Hi luschetk,

Glad you are enjoying the mod.

To change the mod is easy.

1. In the GameInfo folder find the Planet entity file you wish to edit i.e PlanetRing.entity (ring world). The names of the Planet enity files all begin with 'Planet' so they are easy to find and the additional description is simple (i.e PlanetDiasporian.entity for Diasporian planet)

    Its a good idea to backup the original file somewhere as a single typo can crash the game.

2. Open the file in notepad. In the planetUpgradeDef section (i.e Line 51 and above) you can change (per stage) such things as

a. stage upgrade costs (credits, metal, crystal)

b. maxPopulation,

c. populationGrowthRate

d. developmentTaxPenalty, etc

Its all pretty obvious ... have a play around.

I will be re-balancing the planets as I go along (R5 and beyond)

Thank you for your fast reply and help!.

I will try my best  !

Release 4 of Maelstrom links available above.

Whoo hoo!!!

Alrighty!

Maelstrom Diplomacy for patch 1.21 is now available.

What's in the patch?

It is a compliance patch as per

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/408939

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/406435

Also fixed a couple of things

1. Buff stacking for enigma planet ability

2. Buff stacking for Norlamin capitalship ability WeaponBoost 

3. Magnetar and Black hole particle effects ...

Yay!  My only major complaint now is that the Replicator shield mitigation is still way too high.  I've been encountering level 10 replicator capital ships that routinely have 80%+ shield mitigation (when under attack) and even encountered one with 103% shield mitigation (when under attack).  Needless to say, they slaughtered my Norlamin fleet, starbase, and defenses.

The few minor complaints I have are that the DysonSphereWorld and RingWorld have excessively large populations compared with the other planets, and the FrigianWorld has a very excessive crystal extraction bonus.  If any of those pop up in random slots, they can easily unbalance many of the maps. 

Other than that, awesome mod!  I really like the new effects.

Hi

I had dowloaded this very good mod but I have a problem:

I have the italian version of the game and al new descriptions of planets , ship a research  are the same " string not found".

What to fix it?

Ps:  my english is crappy 

Ciao

Hi Pena,

In the Maelstrom mod you loaded there is a folder called "String".

In that folder there is a file called English.str.

Change the name of the file to Italian.str

Good luck and have fun.

Hi Peter1x9,

I will be re-visiting the issue of race balancing soon.

Likewise I will be re-balancing the planets as I go. I thought I would throw-out the planets as is ... so people could have some 'fun'

Thanks and also thanks for the feedback.

Hi

Thanks Soase-Maelstrom, the game work fine.

ciao

Hello soase-maelstrom. Just to give you some advice about shield mitigation from one who has had to balance it out, never ever go past 94%. Shield mitigation is a straight across effect. In other words 100% shield mitigation will block all damage. Recharge rates also make the between 95 to 99 range almost invincible. I found 6000 supply points of Vasari heavy cruisers were able to break the shields. Not much else. 94% seems to be the shifting point (though this can vary due to recharge rates).

Hi Ryat,

As always thanks for the advice.

Understood. Though the mitigation, in case of the Replications, is increased via abilities (with cooldown) and hence is not always so high. I think typically it is 84%.

Yes I have noted the effect. While the ship has high mitigation the shields can rapidly recover.

I also noticed another thing causing the shield mitigation problems:

BuffEnergyAbsorb_Replicators, BuffEnergyAbsorbCapital_Replicators, and BuffStarbaseEnergyAbsorb_Replicators are all adding 10% more to the replicator shield mitigation, specifically this section in entitymodifiers:

entityModifier
    buffEntityModifierType "ShieldMitigation"
    value
        Level:0 0.100000
        Level:1 0.000000
        Level:2 0.000000

Also, CAPITALSHIP_BATTLESHIP_Replicators, CAPITALSHIP_CARRIER_Replicators, and CAPITALSHIP_COLONY_Replicators have issues with maxmitigationperlevel. 

Normal capital ships have this setting:

maxMitigation
    StartValue 0.650000
    ValueIncreasePerLevel 0.011110

Three of the Replicator ships have this setting:

maxMitigation
    StartValue 0.650000
    ValueIncreasePerLevel 0.020000

All of the combined settings will put them over 100% when they reach high levels.

I think it only takes it to 95%, also it was in R3 that I added 10% mitigation in culture ... hence you have to fight a high level Replicator cap outside its culture.

Hey Soase, Just played a match against 2 unfair opponents with your expanded mod, and it was fun, your mod really feels polished now, great work as ive said often before.

I just have 2 meazly suggestion based on how this match went.. hehe.

The 2 unfair opponents were piece of cake with the dread factory, i can just turtle and build up more and higher level dreads and then steam roll the map. So i really wish you could make the dread cost a little more population cap. Make it so it wont build if you dont have a free cap spot for instance, because right now i dont uppgrade either my fleet cap or my cap ship cap and i can still roam around with 20 dreadnaughts. pretty overpowered.. hehe. Now the ai he never does that, at most he has 2-3 dreads, so this would only be a real nerf for a human player. In effect making the game harder for a human, because right now its way to easy.

Also i noticed that the pirates really hit hard in this version and that is just good and fine, but when i wanted to remove the pesky robbers from the map i got a huge surprise, i jumped 6 lvl 10 dreads into the pirate base and uhm i got wiped out pretty much without dooing anything. Now the worst part wasnt the loss, it was the lagg.. the pirates had abouth 100 cap ships and uhm over 1000 other vessels there, i am running this on a quad core intel 7, with 8 gigs ram etc and a powerful video card and still it went very laggy.

To actually take out that amount of pirates that also replenish their losses at descently fast rate i need a huge fleet, maybe 30 dreadnaughts could do it or something..

So my suggestion here is to give the pirates a cap in how many ships they can build just like the player and the ai have. 2000 fleet support should go for them too at the highest, what i saw in that pirate base was more like 5000 cap which is way to high imo.

What do you think?

The pirate base issue cannot be limited in game directly. We in Distant Stars created a second set of pirates that have a self destruct after 25 minutes and use these for the raids. Keeps the leftovers from getting too heavy.

Aha, thanks for the info. Too bad with all the hardcoded stuff really, well it forces people to make creative solutions atleast.

How would I go about removing the asteroids from each planet in the game files so they do not appear when I play?

I'm playing the expansion for 1.21 Diplomacy if that matters

Hi Malanthor,

If you remember based on the limitations of the engine I can either

1. Make the Dreads standard caps and have them purchased and built from a normal cap factory. Problem is the AI builds typically 1-3 caps, occasionally more and very rarely more than 10.

2. As implemented i.e spawned as an ability. In this scenario the cap fleet logistics are ignored, but the general fleet logistics are used. So there can be more Dreads in play.

20 Dreads in play implies a long game, I assume you are not expanding quickly? Also the Dreads at level 6 are slow to move ... you are a very patient player.

I can always back-off the rate Dreads are produced!?

With regards the pirates are you by any chance playing Diplomacy Expansion 1.21?

I like the way they are built now because the AI actually uses them, as you say if they were built like other ships, you would see the ai use one every 30 min. Now he comes with 1-3 for every major assault which is very nice. So i think it is best to keep the automatic production method but implement some sort of controlling element on it.

If the game cannot check for capital fleet cap and only allow one to be built if there is a free cap slot then let it take up more fleet cap would work, now it is 1 cap, make that well 50-100 maybe.

Lets say you let the dreads take up say 75 cap, what i then wonder is: will it not build if you are at your fleet cap, say 1000/1000, or will it build but  not allow you to build more til you go above 1075 in fleet cap?

Hmm, i dont know abouth slower build, the ai generally just uses them as stronger capitols, they really only shine when you get them to lvl 6+ and can transform them. So unless you could let the Ai get them at lvl 10 i think the current build rate need to stay because they die real fast at lvl 1-4.

If worst come to worst, one can always just turn off the auto build, but the tempation will always be there to click the button and call one in if you get in trouble.

So my suggestion is simply to increase the general fleet cap one takes up to the mentioned 50-100. They are stronger than normal caps so logically they should cost more than the 50 a cap cost. 75-100 maybe?

There is still a balance problem with this.

If you don't have the '75-100 logistics available at the spawning time (i.e autoenabled) then you miss the Dread production till the next cycle (i.e cooldown time and antimatter are reset).

I don't think there is a work around for this. As a result while the human player can compensate (i.e turn off auto-enable for Dread production unti he has logistics available) the AI is not aware of this and will loose his Dread.

???

Hi dresda,

You need to change the following file: GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (in the GameInfo folder).

Backup the file just in case. It is in text format so you can open it in say Notepad.

This is what you need to change ...

1. on line number 1799, change
items 15 -> items 5

2. Delete x10 lines starting at line 1800
item "Pirate:Frigate:AsteroidSmall00"