MOD: Slow Start (for both DL & DA)

The Rusty Gamer · March 28, 2007, 07:56

This mod slows you down at the start by: increasing the cost of starports and various ship modules 5x and increasing ship module sizes; decreasing number of colonists allowed on colony and troop modules; reducing initial ship range to a minimum and scattering range increases through the tech tree; staggering Stellar Cartography; halving initial industry and research points on colonies; and slowing down logistics early on but having it increase exponentially over time.

Unzip into your mods folder.

The Rusty Gamer · March 28, 2007, 19:19

1.0

Spaceports cost 5 times as much.

Colony modules, constructor modules and mining modules cost 5 times as much.

All colonies now begin with half as much "automatic" industrial and research points.

In the unmodded game, Logistics goes 3, 6, 9, 12, 15.

For this mod, it is 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21.

Note I've added a 6th Extreme Logistics tech to get the 21.

1.1

I have staggered Stellar Cartography research by dividing it into I and II.

Stellar Cartography I is theorectical or preliminary research for seeing all the stars. This is the tech that races get now that got the original Stellar Cartography before. And it's the prerequisite for Sensors.

Stellar Cartography II costs 10x its predecessor but gives you Stellar Cartography proper.

The Rusty Gamer · April 1, 2007, 01:44

1.2

Added two in-between range techs to research - basic range & extended range, interleaved with the life support techs.

The unmodded game range was 20, 40, 50, 50

For this mod it is 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60

The Rusty Gamer · April 6, 2007, 19:49

1.3

Range ability of life support modules on ships now begin slowly and increase exponentially.

Standard Game: 6, 8, 10, 12, 14
Slow Start Mod: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15

Ship range now begins with a decrease of 50%!

I am planning to tweak the tech tree with range settings next.

The Rusty Gamer · April 7, 2007, 06:08

1.4

Decreased logistics by 3 and drastically decreased ship range by 250 at the beginning of the game!

Restored the life support tech tree to be as per the standard game (though not the changes to life support modules) and added a new tech branch for ship range. There are 30 of them called Range I - Range XXX. Each one adds another 10 to your basic range and the prerequisite for Range I is Xeno Engineering.

This has been done to have near minimum range at the beginning of the game and a slow increase over time. Note that there is no guarantee of any increase in range after a range tech has been researched, particularly the early ones. It partly depends on your ship configurations and the size of the universe.

The Rusty Gamer · April 12, 2007, 00:11

1.5

Removed the Range branch of the tech tree I'd created and scattered range increases around the rest of the tree.

This is because the AI didn't know to persue Range techs and therefore they could become sitting ducks to being attacked but not having the reach to retaliate.

Incidentally, on smaller universes, there is a threshold before range increaes begin to take effect. For instance, on small universes, it is about -80 whereas on Gigantic Universes, a range increase has an instant effect. Since I have set the intital range to -250, you can see that it may take a while on some games. This isn't necessariliy a bad thing because you should not be able to move around the entire universe early on.

I am thinking, however, of revamping this whole idea. It may only be for DA though, and not DL.

The Rusty Gamer · April 14, 2007, 00:38

1.6

Ok, I'm really happy with what I've just done here. I've finally got the range to work the way I want to.

Removed the -3 for logistics from 1.4 version of mod. It is now the standard starting value.

Set initial range to -100 instead of -250

Reset the increased ranges in the tech tree to better suit this purpose (took most them out). It's not a pain to research range now. The difference is instantly noticeable for scouts (see later).

Increased the size and cost of all life support modules 5x.

Stripped all ship designs of life support. This is to stop them from having more than basic range. Also the new sizes wouldn't fit the current designs in any case - this has been done deliberately. If you want to add extra range to a ship, you need to manually design it, probably with a bigger hull.

OK, this is the sneaky bit - gave an inbuilt range increases to tiny hulls of +1 (equivalent to basic life support). This is so that tiny ships like the Scout can go a little further. I also had to change to a tiny hull for the scout in DA because it was using a small hull, but without life support, it won't need it. The point was to make scouts more important to build and to actually be the explorer ships, not the bigger hulled ships whose range has now been nobbled.

Increased the size of some ship modules +5 - they are, colony, constructor, mining, troop, and advanced troop. This is partly to fill the gap created by removal of life support, and also to help prevent smaller hulls being used for the modules. ie: You could actually fit a colony module into a small hull in DA but not now!

Decreased the maximum number of colonists that a colony or troop module can carry from 500 to 100! The advanced troop module has been reduced from 1000 to 250.

That's it! I think you'll like the changes. Let me know.

Also, be free to post suggestions here or let us know of anything you don't feel works right.

The Rusty Gamer · April 14, 2007, 22:27

1.61

Removed one troop module from troop ship designs as they didn't all fit after resizing.

Changed some screen titles etc to make it clear you are in a mod.