Save Our SOTS2 - A Fan Made Patch

[willdieh]

Yes, that's the best way to install it. Yes, if you didn't back up the folders you overwrote before applying the patch, you'd have to reinstall the game... Thanks for trying it out!

Resok noticed that I had the Brawler attributes in the beam weapon files wrong. I've already updated them in my working files and will include those fixes in the next release. Thanks Resok!

[Resok]

Resok noticed that I had the Brawler attributes in the beam weapon files wrong. I've already updated them in my working files and will include those fixes in the next release. Thanks Resok!

Happy to help!

Just sharing my own experience as to the install process: I've just been making a copy of the SOTS2 folder and copying the patch files into the new copy and then just renaming the folders to easily swap between versions if I need to. Takes some extra disk space but it tends to be faster for me since I play a lot of multiplayer and will need to swap back to vanilla quickly.

[Rossinna-Sama]

They should start fighting back though, even now, once you start attacking...

Quick question, what's the requirement for the AI to go into the defensive stance instead of conquering or destroying? Because personal experience\opinion is showing that the moment the AI switches to that stance, they do nothing but defend with only an occasional strike mission.

Also, how difficult is it to make new ship roles for the AI or to assign certain designs to a role?

Finally, a late-game request; is it possible to have the System Killer and\or Locusts engage the VN homeworld without a player or AI interfering? They sit there doing nothing until either you or an AI show up if they are all in the same system.

EDIT:

I've signed up to the forums however the mods haven't activated me yet (been almost a day). I'm hoping that the author is able to implement the missing achievement to the game otherwise I'll have to learn the source to do so myself which will take considerably longer. If you guys have access to those forums then please ask this for him to do!

The above is a post from the steam forums that I spotted, so putting it here until they can get their account activated.

[willdieh]

What missing achievement?

As for the stances... yeah. So the AI tries to use several bits of info when determining the stance they should be in. They start in Expanding, which is fine and makes sense. They are then supposed to gauge their expansion room and compare their tech and strength levels against other players and these comparisons are what affect the change in stance. However, it seems like most of the framework for these comparisons was never implemented. The AI is supposed to be remembering what ship class (cruiser, dread, leviathan) it's encountered per player along with how many of each and the section info however, as can be seen in the save-game database AI Info tables, these bits of data are not being recorded. Consequently, I'm seeing what seem to be hard coded comparison values for opposing strength numbers (which might be a hack to overcome the lack of data) and logic that depends on both colony and fleet information but is only able to work with colony information.

So it's kind of a messy situation that I've been trying to figure out for a week now.
I'll keep on working on it though!

[Zloth]

I'm guessing the "We Got Rock, Neil"

Quoting from another post from corwinspace:

We've Got Rock, Neil - Successfully repelled with no damage taken by the planet.

It should be talking about a meteor strike event but, IIRC, it was broken. Unsure if it was ever fixed as I got it a long damn time ago.

If that's really supposed to be the requirement, the current 0.5% achievement rate is AMAZINGLY low.

[Falcrack]

Yes, that's the best way to install it. Yes, if you didn't back up the folders you overwrote before applying the patch, you'd have to reinstall the game... Thanks for trying it out!

I uninstall and reinstall games frequently without concern, so not a big deal. I had originally meant to backup the "vanilla" assets and bin folders to a new folder so that I could easily revert, but stopped when I saw that it would be about 7.5 GB in total! I assume that for future update to this mod, I just copy over what I have currently (the modded assets and bin folders)?

[willdieh]

Yes the patch is primarily the .dll but there have been some minor modifications in some of the support files as well. Just overwrite everything with the versions in the patch.

I keep a .7z zipped copy of my original bin and asset folders in case I ever want to revert without having to re-download the whole thing again... or you can also just keep two copies of the bin and assets folders, rename one of them to xxx.prod or something, then just swap the names like Resok was saying.

[Scorpy]

I'm guessing the "We Got Rock, Neil"

Quoting from another post from corwinspace:

We've Got Rock, Neil - Successfully repelled with no damage taken by the planet.

It should be talking about a meteor strike event but, IIRC, it was broken. Unsure if it was ever fixed as I got it a long damn time ago.

If that's really supposed to be the requirement, the current 0.5% achievement rate is AMAZINGLY low.

The 0.5% that you see on steam have used an achievement manager to "give" them the achievement, without earning. Currently the achievement isn't actually implemented into the game.

Code: Select all

namespace Kerberos.Sots.Steam {
	public enum AchievementType {
		SOTS2_DR_SLEEPLESS,
		SOTS2_STEEL_PUSHER,
		SOTS2_SHIPYARD_SUPERVISOR,
		SOTS2_WE_WILL_CALL_IT,
		SOTS2_HOT_COLD,
		SOTS2_NOTHIN,
		SOTS2_TO_BOLDY_GO,
		SOTS2_ZWORD,
		SOTS2_SWORD_OF_STARS,
		SOTS2_GOT_ROCK, // The missing achievement, not implemented in the source.
		SOTS2_STATION,
		SOTS2_INCONVIENIENCE,
		SOTS2_IMITATION,
		SOTS2_WELCOME
	}
}

If you could implement this achievement then it would complete the game for every completionist out there and would be a huge boon and finally make the game 100% complete.

[sqw82]

OP, I haven't touched SOTS 2 since '13 - what a pleasant surprise someone is still toiling at the mod. Thank you.

Looking at your notes, I would summarize that your mod will conflict with Reforged? If so, in your opinion, which should I use? Reforged is 600MB while yours is but a fraction.

[willdieh]

I can't really comment as I haven't looked at Reforged much... my work is more on the AI though and is a patch not a mod... so it's possible that the Reforged content will work. That being said, any changes made in Reforged to help improve AI performance (things like reducing costs, construction times, admiral requirements, etc) may no longer be necessary and thus unbalanced with the application of the SOS Patch.

All I can suggest is give it a try Back up your game folders before installing and then you can just restore if it goes south.

As a more general update, I'm still working on some things for the AI defensive logic. I've got it working pretty well (I think) but play testing will tell for sure. I'm currently tracking down a LOA bug with the fill fleets logic (ugh, always problems here with cube and ship reassignment). As soon as I squash that one, I'll post an update. My SSD is starting to get flaky so I spent the weekend reinstalling Windows. Sorry for the delay! Thanks!

[Resok]

Was playing a game testing the patch out in multiplayer tonight and hit a crash the turn after the AI Liir player declared war on me (playing as Loa).

Attached are the details.

I attempted to repro the same behavior while playing the turn out in single player, and the same crash happened.

AI_Crash_NullRef.7z

Logs showed:

Code: Select all

W (2019/03/19 22:52:07) [game] System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

   at Kerberos.Sots.Strategy.StrategicAI.GetBuildFleetInvoice(FleetTemplate template, AIStance stance)

   at Kerberos.Sots.Strategy.StrategicAI.BuildFleets(AIInfo aiInfo)

   at Kerberos.Sots.Strategy.StrategicAI.Update(UpdateInfo updateInfo)

   at Kerberos.Sots.Strategy.GameSession.ProcessEndTurn()

   at Kerberos.Sots.App.EndTurn()

   at Kerberos.Sots.Engine.GameUICommands.<>c__DisplayClassc.<.ctor>b__0()

   at Kerberos.Sots.Engine.UICommand.Trigger()

   at Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.StarMapState.EndTurn(Boolean forceConfirm)

   at Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.StarMapState.UIHandleCoreBehaviour(String panelName, String msgType, String[] msgParams)

   at Kerberos.Sots.GameStates.StarMapState.UICommChannel_OnPanelMessage(String panelName, String msgType, String[] msgParams)

   at Kerberos.Sots.GameState.UICommChannel_PanelMessage(String panelName, String msgType, String[] msgParams)

   at Kerberos.Sots.Engine.UIEventPanelMessage.Invoke(String panelName, String msgType, String[] msgParams)

   at Kerberos.Sots.Engine.UICommChannel.ProcessPanelMessage(String[] subStrings)

   at Kerberos.Sots.Engine.UICommChannel.ProcessEngineMessage(String engMsg)

   at Kerberos.Sots.Engine.UICommChannel.Update()

   at Kerberos.Sots.App.Update()

[firigd]

I don't know what you did, but the game feels fresh, like as If I turned it on for the first time. Great work!

[willdieh]

Resok,

Yup, that's the bug I'm working on now. Thanks for the error log, very helpful! Loa behaves very different from the other factions after I rewrote their fleet logic and it's been tricky to work out.

Edit:
That actually looks more like a bad fleet template issue... but it's hard to say without debugging. I did find some issues with the default_templates.xml file that will also be fixed in the next release though, so let's just hope it's fixed then whatever it is.

[sqw82]

I can't really comment as I haven't looked at Reforged much... my work is more on the AI though and is a patch not a mod... so it's possible that the Reforged content will work. That being said, any changes made in Reforged to help improve AI performance (things like reducing costs, construction times, admiral requirements, etc) may no longer be necessary and thus unbalanced with the application of the SOS Patch.

All I can suggest is give it a try Back up your game folders before installing and then you can just restore if it goes south.

As a more general update, I'm still working on some things for the AI defensive logic. I've got it working pretty well (I think) but play testing will tell for sure. I'm currently tracking down a LOA bug with the fill fleets logic (ugh, always problems here with cube and ship reassignment). As soon as I squash that one, I'll post an update. My SSD is starting to get flaky so I spent the weekend reinstalling Windows. Sorry for the delay! Thanks!

Appreciate all the hard work. I think the base game is still solid. As long as you can fix the AI, there's not much else I need from a mod.

[adamut100]

Is there a list of modified files for this patch somewhere? If so, I'll be happy to do a check against the Reforged files and see if there is a compatibility issue. An improved AI is worth a bit of time to patch up Reforged is that is wanted maybe even spend some time on the LOA and wrap it up.