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Unleashed Extended I & II - 4/2/2015 11:42:37 PM

mordachai

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Joined: 3/6/2015
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Extended AI, Research Unleashed, Immersion, ++, Oh My!

Follow this link for UE II:
Unleashed Extended II!

Retreat1970's Unleashed Extended II + AI research orders:
Retreat1970's Unleashed Extended II Improved!

... or for the original version of Unleashed Extended I
Original Unleashed Extended I

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary of UE I - Principle content:

Distant Worlds Extended - Haree78
AI Improvement 1.04 - Icemania's
Research Unleashed - Osito

Chrome & other visual & audio enhancements:

Alien Immersion project - Blackstork
No annoying ship symbols - fruitgnome
Stuff & Bits - KEBW1144
Das Chrome UI - Das123
astradeus-graphics-mod - astradeus

What started out as me playing with things others had been generous enough to publish for all of us ended up merging into a sort of "my favorites compilation album plus extensions & re-balance"

Most of my original content is in the tech tree. I got into this wanting to do an extended tech tree / tech tree overhaul / weapons rebalance. But then I saw that Osito had already done 90% of what I wanted to do anyway, so I used that as a starting point.

Balancing / Weapon numbers:

DWWeapons.xlsx spreadsheets - Aeson?
(I assume that you created this spreadsheet since you attached for me?! Plz let me know if I'm misattributing this!)
- updated and enhancing for all of the new weapons / changes from Osito's Research Unleashed mod and my own additions / tweaks
- I focused my balancing primarily on the DPS/Size information.
- I generally left power usage characteristics alone.
-- if it was a power-hungry weapon system before, it continues to be so.
-- If it was an energy miser, it still is.
- I primarily went with Osito's weapon-philosophy of making rail-guns not suck, added "missiles shouldn't suck" to that.
- All weapons should generally give a clear path to end-game goodies.
- They should serve a specific niche (not be pointless)
- They should be competitive (no "one true path" - just lots of fun - "what about..." paths!)
- No lineages should bog down strategy choices (I need missiles for point defense? NO)
-- Generally: choosing what to research should be a straight-forward matter: I think spending my research efforts HERE vs. THERE is the best strategy. Not: and also build up this pointless list which will confuse the AI into refitting ships with obsolete weapon systems)

Things I've actually added / created for this mod:
- Added one new race: the Hiigaran (Humans, based very loosely on Homeworld, using astradeus' shipset & character images)
- Expanded and further enhanced the tech tree (based on Osito's Research Unleashed)

Some Details:

Hyper-Warp:
- Start out slower (As per Osito's Research Unleashed)
- Much deeper tree
- Slightly extended Osito's work and ensured all paths are 100% playable (without having to back-track on research). I also made the "efficient" line suck less, so that it is more competitive alternative to quick-jump and fast-move lines of engines.
Also did things like link in race-specific hyper-warp to the final end-game hyper-warp techs so that playing one of these races allows you to also get the end-game goodies (without re-researching the entire normal-line of techs in addition to your racial specials!)
- Rebalanced the two slower-engines to ensure that they were precisely 75% of the speed of the fast-version, so that there is a clear cost/benefit to each path. Faster engines, quick-jump, lower-energy (without then muddying the waters with additional pros/cons: you just pick amongst those primary factors).

Direct-Fire Energy weapons (beams):
- Extended several tech-lines
- About 1/2 lead to the end-game goodies (from Osito's Research Unleashed)
- Phasers buffed a little
- Extended race-specific weapon-lines to have an additional tech level
- Extended race-specific weapon-lines to lead to end-game goodies
- Includes Osito's clever Tachyon beams, which increase damage with distance!

Torpedoes:
- Removed diamond-pattern research loops
- Extended all torpedoes to level 8 technology
-- Velocity Shard: Long range, fast-moving, low-yield
-- Thunderbolt: Medium range, moderate-speed, medium-yield
-- Shockwave: Short range, slow-moving, high-yield
-- Added extra level to Shaktur FireStorm
- All lead to end-game techs from Osito (Gravity Torpedo, Sub-Space Torpedo, and more!)

Fighters:
- Hangar Bays don't give you any fighters or bombers (you can choose what to research to put in them)
- Missile bombers are 100% equal to Torpedo bombers.
-- Different prerequisites only, but stage-for-stage, there is an equivalent bomber (not that their stats are identical, just nobody sucks, no clear "winner" between them).
-- Damage output balanced between them: they're 6 & 1/2 doz the other. Play with what fits your fancy!
-- Added end-game fighter & bomber (Osito had added one end-game "black edition" missile bomber - now there is one for every fighter / bomber type)

Missiles:
- Balanced DPS/Size to be competitive with other weapons systems
- Longest range weapon in the game.
- Lead to some fun end-game techs (via Osito)
- Extended the race-specific Hammerhead line to also lead to end-game techs

Rail Guns:
- Balanced DPS/Size to be competitive with other weapons systems
- Broke the needless diamond research pattern
- Light rail guns & heavy rail guns are independent paths to pursue
- Light rail guns leads to light mass drivers (new extended line of tech)
- Heavy rail guns leads to heavy mass drivers (essentially unchanged)

Governments:
- Nerfed Republic & Democracy tech bonuses
- Made Way of Ancients care a lot more about yours & others reputation
- Reduced % for leadership change by 1/2 for every government type (so less likely to have elections / coup / etc.)

Weapon-philosophy:

I tried to keep the basic elements the same as in vanilla:
- Beams are the highest DPS in the game (but they suffer the most limited range of any weapons systems)
- Missiles are the lowest DPS, but they have the greatest range.
- Torpedos are between those two, with good range and good DPS, but with some of the disadvantages of each.
- Ballistics are a solid weapon choice, but shouldn't prove OP. Longer range than beams, but with vastly poorer accuracy, and still not quite the level of raw DPS.
- Area / Gravity / Ion - basically unchanged.

Tech-philosophy:

Generally speaking, I abhor the diamond shaped inheritance patterns in vanilla tech tree. Back-tracking sucks, and leads the automation to constantly redesign ships in a most unfortunate manner: replacing higher performance torpedoes or missiles or engines with "the latest one!" I'm sure that this causes the AIs all to foolishly waste vast funds refitting their ships when they shouldn't be, and double-whammy making them worse in the process!

I hate redoing research + the AI / automation suck at it => ugly diamond-patterns must go!

Final Disclaimer & Caveats:

I did not treat anyone else's mods as "sacred". I.e. I changed things as I saw fit. I did try to not-change-something-just-for-change's-sake. However, this was (originally) intended just for myself. The vast majority of content is as Haree78, Icemania, Osito, etc., all created it. However, If I found a race pic in vanilla to be more to my liking that Haree78's choice, then I reverted that to vanilla. If I found an icon I liked best in Stuf&Bits, I used that over DAS Chrome (and vice verse). I made a couple of new icons where I felt motivated. To be honest: I picked and chose what felt was best (to me!)

The thing of modding is: You can start from here and make your own compilation mod - your own best-of-mod-mod-mod. I'm simply thinking I'd like to share what I made for myself because at the very least, it allows one to play with a hybrid Extended AI + Research Unleashed, which is a pretty awesome starting point!

All mistakes, bugs, and omissions are my own. All excellent content is probably from one of the other moders. I'm just a messenger: please don't shoot!

< Message edited by mordachai -- 4/21/2016 4:02:09 AM >

Post #: 1

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/2/2015 11:50:20 PM

Retreat1970

Posts: 948
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link?

(in reply to mordachai)

Post #: 2

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/2/2015 11:56:24 PM

mordachai

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Link added. Anyone who wishes to mirror this is welcome to do so. This is MediaFire, which has worked well for me over the years. But YMMV.

< Message edited by mordachai -- 4/3/2015 1:27:22 AM >

(in reply to Retreat1970)

Post #: 3

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 2:10:22 AM

Aeson

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quote:

I assume that you created this spreadsheet since you attached for me?

Yes. I'd caution you that numbers that look nice and balanced on a spreadsheet won't necessarily translate to numbers which are balanced in the game; spreadsheets are more a tool to get an idea of where there might be issues, and also perhaps to get an idea of why an issue you notice in the game might exist.

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Post #: 4

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 4:47:11 AM

mordachai

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Yeah, I'm afraid I could spend endless hours playing with the numbers, and still never feel right... it would really require the ability to run thousands of simulations, and gather statistics on those, and then plot trends. Since I've nowhere near that capacity, I figured that dps/size was about as good of a shot at it as I was going to get.

I did realize that the numbers (icemania/haree78) aren't as messed up as they seemed to me at first. That using your spreadsheet made it obvious that the "random" appearing jumps in rate-of-fire (fire-delay) were actually the finest-tuned value that the devs gave themselves. Since you can't do fractions of a point of damage, you have to use rof (which is 4 digits deep) to fine-tune each weapon's output.

I originally replaced a bunch of the tech numbers with significantly different ones (paying attn. mostly to dps), and then realized how much thought you all had already put into this, so I decided to jettison that, revert to Icemania/Haree78's numbers, and then tweak more mildly from that standpoint.

My current game seems reasonable, but that's just anecdotal. Statistically significant volumes of sims is just not available. ;)

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 5:37:27 AM

Tikigit

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Nevermind didn't realise you had decided to RAR the folder containing the mod so when unpacked through the normal sane persons way it double folders. All sorted.

BTW, no desert colonisation bonus on the Hiigarans??!?

< Message edited by Tikigit -- 4/3/2015 7:00:54 AM >

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 10:28:24 AM

Osito

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I'll take a look at this when I have a moment, but I just wanted to comment on one point. You mentioned that in some cases you gave the racial research tracks the possibility to join up with the more powerful later game techs. When i was doing my own mod, I thought about that, but decided against. What I wanted to do was to give a race a strong advantage in the early to mid game, then a late game disadvantage. That was the thinking behind it.

Osito

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 3:37:19 PM

Icemania

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Glad to see this mordachai!

A combined effort from here with Osito would be ideal but I also understand if your visions differ in some ways.

Please note that a reasonable number of the weapons balancing changes were done with battle arena style testing. I would encourage you to consider this approach as my conclusions changed significantly as a result compared to paper. That said, my testing was limited for practical reasons so I couldn't be happier to see more work done on this.

(in reply to Osito)

Post #: 8

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 4:36:22 PM

mordachai

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Osito - yeah, sorry - I know it wasn't the same as what you'd done. When it comes to playing a race that has a special in an area, I really wanted to see that lead on to end-game techs w/o the backtracking. It's a different take than yours - and I take responsibility for bastardizing your work/vision in that regard. (One idea that I had would be to have race-specials lead to an expensive extra speed-bump tech before feeding into the end-game techs... or similarly, have them lead to the pen-ultimate normal techs so that they had to research one-or-more of those before getting the final tech, still w/o having to backtrack to the start of the tech line -- but fundamentally, it's a different POV to have them be early-game advantages but late game start-over vs. early-advantage leading into end-game awesome :))

Problem is always that everyone has different sensibilities - and hell, I'm never really 100% satisfied with my own choices (always room for improvement, or what-if, :)

I'd be happy if you took this and modded it another direction. I'm also psyched to check out Starfall which seems to have take then "expand the tech tree" and gone nutzo with it! (hopefully in a really good way!)

I don't pretend to have all the answers - everyone's welcome to mod anything I've done here - assuming the original modders are copacetic, and run in any direction they'd like with it. I'd be curious to play with whatever, see whatever.

If you'd like to work together Osito, I'm open to exploring that possibility. But I'm fine with just doodling what feels fun and having many differnt mods / visions of what's fun. How about after you get a chance to load it up and see the tech tree and so on, if you want to discuss teaming up, PM me and we'll see if that makes sense. I'm not even sure how much more I want to do, but I have at least as much fun most times modding as playing.

The next step for me is probably to write a bunch more scripts - or maybe a c++ program that would suck all of research and components in as binary objects, and then code specific analysis / updates from there (like sorting the research so that every tech & its upgrades appears in-order, and contiguously). Probably won't get to it, not enough time in the day - but maybe! :)

EDIT: Hell, if I did write such an bit of code, it could be the basis for a semi-automatic mod-merging tool, that read multiple research & component files, and then merged duplicates and reordered the rest so that a coherent set of files would emerge each time (modder would still have to update race files & maybe a few other things - fighters, governments, etc... but a lot less).

Tikigit - Hiigaran's were a slap-dash first attempt at adding a race, mostly because astradeus' shipset for them rocked too hard to leave it out! :)
They could have an additional bonus to deserts, even have them start as native-desert, and then instead have a solid bonus to continental. Maybe I'll do that next. :)

< Message edited by mordachai -- 4/3/2015 5:53:31 PM >

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 6:43:15 PM

winkr7

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If you replace the ship designs the AI mod was using, what did you replace them with--the defaults?

I am playing this mod, so far, so good.

Thanks for your time.

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/3/2015 9:04:21 PM

mordachai

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The designTemplates are 95% what icemania did for his AI mod. I couldn't use his specific AI research - like Osito, we had to jesttison that because the IDs all changed when I merged the two mods (and added my additional research techs).

I did play with a few:

The Caleph are Fighters + Torpedoes (they have racial fighters / bombers, per Haree78's extended mod)
The Hiigaran are Fighters + Rail Guns.
The Mortalen are Fighters + Missiles.

Most everything else is as it is in the "Extended AI" mod.

(in reply to winkr7)

Post #: 11

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/5/2015 4:32:46 PM

mordachai

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Unleashed Extended II

Download Here

What's New:
- Adjusted the economy so that it is much more fluid. You should have plenty of cash, as well as the AIs, to wage many more wars, with more fleets, more destruction, more bases, more everything!
- Adjusted the research costs so that they go up by exponentially, but less insanely steeply. High end tech is just around the corner when the Shakturi arrive.
- Your people will tolerate wars a bit more. Should allow AIs and players to engage in longer campaigns.
- Research labs aren't as productive - so now the research techs actually play some (minor) role in the early game (compared to before, when they were a pointless line unless you wanted the wonders)
- Filled out the UI chrome with more racial icons
- Removed the mood music for diplomacy to cut the download size in 1/2 (copy from previous version if you want it, or see Beyond Extended for more...)
- Removed Pirate templates from species that cannot be pirates!
- Updated torpedo line so that the automated ship designer should choose the better torpedo type with each research upgrade (from epsilon->velocity shard, e.g.)
- Fixed tachyon beams to be phasers (since that's what they're linked off of in the research tree), and balanced their output a bit so that the automated shipbuilder would design ships using them (AI will use them against you!)

Ship Templates for all races were updated:
- Defense Bases: Majorly increased firepower & armament
- most ship classes are considerably tougher (more weapons, more shields, ...)
- gas mining stations and small spaceports now include long range sensors
- small spaceports now include energy to fuel converters
- all spaceports & defensive bases include area weapons, gravity area weapons, tractor beams, hyper-deny, and gravity wells
- adjusted fuel cells so that all classes have similar range (all ship classes within fleets should run out of fuel about the same time)

Updated all race policies to:
- have lower thresholds for building various planetary facilities (now that money isn't so tight)
- allow building spaceports nearer to each other (100 minimum)
- have a more natural distribution of ships amongst escort, destroyer, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, carrier and battleship

Changed the Lipid to be a water species
- Updated their photo, chrome, racial events, racial preferences, victory conditions
- They're now a phaser + boarding-pod species

Updated Hiigara
- Victory conditions, racial events, homeworld type

Reduced the research cost-slope significantly
- Tired of having all of my games bog down to un-fun around tech level 7...
- I included a perl script which can be used to change the research costs to various slopes
- I included a x*3 slope (research x*3 slope.txt) and the default, x^1.5 slope (research.txt / research x^1.5 slope)
- However, modifying the perl script and running it (see comments in the script) can allow you to choose any slope you desire

Changed the light-rail line to be size 16 (to match the heavy):
- This makes the designTemplates work whether you go light or heavy (or the AI does)
- The light-rail all have 2x rate of fire (it's as if you installed 2x lights or 1x heavy)
- Light is still slightly shorter range, higher power usage, but way more rounds / second
- Heavy is slightly longer range, more power efficient, but far fewer rounds / second

Copyleft
- Feel free to use any of this as you like, just continue to acknowledge the various original authors (remember, most of this I'm merely tweaking: Others built this first)

< Message edited by mordachai -- 4/15/2015 2:29:15 AM >

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/16/2015 3:50:31 PM

RogalDorn

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Are the two versions meant to be combined or is it an either/or thing?

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/16/2015 4:23:56 PM

mordachai

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They are stand-alone. The 2nd one is intended to be version 2.0 of this mod, but you can play either one. It will create its own customization folder - Unleashed Extended II (vs. Unleashed Extended), so you can switch between them if you wish.

Personally, I think II is just "more" and "better" - but everyone has their own sensibilities. I just finished an epic game using II, defeating the Shakturi to win with the "new" Lipids and using the 3x tech-slope (and "cheap" base cost - 60, on Hard difficulty with "difficulty scales as player approaches goals" enabled). It played at a brisk pace, remaining competitive with the AIs throughout, and was a blast.

But again, everyone has their own sensibilities of what's fun, what's challenging, what's too hard, too easy, too slow, too fast, ....

So, this mod was and is entirely about putting a lot of good stuff together in one place, and then extending it and balancing as makes it more fun purely in my experience. If I see something and think "that would be cool if...!" or "why can't I...", then I sometimes make that thing / make that change, and play it out to see if it's "better" - this is the result (so far).

Cheers!

(in reply to RogalDorn)

Post #: 14

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/16/2015 4:56:40 PM

RogalDorn

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quote:

ORIGINAL: mordachai

They are stand-alone. The 2nd one is intended to be version 2.0 of this mod, but you can play either one. It will create its own customization folder - Unleashed Extended II (vs. Unleashed Extended), so you can switch between them if you wish.

Personally, I think II is just "more" and "better" - but everyone has their own sensibilities. I just finished an epic game using II, defeating the Shakturi to win with the "new" Lipids and using the 3x tech-slope (and "cheap" base cost - 60, on Hard difficulty with "difficulty scales as player approaches goals" enabled). It played at a brisk pace, remaining competitive with the AIs throughout, and was a blast.

But again, everyone has their own sensibilities of what's fun, what's challenging, what's too hard, too easy, too slow, too fast, ....

So, this mod was and is entirely about putting a lot of good stuff together in one place, and then extending it and balancing as makes it more fun purely in my experience. If I see something and think "that would be cool if...!" or "why can't I...", then I sometimes make that thing / make that change, and play it out to see if it's "better" - this is the result (so far).

Cheers!

Thanks, I was simply asking because II is less than half the filesize of I and I assumed this meant it did not have all the content of I.

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RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/16/2015 7:02:39 PM

mordachai

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You're welcome. Yeah, I can see how that would be very confusing!
I removed the diplomacy mood-music from it, so that it was about 1/2 the DL size. And if you have I, you can copy it into II if you like having it.

(in reply to RogalDorn)

Post #: 16

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/17/2015 1:05:16 AM

OJsDad

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Hello Mordachai,

I just downloaded Extended II today and I'm giving it a try. A couple of things that I've noticed;

1. I just researched Stable Warp Fields. In the research screen, the description says that speed is 2500. But when I go to the ship design screen, the ships are still showing the old speed. Is there a bonus that is applied that does not show on the ship design screen. I also noticed that after the research complete, I never go a prompt to upgrade my existing ships.

2. It's year 2126, and I have no civilian ships, except for gas and mining ships. No freighters.

I like the look and feel so far. Let me know if I'm missing something.

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Post #: 17

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/18/2015 1:31:56 PM

OJsDad

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Duh, I just realized that the default builds for the freighters are too big to build at the start of the game. I had to go in and downsize the small.

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Post #: 18

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/20/2015 1:52:32 AM

mordachai

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ah, I haven't seen that happen. What sort of game did you create? Size, stars, which-game-start (custom, shadows, ?), and what race?

As with any software, I have the myopy of play-testing with settings that appeal to me, and developing against those same settings. So... I know that for the sorts of games I create (settings I typically use) things haven't been that odd. But... there are a lot of ways to create a game with DW:U!

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Post #: 19

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/20/2015 2:07:18 AM

OJsDad

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Playing as XHuman, difficulty Extreme, 1400 stars, 15x15 map size.

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Post #: 20

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/20/2015 2:38:55 PM

OJsDad

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Mordachai,

Something else I've noticed is that Caslon isn't getting distributed around. This may just be an issue that will fix itself once I get more efficient power systems, but it is causing a lot of shortages. I've noticed this even when I have a gas mining station location at a Gas Giant with a CA rating of 83% and is orbited by a colony with a spaceport. The space port has 0 CA on board. I've seen empty freighters go to the gas mine to refuel, but they are not picking up any to take anywhere else.

Thanks.

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Post #: 21

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/20/2015 8:38:50 PM

mordachai

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Which start did you choose? Custom, or Legends, or Shadows, ...?

I noticed a shortage in my current game as well (though it was just that: a shortage. Over time the mining stations did their jobs, and my fleets would eventually get what they needed, just took longer than I wanted).

I'll double check a few things tonight - but I've not seen a scenario where freighters weren't being created. If there are circumstances under which the freighters aren't being created correctly - then that would very likely explain any undue resource shortages. However.. I don't recall making any changes to cargo capacity, or mining efficiency. I think the only variable I would have touched in all of that would be max-construction-size, having reduced it to 200 at the start (though it jumps up to 500 in 2 tech upgrades [if starting pre-warp, or 1 upgrade if starting standard game], so by that point the size is > vanilla).

I haven't changed the freighter ship designs that I'm aware of either. Changed stations, military vessels, defense bases, mining bases, and resort bases. Maybe there are some circumstances under which a mining base will get designed by the automation which fails to have any mining units? lol - that would be terrible (or missing cargo hold).

Anyway, I'll poke around. If you can answer the "which game" question, and keep an eye open for patterns in the weirdness, maybe we can track down the underlying issue.

DW:U is huge, and complex, and it's impossible to avoid all possible edge-cases, but maybe we can eliminate a few more prevalent "gotchas"

(in reply to OJsDad)

Post #: 22

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/20/2015 9:53:41 PM

mordachai

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I might try changing the engines so that they're more efficient - but they have smaller capacities of fuel. So instead of requiring such large volumes, they require smaller but run out about the same time (so still restrict range early on, but do so in a less costly / hard on the economy way).

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Post #: 23

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/29/2015 3:42:17 PM

Dudok22

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Playing UE II max size galaxy game as Yor, everything works fine, having loads of fun but I have "instinctively dislike" modifier with other Yor empires. Is that normal or is it bug?

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Post #: 24

RE: Unleashed Extended - 4/29/2015 8:10:18 PM

mordachai

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I'm glad to hear it! The Yor disliking other Yor must be a part of Extended mod (Haree78). I guess those bugs just can't stand anyone - not even themselves :)

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Post #: 25

RE: Unleashed Extended - 5/1/2015 2:02:58 PM

OJsDad

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Hello Mordachai,

Sorry, been traveling for work the last couple of weeks. I did answer my game settings earlier, so hope that helps.

For the Caslon, it may not be as big an issue as I first thought. In hindsight, it makes a game more strategic. In vanilla, you really didn't have to worry as much about mining, power plant efficiency, and storage capacity as much and could direct your research to other areas. But now, you have to put more thought into your research to better utilize your resources.

I think this will be a very mod. Haven't gotten very far into it yet, but it is looking very good.

OJsDad.

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Post #: 26

RE: Unleashed Extended - 5/1/2015 2:16:08 PM

OJsDad

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Joined: 1/3/2011
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Here is a screen with the default freighter design at the very beginning of the game. As you can see, the size of the design than you can build at the very beginning of the game.

[URL]http://s1145.photobucket.com/user/OJsDad/media/DWU%20Small%20Freighter.jpg.html[/URL]

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Post #: 27

RE: Unleashed Extended - 5/2/2015 9:09:15 PM

mordachai

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Ah, yes, I see what you're saying now. :)

The initial size limit of 200 means that the basic freighters won't build. So you need to research that first construction tech asap! I normally play with pre-warp start - and even then this has never hampered me. My early builds fall within the stores I begin any game with at my HW, and by the time it matters, I've researched the first size jump to 500.

Keep me posted as you play. My most recent two games saw the AIs kicking my butt :( So they certainly didn't seem set-back by that limitation. But... I could redesign the small freighter to fit within the 200 limit, or I could try pushing it back up to 250. That just invites the auotomater to create idiot destroyers, light cruisers, etc., again, so I'd prefer to avoid it if I can.

FYI - I'm play-testing with 250 starting size. Seems the automation can handle designing the freighters at that size, and so-far looks like it doesn't try to make light cruisers or above, so good balance.

< Message edited by mordachai -- 5/3/2015 1:06:20 AM >

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Post #: 28

RE: Unleashed Extended - 5/4/2015 1:28:46 PM

OJsDad

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Joined: 1/3/2011
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Mordachai,

   Here are a couple of screen shots of how I setup my games. See if these help at all.

   [URL=http://s1145.photobucket.com/user/OJsDad/media/DWU%20Setup%201.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1145.photobucket.com/albums/o513/OJsDad/DWU%20Setup%201.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

[URL=http://s1145.photobucket.com/user/OJsDad/media/DWU%20Setup%202.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1145.photobucket.com/albums/o513/OJsDad/DWU%20Setup%202.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

   Once I figured out what was happening with the freighters, it wasn't hard to go in and adjust them so they could be built.

   In my current game, I only have one other AI opponent that I am in contact with so far. No sure how I'll fair against them if they start a war with me. They are quite a bit smaller so hopefully that will help.

   I do need to learn how to adjust the templates, as the auto design for bases drives me nuts.

   Oh, and if you want a copy of one of my save games, let me know and I'll get it to you.

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Post #: 29

RE: Unleashed Extended - 5/4/2015 2:49:07 PM

OJsDad

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Joined: 1/3/2011
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Another question, what tech needs to be researched to unlock carriers.

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Post #: 30