26.5.06

DemoDictMod b8


I.) Mod Idea
I'm a little bit bored that more than 95% take Uni. Uni is simply too strong in 1.31. Therefore this mod wants to help the dict and demo races by better MapBalance (III.), availabe Morale Techs (IV.) and new Racepick costs (V.).

II.) Installation
1. Find the Install.exe on your Moo2 CD and double click it to start the DOS installer. (INSTALL.EXE....NOT setup.exe or the autoinstall. If u dont have install.exe on your Moo2 CD use the win-installation and copy this rkernel.com file in your moo2 directory and proceed.)
b) Apply the v1.31 patch
c) Apply the v1.40 patch
Unzip the DDmodb8.zip into your moo folder. NO BACKUP IS NECESSARY! The new files (different file names) can coexist with the 1.40 patch.

Test the Oriondd.exe ---> Singleplayer should work already.

2. Multiplayer via DosBox:
Instead of orion2~1 (last line of step 8 in this guide, btw that is the exe name of the1.4 version) you can simply paste the exe name of the mod:
oriondd

III. Map Balance
The Orange Mod is quite popular recently and it is even used in the ladder. I have implemented some of its ideas in DDb8, mainly to help techbased races which cannot afford to build outposts at start:
a) Brown Stars are defacto Red Stars now.
b) I have removed all unguarded UltraRich planets. (They are rich or abundant now.)
c) UltraRich planets have now a basic prod of 7 per worker instead of the previous 8.
d) Tiny and small planets are now slightly larger. Basic Gaia size for tiny and small are 5 and 10 in regular moo. In this mod they are 8 and 12.
e) I have slightly increased the climate modifiers besides Terran and Gaia.
The effects of the mods d) and e) are summarized in the following table.

DDb8 MaxPop Values (click it to enlarge):

See this post for details how the max pop values are calculated.

IV. Techs
Just 3 small changes with respect to Morale Techs, 1.31 values in brackets:
Holo Sim 400 (900)
Virtual Reality Network 900 (4500)
Psionics 650 Sociology (2750 Biology)

Additionally, Neural Scanners and Telepathic Training were swapped. (Otherwise it is too painful to tech holo sims.)

V. Racepicks
The AI Races and Racepick costs are identical to the DC Mod.

DDb8 AI Races (click it to enlarge):


DDb8 Racepicks (click it to enlarge):

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I'm surprised to see there have been no comments on the DD mod. I've recently played a few single player games with it, and I get the impression that Creatives get the most help from DD. Getting Holo Sim 900RP earlier is excellent for all non-Uni races, and the boost it gives to research (0.6RP per scientist, and I transfer 1 industry worker to science) makes it possible to get the next Computers level 1-2 turns earlier - and at that point Creatives get both Supercomps and VRN! Then Creative begins to have the best features of Uni and Demo: no more "no Barracks" penalty at new or just-conquered colonies; another boost to research; and more cash income. The research boost speeds up the race to Atm Renewer, Zort and Nanodiss, at which point the Creative is almost producing like Unitol.

When I play Creative I use Lithovore. I've used Corion to play the same maps with Cre+Lith, Cre+Aqua+Demo and Cre+Aqua+Uni, and Cre+Lith has usually been ahead around turn 100 - even if I cheated by giving the Aquas more Tundras and the Liths more Arids, an adjustment which IMO gives Aquas more benefit than if both races get the same number and size of Barrens. Lith's freedom from farming and freighter building (except for housing colonies) boosts research a lot and construction noticeably; its pop is maybe 5% smaller at turn 100, but all doing something useful instead of farming.

Cre+Lith has to accept Dict government at the standard 10 picks. I haven't yet tried it with 14 picks, but I might still prefer Cre+Dict+Lith+AHW(+RHW+LHW) to Cre+Demo+Lith(+whatever), as AHW gives a 2RP boost per scientist and Demo gives a 1.5RP boost, which is significant in the first 100 turns 51-100 as almost all the scientists are on the HW for almost all the time (e.g. 0.5RP x 14 scientists x 50 turns = a 350RP advantage) - and the Liths with AHW get the vital Auto Facs, basic ship techs and Colony Ship faster.

After initial colonisation the farming races probably go for Soil Enrichment (400RP), while Lith+AHW goes for Computers; and later I think for Cre+Dict+Lith+AHW(+RHW+LHW) Sociology is a better path: Psionics (Sociology) + TeleTraining (Computers, same level as HoloSim) gives the same spying boost as Neural Scanner, plus another +10 morale for Dict - making it easier to get Stock Exchanges when needed, DemoCash eat your heart out!

These are just my own observations from a few single-player games, plus a bit of arithmetic. IMO getting both Supercomp and VRN is huge. What have others found?

Anonymous said...

link is dead

Jenna Da Capo said...

Do you have any new links? I want to try out those mods!