"Very Difficult Choice" Mod, irc channel: irc.quakenet.org/vdc

[Catalyst_Kh]

It would nice to edit the description then, if possible, changing inflicts extra structural damage part for will be doubled.

Does this x2 multiplys by structure analyzer? Or goes separately?

[Darza]

It is not "doubled". Doubled is how analyzer works - it calculate a damage what would be dealt, than double that value. Extra structure damage ability is creating an additional damage, what calculated from a damage actually to be dealt now, and that damage have a special attributes (directly to structure, never to somewhere else), so it could be called "doubled" only to simplify a things up, and only if you are sure what everybody realize what it actually doing, and there wouldnt be misunderstandment in result. And of course if you add an analyzer to it - it would be: a damage calculated; doubled by analyzer; dealt with Extra structure damage bonus equal to a damage dealt (lets drop that rounding for easyness). So yes, for speedeing a thing up you can say what it "doubled" by analyzer, ESD from a gun fired from a ship with analyzer would be twice more than from a ship without it, if you actually taking into account what analyzer itself didnt doubled ESD value, though, only regular damage part. But it wouldnt be three times higher, analyzer wouldnt recalculate a ESD bonus, because its effect deriving from dealing a damage, and analyzer works before damage is dealt.

[Catalyst_Kh]

True, i forgot that ESD have no chance to hit internals. Thanks.

[Semmelbaecker]

Hi Overlord,

I have a little feedback from my recent games with a friend. You might already know that I am not the professional than others here, but I think I can still give some feedback.

We are playing in a large galaxy, with 6 players, 4 computer players on impossible and 2 human players, average start, average galaxy age. I have experimented with the telepathic trait recently. It seems a little bit overpowered. The computer quickly settles on a lot of planets, with a small fleet and telepathic, it is very easy to capture everything a weakened computer-player has. Because this is basically human vs. human, the other player must do the same if he cant open a direct front. If he does not have telepathic, he falls behind very quickly because he cant keep up with the development of the newly conquered worlds of the telepathic player. But there are other advantages to telepathic as well, +20 on spy roles and the fact that there need no transport ships is also very strong.
I would suggest to make telepathic more expensive, the way it is now, it is too strong, especially compared to spy-plus 20%, which is 5 ticks instead of 7 and does not have all the other advantages. So this is, compared to telepathic, far to expensive.
Given, that telepathic is so strong, I would give it 9 or 10 ticks.

An other topic is diplomathy. I played for fun with a non-repulsive race for once, and I noticed that I cant trade technologies. Is this a bug or is this intentional? The computer player can offer me a tech-trade, but I cant offer him one. This is especially an issue if you plan on playing uncreative (as an additional challenge). I would find it very annoying not be able to offer tech trades in such a scenario. However, I can understand that for a non-uncreative race, tech trades are overpowered.

Cheers,
Semmel

[Darza]

1. Thats very similar to a lucky pick with antarans involved. While it was valued at some price for 1-1 no antarans games, surely it become much more valued if you play 8 players game with antarans involved, so it should cost other price in this game rules. Same with telepathy, while its pretty weak at 1-1 games, its most powerful pick ever for games with 8 players, and always was, mod didnt change any basic principles. And yes, you wrote it right, if you play under such setting and one player skip a telepathy - he's doomed. Ideally you should revalue lotta picks for 1-1 vs 8 player AI games, but much easier just not play a pick what look unbalanced for you. Also you just can mod a game by yourself any way you feel right.

2. Remove /noreport from command line, and trade tech if you want.

[Semmelbaecker]

Thx, Darza, I wasnt aware the mod is balanced for 1-1 setups. And I also didnt know, that tech trade has something to do with noreport. Makes sense to deactivate it because the list of tradable tech would be a huge givaway.

So basically, I have to agree with my friend that either we both use telepathic or we both don't use it. Thx, helped a lot.

Cheers,
Semmel

[Overlord2]

Repulsive doesn't allow tech trading, this is the main disadvantage of this pick. Why it would cost so high if it wasn't so? It costs that high in regular too.
AI is weak, anyone can conquer AI. With telepathic you can get its pop easily. Try playing 4 humans game setup with no AI, you will see telepathic isn't OP.

[Catalyst_Kh]

Semmel, it might be convenient to you to just set your own picks costs for telepathic or other race picks, according to your unusual startup, which you like to play with your friend. With tools at link below it will take very little time to change picks costs:
viewtopic.php?t=1513

[Semmelbaecker]

I asume you are refaring to pickhack. It might be worth a look, but given the game breaking mechanic behind telepathic when computer players are involved, I rather would ban telepathic from our games.

I thought a moment more about this and I came to the conclusion, that telepathic cant be solved with increasing trait pick costs. You basically create the most aggrassive race possible, and when a (prefarrably sakkra et. al.) race has expanded enough, you take him with 1-2 planets a turn and have great race picks plus great trait picks. A telepathic cost at the order of 15 might be more appropriate than the 9-10 I was suggesting before. But 15.. is almost a ban on this trait anyway.. so I guess we will start to apply a ban on telepathic.

Or have the rule that no colony invading is possible. That might be an interesting option in the game loading btw. Something like "noreport", but "bomball", so you lack the option to do anything else but bomb a colony if you win the orbital fight. Overlord, is it possible to add this to your mod?

Cheers, and thx everyone for the information!
Semmel

[Overlord2]

Or have the rule that no colony invading is possible. That might be an interesting option in the game loading btw. Something like "noreport", but "bomball", so you lack the option to do anything else but bomb a colony if you win the orbital fight. Overlord, is it possible to add this to your mod?

No, its not possible to mod the game like that, but no invading AI really solves your problem with telepathic. In MP games there is a rule when a player leaves and AI takes his part, then a player can't invade AI planets unless he was at war with the human player before he left.

[Semmelbaecker]

No, its not possible to mod the game like that, but no invading AI really solves your problem with telepathic. In MP games there is a rule when a player leaves and AI takes his part, then a player can't invade AI planets unless he was at war with the human player before he left.

To bad.. I thought deactivating the button for "invade" and "mind control" would be possible in the same way as it is possible to deactivate the "tech trade" and "report" buttons.

On a different note.. I tried to play, focussed on torpedos and in general special weapons instead of using missiles, fighters and beam weapons. However, I found it very difficult to keep up with the amount of damage you can do with these weapons. I basically used the "warloard" trait and wanted to bypass any computer technology and the physics tech path. It didnt seem to work, even after I researched energy 1, my ships were far less efficient as beam weapons in the same time period would have been. Is there a way to make torpedos work or are they just as bad as I experienced it? The computer players had lighning field and this is pretty much a hard counter to torpedos. The torpedos are so large, that you cant fit more than 4 or 5 into a battleship and the lightning field is much more effective than 50% chance, I didnt count the hits, but it seemed more in the order of 80% destroy torpedo chance if fired at 1 torpedo at a time. I had sensors and ECCM in the torpedos. The raw damage values of torpedos seem to be fine, but the number of torpedos that fit in a battleship is just very small. Given that the lightning field is more effective for small volleys, this pretty much counters the torpedos. It seems to me that it is not possible to make ships with large torpedo volleys in the early to midgame.

[Overlord2]

Well, you touched a vast topic: comparison of torps vs other weapons.
You say the damage of torps vs ships is lower compared to other weapons. This isn't exactly so. All depends on the defense the opponent gets. Situation with beams or rockets can be similar (they will be doing very little damage or no damage at all) if they are totally countered with appropriate defense.
Let me name advantages of the torps vs other weapons:
1) torps cannot be shot, while missiles can and there are pretty many counters to missiles which do so - in result very few missiles go through.
2) torps do not require computers, while beams do. Consequently you get them working much faster. Beams need more time and you can attack in this window.

Disadvantages of torps:
1) missiles get emg modification and just one missile which goes through defense is enough to destroy a ship.
2) beams get all possible damage increment specials like structural analyzer, achiless targeting unit, high energy focus, hyperx capacitor...but these specials come rather late.

About the damage. When you compare torps vs other weapons you should compare weapons of the same tech level (rps cost). What weapons did you have in that instance and what weapons had your opponent? In this case I will be able to tell what you were missing in your consideration...

Also with LF there is one trick - it stops different amount of missiles/torps depending how they were shot. If the missiles/torps were packed in one slot LF stops up to 50% with average amount 33%, while if missiles/torps were packed in different slots it stops up to 70% with average amount >50%. The condition for the latter is when they are put single in each slot.

[Semmelbaecker]

About the damage. When you compare torps vs other weapons you should compare weapons of the same tech level (rps cost). What weapons did you have in that instance and what weapons had your opponent? In this case I will be able to tell what you were missing in your consideration...

Yes, it is true, that you need less other stuff to get the highest damage torpedoes. Maybe I need more training with them. However, given the fact that you can shoot the antimatter torpedo only every second round renders them quite useless, because you are sitting ducks for a turn. Given that you can use fast missile racks for rockets but not torpedoes, gives you only 1/4rth of the number of torpedoes that can fire, given the same number of weapons. But, the torpedoes are at the same time larger than rockets. So you end up with 1/5th to 1/6th the number of fired torpedoes vs. rockets. It might be possible to shoot down all the rockets, but the defender wouldnt have much offensive power left in this case.

Compared to beams, this is an other topic. Viable photon torpedoes come very late, around the time of Energy 1. So you might have the first shot because you have the better engines vs. a beam heavy player, but you cant destroy the enemy ships before he fires. So you definitely loose your ships, which makes it fights very costly. Even if the enemy is out-gunned.

Also with LF there is one trick - it stops different amount of missiles/torps depending how they were shot. If the missiles/torps were packed in one slot LF stops up to 50% with average amount 33%, while if missiles/torps were packed in different slots it stops up to 70% with average amount >50%. The condition for the latter is when they are put single in each slot.

Yes, thats exactly what happened to me. I wanted to be able to shoot individual ships, increasing the flexibility of my torpedo ships. Guess that was a mistake. Which is an other disadvantage for torpedoes.

I wonder if anyone used torpedoes successfully in your pro-like 1-1 games..

Cheers,
Semmel

[Overlord2]

Well, missiles do have increased fire rate compared to torpedoes, but in real combat only 10% of the missiles will get through (wide estimate), while torps % will be considerably higher. Also torps allow to focus necessary target without risk it can avoid the damage. When considering defense against missiles one should't forget such weapons as spatial compressors or pulsars, which do area damage and can bring down the whole salvos of missiles.

Speaking of the photon torps (dunno why they called them protons), they are viable at hyperdrive level too with env mod enabled, though they can't overwhelm opponent at this point, still they are very useful focusing needed targets when enemy approches while shooting am-torpedoes at remote targets. When they had 60 damage they could overwhelm opponent ships, but then they were OP.
Compared to beams if you can get to energy absorber level, it will make low and mid level beams obsolete.

About LF as a counter vs torps - indeed it counters enveloping am-torps pretty well, but then you need to get one level higher to megafluxers. With overloaded mod they are on par with LF.
And the last question - am-torps are used very often in MP - almost in every game.

[Semmelbaecker]

OK, then I think it is my turn to learn to use am-torpedos more efficiently. Ill give them an other try.

BTW, spatial compressors and pulsars seem to be buggy.. some times they destroy the complete volley, sometimes they dont even a single rocket. I dont get it when it happens and when not. Also, you cant defend an other ship with this stuff effectively because you are in danger of hurting it in the process. So I never really liked pulsars and especially spacial compressors because of the larger range. It may be viable if you have very fast ships and fly between the enemy fleet and damage many shis at once.. hmm, thats a strategy I should try once..

Cheers,
Semmel