Alien Races

Baron Munchausen · #1 February 6th, 2001, 07:54 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Nyx:
What COULD be done, however, would be to alter the nature of the custom tech trees. Give organics organic hulls, five different organic weapon categories, organic resource harvesting, bio-computers, and so forth. Even if all you did was replace 90% of the component's cost with organics instead of minerals and made a new component image that was a bit greener, you'd have gone a long, long way toward making it happen and that's totally do able. No balancing issues because you're not changing anything really. Even the techs would have the exact-same cost and effects, just different names and visuals giving them an organic feel. After you get that Version working, later upgrades would include alterations, like organic components regenerating, crystal ones having a higher than normal damage resistance, Temporal resource harvesting facilities would produce more, and so forth. That's when the balancing act would get ugly which is why I don't recommend it as a beginning step.

The most characteristic techs, the weapons and armor, already have special images that look organic. Certain "common" technologies like engines, shields, and life support could be given organic variations to improve the look but I don't think most of the other techs need to be changed. A race with a special ability isn't necessarily going to do EVERYTHING according to its special ability. A wave-motion gun is a wave-motion gun, and probably ought to use the same picture regardless of who develops it.

As far as special hulls, though, seperate ship sets for each racial ability could get really bulky and difficult to manage. We need some "abilities" to be added to ships when they are built rather than having to be written into the config files before the game starts. If we had this, we could have "Darloks" with innate stealth, organic races with innate regeneration ('living ships' instead of just living armor), and other goodies without all the hassle of a dozen independent ship sets in the config files.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 February 2001).]

DirectorTsaarx · #2 February 7th, 2001, 12:25 AM

Another trick would be to "close off" certain tech areas based on use of racial techs. For instance, if you use temporal techs, you don't get to research the standard beam weapons. Organic races don't get either beam weapons or seekers (since they have their own seekers). Granted, the AI's usually focus on available racial techs, but they still eventually spend research points on other areas. Why waste the research points? Of course, I'm not certain how to balance this yet, but it should be doable...

Tampa_Gamer · #3 February 7th, 2001, 12:35 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
As far as special hulls, though, seperate ship sets for each racial ability could get really bulky and difficult to manage. We need some "abilities" to be added to ships when they are built rather than having to be written into the config files before the game starts. If we had this, we could have "Darloks" with innate stealth, organic races with innate regeneration ('living ships' instead of just living armor), and other goodies without all the hassle of a dozen independent ship sets in the config files.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 February 2001).]

Agreed. The way I got around it for the Darlok (originally before I ditched the ideal of modifying everyones racial traits, components, and research data files) was to create and add a special racial component (0k in size) to every Darlok ship design. This component had basic stealth ability. You could only get and upgrade this component with the "Stealthy" racial attribute. It worked great (except that until the next patch comes out the AI doesn't cloak). But I really hate for everyone to modify those three \Data files just because they are using the Darlok.

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 06 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 06 February 2001).]

DirkHowitzer · #4 February 7th, 2001, 02:43 AM

As far as shipsets go, how hard would it be to do something like MOO where each ship size(Escort, Frigate, L. Cruiser, Cruiser, etc...)had several different types(basically just different pictures)which were accessed by left and right arrows. Possible to do? This alone would add a bunch more color to the game.

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

Marty Ward · #5 February 7th, 2001, 03:37 AM

I like the idea changing the cost of items to represent the type of race is a gfreat idea. Why would an organic race need minerals to build its shipyard? If a race was exteremely dependent on one type of resource it could change what type of planet it values the most.
I am not sure if balance would be as much of a problem as some think. The races are only balanced now because they basically all use the same items. How unbalanced would the crystaloid race be if it could not research any beam weapons? What if they never could figure out how to mount PD's on ships but developed an anti-missle fighter? The tactics to fight them would have to change.
Having separate tech tree for a race and having that race lose the ability to research some standard items could make for some interesting competition.
Maybe it is to much to ask, it seems like a LOT of work.You would have to create the new tech tree, think of new techs that aren't just renames of existing items, and determine what should be excluded to that race.
Having true differences certainly would give the game some personality though.

Str8_Gain · #6 February 17th, 2001, 06:45 AM

quote:
Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
Another trick would be to "close off" certain tech areas based on use of racial techs. For instance, if you use temporal techs, you don't get to research the standard beam weapons. Organic races don't get either beam weapons or seekers (since they have their own seekers). Granted, the AI's usually focus on available racial techs, but they still eventually spend research points on other areas. Why waste the research points? Of course, I'm not certain how to balance this yet, but it should be doable...

Heeheehee, look what happens when you use the search functions to find out stuff

I've been considering doing this for races totally mechanical in nature (ie. Artificial Intelligences). I was considering adding a Racial Trait for this, that would require Emotionless and Mechanoid as secondary traits (yes, this would cost big in terms of racial points).

One thing I'd like to be able to block off, as an example, from being available is the conventional Industry-to-Computers tree (since a mech race would have this to begin with, there's no need to research Industry first). So far, I've come up with ideas for a few components/facilities that have close analogues in the regular (non-race specific) tree, but it simply wouldn't make sense for a mech race to start with, for example, the bridge/lifesupport/crewquarters combo when they should rightfully start with Master Computers or some equivalent, to reflect the nature of that species.

If I can't block off a tree entirely, I'd like to find a way to block availability of specific components that are normally there in the regular tree (like the B/LS/CQ combo mentioned above), and replace them with the components I'd like there for that specific race (all the other races would have tech trees that are unaffected unless they were also mechanicals).

Adding in new tech trees and racial traits to use them looks easy enough, but so far I'm drawing a blank on how to block off certain components/trees, given the current structure of the text files.

Marty Ward · #7 February 17th, 2001, 07:24 AM

Maybe you could do it if you made all the tech tree into separate branches each linked to a racial trait. The tech tree would be huge.
You would be required to choose a racial trait that included a tech tree.
You could have a basic racial trait that gives the current tech tree and a custom tree for each other trait. This would certainly allow a more diverse and unique races.