Small Mod Experiment
 

Hoping to stimulate the dormant creative juices I know are still laying around here... Let's try an experiment.

Post a relatively small mod idea you would like to see implemented, and someone else (or even you) can help out, implement the feature, and post the resulting mod. Implemented mods should include a readme file detailing how the feature was implemented.

Examples should be somewhere around the scope of these concept mods, or a bit more in-depth. If this works out, we can build up a similar repository for SE5. Major overhauls on the order of "make Adamant for SE5" are beyond the scope of this experiment.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

'Palace' facility. No requirements for what it does.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Heh, that's a bit vague...
/me cooks up a Palace facility that looks and behaves exactly like a Space Yard, only it has a different name http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Seriously, Golden Eclipse has some "imperial manufacturing/research/mining/etc. capital" facilities much like Galciv does, and those seem to work pretty well - what they do is provide a huge system-wide bonus to whatever type of capital they are (I think they start at 100% http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif), but only one is effective per empire (if that requirement actually works - if not, the new facility counting functions from v1.52 should take care of that!). So you start out building all of your capitals in your home system probably (or maybe you don't because they are pretty darned expensive), and reap huge bonuses to production, but once your empire expands enough you might find some super-mineral-rich system that you want to designate the new mining capital - well, you scrap the mining capital and build a new one in the super-rich system!

So a "palace" facility could work like that - maybe instead of a 100% bonus to one thing, it could provide like a 25% bonus to everything...

Or it could improve happiness in the system... or maybe even provide resistance to boarding/subversion for all nearby ships (not sure how you'd do that though...)

But in any event it would have to have one of the following to prevent abuse:
1. A "one per empire" requirement
2. An exorbitant build and/or maintenance cost, so only large empires can afford more than one. (Those nobles do need a lot of bling bling to get by http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)
3. A special negative resource production ability which depends on the number of palaces in your empire (using the new facility counting functions) - you might be able to have one palace maintenance free, or two for 10000 resources per turn, or three for 50000 resources per turn, or four for 250000 resources per turn...
4. Some other negative effect - maybe it produces 10000 negative research points (decadence implies laziness) or 10000 negative intel points (prime target for terrorists)... or maybe it reduces the planet's or system's space yard rate (see the negative research rationale)...

So yeah, Narf, your "palace" idea really raises more questions than answers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Ah, here's another idea... I've been playing Metroid Prime 3 lately, and this sort of idea was implemented in Anacreon, but what if there were some sort of chemical (call it "Phazon" since that's what Metroid calls it, or "Spice" like Anacreon does - a Dune reference I imagine http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif) that you could give to your people or to your ship crews or troops or whatever to make them work harder or fight better or whatever. (I imagine this would be like a "knockoff" of Organic tech in the sense that Dark Nova's Symbiotic tech is a "knockoff" of Organic tech - a ruins or researchable tech which is inferior to the "real McCoy", but can also be used by Organic races to further boost their advantage.) Anyway, the real trick with Phazon or Spice would be that it's a drug - if you give your people too much (like with Phazon) or your run out after they've been accustomed to receiving it (like with Spice), then Bad Things Happen. Like, people start dying, or your ship crews or troops desert or fight at greatly reduced efficiency, or whatever.
I guess the challenges with implementing this idea are:
1. How do you do a turn-by-turn check on the "corruption/addiction level" of all those planets or units?
2. How do you follow through with the consequences of the corruption or addiction, either positive or negative?
3. How do you report back to the player that all this is going on behind the scenes, since you can't customize the planet or unit reports?
4. The hardest of all - how do you keep it interesting enough for the player so that he can't too easily min/max and find the "optimal" chemical production level, while still preventing a micromanagement nightmare - "oh no, I have to scrap this facility / move or mothball this ship / whatever so I can alter the production level for XYZZY system because something in the universe changed - or else my whole economy collapses in 5 turns!"
I *suppose* it could be done through event scripting, though... anyone wanna have a stab at it? Might be fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

QNP - with two different size engines for each engine type(fryon, have you updated that imagemod yet?) and with a decent supply usage implementation.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

In a similar vein, Brothel! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

More seriously, how about a research lab component that provides extra RPs when placed near an astronomical anomaly like a black hole? That would provide one good use for those systems!

Another would be a diplomatic station (a la Babylon 5) which can provide trade income and (perhaps) small diplomacy/intelligence bonuses with "nearby" AI races.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

does the "one per empire" thing work?

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

I would still like to see a "Soylent Green" facility modded in. Turning population into organic resources for those races that like to eat their victims or would rather use their captured victims to help with their new organic ship hull construction.

1.Could only be place on a planet that has more than one type of population.

2.Consumes 1 population per turn and produces 1000 organics
Consumes 5 population per turn and produces 8000 organics

3.Empires that utilize these facilities automatically take angery diplomacy points from all other empires.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Funny you mention that, here's a similar idea I posted a while back at se5.com:
http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/2684

Should be possible with the next patch now that we have the facility count functions! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Has some details that need to be ironed out but it might prove viable at some point...

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Space Monsters!

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Yes Space Monsters, both the roaming kind like we saw in SEIV, and stationary guardians like in MOOII

Different styles too:
1. Swarming insectoid types with hundreds of smaller units or fighter style critters or bots.
2. Massive Planetary sized roaming gas or energy balls that devour planets and the only way to defeat them is with incrediably high research points in a system. (a working implementation of ships with Research Labs and research point abilities) (Isn't Fyron working on some sort of system organic infestation in his mod - could this be worked with a bit to find a way to eliminate it, and come in different sizes: planetary, system wide, roaming, spreading like a plague)
3. Standard behemouths that wreck havoc on shipping lanes and require an entire fleet to take out.
4. Monsters that could actually be harnessed through the Pyshic trait or massive amounts of boarding parties.
5. Guardians of Gaia style planets.
6. Monsters that are unleashed by landing on a planet with ruins. (Could be a plague or a standard monster in the form of planetary troops that makes inhabiting the planet treacherous until troops are called in to take the critter out.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

We requested all of this and more. MM was just swamped with bugs and other problems, and had to abandon many planned new features like "heros" as well as Space Monsters. It sure looks to me like modders could implement a pretty good approximation of several of these types of Space Monsters with the advanced scripting abilities of SE V, though... maybe a random event or two could be setup to 'introduce' them, as well.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

I don't think anything like Space Monsters is actually possible at this time, though. The scripting abilities are powerful, but also limited to the relatively few functions available( none specifically made for this purpose, to my knowledge ).

As far as I can see, it would require a Neutral side/player that could exist without owning any planets or ships. It would also require the ability to create space objects for that Neutral player, preferably both at game creation and in turn processing( so we would have some monsters there from the start, others coming in while playing ).

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Fyron, is it possible to make a race that has the Organic Racial trait immune to the effects of an Organic Infestion Systems (I think that is what it is called?). Possibly even have a race with the Organic Racial trait gain a bonus in organic construction in these systems. If it is possible, or could be if the right scripting possiblities were later implementd in a future patch, why stop there?

More unique system types:
1. Temporal Rift Systems, all ships of races except those that have the Temporal Racial ability suffer xxx amount of damage per turn. Races with Temporal Racial trait are immune to this damage and gains a system wide +1 movement speed due to the unique properties of the many temporal rifts in this system.

2. Religious Holy Land Systems, all ships and troops of those races except those that have the Religous Racial ablility suffer a -50% combat ability due to troop morale being so low because they beleive the system as a bad ommen or just unlucky. Races with the Racial abiltiy receive 25% combat bonus from an increase in morale because they beleive this system to be their holy lands and a system happiness increase.

3. Magnetar or Neutron Star Systems - all ships of those races except those that have the Pyschic Racial ability suffer random movement due to intense magnetic waves disrupting normal brain activity. Races with the Pyschic Racial ability actually benefit from this magnetic force and are able to focus their thoughts onto these magnetic pulses and gain a 25% combat and production and research efficiency bonus in this system (????) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

4. Plagued System - all planets in this system suffer from an excotic system wide plague, only races that have the Mechanoid Racial trait may safely populate these planets.


Probably not feasable, but I thought I would throw it out there.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

As far as I can tell, the effects of stellar objects cannot be made dependent upon possession of techs, traits, or particular abilities on the ships themselves.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

How about something like the heavy foot of gouverment similar to MoO3. An increasing empire will need to get more and more buerocraty, decreasing your overall effience by a certain amount for each system occupied (i.e. - 0.5 % income for each system after the 6th or what). You can do researches or something to lower the malus.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

That was one of the single most annoying aspects of MoO3. Sure, it never accounted for much of anything, but it got irritating enough to be noticeable. Then, you could just reset it by changing governments and changing back on your next turn. Yeah, that game was silly...

I think that would be possible by putting it into a variable on every building's maintenance equation. As in, call for the number of planets in the empire and alter the maintenance based on that. A really basic version...

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>(main maintenance formula) *
(1+(get_empire_colonized_percent_of_map/100))</pre><hr />

In that case, you would get a 1% increase in maintenance for every 1% of the map you controlled. This can be modified for extra flavor, such as adding a tech that reduces this problem.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>(main maintenance formula) *
(1+((get_empire_colonized_percent_of_map/100)*(100/(100-get_empire_tech_level("Steamlined Government"))))</pre><hr />

With some mathematical magic, you can make it even more crazy. If you just change that 100, it goes from being a straight percent to more increase. If you make it 50, for example, you would end up doubling your maintenance when you controlled 50% of the map. You could also make it exponential or whatever if you so desired. That's a bit sadistic, but it WOULD prevent somebody from conquering the universe on turn 30.

As for a faster-increasing version...

researches or something to lower the malus.

[/quote]

That was one of the single most annoying aspects of MoO3. Sure, it never accounted for much of anything, but it got irritating enough to be noticeable. Then, you could just reset it by changing governments and changing back on your next turn. Yeah, that game was silly...

I think that would be possible by putting it into a variable on every building's maintenance equation. As in, call for the number of planets in the empire and alter the maintenance based on that. A really basic version...

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>(main maintenance formula) * (get_empire_colonized_percent_of_map/5)</pre><hr />

Your maintenance would double at 5%, triple at 10%, and so far.

edit: line breaks added

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

The maintenance functions are part of the game exe.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Er, I meant like...in a maintenance modification ability. This idea had me...well, over-zealous.

Actually, now that I think about it...if you put it in a government type as an ability there, you can change it depending on the government. Neat.

I think I'm on to something...

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Could you please add some line breaks in the code tags you used? They are breaking they page formatting. Thanks.

Sadly, I don't think there is a function to return the empire's government type available to facilities. I may be wrong, but I don't recall seeing anything in the past. There is an unused "Government Center" ability, but that's about it.

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

Yeah, that would've been cool for a MOO2-based mod, where the government types had all sorts of cool bonuses and stuff.
Of course, nothing's stopping you from redoing all the government types as racial traits! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

There may be indirect ways to get these effects, though. You can access quite a bit of information about empires through functions in Facilities and Components formulas. The cost or performance of the facilities and components themselves could thus be adjusted in ways influenced by tech level or even (perhaps) empire size. But it would be awfully tedious to have to keep re-editing all those formulas as you tweaked your mod balance. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Small Mod Experiment
 

I added line breaks. Yeah, table breaking ain't cool.

That would end up needing to be a call in the government's abilities with another funny ability there. I do hope they can stack that way but I haven't tested it myself yet.

Of course, there is also the possibility of having racial traits for the governments allowable, depending on the race's attitudes and all. Base them off of empire_has_racial_trait and give specific technologies based on the racial traits.