Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

The premise is that there was an elder race that long ago declined and vanished.

All of the player races were once enslaved by this elder race and now they have advanced to the point of exploring the galaxy.

The cool thing is that as the players explore the universe, they encounter abandoned outPosts and deelict ships (that may be dormant or may attack).

The host plays only as the elder race (deciding which ships are dormant, etc.) and monitors the game.

Here are my questions:

1) Can one race be given more access to the tech tree at set up?

2) Can a game be constructed where you run 100-200 turns, advancing one race while holding all of the others back and then open it up to other players?

The latter seems possible, but I wanted to pose the question here before I spend the time generating 200 turns just to find out that it won't work.

Thanks.

Re: Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

1) Yes, if you mod in a new tech tree and give the older race that tree. This will prevent the other races from getting that technology, though.

2) also yes, though it is tedious in the extreme. You have to either subsitute an AI that does nothing for the races, mod them temporaly so they CAN do nothing, or play each players turn..for every..single..turn. At the minimum you must lay the ancient race, load SE4, run the turn in the Host menu, load SE, play the race, repeat. Gets very annoying very fast.

Phoenix-D

Re: Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You have a good premise there, good luck with it.

For question One - It is possible to give one race extra access to additional tech areas via two ways. If this is going to be a scenario, edit the RacialTraits.txt file and reduce the costs for each racial tech. Then, while setting up the game, enable the max amount of racial points and setup the empire with as much as you want. It applies on a per-empire standard meaning you ahve to setup each one for the tech racial techs you want.

For Question Two - This can also be done by simply setting all the players to human controlled and playing one empire while all the others are ignored. Make sure all AI control is turned off on the other empires. Warning for you, this involves a lot of hitting 'end turn' so make sure your wrist is properly supported http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . 200 x number of players = to damn much

Re: Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

You can also do something like what I did for the Tug of War Mod. Setup a new racial trait, create a racial tech specific to the racial trait, copy all the advanced technology you want for that race (ie, components and facilities), then change their tech requirement to the new racial tech. You can then set what ever parameters you chose, including whether or not they are available to this race on start up. All the rest of the players will have to research the comps and facs as per normal.

Re: Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you just want that race to progress through the tech tree really fast, use a mod with all tech costs set to ONE research point.
At 12 techs per turn, you'll be done in no time, and then its just a matter of building the ships and moving them to where you want them to start.

Reset the rules back to normal, and run a turn to complete the process, then distribute the game to the players.

Having a copy of the components in a racial tech area will allow you to make the ships too, but the players won't be able to deconstruct and analyse them.

Re: Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

Make SYs have rates of 100x their default rate when setting up the game, so all ships are built in just 1 turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

This sounds like a lot of fun. I hope you keep working on it. I would love to try playing it.

Re: Game Idea: Can it be done?
 

To run 200 turns you can use Belisarius batch file.
(will post link later, or look in the AI DEAD MATCH 2 thread, it ought to be there).

As stated use human empires with settings "AI makes no changes"

(Started thinking, as you need to play the ancient empire to move ships etc, you can't use the batch file, sorry)

[ April 13, 2003, 12:06: Message edited by: Ruatha ]