A mod I am thinking of doing...

[AeoN2]

After looking through archives and how the game works I have decided that there are two things I feel able to do... mod tech/components and mod planets and star-systems... and since tech/comp mods require me to do AI's too I decided not to walk that path

But I am giving serious thought to adding many new planets, and making some interesting new system types... but I would like some suggestions here...

I know there is already one mod that adds many new planets, should I ask for permission to add those planets to my mod?

Also, I am thinking about trying to make a balance in planet size/atmosphere ratio, and would like some feedback on this (I remember looking statisticly on the planet types in the old SE4 beta, and it was by no means an even spread, or even one that seemed logical).

My thoughts are that atmospheres should be equally represented (perhaps with the exception of none), and that gas giants should be rarer but bigger in average...

Btw I am going to use a fractal tool called Wilbur to make planet graphics (I hope the pics will look good in SE4)

--
AeoN2
--
Gumperson's Law:
The probability of anything happening is in
inverse ratio to its desirability.

[geoschmo]

Typically, really almost without exception, everybody that Posts mods or suggestions to the forum understands that people will like certain things and want to incorporate them into their mods. Asking for explicit permission above and beyond this is not usually neccesary as long as you "give credit where credit is due" in a readme file in your mod somewhere. Unless you are doing something extaordinary like taking the entire mod done by someone else and adding some of your stuff but keeping their name, like Rollo and I did with Devnull Mod. In that case we did talk to Devnellicus first about using the name and all.

[Deathstalker]

Best of luck! I did a 'QuadMod' awhile back but I didn't really mess with much on how the planets themselves acted. I just 'beefed up' the systems. The 'organic plant thingy system' was actually alive and pulled things in like a black hole, I had a storm system that had planets, comets hid ships (like stealth armor) and such stuff. You are quite welcome to look at it/incorporate what you want if anything suits your fancy.

Now as to things I would like to see (things I never got around to or totally understood). Colonizable Asteroids! (I know it has something to do with just using the asteroid picture and the small planet stats for everything else). Machine planets! (I don't know, maybe use a borg cube for the graphic ).

I don't know if all the abilities work yet in the abilities.txt but alot of them would be neat additions for planets (ie built in abilities like 'Research Point Generation'-"An all knowing Hermit lives here and imparts his wisdom upon you") I did a map before with stats like that, as well as planets with ground combat bonuses, resource generation etc but most of them did not work.

Ah well, again best of luck. Modding is a fun experience!

[AeoN2]

Here is an example of an medium size ice/oxy planet I made rather quickly...

[geoschmo]

Colonizing asteroids is a good idea. It's fairly easy to do. It does cause minor problems in that you can't use them to make planets then, cause they already are as far as the game is concerned. You sort of need to keep a seprate class of asteroids that are not colonizable so that if any planets are destroyed by natural or other means the game has something to change them into. Those could then be formed into planets, or even colonizable asteroids.

I have always thought that planets of the wrong aptmosphere type were too restrictive as far as the amount of cargo storage available on them. I can see lower population because of the domes, but why do weap platforms, or units which can function in a variety of environments need to be stored in the domes? I would suggest raising the cargo capacity of domed worlds.

Geoschmo

[AeoN2]

I don't think I will do anything game-changing when it comes to asteroids.

The possibility to add different abilities to stellar abilities are interesting though, but it will take a lot of testing to see what will work and what won't... I can imagine things like discovering an ancient sentient computer on a planet, generating 200 or so research points, etc...

Raising the cargo capacity is actually a very good idea, don't know why I didn't think about that when I looked through the planetsize.txt file...

[AeoN2]

Also when looking through the files I saw something called a "Stellar Balancer" ... I haven't encountered this in a game yet, is it deactivated or have I just not played enough SE4 yet

[AeoN2]

I have worked out some statistics out of the secttype.txt now that might be interesting to people (formatting isn't possible here though):

ROCK
----
(none/methane/oxygen/hydrogen/carbon)
tiny 3 6 6 6 6
smll 3 7 6 6 6
medm 3 6 6 6 6
lrge 3 4 4 4 4
huge 3 2 2 2 2

ICE
---
(none/methane/oxygen/hydrogen/carbon)
tiny 2 4 4 4 4
smll 2 3 4 4 4
medm 2 2 2 2 2
lrge 2 2 2 2 2
huge 2 2 2 2 2

GAS
---
(none/methane/oxygen/hydrogen/carbon)
tiny
smll
medm 2 2 2 2
lrge 4 4 4 4
huge 6 6 6 6

Now unless someone says otherwise I will assume the planets in the secttype.txt file has an equal chance of being chosen (since systemtypes.txt as far as I could see always chose random size and atmosphere except moons).

I then calculated how many facilities each race would get if all planets are equally represented (and no extra colonization tech):

ROCK:
-none: 475
-meth: 551
-oxyg: 543
-hydr: 543
-carb: 543

ICE:
-none: 292
-meth: 308
-oxyg: 316
-hydr: 316
-carb: 316

GAS:
-meth: 480
-oxyg: 480
-hydr: 480
-carb: 480

The most interesting fact is maybe that Rock/Methane is slightly superior to Rock/Oxygen (because there is one extra small Rock/Methane planet) ... looks like one small/rock/meth should have been ice instead...

Any comments to my finds?

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AeoN2

EDIT: tried to improve formatting

[ June 17, 2002, 18:27: Message edited by: AeoN2 ]

[geoschmo]

As far as methane having an advantage, that depends on how the game actually chooses what particular planet goes where. I had always assumed that it decides first the size, composition and aptmosphere of planet, and then refers to the sectortype file to select from the available planets that fit those characteristics. In that case there would be statistically no difference between the Rock worlds of any of the four aptmoshpere types (Not including the none aptmosphere. That would have a slight advantage due to the moons)

If however as you seem to think the game goes to the sector type file and Groups all the "any" type planets together and randomly chooses from them, then yes I suppose Methane would have a slightly higher chance of occuring.

The way to tell I guess would be to do a mod with only two types of planets in the sector type file and a lot more of one than the other and see how many of each get picked.

Geoschmo

[ June 17, 2002, 18:41: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[AeoN2]

hmm... yes I didn't actually consider that... It does make more sense if it selects type at random and then finds a matching planet in secttype.txt... but if that is true then none atmosphere planets shouldn't be any rarer than others (unless there is special code again involving no atmosphere)...

Also you must consider that secttype and systemtypes are the only files that contain the different atmospheres, and I think that it's possible to add new atmosphere types here? If this is true then the new types wouldn't get selected at all if a special routine selects atmosphere...

--
AeoN2