Never enough Tech's, here's some ideas

[raynor]

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.

[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

[raynor]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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...