Ultimate Dominion Mod 3 |Need combat advice please

[Jupiter]

Hello all,

first of all big thanks for creating the Ultimate Dominion Mod 3!

i just downloaded [ All in one #2 ] 3 weeks ago and wanted to make a fun project, which i only need some input and advice for combat.
Ofc i also would like to play some normal games with anyone here.

I'm trying to rebuild the fight scene of DS9 when Federation + Romulans + Klingons fight against Dominion + Cardassians - Sacrifice of Angels.

I already did some tests and it seems, 400 or maybe 500 ships is the limit to my CPU.
Not to mention that i only succeded in my 8th test.
Bluescreens, game just crashing, etc.
And the calculating time of each battle is around 5 minutes.
20 hours testing time and i think i finally got it.

But i think i could even go up to 1000 ships, at least wanna try.
It seems the number of ships only influences that calculating time, and crashes only occure if you use Strafe or Harry maneuver (like i think i also read somewhere, that this maneuvers cause game crashes with many ships).

I can't really record the game battle, as the CPU cant really calculate real-time, but recording the playback mode works just fine, can also do some camera work from many different perspectives and angles then.

So, sorry for the long intro, here is the question:
In my first tests i tried to put together varying ships from all the races, and although the fed+kling+rom party won, i think they won too high.
This being a test i also didnt really count the ships, but just put them together by feeling, so it became 270 ships on fed side and 170 ships on cardi side.
But those Dominion battle ships looked really bad, seems the fed sovereign class is not bad as well, although i only build 9 ^^

So, around 500, later maybe more ships, in that constellation, all Elite to Legendary, not really being able to use Strafe, Harry, Circle, Evade, etc. just the direct Attack modes Charge + Assault, what would a balanced combat look like (also i try to use mostly the ships also seen in Tv, which i have to find out which exactly those are, and i think there are no Breen ships in that mod, but im ok with Galaxy D, Defiant, Nebula, Prometheus, Akira, Klingon battleship Vorcha + battleship and Bird of Prey, Cardassian Galor class and small fighters, Dominion Battleships and ofc the most famous small fighters they also used to ram a Galaxy D)?

Anyone knows that from the top of his head?
Otherwise i will just add 9 Battleships for the Dominion and 18 more Command Cruisers to the Cardis.


I might even try to set up a battle with all the other combat tactics, but i need to automate much more for that, starting a 5 players multiplayer with myself already takes like 30 minutes, lol.

I also added a few pics of my current try, video will be uploaded later, it is currently rendering, then i have to cut it, add music (i couldnt play the ingame music, was too much for the CPU lol), then remove personal information and so on ... might be another few days.

[thunderchero]

there is a "stack limit" for combat, I am still not sure what exactly it is limiting though.

but it is not the ship total. might be polygon or palette limit?

I have only heard of this happening twice. (711 ships and 576 ships)

here is an example of crash log you will get when limit is reached

Version Under Test: 72
File: stack.c, Line: 69, stack->bottom != NULL
Initialize State: 31
Player Empire: 4 Starting Seed: 1590353800
Galaxy shape: 2 Galaxy Size: 2
Turn State: 20
Turn Number: 194

[Deimos]

As much as I would love to see a big battle between hundreds of ships, even with the MPR++..thing, I find it will still crash to desktop when clicking turn, not always right away, but sometimes after a few battle turns.

It's a shame because they can be fun to watch!

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

might be polygon or palette limit?

File: stack.c, Line: 69, stack->bottom != NULL

You might be on the right track. Looking at the code context, it might be max textures loaded at the same time.

The crash log code reads inter alia loaded texture/palette data to create some 98h bytes entry size list for each object to display.

My untested data here should increase max Palette Limit and limit for simultaneous palette/texture usage: viewtopic.php?p=54697#p54697