Starbound said: The middle tech in this bunch is barely visible because Inter-Species HR  name tag is on top of it. A minor thing, I know. Just something to keep  in mind when rearranging the techs.

Do keep in mind that the mod will at some point be removing most of the current Military techs to move the Ship hulls in to replace them. That will free up all of the space in Empire Development that's currently dominated by Ship hulls and their upgrades for these new techs.

I've worked on the two big Community Mods for Civ 5 (The original community mod and then Vox Populi).

My one point of wisdom on mods like this.....less is more.

It can be very exciting to do this work, and you can get the desire to change anything and everything. Avoid that temptation. Assume that the game is good for the most part and focus on exactly what you are trying to accomplish, but no more than that.

In other words, use a scalpel instead of a hammer.

I have seen months go by on debates around crazy adjustments and features that are in the spirit of a completely different mod, not one that is just focused on balance.

So I wish you luck in this endeavor, it looks like an interesting prospect.

The First Major Update of Community Mod Project

Version 1.1.0 - For Game Build V 1.0.61

[Consumption Code]

Gene Splice Cravings Fixed (No more cravings before splicing) 

Consumption Split into 3 different types 

[Improvements]

Planetary Influence Specialization bonus on Exceptional Planets

Added 6 Placeholder Improvements

[Planets]

Terraforming Tree Reworked:

- Five areas of FIDS Focus (See Chart)

- 32 Terraformations Removed (of the Original 62)

- Other 30 Changed

- 110 Added (Now 140 in total)

Planet Yields Reworked:

- Changed with new Tree in mind

New Planet Tag "Arable"

New Planet Tag "Exceptional"

Buffed Faction Homeworlds

4 New "Advanced" Planet types Added:

- Ecumenopolis (Pop Slots, Influence, Balanced FIDS)

- Agri-world (Food)

- Planetwide Laboratory (Science)

- MegaForge (Industry)

[G2G Balance Mod]

Made Compatible with version 3.04

Incorporated Ground battle changes

Overwrites Planet tag changes

[Other]

Political effect duration of building Military Ships reduced by 75%

[Localization]

Renamed Sterile to Hazardous

New technologies now have names

[Tech Tree]

6 New Technologies added (in Total)

-"Senate-Directorate Conclave"

-"Cultural Hegemony"

-"Galactic Nationalization"

-"Rapid Phase Transitions"

-"Advanced Placation Techniques"

-"Cosmopolitan Specialization"

Development is still active, I just thought this was a good point to share the current changes, The current plan for the next big update is to do the tech reshuffle, finish of the place holder stuff & add the ability to transfer food about for empire. But I'm sure other things will find their way in too.

What are your thoughts on the changes, what's good, bad or should be changed etc.

Nice, the terraforming seems interesting and I will definitely try it out this weekend

Stalker0 wrote: I've worked on the two big Community Mods for Civ 5 (The original community mod and then Vox Populi).

My one point of wisdom on mods like this.....less is more.

It can be very exciting to do this work, and you can get the desire to change anything and everything. Avoid that temptation. Assume that the game is good for the most part and focus on exactly what you are trying to accomplish, but no more than that.

In other words, use a scalpel instead of a hammer.

I have seen months go by on debates around crazy adjustments and features that are in the spirit of a completely different mod, not one that is just focused on balance.

So I wish you luck in this endeavor, it looks like an interesting prospect.

Thanks for the advice, hopfully the way this porject is set out will reduce the chances those issues arissing, I.E. It's about trying out things and blance is a secondary goal not the main focus so arguments (atleast between those developing it, if the team gorws that much should not happen)

Theodore wrote: Some of the of balancing changes have made Imperials the only major faction besides the vodyani that dont come with an extra bounas when on a planet of its prefered type (Teperate) Bring back some bonus influence points for Imperials when they are on a Temperate planet.

The update has added 4 new planets types that all produce influence and have the "Exceptional" Planet tag, What about +2 Influnce on Exceptional Planets?

PrivateJole wrote:

Nice, the terraforming seems interesting and I will definitely try it out this weekend

Hope you enjoy it! The Terraforming & yields were the big focues of this update and tock quick a while to design & code so hopfully the next update shall come much sooner.

IceGremlin wrote:

I started up a file as soon as the changelog showed up in my Steam account. Fast Sophons of course, to rush the new features.

First  of all, the Academy system spawned with two MegaForges and two  Agri-Worlds. This sounds awesome, except that there is no actual  technology for colonizing those worlds as they are not normal planets, making the system permanently inaccessible.

"Five areas of FIDS Focus (See Chart)" - There is no chart provided.

Most  of the new techs overlap with old techs. This is a particular issue  with Cosmopolitan Specialization, which exactly eclipses the Diplomacy  tech behind it.

There is no apparent  pattern to the creation of Cosmopolitan worlds. This is likely in the  "chart" you reference. Without the chart actually in-game this could get  a bit too complex. Also, they cannot be selected right now; even with  the correct Influence stocks to pay for their creation, I simply cannot  click on the new Cosmopolitan terraforming options.

Normal terraformation does not appear to have been correctly changed, still referencing Fertile and such.

Finally,  I'm still rather unhappy with the idea of dividing Food consumption  into too many types. It's easy for players to understand that Basic  Sustenance is a flat number per Pop and Food Waste is a percentage;  Breaking Food Waste into multiple different names creates unnecessary  extra confusion.

They only spawn in the academy system for testing proposes, I forgot to disable that 

But I will look into the colonization issue, The planets are designed to only be terraformed to but there still is a chance to have them become uninhabited.

Sorry about the lack of the chart, Steam is refusing to let me upload any images to the workshop page & I forgot to post it here

(Click Image to see in full)

The Gas Terraformation is unlocked both ways for any faction with the "Rapid Phase Transitions" tech

With the "Advanced Placation Techniques" Tech you will be able to use Riftborn terraforms or non-Riftborn terraforms (depending if your Riftborn or not) at the small cost of influence

As for the tech overlap it should be fixed during the big tech shuffle will hulls moving into the military quadrant.

The Arable tag has been added for planets that did not have a biodiversity tag and the sterile tag was renamed to hazardous (as sterile just did not fit when half the planets had life) but fertile should still be in use.

The focuses are how the base planet yields are amended within the Terraformation tree.

The pros and cons (that I can think of) for splitting consumption up are:

Pros:

The Food Consumption is never seemingly an incredibly high number as its been split up,

The different types allow for improvements to seem more different E.G. one is -10% Opulent consumption and one -25% logistics inefficiently instead of all just being -X% food consumption

Cons:

As you say having many types can create confusion.

I believe the benefits outweigh the disadvantages but as with everything if its generally disliked it will be changed.

They are supposed to be colonisable, Not sure why they are not I've probably messed up the coding of it somewhere.

The New Planet Stats:

Didn't have any time to test this mod. Next week I'll do. Can't wait for. Keep up your good work and thanks in advance.

Great news! Thanks for the update.

I fired up a test game on UE, everything except galaxy on basic (medium/average/normal sliders) settings on Impossible difficulty, large spiral 8-galaxy, 8 players. 1.0.61 gold version. Unfortunately Horatio attacked me around turn 80 or so and my game froze up while checking a combat reply. Will see if I'll have time tomorrow or on next week to check out the terraforming changes in a bit more detail. However, a few visual things that I noticed in the brief game.

Wouldn't mind seeing the negative modifiers in all red text. The outpost and military capacity kind of stand out as they have same color as the bonuses. This makes the overview a bit messy. "From" and "to" is probably okay to keep as it is but the actual negative number and "Outpost" text in red would give a coherent look to the info sheet.

Then, I know the tech tree revamp is underway but one thing to keep in mind is the visual appearance. Case in point:

The middle tech in this bunch is barely visible because Inter-Species HR name tag is on top of it. A minor thing, I know. Just something to keep in mind when rearranging the techs.

Those aside, the other stuff looks good. Arable tag is a fine addition. Never checked out the official G2G mod so can't comment on the ground battle changes beyond the fact that Horato took a border colony from me in a single turn with some 4 ship fleet. No idea if it would've played out the same way in vanilla as well. Should keep up with the times I guess.

Wow there is a lot of text here ':) But I simply have a request for someone who an do modding better than I can because I have no knowledge of any kind of programming. I'm the kind of guy who liked to play Civ 5 with the biggest map and most people and put it on Marathon then Add a Mod that made all science 2x as expensive to essentially slow the game down 2x but still be able to build huge fleets and have it feel more like a war and that one unit wasn't such a big thing, but one piece in a huge army. If someone might be able to make a mod that is specifially just that, 2x science costs, I would be deeply greatful :) or at least show me how lol.

I really like the terraforming and the rest of the mod aswell. Its a bummer that you didn't get it to work with the colonizing of the new planet types, I imagine it's hard to fix.

So I noticed a big patch has rolled out and incompatibility issues have risen. Any update about progress on this? Just curious, seemed to have a lot of potential.

Starbound wrote:

So I noticed a big patch has rolled out and incompatibility issues have risen. Any update about progress on this? Just curious, seemed to have a lot of potential.

I have not had much freetime for the past two months I getting a bit more soon which means I'll be able to work on the mod again soon, fixing issues & added features.

Thumbs up! I'll be sure to keep an eye on this. But I think it might be actually good to take a laid-back approach to this since official patches can easily break up stuff like right now. Probably the swarm missile patch would again mess things up so maybe it's better to do only some relatively minor tweaks and playtest those. Once official stuff slows down a little, more grand steps could be taken.

But like mentioned earlier in the thread, overall "less-is-more". I think it's a good philosophy with a project like this. Avoids burnouts, massive reworks when game gets patched etc.

Starbound wrote:

But like mentioned earlier in the thread, overall "less-is-more". I think it's a good philosophy with a project like this. Avoids burnouts, massive reworks when game gets patched etc.

Very good point!

May be kind of wrong thing, but looks like latest patch suddenly brokes Horatio mechanics of Genetic Slicing\ Gene Hunter in mod.

Update 1.2.11 -- Guardians & the Galaxy

[MODDING]

• Horatio gameplay gene splicing no longer depends on the name of the AffinityGameplay, it checks instead if Empire property HasAffinityGeneHunter

For me there is no more Genetic Slicing option and no UI for such a thing in Horatio gameplay.

I don’t really post, or even lurk around here much, but I’m gonna throw in my two cents since you guys seem to be doing good work. Sorry if most of this has allready been suggested.

One of the most bang-for-your-buck changes insofar as making system development more powerful/interesting are some simple QoL improvements for population management. 

Specialising systems appears to be a large focus here, and one of the biggest aspects of that is min-maxing minor population placement,  getting the right pops into the right systems. 

This is most certainly possible at the moment, but it can be a bit of a headache. I would suggest three simple changes to flesh out this aspect of the game. 

First, increase starport size. Give a place to store populations on full systems to make moving populations en mass less of a four-six at a time piecemeal thing. If the consequences of having a larger starport is a balance concern, create a huge amount of storage only starport slots, incapable of shipping populations, but capable of holding them. 

Second, buff logistic ships. let us increase their speed, let us assign military escorts, give them more visibility on the map (toggleable perhaps).

Third, change the starport screen for selecting what planet to send pops to so that is has the information we want in order to determine where we send pops.Namely planet types and types of pops already present.

I would really wish such aproject could, instead of being a seperate, be integrated into the main game and developed together with the game devs themselves.

It would be really nice if we could figure out some sort of in wish interested parties could help add features the developers want to add themselves but dont have time. Ultimately good devs think of the entire game when they consider making changes to some feature.

We might want to change thing X to be more "fun" but we do not know the engine and the details nor did we spend couintless hours thinking through the structure of the entire game.

Which is why IMO the best thing would be to use the ideas section to allow devs to incorproate ideas and then assign  people from the community who are willing to help out while being overseen by the devs.

This might be too much to ask but I fear that much like in other games, making a mod without knowing the fine details of how the engine works or without having the input of someone who has been spending hours per day thinking about how changes effect the entirety of the polaying experience will result in a half baked effort.