I m a huge fan of Babylon 5 and am eagerly awaiting the next update for this Mod. Keep up the fantastic work guys! Its nice to see a Babylon 5 Mod taking shape.

I have a quick question... will the 0.43 Mod feature any new vessels for the younger races - specifically the Minbari, Narn & Centauri?

The main problem I found with the earlier version was if you try playing against these guys all you got was the big-black box's for many of their vessels due to the vessels not yet being coded in/having art-work. So I m really hoping they ll have some stuff to play with  .

That leads me to question 2. Any chance your able to disable those vessels from being built not yet with art-work - so we can avoid battles involving big-black box's? If not no worries... but personally I d rather see battles with only 4-5 different types of vessels on each side, than battles with 4-5 types of vessels with art-features on each side + a few more black-box's.

Either way... great job guys. Just thought I d log in to say that

Looking better, many of the bug listed on the Minbari ticket seemed to have been resolved. I've even noticed the AI coping better as Minbari too, probably as a result of tech tree changes and more reasonable ship costs.

Would be nice if Centauri Altarian destroyer had some more abilities.

Try using the following, but set the hasWeaponEffects to FALSE. This should work with Entrenchment or Diplomacy based on my testing.

• ApplyBuffToLastSpawnerWithTravelNoFilterNoRange?
• instantActionTriggerType: Condition
• buffType: Entity
• travelSpeed: Decimal
• hasWeaponEffects: Condition

Centauri ticket Corrected....

Ah right, forgot you're currently not on Rebellion. Sorry!

I was getting to those....but Rodney has a bunch of good ideas and is mucking with the DB and I'm more than willing to see what he has up his sleeve. The Narn and Centauri both need some ability love, esp the earlier ships. Call it a work in progress.

Ability suggestion for EA Omega or Narn G'Quan - "Jump Engines off-line"

* Increases rate of fire / damage output +20/30/40%

* Disables open jump point ability for a period that reduces with level.

* Increases time to begin a jump along a phase lane 3x/2.5x/2x (ie a bit of bit of phase jump inhibitor)

* Maybe increase turn rate/acceleration (ie more power for sub-light engines)

There's a few examples in the show where a ship turns off the jump engines to divert power to other systems.

Seems to fit some of the younger races, where reactors produces a limited amount of energy, and aggressive tactics - but beware if the battle turns against you then it'll backfire as retreating takes longer.

For a planetary ability ... I forget which episode it is (at work and can't look it up) but there was a 100+ year old ship with two cryo-frozen people onboard that apparently there was a 'ghost' lifeform killer that was picked up from a nearby planet ... ?

Any chance you could get that 'life form killer' as a planetary bonus? Kind of like you're digging around a planet looking for artifacts and suddenly you uncover a horrible secret.

Sorry guys, had no time this week, will need to work on the mod on weekend only as I've so much to do on weekdays. 0.43b01 should be finished this week, then we'll see how much still needs to be corrected, but looking good so far.

Will do this weekend, thanks.

Sounds reasonable, perhaps Rodney or Darvroth feel like doing it.

I'd like that!

I'd love to but I've a thesis to write and my time won't really be mine for months to come. I'll help where I can but I've already spent too much time testing for 0.43... For now I must pass the baton to Rodney but for the other active modders of SotYR; I encourage you to look at the open ship tickets and make proposals where there are holes. Several ships (Omega) have place holder techs and could be improved and plenty of others are blank slates. Minbari, Shadow and Vorlon are most complete, Narn and Centauri the least.

Here is the episode link:

http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/The_Long_Dark

Potential names for the Planetary Artifact:

'The Long Darkness'

'Soldiers of Darkness'

'The Copernicus Event'

Potential Planetary Artifact's effects:

'Halves population of planet permanently'

'Reduces tax, resource, & trade income by 50% in gravity well'

'Hull Restore Rate / Anti-Matter Restore Rate / Weapon's Fire Restore Rate / Shield Restore Rate - Of friendly ships is reduced 20% due to reduced man-power'

'All of the Above'

The idea would be that it would be a rarer artifact, but one that you would rather not find.

Also ... any chance we could use the Copernicus as an early 'scout' for the EA if they do not already have a viable option? I know it was considered a 2 man 'sleeper' ship ... prior to jump-gate technology but maybe it could work? Just tossing ideas out there.

Also #2 ... planet militia's are currently setup to a be a mix of the 'younger' races correct? EA at one planet, Centauri at another, etc ... ? Distant Stars has them setup like this randomly as it's fairly neat. If you need some cool looking militia templates (that can occasionally crop up such as a mining colony or 'military exercises in an asteroid belt') then let me know. Once the new version gets released to the public I can start working them in and let you know how it works out. The templates I have are a modification of GoaFan77's 4x templates ... tweaked for Distant Stars ... and they can be tweaked for B5 without too much hassle.

I remember the episode, Dwight Schultz played an EA veteran who had been snacked upon by the "Soldier of Darkness" during the Minbari war - "The walls, the walls ... they're coming through the walls!".

I can't help but think though that such an artifact should provide a positive bonus for a Shadow player - it was one of their agents returning back to Za'ha'dum. Sadly though artifacts cannot provide race-dependant bonuses.

Over the past few weeks I've been reading the 'Dilgar War' fanfic as high-lighted by BM3141596, and that got me thinking about another artifact - called either "Deathwalker's Legacy" or "Dilgar research outpost". It was a research lab used by the infamous Warmaster during the invasion of the League. Before it could be destroyed by the Dilgar, the fortified lab was buried by an massive Earth Alliance bombardment, the planet was then completely overrun by EA troops. It contains the groundwork of her research into the anti-agapic and frightening bio-genetic agents.

* boost to siege damage (Dilgar were notorious for mass drivers, infecting ecosystems with engineered viruses etc) say +30%

* growth rate increase (predecessor to the anti-agapic), say +30%

* maybe slight research rate(+5%) & cost(-5%) bonus

* fairly severe diplomatic penalty -2 or -3

Any thoughts?

I like 'Dilgar Research Outpost' as that sounds cool! I think the diplomatic penalty shouldn't be a -3, maybe  -2 at most, maybe less.

Even though the Shadow's can't have items specifically keyed to them, I think it would still be alright. 'Soldiers of Darkness' is something that still fits in the Babylon universe and can be important. Not sure about Trinity but I thought artifacts in Rebellion could be keyed to specific races? GoaFan77 would know for sure.

What chapter you got to, and are you as hooked as i was yet?

I'm upto Ch 89. It's fair old read (104 chapters) and although there are quite a few typos it's still quite enjoyable. Scale of fleet engagements feel a bit over the top (number and firepower of ships, tonnage of EA armour etc) but the characters seem believable and fit in with B5 plus the descriptions of battles does get the old imagination going. There's a fair viewpoint from a Dilgar perspective (don't worry everyone - they're still the "bad guys") charting Jha'dur's journey to become the infamous Deathwalker, plus a bit subterfuge & political scheming (internally & externally) for most of the B5 factions.

Even found myself thinking it would be nice if SotYR had Dilgar and League races, but I think the team have enough on their plate...

If you wanted a negative artifact, you could fall back to one of the Crusade episodes.

There a rogue technomage created a nanorobot based plague that turned the population of a planet into raving maniacs who killed each other, every night (during the day the sun somehow interfered with the signals controlling the nanites and thus prevented them from working).

In Crusade this resulted in everyone on the planet being wiped out, but if the nanites are working less efficient, it could be used to "only" reduce max population and growth rate.

Maybe you could balance it out with some positive aspect that the owner was able to learn from examining the nanites.

You guys really need to differentiate in your posts between "artifacts", which are global bonuses applied in the same way as a research subject, and "bonuses", which only affect the planet they're found on.

I wasn't quite comfortable with a completely negative artifact myself as it could provide a big setback, a planet bonus does seem far more appropriate. However, we've already got a negative creature based bonus - Na'ka'leen Feeders (-20 pop, -5% culture).

Can a planet bonus grant a percentage based population increase?

The only ones I've seen are deltas (eg AdditivePopulation).

A planet-wide nanovirus that turns its victims into raving murderers sounds like a nasty thing, even in a reduced form, and would be so negative as to be a strong disincentive to explore planets.  You guys should really consider making planet bonuses positive instead of negative to give people an incentive to spend the resources to explore their worlds.  If its a crapshoot nobody's going to bother to try.

In Distant Stars there is a small chance of finding a negative planetary bonus but there are enough positive bonuses that it is very much worth it. It adds another tactical decision on whether or not you want to go digging around the archeology of a planet.

And yes ... planetary bonuses were what I was thinking of ... not necessarily artifacts. :'(

SpardaSon does raise a valid point:- there's only three additional B5 planet bonuses, one negative, one positive and one mixed. Positive/mixed bonuses should outnumber the negative ones (like regular Sins), otherwise you could deter the player from exploring.

I'll be glad of any more positive planet bonus suggestions. To recap, the current B5 bonuses

Brivari Distillery: +20% trade, -30% build rate

G'Quan-Eth plantation:- +50% culture, +10% trade

Na'Ka'Leen Feeders:- -20 population, -5% culture

Once we have more nice bonuses, we can think about adding some nasty ones.

Can planet bonuses be keyed to a race too? Would be nice to grant the culture bonus of the G'Quan-Eth for the Narn only.

No.  Planet bonuses apply equally to all races, which is necessary since a planet's bonuses are permanent once first explored.  They don't change depending on who owns the planet.

While it may seem quiet, behind the scenes there is feverish work tweaking 0.43. The two drivers are ensuring a stable build and providing course balance to the known issues. Since 0.43 is still an alpha and lots of content still needs to be added balancing can only progress so far but to the extent we can... 0.43 will be more fun to play than 0.42 and there are some surprises. Thanks for sticking with us.

How about "Quantium 40 deposits"? It could give trading income and/or speed up ship production (jumpdrives require Q40 and if you have it right on the planet, instead of having to import it, the jumpdrives are going to be finished faster).

There's already the standard 'Relativistic Factory' and a new 'Forge of the First Ones' artifacts. The former gives the owner construction rate boost, the latter a discount on construction costs and an increase of metal extraction rate (very handy in SotYR). So in terms of artifacts most of that seems to be already covered.

It would make a nice planet bonus, so you'd almost end up with an 'Industrial planet' from GoaFan's E4X mod - if I can figure out how to boost ship construction rates using planet bonuses I'll give it a go...