How Does The Tech Gridder Work?

[Atrocities]

If any one knows how this modding tool works please help me. Thanks.

[Suicide Junkie]

Start with a components.txt stripped down to just one component. (Have the *begin*, and the proper spacing of your components)

Then choose the file to grid, punch in the tech area name, and use the scrollbar to set how many levels you want.

For the naming scheme, "simple" will remove the Last "word" in the name of the starting component(s), and figure out its value in the naming system you chose. It will then add one and write the result for each new component generated.
"Complex" will leave the current name, and append the new counting system to the end.

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For example, if the Last word is "Laser" and you happened to choose Simple Roman, it would look at the "L", stop at the "a" and take 50 as the starting value.
The next components would then be LI, LII, LIII, LIV, LV, etc.
The roman numeral naming scheme in the tech gridder works for arbitrarily large numbers, but if you go too high, you'll get a long string of "M"'s at the beginning
The Alpha scheme will also go arbitrarily high, wrapping from Z to AA and ZZ to AAA and so on.

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On the subsequent pages, you can punch in how you want each of the component's attributes to change at each level increase.
They are applied in order, so when going from level 1 to level 2, it will add, then multiply, then take an exponent.
so 50 +5 *2 ^.9 is actually:
(((50+5)*2)^.9) = 68.75

If you type in the value of the component's stat and hit preview, you'll see a bar chart of how the stat changes with each level.

Repeat for all the stats.

For abilities, first select which ability to edit (based on the order they are found in the component)
Uncheck the "DO NOT EDIT" box for the items you want to change, fill in the amounts as before, and then press the "save changes" before moving on to a different ability.

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If you set up changes for a field which is not found, the gridder will not create that field.
So, you con use this on facilites and such too!

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-= December 2004 =-
WARNING:
SE4 will not successfully load more than 32k (32768) components.
Loading a mod with 32k components (and stock-like values for everything else) will require approximately 500 megabytes of RAM plus Swap File.

This limit can easily be breached given multiple dimensional grid techs.

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PS:
- Notepad has probably already failed you.
- Wordpad will likely die slowly and horribly as you get a few thousand components.
- DON'T bother trying to use an office program; they will load and provide editing capability, but will mangle your linebreaks and more while saving. (Although using the ComponentsRepairTool found on http://imagemodserver/other/MM/SE4/Tools will fix most of that type of damage.)

Linux tools tend to work well, even on 50 megabyte files

[Atrocities]

Thank You SJ.

[Suicide Junkie]

BTW, values are tracked to at least single precision internally, but rounded off to integers just before they are written to file.

So if you set a range increase of 0.5, you'll get +1 range every second tech level.

[Atrocities]

Thanks again. This should be an interesting progame to use. Might save a lot of time.