Starting facs for homeworlds...

Trachmyr · #1 May 4th, 2001, 11:37 PM

The way around this is simple... don't add research, add resupply or spaceport abilities to it... and mod AI_facility_creation.txt(?) so that the colonies only build one of the approprite item. For instance, add resupply to shipyards... your homeworld will start with 2 shipyards, then modify the AI_facility_creation.txt(?) to remove all instances where a colony is to have both a shipyard and a resupply depot. Of course the drawback is that now you need only build a shipyard and you'll get a resupply depot for free... but if you increase the costs of the shipyards some, and reduce the costs of the "normal" resupply depot, then that will give human players a reason to only build the less usefull resupply depot as it will be built 5x/10x faster than the shipyard.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Devnullicus · #2 May 4th, 2001, 11:46 PM

I think you could get this to work, but you'd have to make sure that any resource/research generation was less than the value of the lowest facility that does that generation. For example, if a level 1 research facility generates 500 points, your shipyard would have to produce less than that.

The problem is that the AI tries to be semi-intelligent and build the facility that generates the most of that particular resource. This is what caused the monlith facilities to never be built by the AI way back when.

Marty Ward · #3 May 5th, 2001, 03:03 AM

I'm not to good at modding the AI files. I just look for the resupply facility and delete it? This must be done for each race I guess

If you don't make the value higher, tried lower but not equal, on the shipyard than the standard facility the AI will pick the standard facility at start.
You could add the Spaceport ability also and get 3 yards at start and that might work too but that doesn't seem as logical, I can see the yard and resupply being done by the same facility.
Do you think having 2 yards on a planet is worth it? I was hoping to get 7-10 yards and create a real important planet. Doesn't seem possible though.

Trachmyr · #4 May 5th, 2001, 10:25 AM

Now that I think about it, you might not have to delete the resupply entries... I'm not sure what will happen though, it might work fine, it might build an extra resupply fac when the shipyard covers it, or it might frezze up.... I'm not sure. You'd only need to delete a "resupply fac entry" when it also occurs with a shipyard entry... and you would have to do it for each race plus the defaults.

I don't think you can have a homeworld start with more than 2 or 3 shipyards w/o causing serious problems in the game, sorry. I just wish MM would remove the 1 shipyard per planet/ship hardcode restriction, and just enforce it with the "Restrictions" line in componets.txt and facility.txt.

Marty Ward · #5 May 5th, 2001, 06:59 PM

I know that 9 shipyards on the homeworld caused the AI to pump out ships! Maybe I will try a few games with three yards on a homeworld, I think I could modify 2-3 AI's to get a feel for how they handle it.
I'm definately gonna try 9+ in a hotseat game though. Then you would have a planet worth risking you entire fleet to capture, or defend!

DirectorTsaarx · #6 May 7th, 2001, 03:37 PM

I had an interesting thought: maybe the restriction on planetary spaceyards should be "one per [x] facilities on planet". And make [x] a settable option. Make the default high (as in more facilities than you can put on a sphereworld) so it doesn't affect the current setup, but then modders could change it. Setting the value [x] to 20 would allow huge worlds to build 2 spaceyards; [x]=10 would allow 2 spaceyards on medium and large worlds, and 3 on huge worlds; etc.

What do y'all think? I know it requires hardcode change by MM, so would it be worthwhile?

Suicide Junkie · #7 May 7th, 2001, 05:48 PM

I like it!

If you rounded off instead of rounding up, then you could have a restriction of no spaceyards on tiny worlds.

Perhaps it should be based on atmosphere; for airless worlds, spaceships would have a natural environment on the surface, and could take off easily. So, vaccuum worlds could have more spaceyards than other atmospheres, which could be limited to one...

Separately, what if ships can only be built at space stations, but bases can be built from planetary spaceyards.

SO, you need a space yard to get the base, which builds the ships in orbit.