[Mod] Gauntlet's Ship & Starbase Mod

GREAT ideas, havent tried it yet but definitely will.  Resource use will make it hard to use on many bases, was this the intent? I usually play on none or rare to control spam. Once you devote a resource to one of these modules, is there a way to delete it (the module) or do i need to decommission the base to get the resource back?

Just my thought's prior to trying:

Repair Drones - Good, but will it be a good use of my resource
Sector Defense Node - Good depending on cost

ECM Field Generator- Great MSB addition

Durantium Hull Infusion;Shipyard Fortification - Great, can finally boot health of bases and yards, needed addition!

Support Field Expander- I need to think on this, only going to make me want to spam more bases early

Warp Field Generator- Cool idea but buy the time i warp do i really need it

NEW Sensor Ring Starbase and Modules - LOVE THESE!

Omni-Sight Matrix- But anti matter is Sooo rare

I imagine some balancing will be required but these look like good additions

Hey there!

I also play on uncommon and rare... but I'll put Nebulas and such to common. Once you get to late game, there just is more than enough lol, especially if you go down the Pragmatic tree.

I believe you can scrap a module...

As for your thoughts/questions? Well, try it out, let me know. Here would be mine:

Repair Drones, the first level doesn't require Thulium, so its awesome (5 HP per turn I believe?)

Sector Defense Node, the first two levels don't cost much, the third, which provides fighter defenses, costs... 3 Credits per turn. Pretty cheap.

Support Field, true/not true. You use it early game, to making mining more effective with LESS bases. So it reduces overall spam. Also useful for making MSB have a better range.

Warp Field, depends on map size you play and such. I just didn't want to have to build a rediculous highway of MSB through my empire, now I can just shove these modules on all my bases and get a decent highway.

Omni-Sight and Thulium Shielding do the same thing and are not prerequisites to each other. If you have both, really great, but if you only have one, your still good to go!

I'm playing through a game and banning myself from using a sensor ship, and so far these bases are fitting the bill, they don't start super great, because I have the modules tied to the tech tree, but by the time you start making a few warships, these are starting to work out. (Sensor bases that is).

I really like the sensor starbase idea, but it seems to require a planet nearby to create? This limits the usefulness I think. They are something I would want to place around the outside edges of my normal sensor ranges, and the default sensor upgrades do a good job of "lighting up" all the areas near planets/resources. My first thought was to make my relic bases into sensor bases, as they seemed like the perfect fit.

I feel like the support field should only be for mining stations if that is the intended function. On economic bases it allows significant extra overlap on planets and increases the number of bases one feels obligated to create. A planet that could normally only fit 4-5 economic starbases around it, can now fit 7 or more with this extra range.

The new constructor modules appear to break default construction ships early game. I think they are trying to add the bigger modules, regarding the smaller ones as obsolete, but since it can't fit the bigger ones on the ship they just don't put any construction modules on. The player can manually add them to their designs, but the AI is unable to build starbases until they get enough capacity to fit these new modules on their ships.

Hey there!

Excellent feedback, and thank you for posting.

1) Support field, good point, I just naturally don't abuse it, and only use it on mining and military bases.  I'll adjust to be base specific.

2) Sensor stations... I agree and disagree. Yes it limits their utility, but the point wasn't for you to be able to spy on your neighbors, so much as review your own security. Its still likely more effective to spam a few sensor boats, but the station provides research bonuses that are planet related, hence the limitation.

If I freed it from the need to be near a planet, it'd be a replacement strategy to sensor boats, and its meant to be a healthy alternative for the time being, since I'm not interested in re-balancing the entire game (yet lol).

3) The construction module will be removed in my next update to fix that issue.

What to expect in the next update? Some boosts to small and tiny hulls, and some additional modules for econ bases and anything else cool I can come up with .

Update available on Nexus!

V2.0 does the following:

1) Updates to use V1.4 Starbase values

2) Reduces the support field expander from 4 to 2

3) Increases Mining Base range by 4

4) Increases sensor ring module sensor ranges slightly

5) Removes the broken Large Constructor

6) Modifies Tiny and Small Hulls:

Tiny

Mass: 40 (from 25), Tactical Speed +20%, Jamming +20%

Small

Mass: 60 (from 50), Acceleration matches Tiny, Tactical Speed +20%, Jamming +10%

Don't the new changes to hulls also need deleting to convert to an append? Also, if you can figure out a way to increase the ship range extension effect via an SB module, let me know please.

Well I'm not exactly certain what you mean.

So, I'll explain very literally what I've been doing.

To add a new starbase type, I could add a append file. But, to prevent OTHER starbases from being able to build that module, I needed to copy starbasemoduledefs into the mod folder. This then supplants the game's core file from what I can tell.

I did the same for hulls.

Copied shiphullstatsdefs, tweaked some values and dropped it into my mod folder. No error message, no duplicate hulls/etc. Everything seems to work fine. I believe though, that this means the mod is NOT append style, but doesn't require I delete any core game files or such.

Make sense?

Oh! Also, I have not tried modding the increased ship range, the ranges I refer to are the Starbase's area of effect.

Really love this mod, but for some reason it now causes my game to crash when building a new game of any size. Started doing this after the 2-18 patch.

Thanks

Hey there!

I've updated GRM for the new version and Mercs, I will be giving GSM a looksy over the next few days. Thanks for reporting this! I appreciate it!

Ah thats great news, I literally cannot play galciv3 without your star base upgrades much appreciated for all your great work.

I am also getting the crash

To save you a bit of time, it looks like the following XML files are causing the game to hard crash at map generation:

0-GSM SC Drives and Thrusters
0-GSM SB Modules Military

When all of the other files are present the game loads as normal (I did a one-by-one check).  Checking the debug.err file, the game is crashing as it gets to tech tree generation.  Perhaps a ship component was renamed somewhere along the line.  Or the schema order was changed on the stats.  I'll look into it a bit more if/when I get the time tonight.

Me too, but i have have cut back on using star base upgrades because the AI does not use them thus giving the player a huge advantage.  It can be modded into the AI strategy but has the down side of changing a core file (pretty sure)  and it would have no logic of when to use the new module or not so the AI would just always build them (which may not be  a bad thing.

G- Can't wait to see what creative new merc's you come up with.  Will they employ a Gauntlet ship design? >> Your work is A+

Oh yes. Not to worry, I'm using both existing GRM designs (that don't generally see the light of day, like the stations and Cargo Tacticals) as well as making new ones.

Mercs is awesome for me because 

A) I can use mercs as a way to introduce you guys to more of the background and history and flavor of the GRM universe.

Its fun to be able to just design ONE ship and not feel any responsibility to make more lol!

Its in fact so much fun, I might not update this starbase mod for a bit lol but we will see.

your ships are amazing! I can't wait to see what you do next. Thank you for  creating the best content for Galciv.

Hey there!

GSM has now been updated! Some unfortunate changes had to be made:

1) Experimental Thrusters would not work, caused crashes and were removed for now.

2) Shipyard Fortification module for Military Starbases caused crashes and was removed for now.

3) Removed advanced construction modules to avoid confusing the AI.

Everything else tests good and should work!

That's great Gauntlet,

Thanks

Testing some other items for this, curious if anyone has opinions... 

1) Increasing starbase ranges massively (from 5 to 10) increasing minimum range (how far apart they MUST be) from 5 to 10. Doubling the various econ bonuses they provide. 

2) Military SB get an addition range beyond that listed in #1.

3) Split military bases into two categories. A) Planetary Defense (must be around planets, very short range) provides bonuses to local planets, and is a tough starbase to kill. is a logistics base, big range, all the ship abilities, very easy to kill.

4) Increasing constructor module to base of 2 construction points.

5) Increasing ship base move from 1 to 4.

Just toying around really, but these feel better to me. Could be I just don't enjoy playing the larger maps lol.