n00b Modder Needs Help

[MrSnuggleBunny]

Greetings all.

I'm thinking the one thing this already excellent game needs to excel even further is better diplomacy rules. The treaties available thus far do not cover a wide variety of situations or go too far. Essentially what I'm thinking is this...

MUTUAL DEFENSE TREATY - The military alliance grants benefits to an AI that I do not want, i.e. it can still trespass and it gets bonus off of my point pools.

I just want a treaty that will--depending on the honor of the race in question--give a serious modifier for the treaty race to declare war against any race that attacks a treaty counterpart. Even full-blown alliances aren't much use.

NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY - Again, dependent upon the honor of the signatories, selected tech trees are prohibited from being researched. With human players we have agreed to not develop any weapon that will destroy planets or stars. Of course a race may still do so and do so secretly but as with all treaty violators the bad reputation will effect racial attitudes.

CONVENTIONS of CIVILIZED WARFARE - Signatories agree to abstain from "glassing," attacking colony ships & population transports.

GALACTIC ARBITRATION COUNCIL - Disputes over systems or treaty violations can be brought to the GAC where votes are cast and judgments rendered. The winner and losers get attitude bonuses and penalties respectively with the signatory races.

For example: you might drag a race before the GAC citing:

"<empire> <attacked/colonized> <system> under my control!"

The longer I have had uncontested control + # of facilities in the system the greater the % that the GAC will rule in my favor.

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I would also like to develop a mod that consumes a smattering mineral resources but gobs of radioactives. Basically, everytime your units resupply they consume radioactives. Let's face it, fuel costs don't really register in this game and I think mineral planets need not be the only really vital resource. And wouldn't it be nice to have your empire besieged by patuli smelling rioters all screaming, "NO BLOOD FOR RADIOACTIVES!!!"

[Fyron]

Treaties are not moddable. Wait til SE5 where you can customize them in-game.

You can't mod resupply to cost resources. However, ship maintenance can largely be seen as fuel (and other supply) costs. Why else would you have to pay the entire cost of the ship every 4 months if it weren't fuel? It is abstracted, but that's ok IMO.

A lot of mods make other resources important too. Try Pirates and Nomads for the mod with balanced resource costs that is closest to stock. Other mods like Adamant, Carrier Battles and Proportions have more sensible use of resources as well, but are very gameplay-altering in many other regards.

[MrSnuggleBunny]

Imperator Fyron said:
Treaties are not moddable. Wait til SE5 where you can customize them in-game.

I hear ya

You can't mod resupply to cost resources. However, ship maintenance can largely be seen as fuel (and other supply) costs. Why else would you have to pay the entire cost of the ship every 4 months if it weren't fuel? It is abstracted, but that's ok IMO.

I may be just me but it appears the lion's share of maintenance come from my mineral pool.

I think what I'm looking for is the maintenance cost to be paid primarily in radioactives with a progression built on the size of teh ship and number of engines.

A lot of mods make other resources important too. Try Pirates and Nomads for the mod with balanced resource costs that is closest to stock. Other mods like Adamant, Carrier Battles and Proportions have more sensible use of resources as well, but are very gameplay-altering in many other regards.

roger

Thanks for the patient and timely reply. Gonna hit the ol' salad bar of game modding.

[Fyron]

I may be just me but it appears the lion's share of maintenance come from my mineral pool.

This is because maintenance is a percent of each resource. With highly biased mineral costs, maintenance is biased towards minerals.

...maintenance cost to be paid primarily in radioactives...

You can not do this directly with maintenance, since there is no way to control maintenance of a particular resource (other than build costs, which obviously is more than just maintenance). However, you could add this ability to engines:

Generate Points Radioactives

Give it a negative value, and presto, engines now have higher rad "maintenance" costs. This ability is not affected by any factors (racial bonuses to production or maintenance, system abilities, etc.), so it gives a fixed upkeep cost.

Just be aware that there is a bug where the points generated (destroyed) by these abilities do not show up in the empire status screen, but they do still subtract/add resources each turn.

[MrSnuggleBunny]

To quote the eternal wisdom of Curly...

Poy-fect!

Thanks again.