New ancient unique techs

KnidVermicious · #1 December 13th, 2003, 12:04 AM

I am interested in adjusting the current unique techs and adding some more. I have a few ideas bumping around, but I want to be sure I don't make anything too unbalancing.

I've looked at some of the techs in Adamant mod, but I'd rather not have extra research after you get them. I was thinking of putting some of the stellar manipulation techs in as unique to let empires get them early. Any words of warning? What should I be careful with? I'm mostly concerned with how the AI will react, because that's my usual opponent.

Fyron · #2 December 13th, 2003, 12:15 AM

Look at the Eye Candy Mod on your Gold CD. It has a lot of new unique techs in it. I suggest starting off with it, or at least using some of it.

I suggest making the SM you get from ruins be weaker than level 1 of the appropriate tech that costs research. So, a planet builder would only make tiny planets or some such. Perhaps make them have a 100% increase in ship maintenance ability as well, representing the fact that your people do not really understand the devices they are using, so are using them poorly so they have increased maintenance. Also, I suggest not giving any of the higher level SM from ruins. Star Destroyers et all drastically change the balance of the game, and the only defense against them requires level 10 in shielding (other than guarding every single star...).

KnidVermicious · #3 December 13th, 2003, 02:24 AM

Is there a newer Version of the Eye Candy Mod? The one on my cd doesn't have any component or tech changes, just colonytypes, and name changes.

Fyron · #4 December 13th, 2003, 03:01 AM

Whoops! Wasn't the Eye Candy Mod. It was a "Unique Techs" mod that is for classic SE4 (easy to convert to Gold, just find/replace Vehicle Types and Target Types entries). I have uploaded it to SpaceEmpires.net *here*.

KnidVermicious · #5 December 13th, 2003, 07:34 PM

I originally started thinking about new uniques because I wanted to add a planetary defense cannon to the Planetary Assault mod.

Currently I'm thinking of adding:

Planetary Defense Cannon (weapon platform and nasty long-range but slow recharge anti-ship weapon)

Ancient monolith-monoliths, hopefully not unbalancing

Advanced missiles-'cus I think they should be tougher

Ancient cloaking device-powerful, but large, expensive and supply guzzling

Some kind of scanner coupled with a minesweeper

Any thoughts?

Arkcon · #6 December 14th, 2003, 02:36 AM

A good one would be some sort of super engine -- mabye 24 movement points, that had a kt such that it almost completely filled a ship. Yes, it's a blantant ripoff of Larry Niven's Quantum IV hyperdrive.

But then there's a balance problem -- how big should it be. If you needed a baseship, then you'd be waiting forever to use it, making it useless. But if it were smaller, you could build a fleet around them.

Ed Kolis · #7 December 14th, 2003, 03:51 AM

Scale mount it! Just make it really huge so you can't use it unmounted on ANY ship, then make a series of scale mounts, one for each ship size, where each ship size has a mount that makes it take up a large amount of that particular hull's space. So if you want it to take up 50% of any ship's hull space, and the size in Components.txt is 2500kT, then your scale mounts would be 1% for every 50kT of hull size, so you get a 75kT (3% of 2500kT, since an ES is 150=3*50kT) engine on an Escort, a 200kT engine on a Light Cruiser (8% of 2500kT, since a LC is 400=8*50kT, and similarly for the other ships. Just tweak the numbers for the particular sizes you want - if you want the engines to be more space-efficient on larger ships, but still not a constant size for every hull, you can reduce the mount scales for larger ships.
Now what would we have done had Aaron not put in mounts in the first patch???

KnidVermicious · #8 December 14th, 2003, 07:18 PM

Does the AI ever use unique techs? Is that even worth considering when creating new techs?

capnq · #9 December 14th, 2003, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Does the AI ever use unique techs?

Some of the TDM-ModPack AIs do.

KnidVermicious · #10 December 15th, 2003, 03:17 AM

I ran into something bizarre. I had made large weapon platform a unique tech, and included a big nasty cannon. I removed all weapon platforms from regular research,and I set all weapons to not have weapon platform as a vehicle type. I changed the unique tech to ship construction 1, just to see what the AI would do with it. When I play the game and go to the Weapon Platform screen I can only choose the weapons I created, exactly how I want it. However, when I turned all the ministers on, the AI makes large weapon platforms with CSMs, DUCs, etc. How is this possible if those weapons should not be allowed on WPs (and don't show on the screen)??