If I understand this correctly, the icon shows up when the InternalName and the DisplayName of the tech are identical. Interesting...
That's correct. I think this is the result of a bug, because such a requirement makes no sense and no other data except invasion-techniques show this behaviour.
Of course, changing the IntenalName of techs requires a check of the scenarios and campaigns, to make sure it didn't break anything. At least the Battle of the Gods scenario will require a fix.
Speaking of the campaigns, the Campaigns subfolder in the Mods-folder doesn't work. The game doesn't register any data within that folder. If you move the Campaigns folder out of the Data folder (i.e. Community Update 6-1-1\Campaigns) then it works. However, subfolders within the Campaigns folder still don't work. You need to place any files within them directly into the Campaigns folder.
I've virtually no experience with those files and would greatly welcome it if you could help on anything Campaign-related.
Internal-names of techs that got changed in Techtree.xml were:
- <Culture ID="XenoIntimidation"> --> <Culture ID="Xeno Intimidation">
- <Weapons ID="MechanizedWarriors"> --> <Weapons ID="Mechanized Warriors">
- <Weapons ID="TerrorDrones1"> --> <Weapons ID="Terror Drones I">
with the references in each individual treesheet got changed as well, of course.
I've also stripped the Drengin/Korath from the tech "Space Marines" because it makes not really much sense that they have 2 almost identical invasion tech were one will obsolete the other [to counterbalance that this tech is missing I've increased soldiering on Shock Troops by +5 (not really much but their invasion tech is now actually stronger in relation to the previous Marines) but increased techcost by 500 to retain some distance to Adv Troop Mod]
No, ImpossibleTech doesn't prevent it. As far as I can tell, the AI simply ignores the Tech_Requirement.
Ok that entry is currently deleted.
Core Detonation itself, however, could use a slight buff. It currently provides the same bonus as Tidal Disruption (40-50% penalty to the attack value of the defender), but at a higher cost (250 vs 200) and worse penalty (10-30% PQ reduction and 20-30% PI destruction vs 70-100% PI destruction). Just increasing the bonus to 50-60% or 50-70% should be enough.
Gas Warfare also seems a bit overpriced (15-30% penalty to defender, cost 200, 5-20% PQ reduction). Dropping the PQ reduction to 5-10% would be a bit more sensible, in my opinion. At least I would actually use the tactic then.
Sounds reasonable. In a way I feel reducing PQ won't pay off in the long run and if you're playing with or against a faction building mostly unique improvements then most of them get cleared out anyway, also Core is a tech more late in the tree so should be a tad stronger, so 50-70%.
I also don't use Gas that much since its so lackluster. However, the PQ penalty isn't applied very often, I think this is because the game truncates some numbers. Having the PQ penalty too low may mean there's not even a potential chance on low PQ planets even on unfavourable rolls. I'm gonna reduce the penalty to 5-15% and costs to 150bcs. This is the earliest technique which is not that strong but if we keep it cheap it may still be worthwhile to players w/o more funds.
I'm pretty certain that the Core Detonation did show up in v2.04 and earlier, but I can't verify that, because I don't have the old .EXE. Checking DL and DA doesn't help either, because their .EXEs have been modified by Stardock, so CD no longer shows up there, too. I really wonder what happened to cause that? Or perhaps I'm completely wrong, and misremembering this. That's also possible.
Well, I went back to ToA 1.97 and the bug is there. In DL 1.0 it's not there but here the techs don't show invasion-techniques at all, neither can you right-click on them, and Space Marines is named Space Marines when somewhere later it got changed to Stellar Marines.
Interestingly, the InvTactics.xml there holds no tech-requirement for TraditionalWarfare & InformationWarfare. I think this is done so that you can still invade planets if you buy Transports from other AI while neglecting research into Planetary Invasion. What do you think about this in the case of TraditionalWarfare? Not that I think such a case would happen often, but the possibility is always there...
The way I see it, the collateral damage done by the Terror Drones is intentionally. As their name implies, Terror Drones are there to cause terror in the enemy troops. What better way to do that, than to spread chaos and destruction by shooting up the neighbourhood (including the civilians). However, the bonus type of the tactic should be a penalty to the defender in this case (i.e., changing the value from 1 to 3), because the purpose is to disrupt the defenders abilitiy to fight back. That would also fix another issue I have with the current setup: there are too many tactics that provide a bonus to the invader.
Yes, that seemed to be too unintuitive to me as well. Thus, I've made Space Marines untradeable so basically all factions only have one tech that increases its own advantage, except Mass Drivers, but that tech is greatly differentiated from Marines/Drones/Warrior/Troops by its immense destructive potential. And since Yor/Thalan have far less techniques to choose from I think its justified if those become their strongest choice (although this naturally depends on the actual situation).
Looks sensible. However, I still don't understand why Information Warfare got split up. What purpose does it serve besides preventing the Yor from getting access to it? And why the Yor in particular? Because they're genocidal? There are several other races with genocidal tendencies (Korath, Drengin, Terrans, even the Altarians to a degree) that still have access to IW in some form, so that doesn't make sense. If it isn't the Yor's drive to wipe out all meatbags, then what is the reason behind this restriction?
Well, I didn't do these changes so I can only guess. It's mostly because different people take different basics or stances in their apprehension to change the appearance of the game. As I perceive it, Mabus has a strong incentive towards roleplaying, realism & ingame folklore, which is totally different from my approach to balance by compare objective strengths & weaknesses.
For example, I believe InformationWarfare is the strongest technique because of the crazy shit you can do with it once AI planets are full - mostly are bad at morale. I consistently only build Tiny Hulls w/ a single (Adv.) Troop mod, you can incite an invasion with only 500 soldiers that will become +3000 if you roll high enough for InfoWar, and then you conquer a planet with its own population successfully if you're soldiering is high enough. Which means only a single quite cheap Transport vanishes for each planet, which will keep my own pop high, and I only have to invest about ~25% the MP in building invasion fleets altogether.
Taking InfoWarfare away from Yor (for whatever reasons) was a big nerf and should have been balanced out by giving them something else in that field, that's why I think my change to TerrorDrones is well justified.
Maybe Mabus found it unrealistic that evil-races could convince others to change sides or even have the possibilty to exist in other society successfully (or, at all) esp. in the case of robotics vs. biological ones - although there are multiples examples in the Sci-Fi universe which approached that subject (eg. in Dune mankind in the 5th millenia lived in a completely robotical machinized society), but frankly, if you just muster enough fantasy everything is possible or imaginable in Sci-Fi so that's why I find argueing about it to be so moot...
Speaking of the campaigns, the Campaigns subfolder in the Mods-folder doesn't work. The game doesn't register any data within that folder. If you move the Campaigns folder out of the Data folder (i.e. Community Update 6-1-1\Campaigns) then it works. However, subfolders within the Campaigns folder still don't work. You need to place any files within them directly into the Campaigns folder.
ok thanks.
I tried that approach before and ran into an issue with the campaigns. For some reason the Espionage penalty got doubled for the player (non-Player races weren't affected, as far as I could tell). I first noticed this during the mission A Nightmare on Dithir, because I couldn't train any spies (which made the mission unwinnable). The Espionage penalty was at -100% instead of the intended -50%. I never figured out what caused this. The penalty was correctly removed from the Political Parties and the tech tree entry also checked out okay. It's really strange.
Shouldn't the penatly be -25 instead of -50? Did you delete both -25 entries for each party in PoliticalParties.xml? Maybe something did stack up...
Nevertheless, I've no clue why it got doubled on that campaign, but looking at the sheet for "Nightmare on Dithir" alot of entries under the [Universe] section are 50, perhaps one of these did stack up. I've no clue what all of these entries precisely do. Maybe one does simply double whatever espionage bonus there is in order to promote the building of spies. Perhaps one solution could be to introduce a base bonus to espionage in that particular mission (or others) to make that 0 in total so any multiplicative effects are rendered to nothing as well.
Is there a possible way to start the missions from the campaigns right away? for testing purposes? Because I'm afraid all my saves were lost long time ago....
