Starting Tech Levels like SE III?

[Kimball]

I recently emailed MM and Aaron said that a future patch will allow SEIV to have "starting tech levels" during game setup like in the SE III setup. Does anyone know if that it is still in the works? Thank you.

[rdouglass]

I don't know but its a good idea IMO. I always liked that about SE3 - if you wanted to max out PDC's at the beginning, you could. Or missles, or shields, etc. I think that gives quite a bit more control over the customization of your race.

I definitely like the custom racial traits like crystallurgy and organics (those were lacking in SE3), but the fine tuning of your starting techs is very much missed by me...

[Baron Munchausen]

We've been asking for multiple intermediate levels for starting tech for a long time. Just another of the gazillion changes we'd like to see... For now, you can change the "Medium" level to be what you want, it's just not changeable IN the game, you have to edit the techarea text file. And, it's only ONE customizable option, so you have to edit each time you want something different.

In techarea.txt, the "Raise Level" setting is the level of this tech you will get if you choose "medium" for starting tech. It's that simple. But, it's up to you to make certain that the arrangement of these techs makes sense. Prerequsites are not checked.

[Kimball]

The problem with editing the techarea.txt file is that all players have to start with the same tech levels. It may be possible, however, to have each human player start with their own modified techarea.txt file on their computer. I think that would create some problems with computer players having the same tech areas that the Last human player has. I haven't tried each human modifying their own techarea.txt file, though, so I could be mistaken. Anyone tried it yet?

[Kimball]

I went ahead and tried what I just talked about. It didn't work the way I had hoped. Everyone still starts with the same levels as indicated in techareas.txt. Hopefully MM will have time to make the SE IV setup like the SE III setup in the next patch so that each player can select their own individual starting levels. Editing the text file is ok if you're not playing with multiple human players. Oh, well. Thanks to all.