Written in stone?

[zircher]

One of my pet projects is to port over my favorite paper space empire game to SE IV.

One question that came up is the ability to evolve that game as it is played. One of the capabilities of FOTS is the ability to research anything, the GM just assigns the prequisite techs and cost.

Let's say the player wants to research organic armor. Can the appropriate technology and component files be updated in such a way that they would not throw a monkey wrench into the game? If possible, would such a tech beom available to all players or can it be just part of player X's tech tree?
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TAZ

[Mark Walton]

That might be a bit of work.

At present, each component (like the example organic armour) has certain tech requirements. Each component shares the requirements with other components. So, gaining one tech advancement will give access to many different items.

The tech advancements also have requirements, to research tech C you might need A and B first. Doing this will give access to all components available to A, B, and C.


If I have understood you correctly, you would need :
a new tech area for each type of component;
a new tech tree, or all items avaialble at the start;
proabably, remove the "racial tech" flags from current racial techs like Organic;
alter each component to reflect the new tech tree.

[Dracus]

You can set up a new tech tree and assign it to the race.

[Suicide Junkie]

You can add components to the end of the file without ruining your savegames.

You can't alter the racialtraits file without invalidating savegames.

I'm not sure about the techarea file, but I suspect you could add to it without too much problem.

If you want only a specific subset of the players to be able to use the new tech, you should get all the players to choose a different, newly added "dummy" racial tech before the game starts.
Something like "Player 1 tech", "player 2 tech" etc.
Then the GM just sets player 1 as a requirement for the component. For multiple players, make identical components, one only allowed to P1, the other P2.

Remember that this not only applies to components, but to ship hulls, facilities and units too.

Many abilities can be added to ship hulls, not the least of which is Master Computer.
Since this MC is part of the hull, it cannot be destroyed, so your ships are immune to Psychic A.S.ers

[ZeroAdunn]

Here's a way I think you could do it.

Before beggining of the game create a advanced traight for each race (just call it the race name) This will work just like for organic or whatever tech.

Then all tech that you want to add for each race just give it the requirement of having the race tech you just created before you can research it. If you want anyone to be able to research it don't. (also if you want them to be able to trade it simply don't give it the racial req.) This will preven other races from researching it but trading for it should work (I think) maybe even stealing it too, but I'm not sure.

You can change the tech area, vehicle size, comps, components enhancements, and much more without screwing up the game.

That was an excellent Idea for a game you presented.

[zircher]

It's just amazing what you can tweak in this game. Thanks all for the suggestions and commentary.
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TAZ