Miniaturization Tech

Menschenfresser · #1 July 27th, 2001, 07:23 PM

This may have been suggested before, or conceived and then tossed because of its difficulty, or even is out there. Hell, I must admit I haven't been keeping up lately.

But I would like to add a miniaturization tech to the tree. I have modded some before, but am not an expert, so I would appreciate some help with this if anyone can.

I would like to have a new area of research that once finished shrinks the size of some or all the components for ships, fighters, etc. I suppose it is possible to have as its prerequisite every other tech, so that it become the final tech to research, and thuse the player would get every tech all over again, but in a smaller size. These smaller sizes would be more expensive. I'm not sure if this would be the only way to go about it, or if this purely theoretical approach would work, but I would like to introduce it earlier than at the end. Not sure how though.

I don't envision it to make everything smaller...weapons, shields, stuff like this.

Ideas?

geoschmo · #2 July 27th, 2001, 07:49 PM

Doable.
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/For.../001358-3.html

Baron Munchausen · #3 July 27th, 2001, 07:57 PM

Well, the hard way to do this is to make special racial technologies that get smaller at higher levels. Then give your race the necessary racial trait. This is a lot of work and requires maintenance whenever the game changes. A better way would be for the hard code to be altered slightly so that some kinds of mounts can be restricted by technology. If you can make a mount that's only available when you have a certain tech, then miniaturization of EVERYTHING is easy.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 27 July 2001).]

raynor · #4 July 29th, 2001, 01:23 AM

In my vision of miniaturization technology, it applies to all components. I might create a new Version of each component that requires 90% the space but costs twice as much to research. The next Version would cost twice as much as the previous component but require 80% of the space. And so on... That is one way of doing it.

In order to implement this, you might start by adding additional levels to ALL technology tracks that lead to components. Then, create higher Versions of each component that require less space.

This is not really a complete solution, though, because the tech costs might not increase fast enough to insure game balance. Instead, you would probably have to create additional technologies for *every* component so that you get a steep enough slope in the cost vs. size curve.

Play balance is going to be a big factor. Before a project as big as this was attempted, it might be helpful to determine an equation that could be used to determine firepower vs. weapon abilities (shield piercing, armor piercing, etc) vs. resource cost vs. size. Then, balance the entire original tech tree. After that.... Well, that's a lifetime of work already. But after you did that, it would be trivial to write a computer program to generate additional technologies and components so that you could add, for example, ten levels of miniaturization to all components in the game so that after investing a HUGE amount of tech research, you could have components that are at least 10x smaller.

Hmm... now that I've written all this, it seems rather foolish to create additional component-specific technologies that only yield a smaller Version of a single components. Instead, you would research a technology and gain a reduced Version of several components. Still though, game balance is the hard part. Although, it is readily granted that the weapons aren't terribly balanced now anyways.

Baron Munchausen · #5 July 29th, 2001, 02:54 AM

This is an example of a completely different approach in MOO and SE. The MOO techs are stable in performance. Once you get Gauss Cannons or Phasers or whatever, their performance doesn't change. But as your technology improves you can miniatureize them. SE is just the opposite but you COULD completely revise the SE tech files to work more or less like MOO. Just edit all the various techs to have the same performance at all levels but the component gets smaller and cheaper at each level. That would be a lot of work, though!

Lerchey · #6 July 29th, 2001, 09:22 PM

There is another way to do it, which would be more work, but should be closer to what the original posted asked about...

Create a reasearch area of "miniaturization". You can either make it available to everyone, or make it based on having a certain level of physics/construction/whatever.

Make complete copies of the standard components for Miniaturization Level 1. They would have their normal requirements PLUS require one level of Miniaturization. If you have all of the requirements, you can use the smaller components.

One way to justify the duality (eg, a Meson BLaster III and a Reduced Size Meson BLaster III) would be to make the smaller ones more expensive to purchase.

Thus, (sorry, SE IV is on my work machine and I'm using my laptop, so I'm completely making up the numbers!), if a Meson BLaster III used 20KT of space, and cost 1K in minerals and 0.5K in radioactives, you could make the 1st level of miniaturization create a Mini Meson BLaster III that uses 15KT of space, but costs 1.5K in minerals and 0.75 in radioactives.

Of course, there would be Mini Meson BLasters I through X or whatever is normally available for that race type.

When you get a new level of Miniaturization, you'd have a whole second set of Micro components (of course, you'd need to create a set of prefixes for each level of miniaturization), and another set at Miniaturization III and so on.

I think that it could be a lot of fun, but it would also be a lot of editing.

Col. John

Krsqk · #7 July 29th, 2001, 11:49 PM

Be careful about making your components.txt file too big. I had problems keeping the game stable in my Basic Tech mod (still in progress) until I cut out several levels of research on several different components. I don't know what the limit was, and it may differ from system to system. Currently, my comp.txt is 660k; it was around 960k when it was giving me problems (and I wasn't even done with weapons yet). The standard comp.txt is 485k; doubling or tripling or quadrupling it may not work. Of course, your system might be able to handle it at 1.6 megs.

Just thought I'd make you aware of this. Hope it works, though; I'd like to have an even more infinite tech tree. ("More infinite"? How does that work?)

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"The Unpronounceable" Krsqk
Basic Tech Mod
--Basic Tech Mod v.75

[This message has been edited by Krsqk (edited 30 July 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Krsqk (edited 30 July 2001).]

Lerchey · #8 July 30th, 2001, 12:34 AM

Interesting. I wonder if the problem is really related to file size, or if it's caused by tripping over some max number of components.

Did you try asking Malfador about it?

Col. John

Krsqk · #9 July 30th, 2001, 06:20 AM

Well, now I'm not sure what it was. Maybe my system was unstable then. I tried copy/pasting the comp.txt file to double and then quadruple size, and no problems. IIRC, when I had the problem, ship animations were jerky, and the program didn't respond for some time, storing up my frantic keystrokes until it felt like moving.

It could either have been a buggy component which got edited out in the process or a system on the fritz. A day or two later, my OS really did go nuts, forcing three reboots in 30 minutes.

I love Bill Gates; it's just his programming staff that I hate.

Anyway, I may have been wrong in attributing it to cause and effect. Maybe it was just bad luck and effect.

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"The Unpronounceable" Krsqk
Basic Tech Mod
--Basic Tech Mod v.75