It might simply be something that will only be perfected when Rebellion comes out. It sounds like some of the game mechanics will allow the flagship mod much more freedom in it's design.

Possibly true. Kinda sad that we have no idea what's coming or we would be ramping up for it. In the meantime, he's looking at changing the model for the Vasari Flagship if we can get the right one. Beyond that, Ryat has only made clear that he'll be playing with balance numbers. Beyond that is conjecture at this point.

Oh, and that partially covers NHDs answer.

Stant is actually listed as a contributor if I remember correctly. So be cool.

Yeah, I've contributed dick in comparison.

This is something I have a twisted opinion on, but it's a good general rule for survival.

Again, if you have suggestions, you can give them. What you have to keep in mind is that when you play a mod that's been out for some time and they have, for example, all the original abilities and classes of ships, they probably want to keep it that way for a reason. Poke around and get a feel for what it's about. Someone brought up the rebel fighters from Star Wars and you can probably guess why that was ignored.

I am wondering where you guys got the music in your mod. It is pretty cool, can I find it somewhere on youtube or is it custom made?

Just the Vasari one. SuperZero0 tried hard to give me what I wanted but that didn't quite work out. ZombieRus5 is seeing if he can get another for me.

Not currently.

@OriLord - Our mod is an enhancement mod. The vast majority of your suggestions will not be implemented. Some will and I am sorry if we don't post our IM/TeamSpeak meetings but we have discussed many issues, some of what you listed and some of which you haven't and what we are going to do about them. Its a lot of work and our time is limited by RL. As for our resident "troll" Stant123 he is a very valuable member of our team and if you attempt to insult him (or anyone else) again I will let him off his chain. Its not pretty and makes a big mess that has to be cleaned up, so please back off.

Mostly YouTube. Two Steps from Hell, and a few others plus some movie tracks (Transformers). When Carbon gets back he can help you more.

He's our music man.

Alright, mines. Mines mines mines. What the poop is with the mines?

I decided to attack a system. Before I did, I saved the game. I jumped my fleet in, and watched as they subsequently instantly exploded. All my frigates were gone, most of my cruisers were on the brink of death, and my capital ships were crippled, losing their mostly upgraded shields and half of their tier-12 health and tier-8 armor. All to a handful of dirt-cheap instantly-built low-tech mines.

So, I reload, and go in the back way. While attacking the planet, my overzealous fleet AI wanders too close to the mines and blows itself up. I manage to wrangle control and escape with a few losses, then set them to not move. I build 10 scout frigates, figuring that this used to be more then enough to clear out a minefield. I bring them in, make sure the auto-minesweep is set up, and let them go. They go up to the first mine, the detection ability runs... and... nothing. The mine wasn't detected.

I manually move some of the scouts closer, well within range of the minesweeper ability. Still nothing. I get about halfway to the mine, and it *finally* detects it. My fighters destroy it. I move to the next mine, but just a tiny bit too close. Scout ship blows up and dies. The rest of the scouts use their auto-ability and run over to scout the mines.... again, even though the mines are within range, they aren't detected.

So really, I'm hoping that the fact that mines are completely undetectable now is a bug, but what is with mines in the first place? They're cheap, easy to build, extremely low on the tech tree, and capable of utterly annihilating all but the most highly upgraded capital ships. There is absolutely no way to actually counter mines, meaning if the jump-in zone is mined up, the only way to actually get into it is to build a huge horde of scout frigates, throw them into the minefield, and watch them explode. That's it. Clearly not a lot of thought went into this one.

Mines were annoying in the past, but they weren't terribly powerful. This was countered by the fact that they have always been a huge pain in the ass to disarm. You used to be able to let one or two scout ships run around and they'd detect and destroy mines on their own. Now you can't, you have to micromanage them. And if you screw up, they instantly explode and die, no question.

Seriously now, what the hell.

That's probably it thanks. I was just curious as to why it occured.

In the American military anyway.

If the menu theme is the same in Entrenchment, (it's been a while since I've played Diplomacy, so I don't remember), then it's Ebla (I think) by ES Posthumus.

That sounds... frustrating. It's never happened like that to me, but I play the Entrenchment version.

As for the crazed flaming that's gone on previously can we try to keep it constructive please guys rather than falling in to little flame wars, it isn't clever and it doesn't help us keep track of useful comments which we often have to refer back to.

No, Stant doesn't have a "DS Team" avatar, no he's not an official member of the team for reasons he mentioned, however he is a valued member of the DS, hell the SoaSE community and does continually give to the mod/game without any of us ever asking him to, he is also very knowledgeable on everything SoaSE related. Please treat him with the respect you would everyone else you interact with.

Admittedly comments on the internet can sometimes come across differently from the way they are originally meant to but that is sadly just one pitfall of reading conversations than speaking them. So it's likely that all of this has just been a mis-communication error however please don't start ranting about others in threads that are used for development. Take it to Private Messages and question what was said there rather than in the public domain.

Anywho, back on topic...

The mines in Diplomacy had an upgrade to reduce the lag generated by the AI spamming them. Quite simply we allow 3x less mines in any given system (apart from the Pirate base at the moment). This in turn meant they needed to be much stronger than the originals.

After extensive testing on our end we set them to their current strengths now admittedly they are very powerful although isn't that kind of the idea of mines? I do agree however they can be somewhat incredibly destructive early on, late game they aren't much of a problem once you have an economy which affords the ability to send scouts in ahead of your fleets to check for mines / alternate routes to attack etc

I have considered weakening them somewhat as of late, however a balance needs to be found between being over powered early game and under powered towards late-game. As such a new technology (which increases the damage/blast radius of the mines) will need to be added in. This will take the extra levels from the mines as they stand at the moment and move them to a different technology further down the tech tree.

Before I get to your post, just let me say "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  That happens to me all of the time."  The first time it happens, yeah, it suck, but eventually you learn to just deal with it.  Okay, now to answering your questions. 

They were made to have to be dealt with.  When the mines are first purchased, they're really not all that bad, it's just when the mine improvement research is done, they turn into a fierce defense.

Good thing you saved, imagine how pissed off you'd be if you hadn't?  I'm guilty of that little maneuver.  Anyway, sounds like you ran into some of the upgraded variety.  Nasty aren't they?

Yeah, I've been thinking about looking into that actually.  It's been annoying the hell out of me for a while now, but since no one else complained about it, I just never bothered figuring I was the only one who was taking issue with it.

I feel ya.

Well, yes, it's a bug, the mines are in range and they're supposed to be detected, but they aren't, so...  The ability is set up to give the scout a range of 7500, whereas the buff is set up as something that get's upgraded with the first level range being 5125, the second 7500, and the third 10000.  As far as I can tell, there's nothing in the research items that upgrades this buff.  Soooooo...  Based on the original files from Entrenchment the ability range was 5000 and the buff range (the thing that actually does the work) is at 5125 and set up as a single level thing.  So the buff had a larger range then the ability.  I guess give me an hour or so (depending on how fast I can get my enemies to build mines) to change the buff so it matches the ability +125 like the original settings and see how it goes.  If it performs as I hope, I'll post a fix for everyone.

Well, actually, in my experience, a fully upgraded TEC scout can actually take a blast and limp away with over 600HP left.  Maybe I'm not hitting the fully upgraded versions of the mines, but several hours into the game, I'd hope the factions that I'm fighting have researched these things...

I'm looking at the files as I type this and fixing them, and will be testing as soon as I post this and I'll get back to you.

Okay so 9 vicious AI's on 8x speed get mines built pretty quick....  Anyway...  Here's the fix, the scouts jump in and act as legit mine sweepers.  Still won't protect you from jumping in on top of a mine, but that bad luck aside, they'll get down to business.

http://sites.google.com/site/steelers086/gamefiles/ScoutDetectFix.rar

Unrar to your desktop (3 files) cut and paste them (overwriting the current files) into your Mods-Diplomacy v1.2\Distant Stars (D) 0.99 B2\GameInfo folder...  Or what ever versions of the mod your using...  Put it into that GameInfo folder.

I have not insulted DS or any team member nor his qualities.But dont expect me to stay back when one clearly beahves immaturely.

It is not my fault.Why is not somebody flamed when he/she says somehting like "what the hell about those mines?"

I took SOGE as an EXAMPLE,I dont want this to be radiacally changed,alas I did not know that DS does not want to get out of the borders of vanila Sins,ie no new abilities.

Nevertheless,I apologise if I created unnecessary flame.It was not my intention.However,I might suggest that maybe only some of you should answer user feedback,ie the guys who are in the development,not some random dude or a mapmaker.

Anyway,that is up to you.

.I play many games beside Sins and most mods for them have no clear idications of what they really aim but what they changed.I have seen many graphics mods that pondered with balance and many balance mods that pondered with graphics.

Neverthless,at least you agree that maybe advent need some change regarding phase penetrationj,or resource focus.

i really hope you buff the radiance,you know the reasons why it needs to be buffed.

Where I get the music? Alot of places TBH. That is just a random selection of over 2.5GB of music ive added to my local version of DS.

I think I was sure to include I think, it might be a sad that im not 100% sure, Transformer stuff, Supreme Commander, Mass Effect, Total Annilation, MechWarrior 2, more E.S. Posmuthes, maybe some Two Steps from Hell.

At any rate, its wide spread of music, wish I could add more for yall without making the download extreamly large.

Shew....

Love this mod! Keep up the great work!

But you did.  You called me a troll.  That is insulting to me, and as you have seen if you read everyone's replies, you couldn't be further from the truth.

Who behaved immaturely besides you?  Certainly not me.  I chose to answer only part of your question because I was planning on only making a quick stop in and then head off to bed since I had been up all night waiting for my new nephew to be born and then hanging out with family following that, but you took an innocent explanation of something and blew up over it and are still trying to make it out that you're the victim.  Stop that.  Everybody sees through it.

But it is your fault though.  I politely answered you explaining the differences between the mods and the troubles with balancing each type without critiquing anything that you had wrote, and you got upset because I didn't answer all of your questions and came back on ranting assuming I was just some random person in the crowd. (and it sounds like you still think that for some reason...)

Because Frostiken hasn't come back on here yet bitching up a storm over something that's really not that big of a deal.  Besides, you weren't flamed for it either, and you're still not being flamed for it, so stop acting like it.

Maybe you missed this part of my original comment:

In actuality there are quite a few new additions, however, as I was saying, we're not changing the base game because this is an enhancement mod.  We are only tweaking what's already there trying our best to achieve balance, while at the same time adhering to what the Sins Devs passed down to us.  Unlike in SoGE, they got to start from scratch and build from there maintaining whatever balance they felt like having.  That's all I said before, so there was no need to get upset over it.  To further that thought, in a total replacement mod, the only similarities between Sins and whatever mod is the engine and how the mod is built.  Nothing else is the same, hence the reason why it's called a total replacement mod...  They got rid of everything and started over.

Apology accepted.

Well, if you're referring to me, I'm in the development.  Just not officially.  You did see my fix I posted right before your last one, right?  If you go back through the pages you'll see that I've been posting all kinds of fixes.  When I think something needs to be fixed, like the ocean planet icons, or the new faction icons not showing up, or the galaxyscenariodef file being fixed up almost a year ago, when I see a change that needs to be made, I do it, then I post a copy for everyone else.  If you'd care to notice that when people ask if Vanilla DS will ever be updated, they're usually told to PM me to arrange getting a copy.  I also do support and trouble shooting, map making, lore writing, testing, and a plethora of other things.  I'm just a nice guy like that.  Perhaps you saw me post this info earlier?  Would it help you if I had a different avatar?  Like this one?

The problem with that is when resized to 100 by 100 you can't read any of that very well. 

You see, the reason why I CHOOSE not to be on this team or any other team or use an avatar like that is because when I get sick and tired of someone, I can tell them off if I so desire.  I don't want my antics to reflect poorly on everyone else, and I've made this information perfectly clear for some time now.  That and I don't like being given deadlines since I never know just how much time I'm going to have to give at any one sitting.  Plus I like to freelance from time to time and do tiny bits and pieces to other mods.  There again, I take no credit for my work because I do it for the fun of it, not for the recognition.

Make a sound mod.