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

[Catalyst_Kh]

You may take 42c version of VDC, it is before making Antarans stronger, the other differences to the last version are tiny. Or you may switch Antarans off for a while, until next update, but probably that would hurt aesthetic part for you. Also, as was showed at previous pages, you can conquer most of the galaxy before Antarans comes, or even eliminate all AI players at all, if you will be that fast.

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks for the tip, Mr. Catalyst - I'll certainly try version 42c!

[Overlord2]

I agree that the Antarans are way too hardcore as they are right now, but it's only a part of the problem. The other part is that it completely changes the idea for the game, not just its difficulty. I play MoO to build a star empire and fight other star empires, and the Antarans destroying one of my system sometimes is good as an additional feature; while in the current VDC it's actually the MAIN feature of the game, since normal empire building is impossible due to their attacks. I don't think many MoO fans would appreciate such a shift, although I of course can't know this for sure.

I was considering that good player can develop and defend from all antaran attacks, but the antarans resource growth was set too high, i.e. it switches to high-tier ships faster than I expected. Going to change that with the next update.

.....Perhaps you could point me to the files when I can edit this particular feature to my preference? I'd be grateful for such information.

In OCL_Improved editor see monster section - antaran fleet build rate. Change the delay and calculation frequency as you see fit. Random Attack Chance Variable accounts for probability of attack. The less - the higher probability. Needless to say first you need to load the exe you're going to edit, then extract and load data...

[Talhydras]

I actually REALLY appreciate the super antarans. I am nowhere near good enough at the game to roflstomp the whole map before they really ramp up, so often times there's a sweet spot where I can actually have a fascinating war against them. I have never played another 4x where the ENTIRE GALAXY gets invaded by an extradimensional power that wipes out two of the four empires entirely and brings my own civilization to its very knees... before vanishing back into the void from whence they came. 50 turns of adrenaline and insanity as the Antarans bulldozed almost everything, leaving two shattered empires to fight it out and claw their way back. If nothing else, I think that preserving the Antaran difficulty should be considered just for the emergent storytelling options.

The most curious feature of the new Antaran threat is how its mechanics do not seem to be constant from game to game. Some games they'll only launch four or five raids across all the empires in the galaxy - others like I said they'll go on an epic crusade with titans and battleships that carve whole empires up. Some notes:
* There does not seem to be any way to tell when the antarans will start spamming attacks. I have noticed sometimes they will immediately launch another incursion after razing a colony, leading to a huge chain of attacks. Is it possible that they 'gain' resources after successfully destroying a colony?
* The early raids of frigates and destroyers can be fended off with merculite missile bases and so forth, but there is no early counter I've found to their bigger ships. Heavy death rays and Particle Beam interceptors flatten Zortium planetary defenses and battleships alike pretty handily.
* In every game that has had heavy Antaran activity, it has always been confined to one 30-50 turn long campaign in the early game with no late game followup. I do not know if that's a bug or a feature atm, but it does leave a gap where attacks by antaran battleships and titans would be challenging but NOT unstoppable by scrubby noobs like me .

I would humbly propose that a good solution would be attempting to make the antaran raiding fleets in the early game disproportionately heavy on their frigates and destroyers, reserving their battleships and titans for later game - if that is even possible. I think if the frequency could be smoothed out to be more consistent from game to game, and didn't so quickly turn into unblockable Titans and Battleships, it'd be really cool. I do love the challenge and I think it's a great new feature that shouldn't be busted back to work like vanilla MoO2. In fact I'd rather see more antaran incursions, not just in the early game.

Final thought: the antaran defensive fleet composition is quite odd. Their defensive destroyers and cruisers contribute very little to their firepower, if anything at all, compared to the battleships and especially the titans (and the super star fortress). I suggest improving them, or trying to find ways to spawn fewer of the light ships and more of the heavy ones - IMO any fleet that can reasonably engage the star fortress will find the defensive destroyers utterly superfluous with their PD particle beams.

Thanks for reading!

[Overlord2]

The smoothness of anatarns attack rate is what I was working on lately, but to no success yet. I am aware of the problem of sudden stop of attacks after a long serie. Didn't find a solution yet. Also I will try to make the antaran forces change more smoothly with time (gametime).
As for defensive ships and particularly destroyers, you cannot do much about it since you cannot add more specials or weapons in other slots. The only thing what you can do is optimize the given specials or weapons. I added stasis field as a main weapon to smaller ships combined with high initiative and subspace teleporter. The aim is to switch off invaders ships before they are able to fire. Don't see any better solution in that part. After all low tier ships aren't supposed to be the main firepower.

[Talhydras]

I did some tests this afternoon and last night and have a strange observation to report.

Last night I played four games, all without quitting the vdcgm2.exe executible. The first one featured constant attacks, while the remaining three had little to no antaran presence, usually a battleship or titan.

Today I quit after each game and restarted vdcgm2.exe - each time, five games in a row, the antarans attacked heavily. I won two separate games just by virtue of surviving while the antarans exterminated everyone else. Anyone else noticed their first game of the session featuring far more antaran activity than the others?

[Catalyst_Kh]

Could it be the coincidence? If in each of those 2-4 games, when Antarans didn't pressure you heavily, there were some other race with very lucky startup, that race (by it's better stats) could attract most of Antarans attacks at their planets instead of yours... Something like that.

[Talhydras]

I certainly don't have anywhere near enough data points to start feeling certain, but here's some rough stats from this morning:

Game 1 Session 1: first antaran incursion video turn 85, by the time the game ended in my victory as sole survivor of the antaran sh*tstorm it was turn 135 and there had been over 30 incursions. Had a pack of five raiders and four marauders and 1 raider show up at the system at the same time, yuck.

Game 2 Session 1: first antaran incursion video turn 120, two more by turn 135 and then they stopped.

Game 1 Session 2: Similar scenario to g1s1- antarans arrived around turn 90 and I won with one planet with six guys on it with my treasury one turn from depletion ca. turn 150.

Some antaran recommendations: AM bombs (or maybe even fusion?) for the raiders and marauders- this will mitigate damage to radiation shielded planets some. The marauders' heavy death rays will still punch through pretty well over time I would think but hopefully it will allow the significant investment of rad shield + missile base + fighter garrison to hold off a single marauder.

I kind of recommend a reduction in the number of PD beams on the marauder... I've had them blow away a transdimensional warlord +75 defense battleship with shields IV, heavy + reinforced tritanium armor, inertial stabilizer and augmented engines solo largely due to the AF particle beams.

Considering transdimensional+warlord+75 def and creative for the hv armor and positronic computer is something like every single one of my racegen points I'd like it to actually be enough to give me an edge, hence the recommended nerfs... as a relatively pointless aside, it feels kinda like doubling down on the economic race gen traits has perfect synergy, while going heavy on the military race gen traits is gimping yourself heavily even in the short term. I don't think I can come up with a better pricing scheme for traits as it stands, for fairly obvious reasons (if it's competitive to pick lots of military traits, its competitiver to pick slightly fewer military traits and some econ), it's just a general gripe/observation.

Final question: What motivated putting Zortium is so far down the tech tree, and bundled with such a nice tech like Zeon missiles? It feels like there's a pretty big dry spell before you rapidly start upgrading your armor to Xentronium at the end of the Chemistry tech tree.

[Overlord2]

Game 1 Session 1: first antaran incursion video turn 85, by the time the game ended in my victory as sole survivor of the antaran sh*tstorm it was turn 135 and there had been over 30 incursions. Had a pack of five raiders and four marauders and 1 raider show up at the system at the same time, yuck.

Haven't figured out yet why it puts different time of arrival. Do you say it launched number of attacks on the same system within a few turns?

Game 2 Session 1: first antaran incursion video turn 120, two more by turn 135 and then they stopped.

Only two attacks at all, or at you (ai still attacked)?

Some antaran recommendations: AM bombs (or maybe even fusion?) for the raiders and marauders- this will mitigate damage to radiation shielded planets some. The marauders' heavy death rays will still punch through pretty well over time I would think but hopefully it will allow the significant investment of rad shield + missile base + fighter garrison to hold off a single marauder.

Why I didn't put other bombs than neutronium is because in late game it mixes ships classes, while you can get Barrier shield, maraduer won't be able to do any damage at all vs Barrier. 1 hvy death ray alone will be doing very low damage. But I see the point, 1 destroyer can effectively bomb the entire planet early on. Better to reduce the number of bombs then.

I kind of recommend a reduction in the number of PD beams on the marauder... I've had them blow away a transdimensional warlord +75 defense battleship with shields IV, heavy + reinforced tritanium armor, inertial stabilizer and augmented engines solo largely due to the AF particle beams.

You want to say +50 defense? Anyway, particle beam is shield peircing and pd beam got +25 offense bonus, so it's not suprising it can punch. Maybe I reduce the number of pd beams a little. I will reconsider it.

Considering transdimensional+warlord+75 def and creative for the hv armor and positronic computer is something like every single one of my racegen points I'd like it to actually be enough to give me an edge, hence the recommended nerfs... as a relatively pointless aside, it feels kinda like doubling down on the economic race gen traits has perfect synergy, while going heavy on the military race gen traits is gimping yourself heavily even in the short term. I don't think I can come up with a better pricing scheme for traits as it stands, for fairly obvious reasons (if it's competitive to pick lots of military traits, its competitiver to pick slightly fewer military traits and some econ), it's just a general gripe/observation.

Don't quite understand what you want to say here, considering there is no +75 defense
You want to say that +75 offense? combined with warlord and creative's positronic computer should be enough to beat antarans with tritanium amor?

Final question: What motivated putting Zortium is so far down the tech tree, and bundled with such a nice tech like Zeon missiles? It feels like there's a pretty big dry spell before you rapidly start upgrading your armor to Xentronium at the end of the Chemistry tech tree.

Zort has been at 2000 rps since vanilla. Rather the question why I put Zeons so low would be appropriate. The answer is because with higher position in the tech tree you couldn't get all modifications to it, since it was just too expensive and consequently not justified. Missiles are comparatively ineffective in late game vs beams, because there is delay with damage, while beams do instant damage.
Anyway, if you are considering tradeoff between Zeons and Zort, Zort is a good choice when you plan early attack or you need early defense. Besides after introducing overloaded mod for the missiles, pulsons or other missiles aren't outdated either. Btw, in real games many people prefer pulsons-nano disassembler-neutronium armor combo.

[Talhydras]

Actually the two fleets in game 1 session 1 arrived simultaneously, so it was ten antaran bogies in the fight. Something I've never seen before, actually, which was why I shared it. But yes - multiple times I have seen three different antaran groups inbound on the same system.

Game 2 Session 1 was three incursion videos period, I believe none of them on me but several in my sensor range - spotted a battleship.

I suspect that in the late game the firepower of any antaran battleships or titans in the battlegroup will so outweigh any contributions of the destroyers and frigates that it wouldn't make a difference if they had bombs or not. XD

I don't know where I got the +75 def notion into my head - meant +75 acc +35 def if I remember that fail-race properly. The offense bonus on top of their excellent computers will make swiss cheese out of just about any single ship I can put together by the time I need more than planetary defenses and a starbase to hold off the antarans. A 2 marauder/4 raider pack is bad news bears if they show up early enough for me.

Just did a game trying out rushing zortium... not TOO bad. Held off marauders fairly well with a funky 100 pop/demo/+75 off/transd.

[Overlord2]

I suspect that in the late game the firepower of any antaran battleships or titans in the battlegroup will so outweigh any contributions of the destroyers and frigates that it wouldn't make a difference if they had bombs or not. XD

Probably I didn't express my thought accurately: the antarans do mix the ship classes in a single attack, but more importantly they mix it in waves, e.g. sometimes you see pack of destroyers coming right after it sent couple of doomstars. I don't know what it is connected with and I am working to remove this thing, i.e. never send destroyers after it reached battleships and doomstars level. However this is not the case at the moment and therefore I need to keep good bombs with destroyers.

[randomzach]

Is there a way to make it so that the AI does not use both shields and dampers? I find this combination extremely tedious, even more so when you throw in additional specials like reflection field/energy absorber. AIs already have ship design advantages (eg, more than 8 specials), this just seems over the top.

ps: Thanks for all your hard work on the mod, it's extremely impressive overall.

[Overlord2]

Is there a way to make it so that the AI does not use both shields and dampers? I find this combination extremely tedious, even more so when you throw in additional specials like reflection field/energy absorber. AIs already have ship design advantages (eg, more than 8 specials), this just seems over the top.

ps: Thanks for all your hard work on the mod, it's extremely impressive overall.

OK, I will remove it. The update will be ready in several days (expected time on Monday).

[Catalyst_Kh]

OK, I will remove it. The update will be ready in several days (expected time on Monday).

AI is still very weak strategically, so it is very good it has dampers + shields. I believe most players would like it this way more because at least some additional challenge. Maybe it would be better to include both versions of exe-files in mode, with this feature turned on and off (on by default), so the players could choose themselves.

[Catalyst_Kh]

Also there is an interesting idea: why not include configurator exe in mode? For example it will have simple text menu or even just /? help output with list of commands. And players would be able to easily switch the following settings in the all 3 VDC exe files:
1) switching sizes of galaxies (which is stretched and how much, all variations easily included, very convenient);
2) having dampers with shields or not;
3) having original Antarans, modded extreme Antarans, or modded "calm" Antarans, 3 versions far better, then only one ;
4) anything else, which ever was the point of arguing and could be changed by simple hex editing of several values.

If at the start configuration exe will directly get the current settings from exe's and show it at the screen - i see this as a very convenient tool to solve many problems and wishes.

Something like that. What do you think?