Racial Tech-Traits Mod

[Ed Kolis]

This will be fun... Fear the Cheeze Dominion and its army of elite Zealot Infantry wielding the Holy Photon Grenade of Antioch, and ProtoBuster-equipped fighters providing air support... not to mention the HyperSpace VOMM Ray ("It's called that because it goes through HyperSpace and it goes VOMM when you shoot it!") armed UberDoomNaughts (a 15,000 kT base with 1 "Holy Frickin' Crud You Can Move a BASE With That Thing?!?" Ion Drive)... and Level 9 Legendary Spazers on MicroPlats (weapon platforms that are just big enough to hold 1 of my best weapon, so the "build 1 turn's worth" can be used optimally)



Now if I could only stop myself from peeking at the data files...

[Pax]

Originally posted by PvK:
Muahahaha!

Did a test.

It seems, from my brief test anyway, that the name of a racial trait is essentially a special effect for human benefit only.

Which means that it may be very easy to make the names not contain the information about what traits a race has chosen, or, for instance to have any number of traits with the same name, and give them varying effects, so opponents won't be able to tell exactly what traits a race has simply by looking at their info file.

PvK

In other words, everyone gets "Custom Racial Trait" ... and are DIRECTED, when building their final EMP files, "Use the #5 position" ... ?

Hmm, wait. Even better. SE4 only cares about the NUMBER of entries in teh RacialTraits.txt file, right?

Hand out, for EMP building, player-specific racialtraits.txt files. Lots of entries, one of them labelled "yours", the rest labelled "not yours" or used for standard SE4 traits. Each player-specific racialtraits.txt file has NO information on the customs that aren't theirs.

Everything custom, ofc, is appended on to teh end of the REAL racialtraits.txt file, in player order.

Posted by Ed Kolis:
This will be fun... Fear the Cheeze Dominion and its army of elite Zealot Infantry wielding the Holy Photon Grenade of Antioch, and ProtoBuster-equipped fighters providing air support... not to mention the HyperSpace VOMM Ray ("It's called that because it goes through HyperSpace and it goes VOMM when you shoot it!") armed UberDoomNaughts (a 15,000 kT base with 1 "Holy Frickin' Crud You Can Move a BASE With That Thing?!?" Ion Drive)... and Level 9 Legendary Spazers on MicroPlats (weapon platforms that are just big enough to hold 1 of my best weapon, so the "build 1 turn's worth" can be used optimally)



Now if I could only stop myself from peeking at the data files...

Well, TRUE god-modding wasn't exactly my idea, but it could be fun anyway.

I think it would be best if all players in such a game agreed on wether or not the point is god-modding, or not; on wether the game should have a humorous theme, or not; and so on.

Also you would have to agree wether or not the mod used certain conventions, like QNP or mQNP, or not. 8)

What'd possibly be funnier is ... once everyone has their race done up, and their tech balanced and approved ... everyone hand your EMP to the player on your left ... hehehe!

Still, a "Custom Race-Tech" game could be a lot of fun.

[ January 08, 2003, 03:01: Message edited by: Pax ]

[Ragnarok]

This is an interesting idea and could be alot of fun.
Would you limit the amount of stuff the player could mod though? I think you should other wise you'll have players modding 10 different hull sizes with 20 different weapons to put on there. While another may mod 12 hull sizes and only 12 weapons.
Even though the point is sort of a god mod thing going on here I would think you would limit how much they could mod.
Say for instance you set a limit of 7 new weapons.
3 new hulls.
and so on and so forth.

Just a thought.

[Taera]

lets not god-mod.
I like the idea of receiving someone else's empire and race tech but i'd like to mod some of my new gravity technology.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Ragnarok:
Would you limit the amount of stuff the player could mod though? I think you should other wise you'll have players modding 10 different hull sizes with 20 different weapons to put on there. While another may mod 12 hull sizes and only 12 weapons.

No limit. Here's the catch: the more you GET form a given level of tehnology, the more it should (logically) COST, right? So, the more benefit you get form each level of technology in your own racial area ... the more it will cost you to get into, and advance, that technology.

And/or, the more LEVELS of that technology there will be ... inherently working in a higher reserch cost.

OTOH, limiting it by numbers of components isn't right; MY five components may only do as much as any TWO of yours, for example.

Also, if I played in something like this, I'd be strongly tempted to adapt something from Exodus -- possibly based on the trait "Doctrine: Advanced Carriers", which is intended to make fighter use viable all the way into thelate game. Between fighters, fighter-components, carrier hulls, FIGHTER-BASE hulls (larger-than-normal bases with the "50% fighter bay" requirement), and so on ... that's a lot of hulls and components.

Let's see, if I were to convert it in all it's uber-goodness, I'd have:

... 5 ship hulls (all carriers, one of them HUGE)

... 4 base hulls (CV bases, one of them TRULY gigantic)

... a total of 7 fighter hulls (ranging from 5kT to 50kT in size)

... 19 assorted fighter-launch components

... incredibly numerous, even countless fighter non-weapon components (some 15 just for Control use)

So obviously, it wouldn't be a SMALL racial tech area in terms of what you get, even if I watered it down heavily (almost inevitable to bring it into line with stock SE4, in terms of technology-dependant gians). Most of it would rely on, say, an "Advanced Fighters" field combined with various other fields. But no one component would be as godawful nice as, oh, the Talisman.

Hence needing a third-party Arbiter, an experienced mod writer, playtester, and/or just general "SE4 SuperGuru", to go over all the submissions, balance them, and combine them all into one new collective mod.

[ January 08, 2003, 05:29: Message edited by: Pax ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Pax:

quote:

---

Originally posted by PvK:
Muahahaha!

Did a test.

It seems, from my brief test anyway, that the name of a racial trait is essentially a special effect for human benefit only.

Which means that it may be very easy to make the names not contain the information about what traits a race has chosen, or, for instance to have any number of traits with the same name, and give them varying effects, so opponents won't be able to tell exactly what traits a race has simply by looking at their info file.

PvK

In other words, everyone gets "Custom Racial Trait" ... and are DIRECTED, when building their final EMP files, "Use the #5 position" ... ?

Hmm, wait. Even better. SE4 only cares about the NUMBER of entries in teh RacialTraits.txt file, right?

Hand out, for EMP building, player-specific racialtraits.txt files. Lots of entries, one of them labelled "yours", the rest labelled "not yours" or used for standard SE4 traits. Each player-specific racialtraits.txt file has NO information on the customs that aren't theirs.

Everything custom, ofc, is appended on to teh end of the REAL racialtraits.txt file, in player order.

---

You don't need to make different setup mods, just one. The descriptions can contain for instance a password that doesn't identify the player, or informative descriptions (for a mod that just wants to protect choices from observation). The names can all be the same though, so people can't determine who chose what.

PvK