I will do so in the next games. 

Meanwhile, we just had another minidump error, that was quiet interesting:

2 player coop vs 1 AI. The AI was minbari federation, we had earth alliance and vorlon empire.

the vorlon empire tech tree was not very developed, only some minor research with about 4 stations in military and civilian. The crash for both happened as soon as my vorlon forces jumped with their hyperdrive to the enemy capital.

But first, EA vs EA and Narn vs Narns has priority. It might help to know: I already had one game EA vs EA and had no problems there, so I guess it could be the narn more likely. we'll see.  

new link should work now. The "manual" is exported from our database. If you want to make a really nice Manual you are welcome to do so. It will be an awful lot of work though

Thanks for your testing efforts.

I've been digging into overall balancing between the races and there are some huge disparities. Some should be there but others strike me as unintentional. When done the races will not be balance for many reasons but they will be more balanced than they are now.

Also, if a planet is unlocked and I assign a populationcap bonus or penalty from that point then I have effectively customized the planet types for that race which has been a discussion point for a while AND I can do this without having to make or modify the existing planets which would otherwise be a lot of new work. Short of a eureka moment but nice all the same.

 

TobiWahn,

Digging through the research trees there are some significant differences. Some I've already adjusted and others I will but have yet to in the name of overall balance. The biggest and most egregious is ShipMaxslots as illustrated below:

Narn       Centauri      EA        Minbari        Shadow      Vorlon

1978       2028          2338     2078           2090          2280

This means the EA can field a fleet some 360 logistic points larger than the Narn which explains in part why the Narn are so much harder to play. I propose to adjust the ShipMaxSlots from all sources to the same number giving each race the same maximum potential fleet size.

There is also a delta in the IncomePercLost which is reflective of the overall drain of the fleet on the race's economy. This is potentially very unbalancing but there are lots of other variables to consider so I'll table this till I can do more comparison.

I'm also stripping out the various unlock redundancies of which most races had several.

The various planet research is still required and I'll add initial PlanetPopulationCapAdjustment bonus or penalies to make some planets more or less valuable to each race. All races will be able to colonize each planet type though some may be later in the tech tree.

We had another, very enjoyable multiplayer session against minbari. 

narn and EA vs minbari.

This time, we has no minidump, but a runtime error (R2025 if anyone knows what that means)

"pure virtual function call"

We are not entirly sure, no reasearch was made by that exact point. the narn research was on its way to get the supportive research in the military tree, the EA research was just about to start the carrier cruiser one.

I also played a session narn vs narn against the AI. the AI seems not to build any missile frigades or destroyer. It was odd to see it using every other ship type but not THEM. Otherwise, nothing happened, no crash or something like that. maybe the next one will be more useful.  

As long as you are having fun. The runtime error is the one we haven't been able to islolate. I normally see it when exiting a game, which I can in the short term live with. Runtime errors mid-game are a different issue and will require some effort to track down.

This one was pretty much midgame, but it was fun until this point. 

Today I only played the new released dawn of the reapers, just had to after been waiting for so lond. Beautiful models, but it clearly showed me, how important the techtree and abilities actually are. Although it is in a comparable state as this babylon 5 mod, and even looks more finished only by ship models and menu screens, the game just doesn't feel as complex and fun as it does in the babylon mod.
This mod here might have more oddly black blocks instead of finished ship models, but it has the more important mechanics that make it really worth playing for a long time, over and over again. 
By no mean I want to offend anybody in any team, both are incredibly good mods I am looking foward to see finished someday and both teams have a lot work to do. It was just a nice experience that really showed again how much great work is already done here. And that's the reason why I will always gladly play another session of this one again and will hopefully be able to get some other information together. And, as someone who already worked on projects (not nearly as long and great scaled mod-projects like this one, but still something for some months), I maybe can imagine a bit, how important it can be to get some positive feedback from time to time. so, congrats to you guys!  

Thank you for the kind words. Improvements come is spurts but progress never stops.

It's working now.

My offer still applies.

Many thanks for the words and to Darvroth for making it that fun to play (and to all the others helping him of course!)

How would you go about making that manual? You are invited to do it (I'd love to have a nice manual), but what do you need to do it?

Thanks

Tobias

5

Thanks. Agree, though ShipMaxSlots is only part of the formula, since it entirely depends on the buildSlots of the ships of each race.

P.S.: I've received my new Cinema4D R16 discs. Diving into the new functions...

NP. Build slots are only a capital ship function and there are good reasons which we have already discussed for the current limitations. I was thinking more to frigates. This esp helpful on the larger maps. As to the other variables on ship toughness I've built a paper spreadsheet and am making some tweaks but the races will have strengths and weaknesses relative to each other. I'm also only looking at the total bonus/penalty assuming all techs are researched, there are times along each races tech path were they are advantaged or disadvantaged. EA civil war for instance applies some significant penalties to the EA, all are resolved eventually but the research path to do so is up to the player depending on their area of focus.

If you accept the task, it will be a challenge to outline how uneven the tech path is. Some techs offer almost trivial adjustments, others are huge. The civil war techs in particular are have very negative impacts.

I've had some nice matches on smaller maps, mostly against the same faction. No crashes so far and no obvious bugs to report (only usual cosmetic stuff like unfitting textboxes or effects). 

The only thing possibly notable was my own experience when playing the narn. I can imagine, this stuff is one of the less finished work, but at the moment the narn capital classes seem mostly a bit "useless" compared to different classes in for example the earth alliance. 
I just get the feeling that the research for these ships is just an "addition" to other useful stuff, but not really nescessary itself. Most of the times I play, it is enough to just rely on the first capital ship class and simply wait for the g'quan to come instead of using the the two or three classes in between in the meantime.
If the paths in the tech tree would be less "parallel" and more bottom-up, maybe with some more specialization in the classes, the narn gameplay would become more complex and with that- more interesting.

Also, just as a question: are vorlon ships meant to use shields? Maybe I completly miss something in the lore, but as far as I know their ships are mostly described using organic armor wich is more regenerative.  

The Narn haven't had any TLC since the tech trees were built 2-3 years ago. I'm in the midst of a major overhaul of the tech tree for most races with a focus on course balance. The Narn in particular were deficient in several ways which was making them harder to play than intended. Here is a brief rundown of strengths and weaknesses of the Narn capital ships:

Rothan - short range weapons fwd and aft arcs only - capital colony ship

Rongoth - Short range, all round weapon coverage, excellent at thinning fighters and good against light frigates and corvettes - will not fare well against most other capital ships and heavy frigates.

T'Loth - Good bombing, good short range all round weapon coverage. On review I need to increase the forward arc hitting power.

G'Quan - Long range beam, good forward, L & R short range weapon coverage, decent bombing, energy mine (not available till level 3).

G'Vrahn - Good Fwd & Aft beam, weak bombing, excellent all round weapon coverage (2x L & R), excellent anti-fighter coverage, best fleet brawler.

Bin'Tak - Good Fwd beam, weak aft beam, short range good all round weapon coverage, best bombing. (I need to improve this ship)

The Vorlon have and use shields. There is ample evidence of this from the show, they also have bio-armor and self heal quickly. Concentrate fire and kill them one at a time, wounding a Vorlon ship ensures you'll see it at or near full strength next engagement.

 

EDIT: just looked at the downloads.

 

So how would I go about downloading the 1.82 version of this to play/test?

Last publicly available build: https://mega.co.nz/#!1UgCWSpI!ncyhi8hTc-dcMXbJezJduW9dKX-hCQnk5krr5U-o-RI

There are lots of internal updates between public releases to increase stability, balance and add new content.

 

Thanks for the information! I haven't really figured out that stuff on my own, my bad :/, but now that I know it seems this gives some interesting opportunities.

  Playing against someone using the vorlon showed: these are some pretty hard ships. But they seem to work well! This colonization thing the vorlons have, that disables their colonizer for some time, really helps out in the early game. I personally found it especially hard to fight them on larger maps, when they get a chance to get a strong economy running. But their ships seem to need to work in fleets to be truly effective. I like that! 

 

Just as I read that, I just wanted to say, that I still want to help as much as I can, but my experience with mods regarding to actually testing things are nearly nothing. If there are certain ways how to outline special things like this, other than just the own feeling when playing with it around, I would be glad to try them out, if possible.  I love to spend time on this mod, but of course I'd always like to spend it as efficient as possible! 

Appreciate the comment. We tried hard to make each race feel different and use different tactics to win. Minbari for example have long range lethal beams but comparatively fewer ships among other weakness' (if you can find them). The Narn use a mix of short range and long range weapons (this disadvantages the AI which tends to stop once any weapon comes in range). The Centauri use weapons of middle length and tend to favor forward weapon arcs, they also use fewer fighters but have many frigates in the 4-6 logistic point range. Centauri ships are either a bit ponderous (with very heavy weapons) or agile with correspondingly lighter weapons. Adjusting the mix of a Centauri flee is a constant challenge. EA are the most overall balanced and have the largest selection of ship types. Shadow and Vorlon ships tend to have only a single beam or pulse weapon but have awesome hitting power that frequently auto-pops frigates.

play with the parameter "m_weaponIndexForRange" to adjust which weapon(range) is responsible for the distance a ship keeps when attacking. If you want the Narn to get closer, do not use weapon 0 (mostly the weapon with then longest range), but one of the shorter range weapons.

e.g. the VarNic could use m_weaponIndexForRange 1, because Weapon 1 has a shorter range than Weapon 0 but is still highly effective against most ships. Weapon 2 on the other hand while having an even shorter range is just an anti fighter weapon, so there is no advantage using m_weaponIndexForRange 2.

I'll look at this but it is a significant effort if applied to every ship. I'll work it after the titan issue is addressed.

So when will this be Rebellion ready and playable? I've looked forward to this mod forever...