ISG RangeMod v1.1

[Kornstalx]

After 500 glorious hours of ISG, I've decided to spice things up a bit and mod a few of my nitpicks. First on the list: ship ranges feel way too high by default.

Wars often turn into games of whack-a-mole as your opponent is blasting behind your empire, leapfrogging you to colonize or simply making a bee line to your interior... all with very basic Logistics tech. And by turn 50 on most maps, the whole galaxy is already in contact with each other. This has always bothered me.

Ostensibly this is what the "Distance Slider" in new game setup is for -- you increase it to 1.5x or 2.0x, and the range issue is supposedly resolved. But not really. It unbalances too many other things. For example, a colony's Sphere of Influence is not affected by this slider. This makes it virtually impossible to passively bring neighboring systems under control via the bubble. The distance slider also makes things like the Warp Interdictor moot, and puts way too much emphasis on Engine Speed techs. It's a ham-fisted solution to a real problem. I felt it was much easier to just lower the Logistics tech ranges, and make them feel more in line with Moo2.

The result is early game rushing (at default Distance, 1.0x) is still possible, but not outright leapfrogging your neighbor. It does, however, mean that races that rely heavily on diplomacy might have to contend solo with a violent neighbor a bit longer into mid-game, rather than meet everyone else early and focus purely on diplomacy.

I've got other mods in the works, such as removing the starting Colony Ship and replacing it with an Outpost Ship. Need to rebalance the Space Fervor Perk for that one, though. Also working on a mod that ups the tech-cost multiplier for researching a tech again in the same category. I felt that 2x, 3x, 4x wasn't punitive enough. Moo2 doesn't let you go back and re-research the same category at all. However, modding Perks and the Tech Tree UI (2x, 3x, 4x) requires altering the base Unity asset files, and is a bit more tricky.

RangeMod is a very simple mod that does only one thing -- it lowers the range of all Logistics techs by 2 parsecs, from 6-8-10-12-U to 4-6-8-10-U. This is done purely in the game's runtime, and doesn't require modifying the asset files, so I'm putting it out there first.

Installation instructions are in the Readme. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-e9oqn5WkyZdeBJ62MbTfB5MiAaMjX8V/

[Mr. Frosty L]

Great work! Thank you!
I'm sure many people will appreciate this.

Another solution to not meeting everybody too soon would be to prevent the generation of wormholes in the galaxy map creation. How hard would it be to implement this?

[Kornstalx]

Originally posted by Mr. Frosty L:

Great work! Thank you!
I'm sure many people will appreciate this.

Another solution to not meeting everybody too soon would be to prevent the generation of wormholes in the galaxy map creation. How hard would it be to implement this?

I'd have to dig through my notes but I know last year I found the flags in the dll for # of wormholes, nebulas, etc, created during generation. IIRC it's based on the number of players by default.

[FireFly7]

Great Idea! This game desperately needs mods. Is it possible to start with more than 1 planet solar systems ??

[Mr. Frosty L]

I like my galaxies feeling big and empty with early to mid game solitude, where it takes long time to get anywhere. Therefore, I always play gigantic galaxies with 2x distance, few planets and 4 or 5 players. If I wasn't a clumsy non-coder I'd also slow down nuclear and fusion drive ftl speeds to 1 and 2, respectively.

If only game rules were as easily adjustable as in MoO2 fan patch 1.50...

[Kornstalx]

Originally posted by Mr. Frosty L:

I like my galaxies feeling big and empty with early to mid game solitude, where it takes long time to get anywhere. Therefore, I always play gigantic galaxies with 2x distance, few planets and 4 or 5 players.

I did this too (for hundreds of hours) but found it unbalanced so many things. One, it nerfed aggressive races like Draguul and Cerixx unnecessarily. If you play them you realize they're designed to jump on a neighbor early, before tech can overtake their natural (ship combat, ground combat) advantage. The biggest issue with that slider, however, was the Sphere of Influence. The slider completely nullifies SoI's existence. Like, say you find a Minor Civ in a system with only the single planet that they live on. At 2x spread, it's practically impossible to gain exclusive control over them from a neighboring system. Also the whole Warp Interdictor thing -- that device is designed to be used on a chokepoint system, hopefully with its radius (2 parsecs) also slowing a path to a nearby system. When you spread things out at 2x this makes the Interdictor a worthless tech, except for maybe the system itself in which it's built.

I appreciate the fact that the slider exists, but felt it sorta broke so many other things.

I tend to prefer my RangeMod, 1-1.5x slider, few planets/specials/everything, and 13-15 systems per player (5 on Medium map, 8 on a large, etc).

[Mr. Frosty L]

I tend to switch off aggressive rush races and play only against other builder/grower races which I also customize.

I don't mind having no exclusive access to minors as long as rivals don't have either.

I only buy Warp Interdictors to enemy homeworlds just after I've conquered/exterminated+colonized them. I build them sometimes in a lonely border colonies that the enemy can reach.

[Mr. Frosty L]

Originally posted by Kornstalx:

... Also working on a mod that ups the tech-cost multiplier for researching a tech again in the same category. I felt that 2x, 3x, 4x wasn't punitive enough. Moo2 doesn't let you go back and re-research the same category at all.

This is also a good idea and I like it a lot. However, as a side effect it will make Cerixx stronger in comparison, since buying tech doesn't increase the buying cost of subsequent techs on the same field.

[coyote720]

Originally posted by Mr. Frosty L:

Originally posted by Kornstalx:

... Also working on a mod that ups the tech-cost multiplier for researching a tech again in the same category. I felt that 2x, 3x, 4x wasn't punitive enough. Moo2 doesn't let you go back and re-research the same category at all.

This is also a good idea and I like it a lot. However, as a side effect it will make Cerixx stronger in comparison, since buying tech doesn't increase the buying cost of subsequent techs on the same field.

Good point about the Cerixx. One thing I disliked about MOO2 is getting to pick only one tech in a category. I think ISG's system of increasing the cost is brilliant. Also, when playing with random tech trees, it can group really key techs at the same level. Don't make me choose!

[Tanaka]

Brilliant! Thanks for making this! I like your other mod ideas as well!

[watchdog_2003]

I tried this and love it. Thanks!

[mk31bolo]

Originally posted by Kornstalx:

...The distance slider also makes things like the Warp Interdictor moot, and puts way too much emphasis on Engine Speed techs...

Interesting. I use max spread and irregular dispersion of stars specifically for the purpose of giving me an incentive to research engine techs. The compact star placement of the default settings makes engine techs largely irrelevant since the stars are so close together. And one only needs to hop in a local wormhole for long range trips. With so many wormholes on the map, there'll almost always be one going in the direction you need, especially since so many have endpoints near your home system.

As for minor civs not being exclusive, that doesn't bother me. And I generally don't use warp interdictor, though I acknowledge that it's an issue for players that do.

I get the impression that the devs intent is to speed up how fast the player meets the other races. I personally prefer to get my empire up and running a bit before having to deal with alien scu- err... my galactic neighbors, so max spread and irregular dispersal of stars suits me just fine. But that's just me and others will disagree.

So anyway, kudos for being the first to mod the game. :thumbsup: I hope you mod proves to be successful. :)

[Kornstalx]

Originally posted by mk31bolo:

As for minor civs not being exclusive, that doesn't bother me.

It's not really just about the minor civs, that was only an example. It's more about simple influence control. On 2x spread the whole influence system is gutted. It means nothing, even on Varied spread. Every colonized system is an isolated bubble of influence with zero gameplay value other than painting the map. Perhaps mid/late game an extremely high production colony may push against a nearby system, but never early.

This leads to my biggest issue with gutting the bubble: it forces players into the colony rush trap. The bubble is part of playing "tall". The idea is instead of spamming colonies, you find a good spot and focus on infrastructure/production in a system to bring all nearby systems under your control early. This is perfectly viable gameplay that actually works in the game at default 1x settings. It's possible to bring 2-3 neighboring systems under your bubble early, so that you can focus on colonizing them later (just be careful if you form alliances, as an ally might hop on them).

A high spread value completely nullifies this. Back to trite colony rushing to claim territory.

[mk31bolo]

I don't dispute anything you've said except for the "colony rush." I generally have three colonies early. That is, my home planet, and two more (the second from culture perk). And then expansion stops until I've got those up and running. By that time I've gained control of a few more stars from population, infrastructure, and production then progress from there. It can be quite some time before I actually get a fourth planet colonized. Of course, a lot depends on the played race.

The exception, of course, is when a rival race is encountered early. What happens then depends on who I encountered and what race I'm playing. It's one of the reasons why I think there's too many wormholes (and too long as well). I want to get up and running first.

The very first time I ever played this game, there was twelve stars in my initial range. That's insane, and WAY too fast for me for expansion purposes. I set spread and dispersal to max and never looked back.

But that's the great thing about options. Players can set what suits themselves. :)

[Mr. Frosty L]

Originally posted by mk31bolo:

The exception, of course, is when a rival race is encountered early. What happens then depends on who I encountered and what race I'm playing. It's one of the reasons why I think there's too many wormholes (and too long as well). I want to get up and running first.

This is one of the reasons why a galaxy setting for the abundance of wormholes would be great.

[mk31bolo]

Originally posted by Mr. Frosty L:

Originally posted by mk31bolo:

The exception, of course, is when a rival race is encountered early. What happens then depends on who I encountered and what race I'm playing. It's one of the reasons why I think there's too many wormholes (and too long as well). I want to get up and running first.

This is one of the reasons why a galaxy setting for the abundance of wormholes would be great.

Yup. 100% agree.