Empire specific components, tech - possible?

[God Emperor]

Elowan,
Have been away several weeks and only just saw your post.
There is a way of making components race specific without screwing around with the racial traits.

The answer is to do as I did with my Borg variant. That is edit the TechArea.txt file to incorporate a new Tech Area (mine was called Borg Technology) which at different levels allows access to components of different levels. You then add this technology as a research area to the AI_Research.txt file.
As the race is the only one with the tech area in its research program, no other AI race can/will research it.
The only downside is that human players can research it (house rules apply!) and that it occaisionally will pop up on one of those tech planets/ruins as the bonus tech. If an AI player discovers it, there is no problem though as their AI_DesignCreation.txt files will not allow them to incorporate the components (provided that you have not just copied the Weapons/ Component numbers and have created new numbers instead).

As I said earlier, check out my Borg variant in the Race Archive to see an example of how it can be done.
Regards,
GE

[Crazy_Dog]

Originally posted by God Emperor:
Elowan,
Have been away several weeks and only just saw your post.
There is a way of making components race specific without screwing around with the racial traits.

The answer is to do as I did with my Borg variant. That is edit the TechArea.txt file to incorporate a new Tech Area (mine was called Borg Technology) which at different levels allows access to components of different levels. You then add this technology as a research area to the AI_Research.txt file.
As the race is the only one with the tech area in its research program, no other AI race can/will research it.
The only downside is that human players can research it (house rules apply!) and that it occaisionally will pop up on one of those tech planets/ruins as the bonus tech. If an AI player discovers it, there is no problem though as their AI_DesignCreation.txt files will not allow them to incorporate the components (provided that you have not just copied the Weapons/ Component numbers and have created new numbers instead).

As I said earlier, check out my Borg variant in the Race Archive to see an example of how it can be done.
Regards,
GE

This let build any item specific for the race you want ?

[God Emperor]

yup (SE4 is a great game for modders!)

[God Emperor]

PS: The only "core" files that you have to edit are the TechArea and Components files...

[jimbob]

I personally prefer this approach over separate racial trees because then when you capture an enemy vessel (i.e. the borg capture the enterprise or vis-versa) you could disassemble the ship to reverse engineer the technology/components. As long as the players are honest and don't cheat by researching that branch further, you can get some fun assimilated/hybrid ships floating about the universe.
But with strictly exclusive tech trees, the Borg (or any other race) can only hope to assimilate the most mundane (common) components, like engines, shields... the boring stuff that everyone researches in common.