(Updated 9-26-16) Ultimate Dominion mod III 3.0.1ddb

[thunderchero]

Hi Dissy,

no I did not forget your post.

Noticed a few small bugs;

cannot liberate a major races home system.. - i believe there is a fix for this?

yes there is a fix for this.

minors do n't have industry sometimes when fully popped - i believe there is a fix for this?

I wish there was a fix for this but this is a random BOTF error. some mods like BOP use less upgrades and this seems to help since the AI tends to sell off all structures before upgrade. (this is my thought and not confirmed).

phantom dilithium - what was the concencus - remove it entirely ?

I feel with the massive build up of ships it does not effect this mod. (or you could say needed)

AI expansion stuck to small maps?

not sure what you mean if small maps expand good and large maps expand poorly. If so, Yes there is a fix for this (easy one even you could do) lol

I love playing this mod, it's exceptionally stable in MP... happy happy days.. even more so with a comprehensive bug fix update!
Would it be possible to have a final version released Thunder? With simply putting in all the bug fixes..?

Adding all those bug fixes are not that easy. some are very simple while other take a long time and 1 small mistake would cause instability. Like the new command function. This is a very large section to edit. but while the hold option is nice to use with cloaked ships or the recloak is nice too
Also there are 3 different trek.exe's and each one would need to be coded either separately or code only small map version and after all bug fixes were added edit map sizes (again) and setup extended view on final trek.exe

thunderchero

[anthwise]

re Deks problem with Win7, I'm running the same operating sysem on my laptop and it runs without problems, but I have a desktop pc on xp that can't run it. I think your problem is your graphics card drivers just don't like the game.

[Flocke]

Adding all those bug fixes are not that easy. some are very simple while other take a long time and 1 small mistake would cause instability.

I thought it's mostly copy&paste or do you have to type it char by char in your hex editor?

Also there are 3 different trek.exe's and each one would need to be coded either separately or code only small map version and after all bug fixes were added edit map sizes (again) and setup extended view on final trek.exe

It would be pretty simple to write a tool for this if changes keep the same.
It would even be simple to define a file format with hex offset + changes to be read in an applied if that's more comfortable. Of course this doesn't work with conflicting changes.
Might be a good addition to UE.

[DCER]

It would be pretty simple to write a tool for this if changes keep the same.
It would even be simple to define a file format with hex offset + changes to be read in an applied if that's more comfortable. Of course this doesn't work with conflicting changes.
Might be a good addition to UE.

That's not a bad idea. The file should contain the address, expected existing code and patched code.

Actually some things require a lot of minor edits so it would be better if it were something like [num changes], num*[address][size][expected code][patched code], maybe add a description for the file as well just so the user knows what it is.

Perhaps

[description][num options] [num changes] changes * ([address][size] options * [patch option])

or

[description][num options] options * [num changes] changes * ([address][size] [patch code])

where one of the patches should always be vanilla, but can have different variations of the patch as well. Patching would only work if trek.exe already has one of the patch options (for instance vanilla) applied.

Thoughts, ideas?

[Flocke]

In my opinion that would be a well addition, but I'm not modding so much.
I believe if it's there it'll be used, at least for not typing things down so often.
It could also be used to verify and identify mods or adjustments.

[Deks]

Win 7 Ultimate SP1 x64

this is your main problem. this game runs best on XP. (it is over 10 years old)

thunderchero

It did the same on XP, so the OS doesn't make a difference here really.
I updated the gpu drivers to the latest official Nvidia version and now it seems that 3d accelleration works (at least with DIRECT3D in the stbof.ini).
I still have to test out a major battle to see it's not a fluke, but I will report back (still using Win7 SP1 x64 - I really wouldn't go back to XP due to it's age).

One last thing.
I noticed that throughout all UDM versions, shields and beam weapons are quite large when compared to the ships (and both appear to slow the FPS during battle - shields especially).
Some time ago, there was another mod I tried (the Ultimate Mod if I'm not mistaken) which had weapons/shields nailed down quite well (size wise), because I remember having a rather large battle (about 95 ships on my side vs the Romulan fleet of slightly larger proportions - I had dreadnoughts which tipped the scales considerably), and while the game did take it's time at the very start of the battle for calculations, sub-sequential turns in the battle began immediately, and the FPS were more manageable when compared to the UDM.

I was wondering if the different appearance of shields and weapons might be the causing more problems performance-wise during battles in UDM, because both UDM and UM use high-poly versions of ships/stations, so the difference is probably located elsewhere.

[thunderchero]

Hi Deks and everyone else,

first your comment about comparing UDMIII and UM4 high poly ship models

UM4 has 5 models above 300kb

UDMIII has 22 models above 300kb

but this has nothing to do with phaser size this was a trade off when the mod was created. Every model was converted the same way but on final scaling the true size was input for correct scale. Then final scale percent was set within the trek.exe to obtain the correct combat distance. (UM4 did not do this) so I could have small phasers and the ships were nose to nose or how it was released. At the time it was the best choice.

But since last release of mod the code has been located to control combat distance. And with a little editing I came up with this......

UDM_combat_distance_replacement trek.exe's

This file has replacement trek.exe for normal, large and large extended.

this image is before any changes and screenshot was as soon as view stopped moving

this image is after my changes and screenshot was as soon as view stopped moving (ship models are a little closer)

this is in combat before any changes

I tried to get the exact same image as the before in battle screenshot (it is close)

if you download new trek.exe please leave some feedback and your thoughts

thunderchero

[rugar85]

there is two things i'm wondering about, how would i be able to change the explosions of the ships back to the original one? it makes it easier to differentiate whose ships are exploding in a big battle.

and the other question is, why are the cardassian destroyers such pieces of junk??? is there anything in the series that would justify them being so horrible??? i just finished watching ds9 and don't remember anything in particular. i mean those things are pure garbage ((((

thx for any input

[Taurus498]

First of I absolutely love this mod

There is a couple of things that would make it much better experience for me. I like to play the extra large map but end up quitting halfway through the game because:
1) the other majors don't seem to continue expanding/colonizing, which means I easily colonize half the map while the AI sticks to their small areas. You mentioned to RSE_Dissy that their is an easy fix for this, can you please let me know what it is?
2) It also seems that the AI never builds starbases to defend their borders (is there a fix?).

Both of these two issues make the mid game far too easy, what I really want is a long and epic game against large Major empires

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

1. This fix is necessary but insufficient for the problem. So no, there is no fix yet.
2. Not (as) yet.

[DCER]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but one of the factors to AI expansion speed can also be the AI ship building sets. These can for instance hamper the AI at starting era level 1 where the AI only has one colony ship a time and builds endless numbers of scouts when it can't build a destroyer.

As it works now when the AI encounters a ship type on the list it can't build - it will instead build a replacement ship and get "stuck" building those until the type is available. I'm not sure this behaviour is optimal. It might be better if this were fixed to instead simply skip the unavailable types. This way the AI could continue building colony ships and have more of them at the same time even at level 1.

[Taurus498]

I see.... it's just that at the top of this page there is a quote from Thunderchero :/

RSE_Dissy wrote:
"AI expansion stuck to small maps?"

Thunderchero wrote:
"not sure what you mean if small maps expand good and large maps expand poorly. If so, Yes there is a fix for this (easy one even you could do) lol."

Is this fix that Thunderchero is talking about not sufficient?

What I have been doing lately, is playing the large map with me at level 3 tech and AI with level 5 on impossible, but the AI expands only a little bit more :/

[thunderchero]

what I was referring to is the "The AI Map Scan Matrix Reloaded"

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=618&p=26159&sid=654 ... 79f#p26159

at 0x1c44f change 19 to 34 (only do this to the large version of the trek.exe)

and as Spocks-cuddly-tribble stated this is not a fix but is necessary to help ai, but this was found after final release of this mod.

thunderchero

[thunderchero]

Hi everyone,

I guess sometime in the next few weeks I will release a small update for this mod

what I am looking for is a few suggestions of what might be needed.

here is my list so far (I will update this list if I agree to add your suggestion)

liberate a major races home system (done)
AI map scan (done)
new chat window fix (done)
Ram fix (current turns hull points of each ship was used) (done)
combat distance edit (smaller phasers, explosions and shields) (done)
New combat commands hold, recloak, retreat return fire with command ship override (no command ship needed for solo commands)(done)
add correct direction card TT (done)
add new planet ani and sun ani (done)
Disabling the chasing ships away / morale-boosting exploit (done)
Borg Invasion bug fix (done)
Cloak default fix for task forces (done)
Weapons "Jamming" Fix for Space Stations (done)
Cloak enabled for Edo God & Combat Drone (done)
Orbital Batteries defensive bonus against Obs (done)
Research Decay Bug-fix (done)
Stolen Ships - Crew Experience Bug-fix (done)
Ship Repair - Ally & Shipyard Bug-fix (done)
Instant-Terraforming Bug-fix (updated) (done)
Auto-Upgrading Ships (Options/Fixes) (done)
minor races: corrected difficuly level bias & pop growth (1-4) (done)
Outpost/Starbase for free bug-fix (done)
absurd AI offers fix (static bypass option) (done)
broken feature fix wrt starting pop of extra starting systems (done)
Liberating Native Systems (morale error fix - updated) (done)
Fixed AI checks for borg presence (done)

(done) is for my records

I know this list could grow so large I will have to push back release to 3-4 weeks or more

thoughts?

thunderchero

[Taurus498]

Awesome!!!

Am glad you are still working on this Thunderchero, I'm really enjoying this mod, and its going to be even better now that you integrating your Error Correction mod with it.

Here's some suggestions I can think of at the top of my head:

Make the AI build starbases.
If at all possible, a fix so that newer GPUs can run the game in Direct3D.
An option to always start in the middle of the map.
Get the AI to use working wormholes.
Extra music.
More minor races.
Allow more/all minor races in large map.
More ship types lol

I assume that most of the above isn't possible to fix, but it never hurts to ask.

PS: I would also like to thank you and Spocks-cuddly-tribble for the "The AI Map Scan Matrix Reloaded" fix, it has noticeably improved the AI expansion on the large map for me