Facilities with negative effects
 

I've been tossing around ideas about creating facilities with big benefits, but they also create some negative effects as tradeoffs, like contaminating a planet's environment, reducing the reproduction rate of a planet (ie: increasing death rate), or making people in the system unhappy.

But I've tried creating these and the negative effects dont seem to work.

Anyone have any ideas?

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

Some (all perhaps?) abilities should accept negative values. And another problem is that only the best value is taken into account for a planet/system for any ability.

For example, let's say you make an Intelligence Center that reduces happiness by 2% per turn in the whole system. If the player builds an Urban Pacification Center I (increasing happiness by 1% per turn in the system), the happiness hit from the Intelligence Center will not matter.

I am not sure if this will be suitable for your purposes. You may also want to add a negative resource generation ability on some facilities, forcing the player to pay for them. The "Point Generation" ability will probably not show up in the Empire balance though... (It doesn't if you put in on a component; I don't know if it is the same if you add this ability on a facility)

[ July 13, 2004, 22:01: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

Most facility abilities do not accept negative values. Some, such as value improvement, do. But most do not.

[ July 13, 2004, 21:59: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

you can have negative point production. I modded this once so that most facilities consumed organics. farming planets were needed to feed the empire.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

Puke, wich ability you used to make the facilities use organics? Can you post an example?

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

The ability is the point generation ability introduced by the 1.91 patch. For example (as taken from the SJ mod):

Ability 3 Type := Generate Points Organics
Ability 3 Descr := Requires 100k Full-Time workers.
Ability 3 Val 1 := -100
Ability 3 Val 2 := 0
Ability 4 Type := Generate Points Radioactives
Ability 4 Descr := Consumes 100 Megawatts during operation.
Ability 4 Val 1 := -100
Ability 4 Val 2 := 0

This ability doesn't show on the Empire status screen though (nor does it show up on the planet production level). But you could use the Solar Resource Generation for the same purpose, if you removed all binary, trinary (and so on) systems.

[ July 14, 2004, 13:38: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

the standard abilities for resources generation (the ones used in the facilities in the unmoded game) don´t accept negative numbers?

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

no no. the standard resource generation facilities in the stock game DO accept regular numbers. this worked pre 1.91

take a look at the organic farm facility. copy its ability (or any point generating facility) and replace the value with a negative number. and change the description.

This also works for happyness changes, if I remember.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

so, the only disvantage with using the standard resource generation facilities would be that in planets with small resource percentages the "maintenance" of the facilities would be smaller?

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

Yes.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

now i only need a roleplay escuse for workers on planets with low organics percentages to consume less "food"....

and i´ll create new facilities for crystalline races so they consume rads instead of organics....

i think i´ll mod it on top of devnull mod (devnull have a lot of nice things to play with)...

talking about devnull, no one thought about modding in the space monsters hulls the production of research, intel and resources? while the "monster homeplanet" would still produce a little quantity of all resources so the monters can get started, the strenght of the space monsters would be directly proportional to the number of monsters roaming the quadrant.... is this feasible?

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

The excuse would go as follow: when you have little in your planet, you have to use these resources very carefully. On the other hand, if you have more minerals on your planet than you know what to do with, you have no incentive to spare them, and so you will likely waste some of them.

It should be possible to mod the resource generation directly on the monsters (either on the hull, or on the components themselves; it should work on the hull, but I haven't tested it). The problem may be with balance however, as it may make the monsters too powerful. I am by no means an expert on the Space Monsters though, so don't quote me on that. It can certainly be done, but do you want to? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">thats the excuse that I used.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

So I was reading THIS post
http://www.invirtuo.cc/se4/viewtopic.php?t=2998

about 'core' mining facilities, and was relating them to the borehole miners in SMAC, and got an idea.

Since value improvement plants stack and can take negative values, maybe condition modifiers stack the same way? We could mod a massive planetary core tapping mining facility that would steadily worsen the conditions of the planet. A planet full of such facilities would soon hit the lowest condition possible, which i think will even start to cause negative population growth.

You would have to ship people in from other parts of the empire to work on your hellish mining planet! isnt it great?

well, if it works.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

Reproduction dosen't go negative...

But you could have very common people-killing events...
That way the hellish mining world will lose people that can't be replaced naturally.
Every other planet except tiny brand-new colonies will shake off the minor losses.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

How common can you make an event?

I have planned on using condition and happiness degradation on the Facilities of the Undead in my own mod, and then taking their population growth away and making them emotionless anyway.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

You can not have more than one event occur per turn.

Negative system happiness ability does not work. Negative planet happiness ability does work, but there is a catch. Any other hapiness facility affecting the planet, be it planetary or system-wide, makes it stop working. Happiness abilities are the only ones that are not completely separated in function between the planet and system affecting abilities. The "higher" number will be in effect if you have 2 facilities with negative amounts. So, with facilities of -1 and -2, the planet will have only the -1 affect it.

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

Speaking of Planetary Happiness: are you sure it is working Fyron? The Temple District seems to be causing unhappiness very quickly in Adamant, even where nothing else happens (a barren homeworld, with no other event happening and a peaceful happiness type). I believe I dropped to Angry in ten turns with the Temple District III, whereas the Theater District (system wide) allows me to go back to Jubilant without too much problem.

Since the value for the Temple District is indeed positive, it looks like there is a glitch with the planetary happiness type, besides the other one you mentioned (both may be linked, if the reason is that the planetary happiness change is broken). And if you happen to give a negative value to this ability, it actually improves happiness.

In short, if you want to make a given planet become angry as time goes by, do put the Planet Change Happiness ability. If the value is high enough, the system wide change will not be enough, and your planet will require troops to prevent rioting.

[ July 15, 2004, 18:34: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

Wait, are you saying that a positive number in the Planet Change Happiness makes a planet less happy?

Or is the Planet Change Happiness for the Temple District a negative number?

Re: Facilities with negative effects
 

I am indeed saying that a positive number in *Planet* Happiness Change makes people less happy, and that you need a negative number to make them more happy. It goes the other way around for the *System* Happiness Change (such as UPC).

I do not know if a higher Planet Happiness ability (such as 6, which means +6 angry people per turn) counters, say, a +3 System Happiness Change (which would be UPC III). The planet should still go down in happiness, but at a lesser rate.

Incidentally, you do not want to use the Solar Resource Generation for making your facilities cost something to run. Otherwise, if a player happens to put Ringworlds a bit everywhere in his systems, all facilities in a system with a Ringworld will suddenly cost no maintenance at all.

[ July 16, 2004, 11:45: Message edited by: Alneyan ]