Glad to hear it ... have fun!

Found only one video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMjbs28QBgM

Someone with fraps could post a bit of game play with comments and become famous! Assuming there is enough capacity in the machine to run the mod and fraps, which may be a poor assumption.

Hi wilebill,

I intend to create a video or three for the mod, just been busy modding

@Soase

Hello m8 just recently started playing your mod, playing on diplomacy 1.34 and ive notice that the string file for shield generators  for the colonials says not found. this may be cause of the game being 1.34 but just thought id bring it up incase you didnt know

Thanks for pointing it out

Release 6 is available ... see above

Yay!  I've been staying with the standard series but i'll give the expansion another shot now.

Few things I've noticed so far:

-Balance is FAR better.  The replicators aren't invincible anymore.  I was able to beat them outside their culture.  However, when I faced a Replicator AI inside its culture I still got annihilated (I was an equal size fleet of Norlamins).  The only way I see of beating the replicators inside their culture is to throw endless waves of bombers at them.  Even then the default races don't stand much of a chance against them.

-Dangerous asteroids are still overpowered in the early game.  They bog down initial expansion to the point of insanity.

-You still have the mass values reversed for the Norlamin Ship Mass reduction techs.  Even though massreduction is green in the display info, it is still adding to ship mass (I blame this on an old bug in the game engine).  In order for it to work properly, it should look like this:

entityDefName "RESEARCHSUBJECT_SHIPMASSREDUCTION0_Norlamins"

researchModifier
    modifierType "MassReduction"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue -0.050000

entityDefName "RESEARCHSUBJECT_SHIPMASSREDUCTION1_Norlamins"

researchModifier
    modifierType "MassReduction"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue -0.150000

I was playing the Start Trek mod a little and found the smaller ships working much better in the engine and it even "feel" better. But that might be too much for you to change.

I tried some stuff from the AI improvement discussion. You can define "of grid" (not selectable by player) research for the AI. This open a lot of options also for Dreads. You can give some bonus to the AI, like more ship support points and resource bonus to compensate their lack for ability.

You can also limit automatic spawning of Dreads to the AI (by adding according research) and let player build the Dread normal.

A very good trick I found was adding Capital ships without support points requirements for the AI to build! I simply added a required research that only the AI can do. So finally the AI builds Capitals!

Hi Peter1x9,

Thanks for the feedback.

- With regards the balance I have yet to re-balance new races abilities and research ... in R7

- Dangerous asteroids, I slowed them down, reduced their damage and increased collisions amongst themselves

- Ship Mass reduction research reversed, I used RESEARCHSUBJECT_SPEEDBOOSTARMOR.entity as a template. If what you are saying is true then Vasari research is also reversed.

Hi Quiet_Man,

- " found the smaller ships working much better" what changes are you suggesting?

- "I tried some stuff from the AI improvement discussion" I noticed the discussion.

- 'A very good trick I found was adding Capital ships without support points requirements for the AI to build!', can you elaborate?

This was something I was thinking about doing with the Flagships or a pre-Rebellion Titan but just never got around to it. Basically it's a way to limit a race to one and only one special ship that can be rebuilt only if there is not already one on the field of play.

Not sure if your hinting that it would be good for Maelstrom or you've found a way forward on this concept?

The former "good for Maelstrom" is for you to decide. I can state my personal preference if you want.

On the latter, I did indeed find a way forward on this concept and have a working prototype as shown in the pictures above. 

In point of fact, I've been working on some ability designs that link different entities together to trigger events on the other under various conditions. In this case the Dreadnought is linked to the factory which also disables the ability and construction (for some flavor text) until the dreadnought dies or is scuttled.

The previous issue I ran into with Spawning capital ships is there was not a built in apply buff on spawning unlike the create frigate action. After doing some research and experimentation I was able to find a way to accomplish this that did not require a lot of complexity.

If your interested I can package up my mini-mod for Maelstrom after I build it out for the other factions and confirm they all work right.

I think a very good idea and congrats for cracking the problem.

Is the ability limited to the gravity well or the whole galaxy map?

Thanks for the offer, I am very interested.

The ship and factory are linked even after it leaves the gravity well. Wherever the dreadnought dies the factory is able to once again produce ships.

That's excellent!

Zman,

Have you talked to Ryat about your find? He would be most grateful if you guide him on this matter for his Flagship minimod.

Sure I'll send the approach to Ryat for him to look at. I've actually refined it some more so it's actually quite simpler and using fairly standard ability/buff behavior supported across all versions of sins, though I a making use of one find that my research uncovered that allows me to target just the factory.

Still some more testing, but...

As it stands I have left the AM cost at 2700 and moved the cooldown to 5 minutes. The way this solution works currently is the cooldown does NOT restart until the Dreadnought is destroyed. The punishment for losing your dreadnought is currently the greater of 2700 AM recharge or the restarted cooldown of 5 minutes.

I had to decrease the cooldown because it stops when the Abilities get disabled.

You've done it now ZombiesRus5, you've got me thinking about Dreadnoughts and  a Titan per race!

Its like he secretly wants us all to be buried in projects until he's done with his. 

He certainly a useful guy to have around ... even if he distracts us with creative stuff!

it would mean scaling down all ships to be smaller. I would say about half of their current size. It looks better compared to the environment (more like "in space") and the engine seams to have less issues navigating them around.

I created copies of capital ships. For the new ones I set the fleet support requirements to 0 and added a dependency to an Research item the AI only can do (for the moment I simply put "pos [ 8 , 0 ]" in). So only the AI can do the research and build ships without fleet point required. I also added PlanetSlotsShipsAdjustment with -0.2 to compensate a little.

This way to AI will actually use their capital ships points.

It figures Stant would be the one to figure out my dastardly plan...

Now that's a lot of work ... over a hundred models

Nice work.

So what you are saying is that if the fleet points are small (i.e 0) the AI will be more likely to do the research for Capital fleet points and hence build more capitals?