Warp Drive (9 turns) for a +1 speed bump is a good idea, because one of the problems I currently face is that my ships are too slow to escape the Drengin death squadrons and escape to a fortified planet.  But before I do that, I need to be making ships with better weapons.  Advanced Space Weapons it is, then, and another nail-biting 14 weeks.

Turn 319 and I'm still waiting for research to finish.  Unfortunately, the Yor have pulled out of the fight, they see which way the wind is blowing and stupidly agree to a peace treaty with the Drengin.

Turn 321 brings more bad news, one of my high-influence planets has fallen to the Drengin.

On turn 327 I choose Particle Beams.  I want to go for Harpoon, but if I keep losing planets the extra firepower isn't going to do me any good.  Besides, I have to get to Medium Hulls to stay competitive.

On turn 346 I've got finished with Particle Beams and Basic Miniaturisation, which I needed to fit two particle beams per small hull.  I've cranked up the production, so it's going to take a while to get to the next tech milestone, especially since I lost one of my productive research planets.  The Drengin are basically owning the galaxy, and I don't see that changing any time soon.  While I've been struggling just to keep up, they have mastered Large Scale Building.  So I expect to see some battleships coming my way.

Turn 356, the Yor have delcared war again. I decide that the only way I'm going to have a chance is if I eschew research and put everything I have into production.

By turn 370 I have been able to negotiate peace again with the Yor and I'm continuing to produce fighters.  I'm able to stave off incoming fighters thanks to my numbers in orbit, but this means I'm lacking research progress.

Turn 379, it becomes clear that three-fighter squadrons are not going stop Drengin frigates, and I retire.

So, learned some important things.  First of all, never underestimate the Drengin.  Second of all, there's no way any race is going to use the naff Particle Beam unless they are forced to research it, so I think I will just eliminate it.  Besides, the Drengin have shown that they are more than capable of getting the weapons research done.

I have moved some techs around in some of the tech trees, making Enhanced Logistics available earlier (previously you would need to get to Tech Progression II first).  I have also placed the Drengin invasion research in between Space Weapons and Medium Scale Building.

Another new test game (this is with what would be version 4L).

It's turn 103 and the colony share is as follows:

1. Drengin: 53
2. Torian: 36
3. Altarian:32
4. Yor: 30
5. Terran (me):22

I'm dead last.  I blame the Altarians, who started next to me.  Not that there was a whole lot of good quality planets to compete for.  I did get a sweet planet with three bonus research tiles.

It's turn 157 and the colony share is now like this:

1. Drengin: 62
2. Torian: 52
3. Yor: 40
4. Altarian: 32
5. Terran (me): 26

The Drengin are nearly finished Tech Progression I, while I'm still a bit behind (but gaining).

Turn 210 and everyone but the Torians are busy developing weapons.  I have made the most of my super tech planet and beelined to Advanced Space Weapons.  This time I'm going to be ready for the Drengin.

Turn 216 and I'm amazed to see that the Altarians, Yor and Drengin are all developing missile weapons.  Last game they all fancied themselves the kings of Mass Drivers.

Turn 224 and while I'm still developing Harpoon, the Drengin declare war.  I divert some limited cash to making constructors to add battlestations to my starbases, but it slows my research down a bit.

Turn 241, my mistake was assuming that the Drengin would just send their weakest fighters to attack starbases.  Instead they use their Super Dominator corvettes.  D'oh!  Oh well, I am finally ready to roll out my nasty dual-Harpoon fighters, although I still need to catch up on some industrial techs

Turn 261, much to nobody's surprise, the Drengin have built up a massive fleet thanks to their Super Dominator ability and large empire.

So first thing's first, that's getting nerfed.  They can build better, let them bloody well build better.  They don't need such a huge influx of military power every time they start a new war.

Second of all, I may need to take another look at the changes I made to Drengin improvements.  It may just be that they are supposed to be this strong (it wouldn't surprise me) and I just need to figure a way of beating them, or I may have done something to inadvertently make them godlike.  Nah, that's not it.

Interesting to see your test results.

One thing I might note is that it's possible that the Drengin were such a menace because of the relatively low number of races. They were fighting at most four civilizations, and it sounds like the Altarians and Torians weren't much of a problem. In my own games, I've observed that the Drengin tend to be an early menace, but routinely lose because they try to fight too many wars at once - there are multiple games I have on record where they have declared war against literally the entire galaxy, and it's virtually impossible for any race to fight nine others and win. I don't know how much you've modded the civilizations you're not using in those tests, but it might be worth trying a full-player game and seeing how the Drengin do then.

Well I suppose it is a combination of factors in the end.  The strong AI personality, leading to an impressive colony grab, creating a strong research base and making Super Dominator more worthwhile.

Now, if they had to compete with more races for planets, it's quite possible that they would be challenged.

Btw the nerf I have in mind is to just have one railgun on the Dominator corvette.  I don't know how that will change things, because I don't know if the game simply calculates how many corvettes to give based on the might of one corvette.  I might end up with the Drengin having so many corvettes that the light from the stars gets blotted out.

Oh yeah.  I've noticed just now that apparently I did not give the Drengin a new starbase module for researching Ion Cannons III.  Or I have but I didn't document it.  Either way, needs looking at.

My new test game I am playing against nine opponents as the Drengin.  I will get to see just how many corvettes are generated when war is declared.

It's turn 80 and the colony share so far looks like this:

1. Terran: 35
2. Torian: 24
3. Drengin (me): 22
4. LMT Corporate: 21 (Terran custom race)
5. Altarian: 20
6. Yor: 15
7. Thalan: 15
8. Korx: 11

I haven't met the Iconians so I have no idea how many colonies they have, but from the way the reports go they're right next to the Terrans so they're screwed.

Being third isn't too bad considering how all the AIs scoff up as many planets as they can get ships to.  At the moment I have the highest population in the galaxy.

I've picked all the evil ethical choices offered during colonisation and my alignment is already Demonic.

Is it actually possible to edit the Super Dominator corvettes? I know that they use one of the stock designs (the "Thunder", I believe), but I've never been clear on whether editing that would change the corvettes.

Yes, it works, just have to mod GC2Ships.xml - there's a bunch of ship designs in there which cannot be built, but can be created by events and by the Super Dominator ability.  I was able to mod them to use Ion Cannons instead of Mass Drivers, but unfortunately they retained the old firing sound for Ion Cannons, which indicates that they pull that information from the original GC2Types.xml file.

I played some games with your mod and with it TotA was a lot of fun. While evil races seem to be a bit underpowered in the long run, all races tried their best in building up and expanding, so the A.I. players were a real competition on tough with maximum cpu usage.

Thanks a lot MarvinKosh, great job and I wish Stardock would sign your mod for Metaverse submissions.

One minor things I would love to see improved, it seems A.I. players never research the Alliances tech. As I always play with tech trading disabled, I wonder if you could tweak that a bit. It would be nice if Alliances would be availiable later in the  game at least when one wants to end a succesful session in a peaceful way.

Well I don't know why they're not going for it.  It's a fairly cheap tech with only Interstellar Governments as its prerequisite.  I'll look into it.

In my experience, the AI does research Alliances, just not particularly early on. In my most recent test everyone got it eventually.

Yeah, that tallies with what I've seen.  I think the AI researches the fist tech (Interstellar Governments) for the bonuses and because it's cheap, then when itssees Alliances and that there isn't as much bonus to be had, it decides to go for something else.  I do much the same thing when I play, despite the economy bonuses that you can have from the government types.  There just isn't enough incentive provided.

Okay, thank you both! Must have been real bad luck on my side then, since I didn't see Alliances under Inteligence Reports in any of my Space Weapons Fix Mod sessions nor did the option show up in the diplomacy screen.

Hello MarvinKosh!

I have been a full-time lurker on these forums for many years, but a recent discovery during the testing of my own mod forces me come forward as it also affects your work. The AI is unable to use starbase-modules if they are below a certain point in StarbaseModules.XML. It literally can't "see" any applicable module if it is to far down.

Let me explain how I came to this conclusion:

One of my changes to the game was, to change the requirements of the standard Mining and Production Assist Modules to 'Industrial Revolution' and to give the Drengin/Korath, Iconians, Torians, Thalan and Yor a complete set of their own. Testing these changes showed that, while the Terrans and other factory-users were making full use of their Mining and Economy Starbases, the others were not adding any of their Mining and Production Assist Modules. The effect was quite devastating, as you can imagine.
After I made certain it wasn't an error on my part, I remembered, that I had noticed this behaviour in the un-modded game before, but always assumed that the AI of those races either had not yet researched the necessary tech or just had no time to install the module. This assumption was quickly proven wrong in my latest tests, as the AI was happily adding any Defense Modules they had access to, but none of the Mining Modules I knew they had the tech for. The AI was even going so far as to re-route their constructors after they arrived at the starbase, if they had added all of their Defense Modules.

I spent the last week, trying to find a solution for this unbalancing problem and, during my latest attempt, have found it. One of my theories was, that the modules in StarbaseModules.XML needed to be ordered in a certain way to be fully usable by the AI. So I began to split the race-specific modules up and added them to the end of their respective module-type. After testing this change I thought at first that I had solved the problem. The Drengin & Co. were now using their Production Assist Modules. Then I noticed that they were still didn't use the Mining Modules. Worse still, so were the factory-users now, too.
This gave me an idea. I removed all of the Defense Modules from the beginning of the file (I had added quite a lot of my own) and tested. It worked. Now, every race used all of their Mining and Production Assist Modules, as long as they had researched the tech for it.

This is what lead me to my conclusion. To be absolutely certain it wasn't an error in my XML-files, I began testing it in both your mod and Tolmekian's. The same thing happened again. In your mod the AI was also not using any Defense Modules. Looking at your XML I noticed, that you have moved 'Battle Stations' close to the end of the file, which, again, confirmed my suspicions regarding the AI not being able to "see" modules.

As far as I can tell, the only solution to this problem is a drastic removal of modules and unnecessary lines. Though it is hard to know, how much is necessary. My StarbaseModules.XML is currently 1257 lines long and the AI is still not using certain modules.

I would greatly appreciate it, if you could test this yourself, too. Just to absolutely sure it isn't a bug on my end.



PS: Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted it to be as clear as possible.

Well to be frank, I have better things to do than sit down and tediously re-order all the starbase modules to something which might work.  It is high time Stardock got off their encounter-suited butts and did something.

Like writing more than one pass of the modules XML to find modules which have pre-requisite modules so that the AI can in fact see them and choose them.  And cache that data until the end of the AI's turn so that we're not needless thrashing the XML file (even if it is loaded in memory) each time a constructor docks.  Or fixing it so that's what actually happens.

At the moment modules do have to come in a certain order, even in the mod, because otherwise they show up when they're not supposed to or they don't show up even when they should.

If the game isn't programmed correctly, I can't do anything about that.  Sorry.

It's your call/mod. I just wanted to inform you of the problem. So, no harm done.

And I certainly agree with you, that Stardock should come back to fix the bugs. Hopefully after E:FE gets released. Hopefully.

PS: Nice B5 quote.  

I would really love to finish and finalise the mod, but sadly the combination of AI behaviour, radical tech tree modifications, and repeatedly and tediously testing is just killing my enthusiasm for the game.

I have done nothing that couldn't have been done by any one of you, I did so because I was frankly a bit annoyed.  There I was, with more warships that you could shake a stick at, and the other empires simply quivered and did nothing to defend themselves.  I decided that I would look into it and sure enough, after ten minutes of puttering about in the tech tree editor, I found something to explain the complete lack of ability for AI races to muster a defence.

Well I'm not annoyed any more.  It's hard to maintain that intensity of annoyance suitable for modding.  Mine is completely spent.  It's time to let someone else continue the mod.