Thanks! Thread - Haegemonia - Vector Prime mod for Haegemonia: The Solon Heritage

Greetings!

Just a little confidence boost to all who work on the mod. I am always amazed that whenever I think the mod is dead for good it rises again. Good to see that after all this time it is still active. Long story short thanks for the work I for one really appreciate it, though I do not know how much my word worth. And although I can say it easily as I have never had to contribute and still enjoy playing it, please keep up the good work.

Well, as you've probably already guessed, two people working on such a project means an awful dodgy timeline. We all have lives to look after, and it is easy to understand that this is far more important than developing a mod for our own entertainment. Although this may sound harsh, I reassure you that VP is fun to work on. We all have exams, we all have our own little problems that need to be dealt with, and so this results in enlengthened spans of inactivity.

Nevertheless, MU4 will definately be released. Afterwards - like dirt's news entry says, small bugfixes may come, but we would like to give the community a chance to shape the mod on its own. I'm planning this to be done via uploaded custom levels.

Thanks And this great mod will never be forgotten, at least by me

Hi Balazs thank you from me also

GOOD mod BUT...

As an old Haegemonia-Fan, I played it a lot back in 2002, I found it recently on GOG and bought it once again (unfortunately I couldn't find my cd anymore, but after 8 yrs thats probably not a surprise at all).

Anyway: A major blow to this good mod is the AI. After reading the mod summary regarding the new AI system, I was sorely disappointed to find out, that this AI is barely better than the vanilla one was. In fact the poor AI had a big contribution in killing this game back in the days and the AI is killing this mod right now. At least, if you are not interested in playing solely against humans. I played a 2v2 with a mate against two "hard" AIs - it's pathetic: There is a lack of aggression (didn't even need to built more than three fighter squads in my home system to defend the AI "attacks"), reasonable research (e.g. no capital ship design), building (e.g. no research station), unit movement (e.g. not using worm holes) and combat tactics (e.g. deploying fighter/bomber vs. battleships). That's just boring and forcing us to shelve this game just after a few hours. Compared to HW 2, the AI is (and was) just a (bad) joke. Making this mod really play- and enjoyable is modding the AI. I have no idea if this is a solvable task for you guys, but it would be a HUGE step forward into making this piece of software an hours-long gaming experience.

But besides that, I'm thanking you for your great efforts in supporting this good ol' game years after it's initial release. That's just AWESOME!

Well, this is our situation:
The overall "personality" of the Haegemonia AI is hardcoded in the executable, and is quite unchangeable.
There is a totally undocumented research and construction list that is alterable. With a good research list though, the AI can become substantially better.

Allornothing, you seem to be a pretty good player by the sound of it. Would you be willing to help us make a good AI? Check the other thread where I've mentioned that we're looking for good players who can share their gameplay with us.

Also, I am raising the bet - if you say that yes, you are willing to help us, I will put together an AI creator tool, just for you.

I'm not quite sure how I can help you creating a better AI. I checked the other thread, but just recording my building order won't help you at all, because right now it just reflects the lame AI. What you need to do as a first step (if possibly), is to make the AI much more aggressive. That would help a lot.

Someone wrote: Also, I am raising the bet - if you say that yes, you are willing to help us, I will put together an AI creator tool, just for you.

I appreciate that, but have to refuse. I'm not the kind of guy who likes beta testing or something like that. I'm just someone who likes to play good games and even better mods, basically one of your thankful customers.

Edited by: allornothing

Okay, so I've spent quite some time trying to alter the AI files. I've ended up changing the rebel alliance file so drastically that you might say it's an entirely new file. When tested on a 2 AIs vs. 1 good player (Friends level) map, they managed to win against the human player. On a second run (1 human + 1 old smuggler AI vs. 2 new rebel AIs) the human player won but only in a many hours long game.
The new AI file is still not a match for a human player, but it is as good as it can get. I will look into doing the same for the empire and the pirates/smugglers in a week.

You know what? I will try to help you because your effort is encouraging! What can I do? Please keep in mind, that I'm playing 2v2 vs two "difficult" AIs.

Btw: I tried to change some parameter via HE (map prey: changing teams (humans team 1, AI team 2) and caplimit up to 20) and it is now constantly crashing. Any ideas?

Edited by: allornothing

BBalazs: Such an AI editing tool could be great, since it would allow almost anyone to edit the AI and improve on it!

Hi folks, sorry to have kept you waiting for a couple of days.
The map prey is generally a not AI-friendly map, because it uses one system and in-system jump nodes to travel. Unfortunately, the AI is not programmed to use these jump nodes effectively. I'm not sure what causes the crashes, but we have already dealt with multiple crash causes for MU4. It'd be useful if you could tell me if you get an error message of any kind, or just a regular "program has stopped" message. Maybe you could try the SSE and MP fix.
Allornothing, the most helpful thing you could do now is: play a "perfect game" with the smuggler/pirate faction and make notes of everything you build and research. The most important thing is the order. You should start from Tech Level 1 upwards. We really need such a list for the smugglers/pirates because they are a different faction and they need a completely different approach to playing.

Dirtbag: I will see how much time I have on my hands and will try to come up with something.

Prey map:
It is probably the teams. I think that teams must be written exactly the defined way - Team1, Team2, etc. Your real best bet however is to set the team to SELECTABLE for all player empires. That way you can set the team in the Skirmish/Multiplayer menus. Upping the caplimit should be trivial and not a source of problems.

Edited by: BBalazs