Never enough Tech's, here's some ideas

Aussie Gamer · #1 February 19th, 2001, 07:03 AM

Countermeasures pod- Allows a ship to take over an incoming missile group and send it back to the firer!

Ship Disabling gun- Stops the ship from being able to do anything for a couple of rounds.

Energy Reflective Armour- Reflects some % back to firer of direct fire weapons.

Universal colony pod- When you have got all Col techs and say 4l Planet Util you get a pod that allows one ship to colonise any planet type. Saves sending a ship to the wrong type later in the game!!!

The more tech's the merrier, then it's not just my shielded cruiser V yours, but the battle of the differing components.

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raynor · #2 February 19th, 2001, 01:48 PM

Definitely some interesting ideas.

IMHO, MM probably won't have time to add any radically different techs for several months. There are already *tons* of techs the AI ships don't know how to use effectively yet. I'm thinking the priority will be to get the AI using those techs before new ones are added.

There are a couple of weapons which are similar to ship disabling weapons. Some weapons damage shields; some damage armour; some weapons disable/destroy weapons. I haven't seen the AI use these much or very effectively but they are there.

The universal colony pod idea would certainly same me some trouble later in my games. But by the time I would have researched an advanced tech like this, I'm building just one type of colony ship anyways and using my excess resources to retrofit it over to the other two designs.

My best suggestion to you is to think of weapons which just require modifications to the values of existing weapons. For example, could we create a direct fire weapon which has the max range of 20, a high to-hit value but does little damage. Or, do we want it to have high damage but be incredibly high up the tech tree. Or, what about a weapon that never misses but requires point blank range? Each of these weapon ideas should be easy to create within the existing game framework. Of course, the hardest part is still getting the AI to use them once you have created them...

Nitram Draw · #3 February 19th, 2001, 03:18 PM

Cool idea. I also get very frustrated late in the game by sending the wrong type of colonizer.
Do you also have to change the number tech levels to the various branches of the research tree?
How do you do that?
Thanks

raynor · #4 February 19th, 2001, 04:35 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
Cool idea. I also get very frustrated late in the game by sending the wrong type of colonizer.
Do you also have to change the number tech levels to the various branches of the research tree?
How do you do that?
Thanks

Let's say we want to modify the Universal Colony component so that it requires tech level 2 of Rock Planet, Ice Planet and Gas Giant Colonization. Firrst, we would modify the component. Change this:

Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Gas Giant Colonization
Tech Level Req 1 := 1

To now read:

Number of Tech Req := 3
Tech Area Req 1 := Rock Planet Colonization
Tech Level Req 1 := 2
Tech Area Req 2 := Ice Planet Colonization
Tech Level Req 2 := 2
Tech Area Req 3 := Gas Giant Colonization
Tech Level Req 3 := 2

Now, you need to make sure the game will let you actually research up to level 2 in each of the three colonization techs. Look for the file techarea.txt in se4\data. The first three tech areas are the colonization techs. Change all three so that their max tech level is 2.

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 19 February 2001).]

Markavian · #5 February 19th, 2001, 04:45 PM

In the Components.txt data file you have all the info for the components.
Part of each component is:
Tech Area Req 1 := Troops (See TechArea.txt)
Tech Level Req 1 := 3 (Level Required)

If you then go TechArea.txt, you need to change the Maximum level. For Troops, its '3'

If you wanted to make a tech that had a 4th tech level, you'd need to change Tech Area Req 1 to '4' and then go to TechArea.txt and increase the level to 4 or 5 or whatever.

However, if you made Troops 'max tech level' 60, but didn't put any techs in for those 60 levels, people would be researching, but not not getting any thing new!

Hope that helps. . .

Baal · #6 February 19th, 2001, 05:57 PM

I don't see why you don't make this Universal Colony component dependant on just having colonizing capabilites of all 3 planet types. At level one of each you have all the colonizing tech, why would you do all that extra research for one component that does stuff you can already do.

What I'm saying is make dependant on just having level 1 of all of them.

Aussie Gamer · #7 February 19th, 2001, 11:52 PM

It was just an idea about the extra tech levels for planet util, but i suppose that it does not matter how it put in, but I do believe that you should have to research it to get it!

Hope that so of these ideas get put into the official game.

raynor · #8 February 20th, 2001, 12:45 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Baal:
I don't see why you don't make this Universal Colony component dependant on just having colonizing capabilites of all 3 planet types. At level one of each you have all the colonizing tech, why would you do all that extra research for one component that does stuff you can already do.

What I'm saying is make dependant on just having level 1 of all of them.

Well... since it isn't in the game yet, it's just a matter of personal taste. Since I didn't increase the resource cost or size of the component but added two extra abilities and 25x the cargo capacity, I thought maybe I should make it a little more expensive resesarch-wise.

If you want to make it dependent on just level one of all three colonization techs, I hope you make it cost more minerals or make it require two or three times as much space. It's up to you...

raynor · #9 February 20th, 2001, 02:12 AM

The universal colony pod turns out to be extremely easy to create. In your SEIV\Data directory is a file called Components.Txt. Edit this file and look for the first components in the file--the colonization components. Find the Gas Colony component and copy it immediately below the first one. Change its name to Universal Colony. Now, change these lines:

Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Colonize Planet - Gas
Ability 1 Descr := Can colonize a gas giant planet.
Ability 1 Val 1 :=
Ability 1 Val 2 :=
Ability 2 Type := Cargo Storage
Ability 2 Descr := Provides 20kT worth of cargo space.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 20
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

so that they now look like:

Number of Abilities := 4
Ability 1 Type := Colonize Planet - Rock
Ability 1 Descr := Can colonize a rock based planet.
Ability 1 Val 1 :=
Ability 1 Val 2 :=
Ability 2 Type := Colonize Planet - Ice
Ability 2 Descr := Can colonize an ice based planet.
Ability 2 Val 1 :=
Ability 2 Val 2 :=
Ability 3 Type := Colonize Planet - Gas
Ability 3 Descr := Can colonize a gas giant planet.
Ability 3 Val 1 :=
Ability 3 Val 2 :=
Ability 4 Type := Cargo Storage
Ability 4 Descr := Provides 20kT worth of cargo space.
Ability 4 Val 1 := 20
Ability 4 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

And, there you go! You now have a component which can colonize any planet type. The only thing left is to determine what tech level you want to require. Maybe, add another tech level to Rock, Ice and Gas Colonization before you can use this? You could also modify Cargo Storage to make it 500 instead of just 20. Then, when you tell a ship equipped with this component to colonize a planet, the game will automatically load the ship with the max colonist the ship can hold -- 100 Million. This way, your new colony will have the 5% production bonus from population right away. You can also modify how big you want this component to be or how many minerals you want it to cost.

Hope this helps.