some newbie Mod questions
 

Just picked up the game (just in time for SEV it seems, hehe), and I really like it. Have some questions though. For one, is it possible to limit the number of ships in the game by hull class. That is, could I limit the number of Base ships to say one or two per race. The number of DN's to some number a bit higher, etc? I assume it would have to be done through a mod, but is it possible at all? Has anyone built a mod like this?

I'm actually looking to do a number of things and am wondering if it is possible.
1) limit the number of larger ships (scale them actually, more hulls the smaller they are - fewer the larger they are)
2) Increase the build times for larger hulls
3) Maybe mess around with maint costs

The intent being to turn the game from a rush to build an all DN fleet into one of building a 'core' fleet of dn's that you try to keep alive supported by smaller (and less efffective due to mounts) and faster to build hulls. Anyhow, some friends of mine thought it sounded like a cool idea.

Are there any tutorials on making race/AI mods? I assume there must be, so the real question is would someone please provide a link to one.

Thanks,
Chad

Re: some newbie Mod questions
 

Not strictly like in #1.

In GritEcon, I made build times scale with the CUBE of the hull size. The really big ships take forever.
To balance that, I made maintenance costs essentially flat. A huge ship would cost approximately the same to maintain as a tiny one.

Thusly, in peacetime, you can slowly build larger ships and scrap the tiny ones.
In heated wartimes, you'd pump out the small ships as fast as possible and throw them in as cannon fodder.

Re: some newbie Mod questions
 

Non-AI modding tutorial:
SEIV Modding 101

AI modding tutorials being worked on at:
SpaceEmpires.net ModWorks

Note that we are currently working on getting more modding tools and documents set up at ModWorks.

Re: some newbie Mod questions
 

Welcome to the forum http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: some newbie Mod questions
 

For 2 and 3, basically if you increase the cost of the hull, that will in itself increase the build time and the maintenance, since the maintenance is derived from the original build cost of the ship.

Re: some newbie Mod questions
 

But is something like what I describe even possible with the game engine?

For that matter, could you split 'units' allowed. Such that, it was 1k fighters, 1k mines, 1k sats, etc?

Any idea how one might go about this?

Re: some newbie Mod questions
 

There is no way to enforce a set limit on the number of a particular ship hull you can build.

Units count as generic cargo space. There is no way to change this.