This is my first post. I've been here a few times and I have the community to thank for the game and patch.
I love what you have done with your mod. This is the first time I ever used a mod for MOO2, though I haven't seen a lot of them. I have played the game for days at a time, sporadically, in the past 2 or so years.
This mod breathes life into race configuration and the AI (it at least
seems the AI is behaving more realistically and plays better). The tech tree is much better and you managed to change or add existing techs, it now feels a lot bigger, also much more balanced. The game is considerably more consistent and fun to play. Maybe one day I'll join multiplayer, though I'd be really weak and extremely slow to complete turns, next to the experts. For now, I have exams ahead.
There are a few things which don't make sense, example: neural scanner gives +10 spy ( is at a low level for 150) while cybernetic link got worse to +5 ( is at cost 1500 where it used to be)
There is the description for tolerant, which bugged me for a long time and hasn't been edited. I see you can edit these. Tolerant doesn't make planets act as terran, even if you ignore the growing food part. It increases maximum population (for terran included) and removes pollution penalties. It would be awesome if it costed 15 points and made all planets terran, but I don't see you editing that. Gaia would provide no bonus over terran in this case (as a logical fact and a resulting downside)
Adequately removing certain techs for the right picks would be nice, but again I don't see how you would link them. Ex: cutting Gaia for aquatic. I also don't see how you would collapse eventual empty research boxes (in rare cases I have to research an empty box, but it collapses if there was a single tech in it that got acquired somehow; if there is more than one, the box stays).
There is the description for reflection field - I can't make out how it calculates reflection from that. It just doesn't make sense.
You added a tech called something like "phase teleportation" that is meant to be an improvement to the existing ship teleport. I can't make out what the description says about it.
Now to other matters
I have wanted to make a borg, protoss or other such races for a long time. Picks don't let me do that in vanilla and neither do they now. If you could somehow increase the maximum negatives, I'd stash a lot of negatives just so I can put unification with cybernetic, tolerant, telepathic and warlord (for borg). I could throw -50 growth, bad funds (- 8 ), for example (according to your point system).
I would love the opportunity to mix the strong picks together, at the cost of big negative picks. Tolerant + uni or demo + creative pretty much max the space, I wanted more. It doesn't have to be 30 / -10 (I've read that is how it used to be in DC), it can be 20 / -20, can't it?
Other than that, I think your system reflects the usefullness / handicap of picks more accurately, but not always. For example:
- cloning makes the -50 pop not such a great disaster, although it prevents non creative races from taking soil enrichment
- tolerant is a formidable pick, but maybe someone should evaluate it to see if it is worth less or maybe is worth more (unlikely more)
- lithovore is maybe woth only 8 points, even if lithovore / tolerant is strong, soon enough food becomes less and less of an issue; it even prevents you from making money on food ! It is basically an early boost pick (half of tolerant might be seen as that too, though it cuts tech choices as well). Lithovore initially doubles available population, but for small sacrifices in tech (for non-creative) it becomes less and less. Compare it to artifacts world.
- you can't be serious about unification 8 / democracy 5 : with early morale bonuses democracy climbs up to unification's production bonus while getting extra money and further increasing research
- low g is obviously very bad only for the fast expanders - unifications;
- creative is less useful the more immunities your race has: unification and tolerant each subract fom the need to choose
It is difficult to edit a cost compensation ( not even desirable in view of intelligent race design ) but you might want to take the two extreme scenarios and then take the mean of evaluated extreme costs.
- warlord is much stonger than 3 points compared to the attack / defense bonuses
- the -6 from bad attack is funny because the opponent can always chose +2 attack and you're in the same position for 4 points less ; defense used to cost a lot for a reason: with adequate preparations you can get very hard to hit if the opponent doesn't care for his attack
- cybernetic is much stronger than 2 points worth; I think it is cummulative with automatic damage control ? ; someone who can see the code could tell us about all things cummulative and which are not, that were not very clear in vanilla or now
- when the mod starts to have its technology "set in stone" it would be good to have the tech tree displayed on a page somewhere; congratulations on making it so consistent !
Overall, despite a few neglidgeable issus, this modded version of the game is awesome !!
A long time into the future, maybe someone will assemble "Remake Studios" , where Moo 2 along with all its mods will be used as a base, decent graphics / sound used to represent, a few extra innovations for flavor and enhancement that don't dull any of the existing gameplay. I think manual, indivitual star system control has to stay, maybe aided by imitative AI control that learns your preferences. Battles could be strongly improved but have to stay at least as manually controlled, and detailed. Massive ammount of detail that takes from the core simplicty of the game has to be avoided. Relevant details such as boarding need to stay, with correct and simple representation.