Primitives for proportions?

[dogscoff]

I'm actually resurrecting an old conversation here. A year or two ago there was a fairly active thread here about modding primitive (or, to be politically correct- technologically impaired) races into the game. I think it was generally considered too much of a pain in the arse to mod for minimal results, since such races would be pointless cannon-fodder for regular races in the standard game. I remember the thread taliing off with me wistfully dreaming about a mod which would make the map seem much more big and empty and hard to colonise, where ground combat reigned over orbital bombardment and where primitive races could still remain useful and independent by virtue of being strategic allies.

Now, hey presto, we have the proportions mod, and I think it would be the perfect setting for primitive races.

Now, you might be wondering what the point of such a race would be, since they could be easily glassed with a single ship and conquered with only a little more effort, but you have to remember that in Proportions mobilising even a moderate invasion fleet is a far bigger ordeal than in the regular game, especially if the target planet is a long way away and you have the Xi-Chung on your doorstep.
However, offer those primitives a few sparkly things and strike up a partnership with them. Suddenly you have a friendly resupply base and an eyeball in (what might be) a strategically important position, as well as a handy supply of resources through trade. You could also gift your new friends some weapons platforms or ships (mental image of Ewok driving AT-ST in Return of the Jedi) just to really surprise and humiliate your enemies. Finally, conquering them would provide a valuable source of developped real-estate and population (especially if they breathe a different atmosphere): Think of that as a bonus for whoever gets there first.
Besides all that it would add flavour. You would be effectively modelling the exploitation of technically-underdevelopped aboriginal cultures by more advanced imperial forces which we have seen in our own history, and I can imagine even hardened players getting quite protective over some helpless indiginous society who have dragged involuntarily out of their depth into interstellar warfare...

I'm no modder or I'd just do all this myself, and I'm not appealing to PvK because I know he is too busy and/or sick of modding anyway. So what I'm hoping to do is inspire a fellow Proportions enthusiast to create a bootleg Version of Proportions with primitive races enabled.

Here's how I imagine it would work:
The primitive races could be assigned to some of the neutral slots, which many proportions players don't use anyway. All normal technologies (ships, engines, weapons) would have to be assigned to a zero-cost racial tech, and primitives to another, so that they each have a seperate set of technologies available to them- just like the nomad/ pirate/ regular choice in P&N mod.
Then, a new set of "primitive" techs would be introduced. Now obviously, any tech level prior to space age could be used but I'm imagining a very basic pre-industrial race here. It could just as easily be industrial-revolution tech, so you could recreate War of the Worlds=-)

At the start of the game they'd get a cool array of weak but cheap primitive infantry units and weapons (spears, bows, knives), a few farming/ mining facilities, some weak counter-intel and that's about it. They'd have to have their own Version of the cultural centre too, which would produce useful quantities of orgs and mins, maybe a negligible amount of rads and intel and have a space port ability. No resupply ability, no repair, nothing else at all. These cultural centres would be upgradable to better Versions, but only after some research.

The primitive races would have a tech tree all of their own, but since they can't produce research points they would only be able to get new techs by forming a Trade and Research alliance with a more advanced race.
Space-faring races ought to be able to gift them techs as well, although this might be impossible to implement. 'Advanced' primitive tech would include:
-(most important) the ability to resupply spacecraft. This makes them useful as allies to more powerful races.
-improved min, org and output
-improved intel production, improved counter-intel, maybe some simple offensive intel?
-rudimentary rad production,
-some improved infantry and ground weapons (siege engines, cavalry, rifles)
-simple weapons platforms: not with weapons, but with armour (representing the ability to protect themselves from orbital attack)
-rudimentary anti-plague tech.

So what does anyone think? Is it worth doing? Is it possible?

[geoschmo]

Early space flight primitive races. Capable of building sattelites and small orbital bases. Could even give them primitive missle and particle weapon technology for defensive purposes.

[Loser]

This sounds like a very fun idea.

It would not be too difficult to make certain techs 'savage tradable': all you have to do is pick out certain techs and not make them require the non-Primitive racial tech. You could even have zero-cost sub-techs that yield below-par components, facilities, ship sizes, or Intel Projects that have certain 'real' techs as prerequisites, so that when a race gets Intel I they can then research Primitive Intel I for no cost and trade it to the Primitives, who can then do whatever they want with it.

I think the Primitives should have the capacity to produce some small amounts of Rads at some point, just so they can support a ship given to them by a player. "You gave a baseship to the Ewoks? Do you know what they're going to do with that thing?!"

The Primitives should have superior infantry and, if possible, militia to start. This is both to keep them from being easy prey (human vs. AI, after all), and to account for the fact that they probably still kill their own food.

Since the Primitives are not only AI, but dumbed-down and limited AI, plaguing them out of existence would be too easy. I feel that these races should have plague resistance, of some sort, from the get go. This could be said to reflect their hardier, already survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle.

There could be a non-Primitive tech tree, let's call it Uplift for now, that specializes in techs to be traded to Primitives: Resupply, Troops and Infantry, Anti-Plague, and Repair ("Now listen here, little-bear-people. This is a Wrench. I know it looks kinda like a hammer, but you're gonna hafta trust me on this one...")

With these techs requiring a non-Only-only tech to research, but not non-Primitive only themselves, the Primitives could not get them on their own, but could get trade for them or even steal them. These techs would be better than the ones available to the Primitives, but not as good as non-Only-only techs.

If you give another player a transport with Weapon Platforms on it, the Weapon Platforms are his too, are they not? That would be fun. ("How in the blue blazes did Ewoks get CSM V??!" "Look at the hull of that Weapon Platform, sir. Those Weapon Platforms are Narn.")

I haven't modded, but the way I understand it, this should all be possible. All except the Neutrals part... I was under the impression you couldn't mod Neutrals.

[Loser]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Early space flight primitive races. Capable of building sattelites and small orbital bases. Could even give them primitive missle and particle weapon technology for defensive purposes.

You could do all:

Dirt Races
Steam Races
Space Races

But each would require their own Racial Tech tree, to keep them separate.

Or perhaps the Dirt Races could move up to Space Races. This could be very amusing in a Huge (255) map with only a half dozen players.

[mottlee]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Early space flight primitive races. Capable of building sattelites and small orbital bases. Could even give them primitive missle and particle weapon technology for defensive purposes.

Kinda sounds like ....US!.....

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Loser:
I haven't modded, but the way I understand it, this should all be possible. All except the Neutrals part... I was under the impression you couldn't mod Neutrals.

You can mod neutrals. By deafault they have pure vanilla AI_General files. But you could set them up with whatever you want that is affordable in your mod. There is a bug that limits the number of neutrals in a game to 5 IIRC. Don't think that's ever been fixed. So if you want a game with a lot of primitive races you'll need to use regular AI spots. Might be preferable actually because a neutral Primitive that has been uplifted will still be limited to their own homesystem, while a regular AI is not.

Geoschmo

[narf poit chez BOOM]

put copies of the normal tech high up the primitive tech tree? with a max of 20% of another races research, it might work. you'd also have to turn of mega evil.

[Loser]

You're right about Mega Evil, that would throw a real wrench in the gears. ("Damn you, little-bear-person! This does not go here!" "Yub yub!" "No, it doesn't.")

So, the only thing that is not open to alteration, concerning Neutrals, is their inability to leave the home system? Everything else can be changed?

And what about WPs? Can I gift WPs, will the AI know what to do with a transport full of WPs or will it jettison them and fill the transport with carrots for the winter?

The one place I see conflict in the real-tech vs. Primitive/Uplift-tech is Intel. Real players may be tempted to use Primitive/Uplift Intel. This should not be possible, as P/U Intel will probably need to work differently for the little bastards to make affordable use of it.

This can be solved by another layer of racial tech. Primitive-only Intel tech that requires Uplift Intel to get but costs little or nothing to research.

Also, do AI ever use Analyze on captured or traded ships?

[primitive]

Hey big dawg.
What's wrong with my proportions ?
I know I haven't been working out as much as I should lately, but.....

[dogscoff]

I think the Primitives should have the capacity to produce some small amounts of Rads at some point, just so they can support a ship given to them by a player. "You gave a baseship to the Ewoks? Do you know what they're going to do with that thing?!"

Actually I was thinking about this Last night, and while I agree that they should get a small amount of rads, it would make more sense to have rad-free, giftable "basic" techs available to space-faring races. For example, if you gave a quantum engine to someone from the Vicorian era (think H.G.Well, Jules Verne) he would have no clue as to how it worked or how to operate or maintain it. However, although he probably couldn't design and build a working rocketship of his own, he could ( given a little training) probably operate, understand and maintain one at a basic level if you built it for him. He might even be able to manufacture a few spares for it. So you could have a set of "rocket engines" and so on that are available to normal races, but aren't particularly useful (because they are slow, inefficient) except as gifts to primitives. They would be perfect for primitives, who can maintain them easily because they don't use rads. Also, it means the primitives could maintain it but not repair it- or at least, they wouldn't be able to repair the engines, although they could probably fix the crew quarters or bridge if necesasary. This would instill a real sense of entropy in the primitives when trying to uplift them to far, too fast.

Of course you could just gift 100000 rads along with the ship...

The Primitives should have superior infantry and, if possible, militia to start. This is both to keep them from being easy prey (human vs. AI, after all), and to account for the fact that they probably still kill their own food.

This is also a good point. I'm not sure about superior infantry, but they probably ought to be about equivalent. It's worth remembering that they will be completely unable to build anything other than infantry for the first X turns (until they get uplifted). This means that while their infantry might be weak, they will have one hell of a lot of it=-)

Since the Primitives are not only AI, but dumbed-down and limited AI, plaguing them out of existence would be too easy. I feel that these races should have plague resistance, of some sort, from the get go. This could be said to reflect their hardier, already survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle.

Also very true. I like the survival of the fittest idea. I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, you don't want them to be too vulnerable. On the other, realistically they would be very vulnerable. Also, although it's easy to destroy them, they would pose so little threat that most (human) players just wouldn't bother. Maybe put plague prevention 2 on their cultural centres, and allow them to upgrade to 3 or 4 after uplift. The only trouble with this is that human players would find a way to exploit this "free" plague-prevention tech.
Finally, since half the racial point selections are irrelevant to them, they would all probably have very high reproduction and happiness traits, which (I think) would go some way to countering the effect of plagues.

You could do all:

Dirt Races
Steam Races
Space Races

But each would require their own Racial Tech tree, to keep them separate.

Yeah, this would be cool. Especially the steam races, the more I think about that the more I love it. The other great thing is that because of their limited selection of units and ships, you could make shipsets for them very very easily: a few infantry pics, a race pic, a couple of AI files (Build infantry, build more infantry, yubyub) and that would be it.

Or perhaps the Dirt Races could move up to Space Races.

Not sure about the progression, unless it was *really* slow (ie five hundred turns or more to progress)

You can mod neutrals.

Excellent (rubs hands together, in a Mr Burns style)

("Damn you, little-bear-person! This does not go here!" "Yub yub!" "No, it doesn't.")

LOL!

And what about WPs? Can I gift WPs, will the AI know what to do with a transport full of WPs or will it jettison them and fill the transport with carrots for the winter?

Not sure about this. What it will probably do is unload/ jetisson the WPs, fill the transport with ewok warriors and catapults and go invade someone.

The one place I see conflict in the real-tech vs. Primitive/Uplift-tech is Intel. Real players may be tempted to use Primitive/Uplift Intel. This should not be possible, as P/U Intel will probably need to work differently for the little bastards to make affordable use of it.

Just make it less effective or more costly than the real thing, then real players will have no reason to use it.

This can be solved by another layer of racial tech. Primitive-only Intel tech that requires Uplift Intel to get but costs little or nothing to research.

Or do your idea, that works too.

Also, do AI ever use Analyze on captured or traded ships?

No, never.

Hey big dawg.
What's wrong with my proportions ?
I know I haven't been working out as much as I should lately, but.....

Sorry P, but there are some proportions that just can't be improved by working out