Hi soase-maelstrom,

I've been following this post for a while and noted the conversation about spawning Dreadnaughts and getting the AI's to successfully build them. As I can see from your posts you have a firm grasp on the issues that result in spawning capital ships as the normal Sins rules don't apply well in this regard.

So here's my idea, based off of this mod I created (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/391100). Look for the level eight ability that scuttles the capitalship to call in a flagship.

The basic idea is to use a capitalship as a spawner for the Dreadnaught and pick a required number of levels to reach to "spawn" the dreadnaught into existence and destroy the capitalship spawner. This technique does a one for one flip on capital ship levels so their would not be an opportunity to exceed maximum capital ship supplies.

You could use an existing capitalship like I did or have one built that looks like a dreadnaught factory. I'm not sure what the rules are for leveling up capitalships but it seems the AI pays for the increases based on the games I've played (assuming the requirement was level 3 or 4 to get the dreadnaught).

I chose a higher level in my mod as I gave a free Flagship up front but made you work to get an additional Flagship. Build too many capital ships and it becomes difficult to level up as they all split the experience was the basic idea...

Hope this gives you another idea to chew on.

- ZombiesRus5

Hi ZombiesRus5,

Good idea

Hi Quiet_Man,

Don't think so.

Following on the work you have been doing I'm currently testing the following scenario ...

1. All races, on game start have 1 unique Dreadnought factory that can't be built by the AI or player.

2. The Dreadnought can't be built by the normal capitalship factory but is spawned by an ability of the Dreadnought factory, every 1/2 hour and having sufficient antimatter (which takes 1/2 hour to accumulate)

As you suggested, you could have the Dreadnought factory spawn other capitalships from the same ability or have 3 additional abilities that could spawn various combination of capitalships.

@ZombiesRus5: That is a very good idea.

I have continued the test game and finally the AI started to build more capitals. But still only up to 6 now, after looong time and when having more resources than they can spend. On the performance side it runs still quite well (6 players at 6 stars, 144 planets (including asteroid fields and stuff), mostly colonized)

For a another test I will set capital resource costs to 0. It could be just that AI spends money SO fast to never get capitals early on? I checked the AI players and they had huge queues not only on ship building but also research.

A possible solution could then be a re-balance of the game to make e.g. research more expensive than capitals? Also is it possible to have the frigate factory build bulks of ships? So to increase the cost for a build order but have multiple ships build?

I just have the nasty idea to change the frigate factory to spawn ships. The spawn is taking fleet support into account, so no problem on this side. The ability could be scaled to be similar expensive (but get accordingly many ships) like capitals and the AI could no more queue tons of little ships taking up resources and fleet support without use.

If the AI can be brought to play more with capitals, you could use ZombiesRus5 Idea to come to the dreads without need for the fix factory.

And that is why the Dreadnought fleet logistics was initially set to 25 ... didn't help.

There is every indication that the AI chiefly constructs Capitals based on numbers, capitalship numbers (i.e min:max) not logistics or resources. Is possible to have the frigate factory build bulks of ships? This is controlled by the AI.

The human player could easily take advantage of this.

Agreed, though I don't think it likely, I think the unique spawning Dreadnought factory is the simplest solution.

agreed, the unique factory is the simples solution. I just don't like the limitation.

What about giving the ship spawn ability to planets? You can move your home planet. Could the ability be moved this way?

harpo

i love this mod but  i never use the replicators or fight against them as they are to  strong i was wondering why

Because the new factions are not balanced out fully yet and the only way to do that is to get input from people like you who are playing and have decided that something isn't on par with the others.  Why are the replicators too strong in your opinion?  It may have been something already discussed and fixed or it might not be.  The only way to know is if you provide your input.

Hi Quiet_Man,

Can you clarify? What are the limitations that concern you?

This solution was one I considered, but as you point out it won't work.

Each Dreadnought factory is unique to a race i.e it spawns a Dreadnought that is unique to a race with unique abilities. So unless you make the Dreadnoughts identical across the races it will not work. By extension, any ability attached to a planet that spawns ships can not be race dependent.

Adding to Stant123 comments ... balancing is a complicated process. It takes time.

I typically play at the unfair level with multiple AI's teamed against me. I don't make or accept peace treaties.

not to much, just that it won't move where you might want it. I'm playing with the map builder and an interesting scenario is where you need to rush to a different system because the enemy in your own system is to strong. But this is not really supported by the game rules. If you give up your world the other will get a head start and just follow you. So forget it.

I just came upon a value in the gameplay.constant "Buildship". Sounds straight forward, but I wonder what it might do to AI capital ship building? Update: Seams it does nothing for capital ship building. So I'm waiting for your Dread factory.

Do you plan to remove fleet support for Dreads at all than? Cause with the AI always filling their fleet support to the limit, it would not spawn dreads for them.

Out of fun I might try to make the capital ship yard over-expensive (like 100k) give the capital ship yard abilities to spawn all sorts of capitals and remove fleet support requirements from all capital ships. It might become an interesting battle.

Dreadnoughts require a minimum fleet logistic slot of 1 to spawn and that is what I am testing.

I wrote you a message.

You can also use 0. If you set the spawn function to spawn min 0 and max 1, it will create one ships.

there research tree it makes them invincible after fully researched, makes there research all free to. edit other races tech tree im not modder just sayin my opinion but also maybe if you can get the kol beta as extra ship for tech.

Thanks

It makes them a tough opponent, after a number of hours of gameplay, invincible no.

I don't intend to change the original players.

Balancing is a continuing process.

This is probably the most impressive mod I've ever taken for a spin. I feel like I should have paid for it.

However, I seem to be having a problem with the textures: all of the ships of all the Maelstrom races appear to be basically the same off-white texture, apart from the color they reflect from the ambient light. I didn't notice at first, since I was playing the Replicators and figured it suited them, but once I encountered the Norlamins and the Alliance, I knew something was wrong.

For example, here's the Replicator's Ranger Host on ModDB:

And here's mine:

Here's the Alliance's Devlon Cruiser on ModDB:

And here's mine:

It's as if they're lacking a layer of something, isn't it? This is at 'highest' detail on a GTX 480 with the 258.96 drivers.

I've seen this on the FAQ:

Q: I'm having problems with the textures, some of the ships and
     structure don't have textures only meshes.
A: Try turning the team mesh colors off.

Yet I already turned them off, early on, because all the Replicator ships were appearing entirely covered by their team color, like so:

I don't suppose anyone has any ideas. My own troubleshooting has gotten me nowhere.

Adding to what I said on ModDB, try turning the colored skyboxes off (in the effects menu)

Maelstrom has already stated before that the replicators are not meant to have much of a texture.

Sorry, I have been procrastinating making the passive flairs for some time now...

Hi Syneptus,

I am thinking of updating the models of the Replicator and Norlamins fleet for release 3 of the mods. So don't be sorry it worked out alright in the end.

Heh, as long as it's working as intended and not a problem on my end. I've been having stability problems with vanilla Sins, so I'm mostly making sure this isn't another symptom of whatever that is.

Thanks.

Is this for Sins+Maelstrom or just Sins? Also specifically what do you mean by stability problems?

So when is your next update for this mod coming out?