ISG Scaling Influence Mod v1.0

[Kornstalx]

This is a mod that does a single thing: it scales the Sphere of Influence growth around colonies based on the Distance Slider's value.

In ISG, the size of an influence bubble is determined by a system's production. The more production you create, the faster the bubble grows. The star Distance Slider used at game setup has no effect on this. This creates a problem where at high values (1.5x+) it becomes virtually impossible to passively bring neighboring systems under your Sphere of Influence early. This severely gimps playing "tall" in the vanilla game. With the default (1.0x) Distance Slider, it's perfectly viable gameplay to focus on building up just a few systems while bubbling neighboring ones for colonization/mining later. This strategy goes straight out the window as soon as you start increasing that slider.

With this mod I have taken the Starmap generation functions that determine star spread, and re-written the Sphere of Influence class in the dll to take those same values into account as well. This means Sphere of Influence growth is now directly proportional to the Distance Slider.

The way this works under the hood is complex; it's not a simple 2x bubble growth for a 2.0x slider. Many variables in star spread generation are goverened by that slider, such as galaxy shape. For example, a Square galaxy at 2.0x spread will have different internal spread values than an Elliptical galaxy at the same 2.0x spread. I've taken all of this into account when scaling the bubble generation. The new formula is an exact duplicate of the existing spread math into the calcInfluence function, and it takes galaxy shape into account as well.

There's some gritty computational geometry going on in there, but the results will be similar to 1.0x spread, regardless of the slider's value.

This mod is not compatible with my other mod (ISG Rangemod). Rangemod is not designed to play at high spread values, whereas this mod tries to accomplish the same thing (un-nerf playing "tall" at high values), but is Distance Spread agnostic.

Using this mod and playing at the default (1.0x) Distance Slider is fine, but it will effectively do nothing. It will be same as vanilla ISG. Only works on a *NEW* game, not an existing save.

Previews:
Turn 154 @ 1.5x Distance Slider: https://i.imgur.com/tktTmCy.jpeg
Turn 135 @ 2.0x Distance Slider: https://i.imgur.com/20xGsmr.jpeg

Installation instructions are in the Readme. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BOLyd161ie0-QfZwGUDhoIWzUNFNzKvj/view

[Mr. Frosty L]

I have been wondering which would appear first, the devs official update or this one. Anyway, I have postponed playing IS:G until one of them do. Looks like the wait is now over. Thank you!

[Mr. Frosty L]

Does this work in conjunction with Cerixx Empire Patrols evolution perk's +100% border growth?

[Kornstalx]

Originally posted by Mr. Frosty L:

Does this work in conjunction with Cerixx Empire Patrols evolution perk's +100% border growth?

I did not test playing as Cerix, but based on the code it should.

CalcInfluence is where the mod does the work. This is a core game function done first and other game elements, such as Cerix affinity, should calculate after the results of CalcInfluence are handed off to the perk.

[Kornstalx]

I just looked through the dll and it's not readily visible where that perk actually does its magic, but I see references to the XML. All of the XML is packaged in the Unity resource files and altering them is beyond the scope of simple modding. Since the core dll is doing the calculations at runtime, I'm going to assume something in the XML is multiplying the result of this value by two (100%).

You'll have to play Cerix and see if it feels right.

Bubbles should expand to encroach on other nearby systems at a rate similar to playing unmodded at 1.0x Distance Slider. Since there's a lot of randomness in galaxy generation, this is hard to quantify. The parsec diameter of the bubbles will be much larger, but the # of systems engulfed should average to be equivalent to 1.0x spread.

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it hiding in plain sight. The var the XML is returning is evolBorderMod, and yes it's taken into account. Cerix should work normally. The % increase from that Affinity is applied after everything else.

[Tanaka]

Love your mods thank you! Which do you prefer using? This or distance?

[Kornstalx]

Originally posted by Tanaka:

Love your mods thank you! Which do you prefer using? This or distance?

I've got about 100 hours using the RangeMod (which I actually made over a year ago, just for myself) but I've played using Scaling Influence for probably 50 hours or so. I mostly play a mix of Hard/Severe (usually Hard starting conditions, with the tech/prod sliders set to Severe level, or sometimes 133%). I'll play 1x Slider obviously for Rangemod, and either 1.5x or 2x for the Scaling Influence mod.

One of the biggest impacts I've found on using the high Slider value is how it affects the AI. Unfortunately the AI isn't very good at making its travel decisions, and sometimes it will plot a course that takes way too long. For example, many times I've seen enemy battle fleets going places 7, 8, or even 10+ turns away. This is a bit ridiculous and easily abusable. Once you see half the enemy's ships are tied up for 10 turns, it allows all sorts of shenanigans like jumping on the lone outpost that allowed such a far move (with a single frigate), razing it, then when the enemy fleet arrives it has to go 7-10 turns back unless it immediately secures a supply source on the turn it lands. If they jump this far to a system of yours that doesn't have a capturable outpost (such as a system with only a single planet, protected by a starbase), they're screwed.

A human player would never commit such a move without Transcommunication, or at least not without breaking up such a long jump into smaller leaps between stars. Overall this handicap really, really nerfs the AI. It's turned me off from playing on higher slider values, and while I'm proud of fixing the Influence imbalance at those values with my mod, I think personally I prefer just playing at 1x and using the Rangemod's lower supply ranges.

Simply for the AI's sake.

Wars are brutal, stabby, and fast. An AI with good engines can leap from star to star in a single turn and cause a lot of havoc, without being so open to abuse by a human opponent.

[Arakus]

Can we get an updated version please?

[newageofpower]

Originally posted by Kornstalx:

-snip-

Neat mod. Makes me want to do one too.