New ancient unique techs
 

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.

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

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...).

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

Is there a newer Version of the Eye Candy Mod?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.

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

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*.

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

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?

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

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.

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

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??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

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

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Some of the TDM-ModPack AIs do.

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

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)??

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

Because the AI is not restricted in its designs by all of the same rules that a human player is. What the AI builds is determined by its design files, and its designs can be illegal in some ways. The only reason it doesn't cheat in the unmodded game is because its files are all legal in the unmodded game. If your mod introduces new restrictions, you may need to mod the AI files if you want the AI to obey the limits.

PvK

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

You may need to change the weapon family picks for the weapon platform in the _AI_DesignCreation file to the new weapon’s weapon family number. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New ancient unique techs
 

The Dark Nova 3 mod (avaliable on PBW) has a large number of new Unique techs. What I did is picked certain racial components and facilites and made them unique techs. For the most part, I used a mid-level Version of each as the unique tech. That way, anyone with the racial tech would still end up with the best Version. Some of the "key" racial items I didn't make unique techs. Like the Talisman, Temporal Ship Yard and a few others. They are intergrated into the mod, but I could create a seperate set of just the Unique techs, if you're interested. I'm not around this forum as much as I use to be. Your best bet would be to send me an email.

In a test game, I was playing a Temporal race that had Organic armour with Mass Singulary Projectors on my ships. Hard to hurt, did lots of damage, and I could build them fast!

[ December 15, 2003, 20:42: Message edited by: bearclaw ]