Balance of Power Review

Balance of Power Mod; showcase and support/discussion/questions/suggestions/reviews

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Grifman
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Post by Grifman »

Martok wrote:In addition, the other four powers seem to better compete with the Alliance's ability to gobble up minor races (although the Feds & Ferengi still definitely have the advantage in this area).
I'm not finding this to be true. I'm hoping Gowron can take another look at this. I'm finding minor races all over the place that haven't been assmiliated into the other empires.
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Jral
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Post by Jral »

Grifman wrote:
Nope, most of these minors would have been conquered or have joined the Federation in an attempt to maintain some sort of autonomy.

Well lets see......
I agree that some of the lesser minors would have had to submit to become members of one of the major powers or have been conquered by them. However; there are a lot of what would be termed as minor powers in Star Trek fiction of our supposed galaxy that would have been incredibly difficult to subdue.

Like these interstellar powers for instance:
The First Federation, The Talarian Republic, The Nyberite Alliance, The Tzenkethi Coalition, The Gorn Confederation, The Zakdorn, The Sonya, The Sheliak Corporate, The Breen, The Patriarchy, The Hydran Kingdoms, The Lyran Star Empire, The Mirak Star League, The Tamarian Republic, The Tholian Assembly.

Some of the above are mentioned or briefed on in TOS, TNG & DS9 and all are located in what is known as the Alpha/Beta quadrants.
Until the appearance of the Borg and finally the Dominion the above so called minor powers were more than capable of holding their own.

After all you can`t usually fight more than one opponent at a time and this is also true of our world today.
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Grifman
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Post by Grifman »

Jral wrote:Grifman wrote:
Nope, most of these minors would have been conquered or have joined the Federation in an attempt to maintain some sort of autonomy.

Well lets see......
I agree that some of the lesser minors would have had to submit to become members of one of the major powers or have been conquered by them. However; there are a lot of what would be termed as minor powers in Star Trek fiction of our supposed galaxy that would have been incredibly difficult to subdue.

Like these interstellar powers for instance:
The First Federation, The Talarian Republic, The Nyberite Alliance, The Tzenkethi Coalition, The Gorn Confederation, The Zakdorn, The Sonya, The Sheliak Corporate, The Breen, The Patriarchy, The Hydran Kingdoms, The Lyran Star Empire, The Mirak Star League, The Tamarian Republic, The Tholian Assembly.
This would be relevant if these interstellar powers were in the game, but most aren't. We were talking about minor races in the game, not the ST universe.
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Jral
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Post by Jral »

Point taken.......

I still prefer that minors can hold on to their autonomy for longer as seems to happen in BoP. Some players may not like this oddity as it did`nt usually occur in the vanilla version of the game. :)
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Grifman
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Post by Grifman »

Jral wrote:Point taken.......

I still prefer that minors can hold on to their autonomy for longer as seems to happen in BoP. Some players may not like this oddity as it did`nt usually occur in the vanilla version of the game. :)
The problem is that it unbalances the game. Because so many minors stay independent with the AI making no effort to conquer or seduce them, it is very easy for the human player to do so once he discovers them.

It's the only spoiling my enjoyment of this mod. I'm also curious as to how this could be happening, as modders currently can't really touch the AI. Somewhere, somehow though, Gowron's changed something that's impacted how the AI's deal with the minor races. I'd be interested in what it could be.
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Post by Jral »

That is a very interesting point about the AI.
I wonder what has been impacted and by what.
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Post by Martok »

Grifman wrote:The problem is that it unbalances the game. Because so many minors stay independent with the AI making no effort to conquer or seduce them, it is very easy for the human player to do so once he discovers them.

Yeah, I'll admit the human player does seem to have more of an advantage with getting minor races (via either diplomacy or conquest). I'm nearly always the first one to possess the necessary economic and/or military strength to go out and buy/conquer minor races; the AI empires generally seem to be left in the dust in this regard.

Grifman wrote:It's the only spoiling my enjoyment of this mod. I'm also curious as to how this could be happening, as modders currently can't really touch the AI. Somewhere, somehow though, Gowron's changed something that's impacted how the AI's deal with the minor races. I'd be interested in what it could be.

I have a couple theories on that:

1.) Since orbital batteries in BOP are significantly beefed up, it's probably quite a bit harder for the computer-controlled empires to conquer minor races.

2.) I've noticed that in BOP, minor races don't seem to respond to gifts unless you've forked over at least 3000 credits -- I therefore usually hand over the $3000 all at once (instead of spreading it out). I'm guessing that perhaps the AI isn't aware of this, and so winds up taking longer to make friends with minor races (since I suspect it only hands over the minimal 1000 credits at a time).
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Post by Badbru »

I think it's more likely to be point two. Changing the gift values to increments of 1000 up to a max of 5000 would appear like a good idea but I didn't mind that some minors were cheap to buy off and others expensive in vanilla. I've also noticed that they don't really respond to 1000 credit gifts, and that on the turn one of your proposals arrive (friendship, affiliation, membership) it's much more likely to be successfull if it's accompanied with a 1000 or more gift regardless of how much money the proposal went out with.
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Post by jaif »

It's probably #1. The AI probably has a set strategy for dealing with minors, based on how powerful the orbital batteries used to be. Change that value, and the AI sends too few ships and dies.

I wish I had time to experiment and watch the behavior, but I'll bet the AI empires are sending waves of ships, each wave too small to succeed.

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Post by stardust »

An Interesting theory, Jaif. But, though the Orbitals have been tuned up somewhat, the AI are sending the best ships in their arsenal to deal with them, rather than some 2 bit rustbucket relic of a cruiser that they used to.

I remember someone actually doing a chart of which empires had weaknesses when going against orbitals at given levels for this mod. I think it was on the old forum though. If i also remember right, the Klingon's final battleship was pretty well impervious until the oppo got lv 12 in energy so something ridiculous :lol:
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Post by Gowron »

Grifman wrote:BoP is a great mod, but I am noticing one thing that seems a bit strange. In vanilla it seemed to me that the AI's were pretty good at conquering the minor races. But so far in my game as the Feds, I'm finding minor races all over the place that are still independent. In some cases they are totally surrounded by another race, but the AI doesn't seem to care.
BoP does not change the AI-to-minor diplomacy directly, but it takes more cash to bribe them into joining an empire. Maybe that makes the AI slower at getting minors. I'll have a look at it, thanks for reporting :)
Jral wrote:Oh, how does that Hall of Fame do its scoring anyhow........?
Nobody knows ;)
Martok wrote:I've noticed that in BOP, minor races don't seem to respond to gifts unless you've forked over at least 3000 credits
They do respond to minimum gifts, but the attitude bar is not accurate enough to display every change. Give them 1000 credits every turn and you'll see that it works :)
stardust wrote:If i also remember right, the Klingon's final battleship was pretty well impervious until the oppo got lv 12 in energy so something ridiculous :lol:
It's weapon tech, not energy ;)
And yes, the Negh'Var is kind of hard to take down ^^
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Grifman
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Post by Grifman »

Gowron wrote:
Grifman wrote:BoP is a great mod, but I am noticing one thing that seems a bit strange. In vanilla it seemed to me that the AI's were pretty good at conquering the minor races. But so far in my game as the Feds, I'm finding minor races all over the place that are still independent. In some cases they are totally surrounded by another race, but the AI doesn't seem to care.
BoP does not change the AI-to-minor diplomacy directly, but it takes more cash to bribe them into joining an empire. Maybe that makes the AI slower at getting minors. I'll have a look at it, thanks for reporting :)
Thanks, I love your mod, this is the only flaw that I've seen. Other than that, it's really superb as a mod that doesn't add alot of new things, but more enhances and fixes the original.
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Post by stardust »

Oh yeah...I always get that mixed up with the Orbitals..

finally got back onto giving this mod another go at long last. All races on t5 impossible, randoms on, and i'm the Klingons. i've just wiped the ferengi off the face of the map after turn 60 something.
(they were on my doorstep, being a nuisance and decided to declare war simply to bugger their trade routes up :twisted:)
only problem was, in spite of me having taken all ther dilithium colonies, they were still building ships like billyo.

Even when i invaded these last colonies and made a clean invasion (straight in, a few Negh'vars to soak up the Orbitals and tt's so to not do too much damage)

I know on other mods and vanilla the Ai can conjure up dilith in places it's not meant to, but usually when i come across these colonies and invade the refinery's intact. this time they weren't.
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Post by The_Nighthawk »

It's more likely in the other mods/vanilla you had a scout in the group blockading the orbitals, which is the bug that triggers the extra dilithium. Not so much in BoP with the useless scouts, especially if you're the Klingons with the Negh'var.

As far as I know (from stuff I've read here) the AI simply doesn't need a dilithium source to produce ships.
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Post by Martok »

Gowron wrote:
Martok wrote:I've noticed that in BOP, minor races don't seem to respond to gifts unless you've forked over at least 3000 credits
They do respond to minimum gifts, but the attitude bar is not accurate enough to display every change. Give them 1000 credits every turn and you'll see that it works :)


Cool; good to know. I guess I just wasn't patient enough to hand out 1000 credits per turn for 3 turns in a row. I always just gave out 3000 credits at once instead. :)
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