ICE 24

Information, How-to's, and discussion about mod'ing Master of Orion II.
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Darza
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Re: ICE Mod 10h

Postby Darza » Thu May 21, 2015 11:48 am

Well, boards are dead and buried. Or even worse, they looks like GOG one, occasionally, for example.

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Rocco
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Re: ICE Mod 10h

Postby Rocco » Sat May 30, 2015 1:34 pm

The starting relations 'code block' mentioned on page 1 of this thread, which i at first thought to be race relations with human player depending on difficulty level (but never managed to figure it out) in fact is "a.i. starting interrelations", like we had in MOO1. Pitty they did not put this in the manual. All relations are mirrored; Alkari do not like Darlok and Darlok do not like Alkari. One exception is the Bulrathi-Meklar relationship. This might be a bug. Values can be -24, -12, +12, +24. Next step is to understand weighting/significance of 12 and 24 in the big picture of diplomacy.

Here is the matrix:

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Rocco
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Rocco » Fri Jul 31, 2015 12:28 pm

Hello Rocco,

First a big thanks for Ice mod, which I was playing all the week, I love all modifications.

But I have a question for you: one thing I greatly miss in long Moo2 games is the waste of research after we reach level 3 in future techs. Isn't possible to make future research in columns as construction, fields, engines etc, continue to contribute at equipment miniaturization? As they do until there? I love long games where you capture antaran ships and get all techs but no matter how good I am doing my research, it is wasted after 3rd level.

Thanks you for reading and sorry if posted in wrong place, just tell me and I move it.
Hey,

Thanks for your feedback and I will just reply here, if you don't mind :)
Each application can have 5 levels of miniaturization. This means for example for your Plasma Torpedoes and Stellar Converters you can go through 5 levels of Hyper-Advanced Power and 5 levels of Hyper-Advanced Physics before reaching 'the end'. In Ice 10i I have made the Hyper techs for the Physics and Force Fields branches more expensive and the others cheaper.
Note also that the ICE tech tree has 13% more research points than the classic tree.
(but maybe I am now telling something you already knew)

Indeed for other branches the max miniaturization levels are reached sooner because the relevant techs are lower in the tech tree. Unfortunately I am not able -apart from the question if it would be desirable- to add a 6th level of miniaturization and thus, as you said, at some point investing more in advanced research is just wasted resources.

I know that for single player there are quite some players who love the long plays and I always keep this in mind when adjusting the mod. The way I see it, you have 3 styles of games in terms of duration, which are Blitz, Economy games and Long Plays. For blitzing T100 is a benchmark number, interesting Economy games last ~250 Turns (just as an indication) and Long Plays, they go on forever.

If (hypothetically) I could add more miniaturization levels, what would be the point when you are satisfied with a game and allow it to end?

Salamandre
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Salamandre » Sun Aug 02, 2015 3:35 am

Thanks for answer, I didn't know about the 5 levels of miniaturization. I thought future techs automatically allow for it but somehow they stop after 3rd one.

Okay then, doesn't matter, the game is already awesome the way you modified. I especially like that not all techs are now available, so must look for leaders or still push spying after all techs discovered. Thanks again.

Salamandre
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Salamandre » Mon Aug 10, 2015 11:08 am

Hi, it's me again.

I have one question: is there a way to combine good maps mod with yours? For instance I have the GoG version of the game, thus I had to overwrite executable in config files with ICE.exe or whatever was the name, but good maps mod comes also as exe and requires doing same manipulation in config files. I know your mod proposes better planet randomness, but still asking, I also love the 1-2-3 good maps variant. Any solution to this?

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Rocco
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Rocco » Mon Aug 10, 2015 5:14 pm

Which version of goodmaps do you play?
Maybe I can make an ice-x version with these goodmaps.

Salamandre
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Salamandre » Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:44 am

personally I prefer Huge galaxy so I use goodmaps x 3. Would be nice if you could select x1, x2 or x3 but you already did a lot so not stressing you :)

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Dukinson
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Dukinson » Sat Aug 15, 2015 3:13 pm

I was thinking about the talk of +50 ship defense vs transdimensional and why battle results don't really change much with the +50 defense late game. I think there are 2 reasons. The defense is watered down by the time I get it with other mods and drives. Also, missile defense is something you need a ridiculous amount of before you can actually dodge missiles. Think about how much defense jammers give you compare to how much defense intertial mods give. Also they give you missile defense as well! Same with crew levels. Still, when playing tactical with 200 defense, those missiles are deadly. It's just so hard to dodge missiles without point defense. My favorite missile stopper is the lightning field. I've never relied on missile defense, not even once. Between battle computers and built in missile accuracy, they are just too accurate to risk dodging them. That's why I still have little value for the ship combat modifier picks.

While combat modifers really do make a difference early game, you're missing crucial eco picks that will help your empire take off.

I'm curious, does anyone here play a race that uses the ship combat bonus picks? With Icemod or otherwise?
A cob of corn in every pot, an outpost ship with fuel tanks in every garage, and two command points for every colony!

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Darza
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Darza » Sat Aug 15, 2015 5:40 pm

Not that i got much from the message, to be fair. First of all - its about strategic or what? As the combat have very different rules there, affecting named traits. In tactical is quite easy to defend from non-ECCM missiles with jammers, and also possible to make a race utilizing a +defence to jam nearly all missiles even in case they are ECCM + some scanners. But its for fun only, for a sake of doing it.
Either i got you wrong, or you indeed totally mishandle the concept of missile evasion, it have nothing to do with beam defence (is about the "200 defence", in case its indeed actual 200 missile evasion - it means missiles are in deep trouble, actually). Some immobile ship can have a 100% jam chance of incoming missiles, and some ultra-fast heavy-BD ship would take every warhead, in case it wouldnt have any jamming capability. Those a 2 different mechanics. Lightning is very good, but due to way it works it almost never can fully defend you on its own only, exept a case the incoming objects are in a forms of stacks of 1 object. So, if you have only Lightning as a defence, then stack of 2 EMGs would be guaranteed hit after the shields be gone, as 1 of them would surely find its target.

Of course combat picks have a use in game, even +defence, or even possibly in theory - warlord. Usually its +attack as it one that bring not only better chance to hit, but also initiative. The way of TransD belonging to the post remain mystery for me (and there is no TransD vs +50 def stuff at all, its like +0.5BC vs +10 Spy or so).

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Overlord2
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Overlord2 » Sun Aug 16, 2015 2:28 pm

Looked at the mod again. I believe in v. 10k the only race playable is unification. Moral techs are placed so that puts any non-uni race at great disadvantage. Exception is creative, which could be viable, but it's too costly, so unplayable either.

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Darza
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Darza » Sun Aug 16, 2015 3:00 pm

Of course, as there is no food, and also vanilla maps are used to nail it. But point there is not "play something beside Uni", just some another gameplay challenge.

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Rocco
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Rocco » Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:46 am

Moral techs are placed so that puts any non-uni race at great disadvantage.
Thanks for reminding me of this, Unification is indeed still superior in ICE. Although I immediately understand your meaning of 'unplayable' as a way to point out that non-Uni races are weaker, offcourse against the a.i. the other governments are very playable as well, just makes the difficulty a notch higher. Even so, one of my goals too is to find some better balance than classic, so it is something for me to re-consider for the next version. About the maps: ICE-X maps have basically VDCreg maps with some wormhole adjustment and ICE-reg has maps something in between classic and ice-x/vdcreg. Also planing to make a goodmaps3 version that Salamandre asked for.

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Darza
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Darza » Mon Aug 17, 2015 9:56 am

Well, even in "classic, where was no balance and only Uni-Uni-Uni" actually Uni was best choice only under some special game settings. Another best ones included Feu as fastest anti-AI races; Demo, that generally outperform Uni from Prewarp; Crea for Advanced, and even Dict could be used to construct some true Anti-races, so even it was best in something in comparison to others. Game balance is not about to make a totally different races to "have them something relatively close in one benchmark", at least in moo2.

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Overlord2
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Re: ICE Mod 10k

Postby Overlord2 » Mon Aug 17, 2015 10:17 am

Well, even in "classic, where was no balance and only Uni-Uni-Uni" actually Uni was best choice only under some special game settings. Another best ones included Feu as fastest anti-AI races; Demo, that generally outperform Uni from Prewarp; Crea for Advanced, and even Dict could be used to construct some true Anti-races, so even it was best in something in comparison to others. Game balance is not about to make a totally different races to "have them something relatively close in one benchmark", at least in moo2
Not sure who you are adressing this sentence, but I will say my opinion on it. Uni is the best choice in all game settings in regular moo. For blitz Uni tele transd is better than fuedal tele transd; Demo can't out-perform uni from prewarp and for advanced start you take unification based creative race; not saying about the average start development game, where uni was the best without question. So when you say game balance isn't to make totally different races, I don't quite understand what you mean by that, since in all benchmarks uni was better than non-uni.

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Rocco
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Re: ICE Mod 10l

Postby Rocco » Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:22 pm

For blitz Uni tele transd is better than fuedal tele transd;
I think that Feud P+2 should be a faster Blitz than UNI from Avg tech start, as it can build the first CA and Outpost Ships faster.
Game balance is not about to make a totally different races to "have them something relatively close in one benchmark", at least in moo2.
Game balance has a different meaning also if you approach from MP or SP games. For MP, if a certain race design is too weak, it will simply never be played, unless you both agree on some restrictions or until the balance is adjusted, as continuously happens with VDC. Where the adjustment can also be triggered by the use of newly found offsets or also - and I can only imagine - by a wish for some fresh gameplay. In SP, many weak races are played because the player can afford to play more casual against a.i. (although less so in the mods) or even the player prefers to build some 'story line' in the game instead of following the most efficient path. Even, as Salamandre indicated and I have done this many times too in the early years (talking 1997-1999 here) to play games as long as possible converting entire galaxies to all Gaia, or maxing out the tech tree, creating the ultimate Doom Star with fully miniaturized technologies etc. In any case making possible a new 'story line' is one of the objectives of ice, by taking great care that the race design and descriptions fit and indeed also tech descriptions and placements matter in this light to allow for story build. Another example is making DImensional Portal non-researchable and including a back story for this change in opening credits.
edit: just for sake of completeness; an other objective is not to stray too far from original techtree to maintain a certain recognizability with classic moo2. This is obviously quite subjective as many changes have been made but with each change I also consider its 'look & feel' rather than a purely efficiency consideration.


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