Purpose of this adamant mod is....?

Guest

This is a sincere question, and I'm not tyring to be a wise_ss.

I've looked thru a lot of the files and have played a sample game with one of each race-type. I may be missing something but it looks like just different names for the same featuires... spores instead of mines, damage spells instead of weapon attacks.

Is the purpose of this mod to make the Intelligence features of "steal technology" and/or "steal ship" become useless? To have non-compatible technology development, like the crystal or psycic tech in the 'standard' game ?

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

The main purpose of the mod is to provide a very different feel to the game than stock (unmodified) SEIV. This is manifested throughout the modifications.

A major feature is a vast increased in strategic diversity. Many more valid options are open to the player. Many of the weaker weapons were increased in power, whilst many of the stronger weapons were reduced in power. The propulsion mechanic is entirely different than stock SE4. Velocity is now related to mass. Larger ships need more engines to go the same speed. Additionally, the movement and supply aspects of engines are separated into two distinct branches of components. This has the effect of allowing you much greater flexibility in how to design your ships. Do you want them to be slow and heavily armed (or defended)? or fast and lightly armored, using their speed to avoid as much enemy fire as possibly? or a balance between the two?

The propulsion system, combined with the removal of scale mount weapon mounts (eg: 2x size, 3x damage) makes smaller ships a more viable option. Large ships are no longer many times as powerful as smaller ships. Now they have strengths and weaknesses. Larger ships pay a higher percentage of their cost in maintenance per turn than smaller ships do, for example.

Another aspect where wider strategic variety is available is in designing your race. There are many more racial traits to choose from, and some of them have been toned down a bit. Also, the characteristics are now far more balanced than in stock SE4.

The economic system is far better. It makes use of all three resources, rather than having the economy rely almost entirely on minerals as in stock SE4.

The mod uses leaky armor and leaky shielding. This makes combat somewhat more random. Also, even the victor of a battle will usually end up with a lot of damage in their fleet. In stock SE4, the victor usually takes almost no damage, or even none at all, to components before wiping out the enemy fleet.

These are just a few examples of the efforts to present a much more varied game, where there is more than one way to win (in competitive multiplayer play).

The race paradigms (physical, organic, magic) are an added bonus. While it is true in part that many aspects are just differently named versions of the same thing (albiet with radically different resource costs), this is actually necessary for some things. How many different ways can you make a cargo bay, for example? The three paradigms need to be balanced against each other, so many basic items remain the same for each race. It would be very unbalancing for one race to have no access to mines, for example. Further, there would not be much point in having one race's mines be stronger and costlier than anothers. There would not be much gain, and it would take a lot more work to balance out, especially if trying to do this for every single item in the game.

However, there are some fairly large differences between the three race paradigms. Organic races have armor which regenerates in combat, but completely lack shielding (for ships). Magic races have stronger shielding than Physical races, but weaker armor. Physical races have the largest ships, but their ships pay a higher percent of maintenance, as well as have lowered defense values (less maneuverability, so ships are easier to hit). Organic races have small ships, but they have lower maintenace races and higher manueverability. Organic races have better population growth facilities than other races. The selection of weapons available to each race is quite different. The setup of the tech trees for each race is different (different numbers of theoretical techs, and theoretical techs do not match up one for one in what they allow to be researched). There are more differences that elude my memory at the moment.

Guest · Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 9:00 pm Post subject:

Thanks !

Do I understand correctly that as of now (1 July '04) there is no AI, so this is for multi-human play only ??

CaptainKwok · Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 9:59 pm Post subject:

Guest · Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 10:30 pm Post subject:

And yet, they can still kick your butt if you don't pay attention.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

The AI is a bit slow to get going, but once it starts, it is fine. Smile

It is being improved.

CaptainKwok · Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 1:09 am Post subject:

True enough, I should have added "yet" somewhere in my last post...

Guest · Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 2:38 pm Post subject:

That's all right. *MY*I* is a bit slow to get going too. Wink

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Make sure to use some base space yards. They are even more important than in stock SE4! Wink

Guest · Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 6:24 pm Post subject:

I saw something in one of the threads... dont remember which... and nothing later that said there *WAS*.

(subsequent edit: Not clear what this is about... I meant ::

I saw something that said there was no AI, or that the mod was just for human MP. And then did NOT see anything later that said the AI was functional.)

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

One of the news releases (maybe 0.14.00) mentioned that the AI was now functional. It wasn't posted on the forum though.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

I should also point out that the mod has a much better medical technology system than stock SE4. Any level of plague can occur by random event, and they occur more often. You have to have catastrophic event severity enabled to get the highest levels of plagues. Medical technology gives access to System Hospitals, facilities designed to combat the plagues. Now, it is actualyl practical and useful to build medical facilities in every system.

Guest · Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 1:20 am Post subject:

You mean, you moved the components off the ship?

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

No. I used the ability from the stock game Organic Medical Lab.

Guest · Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 10:24 am Post subject:

*shakes head*

Are there still medical components on the ships? I know about the Organic Lab.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Yes. The main part of it is that plague events are now more numerous and deadly...

Guest · Posted: Sat Aug 07, 2004 3:03 am Post subject:

its a shame you cant have plages spreading from plannet to plannet, system to system etc.

Shrike · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 17, 2006

But it's the only one I found that talks about plagues. I have the Mechanoid trait and have built Level 3 Mechanoid Immunity Labs in every system. They say in the description that they prevent level 5 plagues, but that is not (always?) the case. I've had 2 plagues already, which wiped out the entire population of a planet in 1 single turn Evil or Very Mad

Any suggestion on how to fix this? I'm using 0.15.04, not sure whather that's the last version or not.

ekolis · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:11 pm Post subject:

Plague prevention facilities actually cure plagues, not prevent them, so if the plague is powerful enough to wipe out the population in 1 turn, they are irrelevant Razz

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Maybe it wasn't sufficient, but I changed the description of such facilities from "prevents" to "cures" in Adamant:

"Cures level 5 plagues in this system."

Shrike · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 17, 2006

Well, that must be in a more recent version. What's the kill ratio on the plague levels anyway? One planet had like 170 million+ population, all gone in 1 turn. And why does infrastructure and cargo also disappear? In the stock game it was just the population, which makes a lot more sense to me. Sorry about the rant, it just seems unfair that you build it in every system and then turns out to be useless Confused

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

The descriptions were changed before 0.15, or at least in 0.15. I checked in 0.15.04.

There is nothing that could be done about changing what a plague does; that part is sadly hard-coded. You may have had a high level plague though. Stock only has level 1 plagues as events, but Adamant has all levels. You could play at a lower effect level to reduce the effects of events, if you prefer. You could also just modify the Events file, reducing the levels of plague events. This will affect current games in progress, not just new games.

The facility is not useless, as it will still remove the plague after one turn. Think of it as the technicians requiring a bit of time to work out how to remove it. Smile

The exact same thing happens with the organic hospital facility in the stock game; it takes a turn to cure the plagues, allowing one turn of deaths.

Shrike · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 17, 2006

OK, thanks for the info. Still doesn't explain the complete eradication of infrastructure and cargo when all population dies at once, but since it's a level playing field, I'll stick with it for my current game Razz

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

That's how SE4 handles death by plague. Not much I could do about it. Sad

Shrike · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 17, 2006

Hey, it's still a cool mod Smile

It just struck me because in stock the buildings and cargo always remain. When you say it's hard coded, are you refering to the code that works with the "Effect Amount:= 5" parameter? Or maybe it's combined with the "Severity:= Catastrophic" parameter? Does anybody know what effects occur per level of severity?

Just another thought: while going over the cures I noticed that Severity is set to high, not catastrophic. Maybe this is the reason the facilities don't work as expected?