The goal is to fix the imbalance with the small patchy nebula that the AI can't use effectively and make fighting in nebula more of a status effect like in Moo2 so there's tactical consideration for where you engage enemy fleets. In the mean time, if you hover over the system star, the tooltip does give you an indication of the probability you will see a nebula in combat. Minimal means that you shouldn't see a nebula most of the time, but the random generation of them can lead to hitting more than you expect.

I believe it's fully intentional. I've seen similar patterns in games like Distant Worlds 2 and it allows for a level of uncertainty and cold war shenanigans without a binary choice between peace/war. It does sometimes lead to war though, since you'll take a diplomatic penalty for attacking their ships and that can tip you into bad relations and eventually war.

I'm not planning to scrap the nebula resize, but you are correct that they are showing up much too often. That's a result of some randomization code the game has that I wasn't aware of that can result in nebulae being generated for a battle even if the star you are around has the hazard level set to none. Sol is updating that code in UCP so that it is subtractive rather than additive which will fix the issue.

Ah fair. Well i guess as such the opportunistic part is as such in tune with their style.
I guess its then more a flaw of the base game that attacking someone elses fleet dont lead to war.

Another actual point of feedback regarding the mod, is that its super obnoxious when shields dont seem to work in half the galaxy? It can be its bad luck, but i have had them offline in 3 different systems in a row now. With how big a tech investment shields are, i think it would be a better idea to just scrap the nebula mechanic entirely. Personally i really dont feel like it adds anything positive to the game. If Hard Shields then needs more purpose, then possibly they could also be made to protect against bonus damage against shields upgrades.

So the more technical answer is that the personalities have settings for defensiveness and opportunistic. Gnolam has one or both fairly high for all three possible personalities. Opportunistic means they will take advantage of situations like a lone scout or colony ship without an escort they can kill without starting a war. Defensiveness generally means they don't like other factions in their territory. In your situation, you have a shared system. They see that as their territory not a shared neutral space more or less, combined with the traits above, you have a fairly high chance of them attacking stuff that's not around a planet or a outpost even while friendly. They only way to ensure it doesn't happen is a Non Aggression pact.

I see. The situation -feels- super weird, as im both really friendly with the gnomes, and trading with them, while they also attack my ships the moment they tries to leave the planet in the system we got shared control over.

That's not necessarily funky ai behavior but there could be a lot of factors at play. Each faction in 5x and Tactical mod have multiple different personalities that could impact the behavior, especially if you move a combat fleet through their territory and they think they can take it out. Tactical mod generally improves the ai blueprints so the higher fleet strength may make them feel confident in attacking too.

There is possibly something funky going on with the AI though? Well i dont know if its baseline behavior. But for some obscure reason a faction i got a decently positive relation with is attacking my ships when they move into range of its fleet. I have seen random scout killing before. But not this.

Glad to hear it!

Seems UCP was updated a while ago >.<
That solves it. Thanks.

If it's locking up on pirates, definitely check to see if ucp is installed correctly. UCP gives pirates dynamic ship designs that both 5x and tactical mod use. If thsts not there it could cause a crash

Thanks for the advice.
I will give it a try to move the tactical mod.
As i have in the past completed games with the UCP installed.
But the game started crashing after i installed diverse specials and Tactical mod.

In the game before i had the game lock up on fighting a specific group of pirates.
If that says anything about what might be wrong.
But if this dont work ill try and reinstall then report back if that was it.

@lord_khaine: The only think I can see in your ordering is that tactical mod should be before split tech tree, but I don't think that would cause any crashes reversed since I don't modify the tech tree, just the function of a few colony projects.

The likely cause (as in 99% of cases) is that UCP isn't fully installed. You have to follow the read me and set it up after subscribing because it's a code patch. Running UCP partially installed or not at all would probably end with crashes.

I found the concept of this mod really interesting.
But i have had a string of crashes around turn 80-150ish.
The mods om running are..

5x Ultimate Balance mod
Unofficial code patch
Diverse specials lite 2.5 5XUCP compatible
5X UCP compatibility mod
Split Tech tree
Tactical Mod

In that order. Any of them that should not be playing nice with the Tactical mod?

Hey BiIL! I'm glad you are enjoying the mod! I am looking into how to make them a bit less common for 3.8 because I agree they show up more than I like but I won't be reducing their size. The are intended as a status effect. The AI doesn't understand them and I prefer the MOO2 full coverage method to keep things fair. Currently four of the eight star types have nebula's set to zero, but the game has some random logic that can add multiple or even remove them that is applying to all stars. The result is I can never guarantee stars without nebula even when they should be. The net result is that early shields value is reduced a lot more than it should be. I did add probability to the star tooltips that should give you more of an idea about how often you'll see the nebula.

Recently, I have found the new nebula sizes to be a bit problematic. I understand the intention behind the change, but have nonetheless run into some concerns. These primarily regard early game shielding and its effectiveness.

While it is possible to somewhat avoid systems where nebulae are present, when nebulae do appear they easily span the whole map, leaving no room for clever maneuvering (such as luring your enemy into the nebula) while also nullifying the effect of having better shields than your opponent has.

Essentially, the size in particular feels a bit extreme, and is more along the lines of a 'status effect', as opposed to a sizable battlefield hazard.

P.S. This is my first time commenting here, so I wanted to say thank you for this wonderful mod. It has allowed me to enjoy many more hours of this game and brought me back to playing it after I had stopped for a couple years.

PD got some tweaks and I found that drones were just getting wiped out. They've been hard to get sorted and in my testing always seem weaker choices.

@vaaish
Curious why the hp increase for heavy fighters. Before now fighters/bombers are very strong already. Did you up some PD or something I'm not seeing? Or is the thought to strengthen defenses? I use carrier type designs a lot so maybe I'm just used to offense.

Oh or maybe you have AI ship designs using them more?

If you need any help, send me a friend request and I'll help walk you through it.

csmnstoica, I'm sorry your command points dropped in the middle of your campaign but I can only maintain a single version on steam. There's no rollback available here. I do keep all previous releases on nexus mods linked up in the description above.

Just extract the zip file into your documents > Master of Orion > Mods folder on your PC and in the mod menu, enable the local version of tactical mod instead of the workshop version.

I found the previous version on Nexus - how do I install it since I have all mods from steam?
Please just upload it to the workshop

@csmnstoica on the modding place mddb? the previous version

Can you please upload the previous version?
My command points in current campaign went from 500/700 to 1200/700 after the update

Cool, love to hear any feedback you have with the update if you do jump in!

Whoa, a good excuse to play the game again. Been playing Stellaris a bit as I wanted Emperor running big show feel, but been eyeing MOO.

3.7 has launched! Please let me know any feedback you have as this might be one of the biggest meta shifts in a while.

yes great... i am looking for...

Slight delay in release of 3.7, I'll have it released this weekend.

You're quite welcome! I'm glad you've been enjoying the mod. If you have any suggestions or feedback, I'd love to hear it!

thank you so much for this mod, it really gave the game a whole new strategy and its own unique tactical part of in-game battles. This is amazing. We love combat mods for this game. The good ones are specially rare in the entire list of all mods avaliable

yeah, it is less of an impact as the game goes on. it can be a bit surprising if you don't expect it. Im still watching the costs in case its too heavy and ill shift it if it is.

That makes sense.
It's just, I saw my Ironclad need 178 production (4 forward Neutron C, 4 360 Laser PD, C I Shields and some electronics, not full), while my BombK was at 180 production (3 360 Nucl., some bombs and such). So my dilemma was obviously more HP og heavier weapons.

And thinking forward, when the Ironclad fills up it's tech suit, the costs will normalize, I'd wager.

Thank you for insta response time!

hey cutehalo, there are alot of factors with production costs that could result with them being the same costs. i reworked most of the weapon costs in 3.6 to make loadouts more thoughtful since missiles are much better early game due to computer adjustments to better mirror moo2 progression. the idea is you can have powerful missile ships but replacing losses takes longer so theres still a place for cheaper cannon based ships.

Hi.
Just checking: My Frigates and BK's should be smaller vessels HP-wise, but in production cost they are the same as Destroyers/Ironclads, albeit on a lower tech level.
Is it just the fact that Missiles are so expensive, that it makes the Prod.cost equal?

Otherwise, love to use this. Thanks for making one of the greatest games even better!

Thanks!

its sooo mega... thx... the combat is giga cool... the original is good... your mod is mega. thx. the game is with the mods awesome...

I hope you enjoy, and I'd love to hear what you think after giving it a go!

cool, will give this a spin

I hope you enjoy it!

hey, i am looking big forward too the new update.... amizing

It will work in MP games, but you'll still only have Autoresolve with battles. Sol looked into controllable MP tactical battles long ago and determined it couldn't be done without a massive effort.

does this work online?

@Nathaniel: I can't find any references to UCP being installed. Without that, the pirate weapons won't load on their ships. UCP and 5x are required to use tactical mod

I'll look at your log, but it's more likely you have an incompatible mod, have incorrectly installed UCP, or have your mod order wrong. Pirate battles are the first ones I fight and no issues have shown up.

I found out that this mod caused my game to lock up during Pirate Battles on Auto-Resolve. Here is my output log link: https://paste.ee/p/faynI

Is there anything else you need from me? Please let me know if you are able to fix it.

i can only recommend the ucp per java installer.... this has all fails gone and work absolut correctly... great fun big work :)

What's your mod list and order. Turn processing issues are caused by UCP not being installed correctly or another mod that conflicts in some way. There's nothing in tactical mod itself that would cause a desync and hang on turn processing.

gets stuck in game for resolve. end up restarting and took this mod off.

Ah, well Spud feels 5x is as complete as possible unless Sol adds new stuff and Sol tends to take a while between releases so UCP seems dead at times when it isn't. I would say sleeping might be more accurate than dead. 😁

coool

was just happy to see an active mod author. alot of the big mods around here havnt been updated since last year.