Too many planets

[DirectorTsaarx]

An idea, purely to maintain the level of diversity in the game, but without allowing a race to colonize all types of planets:

Make the colonizing techs into racial traits! Then you can't research/trade/analyze/etc. to get the others...

I'll have to do some testing to see how this might work, but maybe the usual team of modders can think about it too & come up with something...

[DirectorTsaarx]

All right - I did some preliminary testing, and I think it'll work OK. I'm attaching a file with some of the appropriate changes; you'll have to cut & paste into the appropriate data files (and do a fair amount of modding to the race files, too; may even have to alter the "*.emp files" if you want to use the "Quick Start" option).

First, you add three new racial traits to "RacialTraits.txt", one for each Colonization Tech; obviously, give each one it's own racial trait ID. I set the cost to 0 (zero) so it wouldn't unbalance the existing setup options. Of course, it would be up to the player's discretion not to abuse this, since it would be fairly involved to allow the AI to start using all colonization techs again after following the rest of these steps...

Second, edit the colonization techs in the "TechArea" file to include the appropriate Racial Tech ID.

And here's where it gets tricky: you have to add the appropriate racial tech to each race. I've used the Abbidon in the example in the attached file; basically, edit the "*_AI_General" file so the race has one more "Advanced Trait" at each option level, and add the appropriate planet type as an advanced trait. For example, the original Abbidon_AI_General file reads:
=========
Race Opt 1 Num Advanced Traits := 1
Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 1 := Psychic
=========
And the new file would read:
=========
Race Opt 1 Num Advanced Traits := 2
Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 1 := Psychic
Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 2 := Gas Giant Race
=========
This is clearer in the attached file. I'm not certain what would happen in games where racial points are set to 0 (zero) for setup, but the above should catch the 2000, 3000 and 5000 racial point options.

Finally, all the "*_AI_Research" files need to be edited to remove all references to colonization techs.

You'll also have to pay attention in startup and select the appropriate racial tech for your environment; I wouldn't suggest selecting "Rock/Oxygen" as your environment, and then taking "Gas Giant Race" as a racial trait .

Any comments on my plan for implementing Barnacle Bill's idea?

[God Emperor]

Sounds interesting and should work. A bit too involved for me though. Think I'll probably follow BB's suggestion of just linking Gas Giant Technology with a Gravity Tech level....

[Daynarr]

You will need to make new emp files for all races if you implement such changes. The game doesn't allow you to use old ones if you have made any changes to racial trait file.

[dmm]

I don't have a problem with allowing races to colonize all types -- gas, rock, and ice. The way I deal with believability is to assume that the game's definition of a "Gas" planet is not what one normally thinks of as a gas giant. And same for Ice planet. Instead, the planets shown are all reasonably Earth-like, but represent extremes that one could not colonize with standard technology. So a Gas planet might be like Venus -- very thick atmosphere. An Ice planet might be like Mars.

This mental adjustment brings its own problems. For instance, how can there possibly be so many Earth-like planets in one star system??

[Elwood Bluze]

I've made a simple mod to reduce planets per system to 4 or 5 for the standard solar systems, and 1 to 3 for binaries and trinaries. This has made each planet that much more valuable and the AI seems to come out more aggressively looking for real estate to conquer. I'll post it is there's interest.



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Elwood Bluze

[DirkHowitzer]

Dmm,
Think of this way...remember cloud city in Star Wars? You have to have some kind of device to negate effects of gravity in the colony but that should be easy enough to an advanced race...Easy way yo colonize gas planets...as for ice, well people live on the north and south poles right? Much of those are ice, in fact if I recall right the entire North Pole is ice...

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"He's dead, Jim."-- Lt. Commander Leonard "Bones" McCoy |Chief Medical Officer / USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

[This message has been edited by DirkHowitzer (edited 29 January 2001).]