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

Information, How-to's, and discussion about mod'ing Master of Orion II.
Astax
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Postby Astax » Wed May 06, 2009 3:10 am

I have checked what you said about food replicators. You are incorrect. If you do not have enough production, and food is not produced elsewhere, your population starves. I have experienced the starvation using a UniTol race.

The BC penalty is about 1bc per food created. On top of this 2 production per 1 unit of food. This makes it insanely expensive to use, totally worthless building, a piece of shit if you will.

Also to note there is a display bug involved with the replicators. For example, if I am making 32 production, and I use 24 of it for food, it will display 12 food and 8 hammers. But if I add 5 more hammers, it will display 12 food and 3 hammers. The 10 hammers disappear. This bug is not beneficial at all.

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Wed May 06, 2009 11:17 am

Are you sure about the income with food reps? I could swear it was charging me a BC per food generated. That was specifically why I tried it with the demo cyber combo, so the bonuses would cover the cost (each person eats half a food, but generates an extra half BC).
The weird thing is, didn't the original description in the manual have it as costing 10BC maintenance? Now it seems to be 1BC plus 1 per food.
I have to admit I was wrong on food replicators. Indeed, it consumes 1 BC per food created. This makes it practically unusable, unless you're demo cash race...
Regarding feudal... well, if you take it with creative, you can cancel the research penalty with only 650 and 900 RP level morale techs. Or even without creative, but you'd give up a lot. Still, dict can achieve a 50% res bonus the same way. I'd say the way to make feudal work is to make repulsive's value -2, to correspond to charismatic being +1 (old values -6 and +3). Yes, it would change how "it's always been done", but with the -6 for ship attack and -8 for low G there are alternatives, and you can't really argue that repulsive causes you comparable pain to either of those picks. It's almost harmless, since you can't really plan on getting good leaders even with charismatic, and depending on luck isn't really a viable strategy. I think it would force everyone to really consider their negative picks, instead of "the standard negatives" that are easily offset by simple tech or are almost painless anyway.
Interesting idea. If you make repulsive -2 you'll need to increase available positive points somehow...or it will turn into forced taking of a "serious negative", which I want to avoid by all means. I'll think about it.

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Wed May 06, 2009 11:49 am

I have checked what you said about food replicators. You are incorrect. If you do not have enough production, and food is not produced elsewhere, your population starves. I have experienced the starvation using a UniTol race.
Ok, lets clarify what happens. I have made a couple of pictures, which clearly show that negative production is possible. Besides food produced elsewhere doesn't seem to have effect on food replicators production.
http://rapidshare.com/files/229879838/foodreppics.zip
Also to note there is a display bug involved with the replicators. For example, if I am making 32 production, and I use 24 of it for food, it will display 12 food and 8 hammers. But if I add 5 more hammers, it will display 12 food and 3 hammers. The 10 hammers disappear. This bug is not beneficial at all.
I didn't understand your example. Could you clarify what you mean when you say " if I add 5 more hammers, it will display 12 food and 3 hammers. The 10 hammers disappear"? It'd be nice if you could provide some screens.

No need, seems like I got it. Those hammers show how much is negative production precisely. It would be logical, if that negative production was covered by 1 BC for each food (or two hammers). However this is not the case...
Last edited by Overlord2 on Wed May 06, 2009 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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rewster1
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Postby rewster1 » Wed May 06, 2009 12:08 pm

It's a little strange to me that you want to avoid forcing someone to take a serious negative. After all, it's the Very Difficult Choice Mod, so shouldn't the negative race picks be a VDC? As it is with repulsive, it's still a no-brainer, along with -spy, -ship def, and/or -GC depending on your other picks.
There's also a reasonable alternative to the serious negatives... which is not taking the full 10. With the three picks above you still get 16 positive picks. With -2 for repulsive you're up to 18 out of 20... enough for a bare unitol. Now that I think of it, that still doesn't seem to balance feudal, and maybe all of those negatives should be -1. :P
But on the other hand I do understand the desire to keep the feel of the game similar to vanilla, and it's not my call anyway.

Oh, another idea... could you give feudal (and maybe uncreative as well) players the evolutionary mutation tech at the start of the game, somehow?

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Wed May 06, 2009 1:30 pm

It's a little strange to me that you want to avoid forcing someone to take a serious negative. After all, it's the Very Difficult Choice Mod, so shouldn't the negative race picks be a VDC? As it is with repulsive, it's still a no-brainer, along with -spy, -ship def, and/or -GC depending on your other picks.
There's also a reasonable alternative to the serious negatives... which is not taking the full 10. With the three picks above you still get 16 positive picks. With -2 for repulsive you're up to 18 out of 20... enough for a bare unitol. Now that I think of it, that still doesn't seem to balance feudal, and maybe all of those negatives should be -1. :P
But on the other hand I do understand the desire to keep the feel of the game similar to vanilla, and it's not my call anyway.
Well, you touched very vast topic, this couldn't be explained with just a few sentences. Changing repulsive to -2 without adequate increase of the free points hits the ballance of all other picks. For example, there is always a substitue for repulsive in the face of lowG. LowG is temporal negative, offset by gravity generator. In this case LowG becomes a valuable pick at -8. IF you reduce LowG as well then everyone will switch to new lesser evil and so on to achive max positive value, which is the benefit. This will continue until positive picks bonuses prevail negative ones. In that case it may become attractive not taking the full 10. But again, you won't achieve normal balance as demo cannot take -spy while other governments can, which gives them advantage over demo.
But after all I don't see point in doing this. I'm not concerned with serious negatives never been taken.
Oh, another idea... could you give feudal (and maybe uncreative as well) players the evolutionary mutation tech at the start of the game, somehow?
No, but what's the point?

Astax
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Postby Astax » Wed May 06, 2009 2:28 pm

If they got evolutionary mutation then in theory they could have 14 picks in a pick 10 game.

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rewster1
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Postby rewster1 » Wed May 06, 2009 2:33 pm

Well, like I said, it's not my call... perhaps if I had the time I'd try modding myself, but alas I do not. I was just looking for ways to make "feudal" a valid option.
The reason I asked about the evolutionary mutation was that I figured it might be simpler to do that to give feudal a "pick boost" than to find the "max negative value" offset in the exe. I take it it probably isn't then.
Oh well... feudal could be interesting beyond a blitz strategy if it could be balanced, but it's not that different that 3 good options isn't enough.

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Wed May 06, 2009 4:08 pm

If they got evolutionary mutation then in theory they could have 14 picks in a pick 10 game.
No. Hypothetically if one race could tech mutation earlier than other race, it would give it only temporal advantage of being 14 picks over 10 until the other race techs mutation.
What I actually meant was giving more picks to feudal on permanent basis, as if it cost more (-13 for instance). Since the game doesn't allow negative value more than -10 (even if I make feudal -13) the only way feasible to assist feudal is launch a diffirent command line for the one who plans to play feudal. Then he will receive extra picks on permanent basis.

Astax
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Postby Astax » Wed May 06, 2009 4:49 pm

If one player launches with picks=13, will that allow only him to take the feudal? Because if so then yeah that would be pretty good solution.

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Wed May 06, 2009 5:03 pm

I was just looking for ways to make "feudal" a valid option.
Ok, I understand. Lets reason.
Roughly feudal as a negative could be equated with -2~-3
research (per worker) . As a positive it could be roughly equated with +1~+2 prod (per worker). This should be balanced out.

Based on original moo tech tree or VDC tech tree there's two possible ways to balance feudal:
1st - decrease free points provided by other negatives proportionally, at the same time make fuedal maximum negative value (your aproach).
2nd - give feudal additional positive value, i.e. free picks (my aproach).

My opinion is that you won't find clear balance of all picks if you follow the first aproach. Something will be wrong with balance. Probably the main reason would be that you can't split picks into fractional numbers.
perhaps if I had the time I'd try modding myself
Changing pick values isn't difficult at all (unless you want to make them fractional numbers lol). You need only one tool- PickHackv1.0, which is easy to use.
Could be downloaded from here: http://lordbrazen.blogspot.com/2005/01/download.html
The main problem is to find right balance. :roll:

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Wed May 06, 2009 5:12 pm

If one player launches with picks=13, will that allow only him to take the feudal? Because if so then yeah that would be pretty good solution.
If he launches with picks=13, he will recieve 13 positive picks (instead of 10) and another 10 from negatives. Total 23 points. As feudal is -10 alone, he gets 23 points, while oponent will be at 20 points...3 points will be handicap for feudal.
I think this is viable aproach.

Lilltiger
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Food Rep.

Postby Lilltiger » Thu May 07, 2009 9:41 am

The cost for creating the food seems to depend on how much negative production you take one. With Hydro Farm and Autofac. it seems to cost about 0.4BC/pop remember that you have to compare it with an equal planet not an planet with buildigs that boost your income.

RassaR
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Postby RassaR » Thu May 07, 2009 10:16 am

It's a little strange to me that you want to avoid forcing someone to take a serious negative. After all, it's the Very Difficult Choice Mod, so shouldn't the negative race picks be a VDC? As it is with repulsive, it's still a no-brainer, along with -spy, -ship def, and/or -GC depending on your other picks.
There's also a reasonable alternative to the serious negatives... which is not taking the full 10. With the three picks above you still get 16 positive picks. With -2 for repulsive you're up to 18 out of 20... enough for a bare unitol. Now that I think of it, that still doesn't seem to balance feudal, and maybe all of those negatives should be -1. :P
But on the other hand I do understand the desire to keep the feel of the game similar to vanilla, and it's not my call anyway.

Oh, another idea... could you give feudal (and maybe uncreative as well) players the evolutionary mutation tech at the start of the game, somehow?
Image

something like that ? I have not spent too much time on it Just decrease role of population / prodution and boost feudal a bit. You can still choose most of common combinations but repulsive wont be enough to get all additional picks you need

20 Uni + tol + rhw
20 Uni + tol + 50gr
20 uni + aqua/sub + 1prod + 50gr + rhw
19 uni + 2prod + aqua/sub
16 uni + sub + 1prod
17 uni + 2fo + 2prod
19 uni + aqua/sub + 1prod + 1sc

21 dem + lith + aqua/sub
20 dem + lith + 2sc
15 dem + lith
20 dem + aqu + sub + 50gr
20 dem + 0.5bc + aqua/sub + 2sc
17 dem + 1bc + aqua/sub
20 dem + 1sc + cre + ahw
19 dem + cre + 2sc

16 dict + lith + aqua/sub
20 dict + cre + aqua/sub + 100gr
20 dict + aqua + sub + charismatic + 100gr

20 feudal + tol + 2prod + war
20 feudal + 1prod + 1foo + omni + sships + tele + trans
20 feudal + 100gr + 2foo + 1prod + sub + 20att

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Thu May 07, 2009 11:38 am

Ok, I can tell you which races will rock under your setting if you base on VDC tech tree. No other races will get close to the ones I point.

1) demo sub lith, 2) demo lith +2 research, 3)aqua, demo cash +1, +50 pop, 4) dict, lith, sub, +50 pop rhw. The negatives will be the following: lowG, repulsive, poor hw, -ship defense for demo, or lowG, repulsive, -spy for dict.
The disbalance is on the surface:
uni in great trouble, dict prod races dead, feudal - dead as it was, creative dead (at 7 points it was in trouble).

Diagnosis: with lowG forced negative playable are only tech races.

c'g~
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I beg to differ

Postby c'g~ » Thu May 07, 2009 3:18 pm

Well, you touched very vast topic, this couldn't be explained with just a few sentences. Changing repulsive to -2 without adequate increase of the free points hits the ballance of all other picks. For example, there is always a substitue for repulsive in the face of lowG. LowG is temporal negative, offset by gravity generator. In this case LowG becomes a valuable pick at -8. IF you reduce LowG as well then everyone will switch to new lesser evil and so on to achive max positive value, which is the benefit. This will continue until positive picks bonuses prevail negative ones. In that case it may become attractive not taking the full 10. But again, you won't achieve normal balance as demo cannot take -spy while other governments can, which gives them advantage over demo.
But after all I don't see point in doing this. I'm not concerned with serious negatives never been taken.
I beg to differ: if Race picks System is supported by structure of Tech Tree, then there isn’t any “lesser evil”. There are only viable tech paths complemented by chosen array of Race picks.

If Race picks System isn’t supplemented by Tech Tree, then the whole System can be considered undeveloped or even broken, for obvious reasons (System elements aren’t interconnected good enough).


Please note I’m not talking about particular Mod/Mods: I’m describing the picture in whole.
So yeah, just to make everything clear.


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