Primitives for proportions?

[geoschmo]

Early space flight primitive races. Capable of building sattelites and small orbital bases. Could even give them primitive missle and particle weapon technology for defensive purposes.

[Loser]

This sounds like a very fun idea.

It would not be too difficult to make certain techs 'savage tradable': all you have to do is pick out certain techs and not make them require the non-Primitive racial tech. You could even have zero-cost sub-techs that yield below-par components, facilities, ship sizes, or Intel Projects that have certain 'real' techs as prerequisites, so that when a race gets Intel I they can then research Primitive Intel I for no cost and trade it to the Primitives, who can then do whatever they want with it.

I think the Primitives should have the capacity to produce some small amounts of Rads at some point, just so they can support a ship given to them by a player. "You gave a baseship to the Ewoks? Do you know what they're going to do with that thing?!"

The Primitives should have superior infantry and, if possible, militia to start. This is both to keep them from being easy prey (human vs. AI, after all), and to account for the fact that they probably still kill their own food.

Since the Primitives are not only AI, but dumbed-down and limited AI, plaguing them out of existence would be too easy. I feel that these races should have plague resistance, of some sort, from the get go. This could be said to reflect their hardier, already survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle.

There could be a non-Primitive tech tree, let's call it Uplift for now, that specializes in techs to be traded to Primitives: Resupply, Troops and Infantry, Anti-Plague, and Repair ("Now listen here, little-bear-people. This is a Wrench. I know it looks kinda like a hammer, but you're gonna hafta trust me on this one...")

With these techs requiring a non-Only-only tech to research, but not non-Primitive only themselves, the Primitives could not get them on their own, but could get trade for them or even steal them. These techs would be better than the ones available to the Primitives, but not as good as non-Only-only techs.

If you give another player a transport with Weapon Platforms on it, the Weapon Platforms are his too, are they not? That would be fun. ("How in the blue blazes did Ewoks get CSM V??!" "Look at the hull of that Weapon Platform, sir. Those Weapon Platforms are Narn.")

I haven't modded, but the way I understand it, this should all be possible. All except the Neutrals part... I was under the impression you couldn't mod Neutrals.

[Loser]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Early space flight primitive races. Capable of building sattelites and small orbital bases. Could even give them primitive missle and particle weapon technology for defensive purposes.

You could do all:

Dirt Races
Steam Races
Space Races

But each would require their own Racial Tech tree, to keep them separate.

Or perhaps the Dirt Races could move up to Space Races. This could be very amusing in a Huge (255) map with only a half dozen players.

[mottlee]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Early space flight primitive races. Capable of building sattelites and small orbital bases. Could even give them primitive missle and particle weapon technology for defensive purposes.

Kinda sounds like ....US!.....

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Loser:
I haven't modded, but the way I understand it, this should all be possible. All except the Neutrals part... I was under the impression you couldn't mod Neutrals.

You can mod neutrals. By deafault they have pure vanilla AI_General files. But you could set them up with whatever you want that is affordable in your mod. There is a bug that limits the number of neutrals in a game to 5 IIRC. Don't think that's ever been fixed. So if you want a game with a lot of primitive races you'll need to use regular AI spots. Might be preferable actually because a neutral Primitive that has been uplifted will still be limited to their own homesystem, while a regular AI is not.

Geoschmo

[narf poit chez BOOM]

put copies of the normal tech high up the primitive tech tree? with a max of 20% of another races research, it might work. you'd also have to turn of mega evil.

[Loser]

You're right about Mega Evil, that would throw a real wrench in the gears. ("Damn you, little-bear-person! This does not go here!" "Yub yub!" "No, it doesn't.")

So, the only thing that is not open to alteration, concerning Neutrals, is their inability to leave the home system? Everything else can be changed?

And what about WPs? Can I gift WPs, will the AI know what to do with a transport full of WPs or will it jettison them and fill the transport with carrots for the winter?

The one place I see conflict in the real-tech vs. Primitive/Uplift-tech is Intel. Real players may be tempted to use Primitive/Uplift Intel. This should not be possible, as P/U Intel will probably need to work differently for the little bastards to make affordable use of it.

This can be solved by another layer of racial tech. Primitive-only Intel tech that requires Uplift Intel to get but costs little or nothing to research.

Also, do AI ever use Analyze on captured or traded ships?