Alpha Centauri Mod Discussion Thread

[Hugh Manatee]

Ok technically Planet was an all Nitrogen and CO2 and fungus. I think we should reflect this in the game. They should be able to colonize as many worlds as they want and it should all be the same but should be more comfortable on Oxegen. IRL there are very litle life supporting oxegen planets.

I think instead of mineral plants and organics farms and radioactives facilities and research centers we should have it set up so you have to build new "Bases" on your planets. These different bases produce a little of all of the resouses and a lot of one specific resouce(eg. a headquarters base produces like 500 of each resourse and has the ability to build space ships{you only get one per planet}, a research base produces 100 of all the other resourses and 1000 reaserch points, a miner base produces 1000 minerals and 100 of the others, and a Covert Ops center produces 2000 intel point, 500 reaserch and 50 of the others, you get the Idea).

You can them build other terain enhacements that give the other bases a certain %bonus(mines and boreholes increase mineral production, boreholes more than mines, solar panels and echelon mirrors increase radiation and reaserch, echelons more so than solar panels, and farms and condensers do the same for organics production.) Also bunkers, perimiter defense and tachyons fields increase troop defense.

Is there some way to mod the planets so you can build lots of stuff on them without increasing the population?

Secret prodjects are like the system wide bonus buildings, likr the temporal vacation thing and the events predicter.

[EDIT] Also there should be no specific shield tech or laser tech or facility tech, we should mod it so that each tech you research unlocks a new one, just like in the game. I have the tech tree poster all mapped out if you need it.

[ July 04, 2003, 02:35: Message edited by: Hugh Manatee ]

[Taera]

true! Planet was nitrogen place, and unfriendly at that... perharps a modded CO2 planet with, like, HARSH environment? or a carefully placed sphereworld... should do it, even if domed

[Chronon]

Thanks Fyron, for pointing me in the direction of your mod tutorial. It looks extremely helpful. Aside from that and SJ's tech gridder, are there any other "must have" modding tools, or "must see" sites?

Welcome aboard Taera! It's great to have you. I like your idea about fungus monsters. Perhaps we could change the Psychic weapons a bit and make them Psionic weapons. They wouldn't capture ships, but they would wipe out the crew (very nasty).

Hugh, those are some great ideas about the facilities and the tech tree. I'm sure we could mod them as you described.

I think we might be able to arrange something about the number of facilities as well. What if we modified the Advanced Storage Techniques trait to 100% instead of 20%, and then made its cost 0 and gave it to all the factions? Then every colony would have twice as many facility slots. I wonder if that would work?

I think at this point we need to figure out how we want to organize ourselves. Do we discuss all of our general ideas first, then work on specifics later? Or, do we jump right in and start modding now, and work out the details as we go along? Do we want a communal style where we all keep our hands in everything, or should we work individually on our specific tasks and report here as needed?

Unless someone else would like to do it, I am willing to act as general coordinator. I will also be able to do a ship set (it took me a year to do my first one - even if it takes me a quarter of the time for set number two, that's still three months), and work on some of the text files to.

Hugh, you wanted to do the Progenitors, which is great. Is there anything else you're interested in (perhaps facilities and research)?

Taera, what would you like to do? I'd love to see what kinds of ship sets you could do for the different factions, but I know you prefer to focus your efforts on the Taera.

Oleg, are you interested in working on the mod as well?

[Taera]

Adv. Storage techniques would make oxygen planets give you way too much dont you think?

Perharps an e-mail would do us good. How about everyone post their addy and we use that? we can of course use the forum but i find e-mail more.. useful? then again, here we can get instant comments.

WHat will i be doing, hmm. Graphics - im not sure about that one (i'd try the Gaians and perharps University/Consciousness -- which one will we be using? i say Counsciousness, i love those guys ). For now, however, i cant work on images because my PC is dead. I will let you know when that changes, untill then typing and thinking are all i can do

[Hugh Manatee]

I will try to do the progenitor graphics and I would like to attempt to set up a decent tech tree and facilities and components(I was good a this in SE3, lets hope I can handel it.). This is my first time modding and I'll have a lot to learn. I think you(Chronon) should take on the responsibility as coordinator, we should check in here every now and then(at least every other day) and meet once a week and delegate commitee style. While I can do the progenitors shipset, and the tech tree, I don't think I'm up to the challenge of the component and facility pics themselves, this will likely involve photoshopping the stuff from the game and I suck at photoshopping. I'll also need somebody to do the progenitor race pics too. Somebody else can set the actual empire files and AI up.

First we need to get some of this on paper before we start actually modding, otherwise it will all be disorganized. Now like I said I still have the complete tech tree poster, and lots of refferace stuff and at least a hundred hours of SMAC play experience, so I have a few good Ideas. First I think we need to specify the starting point of the game, the Unity captain got wacked and the crew split up into 7(or 12) factions(? we need to decide too if we want to work in the Alien Crossfire factions, I guess we do???) and landed on separate planets instead of 1. We need to decide what techs they start with and how many bases they start with, and define what those techs are. In the game there is actually a dialouge about the difficulty and expense of launching the simplest of space probes, so I assume that in this mod we should assume they put everything up to this point into aeronautics, giving them doctrine Airpower, flexibility, mobility, fossile fuels, and Orbital space flight from the start. this should give them missile weapons, lasers, units like needle jets and satelites, troops and speeders and basic colony ad cargo hulls and a moderate space explorer ship, and the fission reactor(this will be their supply and engines). For facilities, they get the bases I mentioned, but low end ones, which an be upgraded by advancing to the apropriate tech later, and basic terrain enhancements(farm, mines, and solar collectors).As for starting secret prodjects I will have to consult the tech tree and my book. What do you think of my broad outline so far?

[edit]BTW my email is listed up there and it's the same as my IM. I also have a website under construction if we need to use it to host the mod, I didn't really have anything to put on it except the swarm after my old comp crashed. Hugh Manatees Ship Yard, under construction

[ July 04, 2003, 06:54: Message edited by: Hugh Manatee ]

[Fyron]

I think we might be able to arrange something about the number of facilities as well. What if we modified the Advanced Storage Techniques trait to 100% instead of 20%, and then made its cost 0 and gave it to all the factions? Then every colony would have twice as many facility slots. I wonder if that would work?

You can get the same effect by doubling the number of facilities and such on the planets themselves in PlanetSize.txt. This does not force every empire to require advanced storage technigues.

[Taera]

I say we work with SMACX factions because i, personally, find some of them to have much more interesting personalities than some of the original SMAC - for example, my favorite Counsciness is far better than original University.

Agree regarding to tech, Hugh. But how are we going to incorporate Secret Projects?