Subjugation Tech

Baron Munchausen · #1 August 19th, 2001, 05:10 PM

I notice that you have entered a non-zero value for the second value of the "Change Population Happiness - System" ability. I was about to post that this will not work in a system with any positive happiness modifiers because the game always chooses the "best" available modifier but I didn't know there was any ability to set different ability numbers like the movement generation ability. There is nothing in abilities.txt about this second value. Have you checked if this works when a UPC is in the system? If it does, this is an important change in the way this ability works and needs to be added to abilities.txt so people know it's there!

As for the apparent limits on how far it drops, there is a clear "amount of change per turn" limit in the happiness types. It might be that there is a typo or omission in the hard code somewhere that doesn't re-adjust this limit for facilities but only accounts for external events. So, it keeps comparing the value to the original value rather than what it has been changed to? Hmm.

Fyron · #2 August 19th, 2001, 08:36 PM

I've attached a more recent Version of my subjugation techs here.

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
[b]I notice that you have entered a non-zero value for the second value of the "Change Population Happiness - System" ability. I was about to post that this will not work in a system with any positive happiness modifiers because the game always chooses the "best" available modifier but I didn't know there was any ability to set different ability numbers like the movement generation ability. There is nothing in abilities.txt about this second value. Have you checked if this works when a UPC is in the system? If it does, this is an important change in the way this ability works and needs to be added to abilities.txt so people know it's there![b]

The non-zero number in the second value of the "Change Population Happiness - System" ability doesn't do anything. I was trying to see if it would change the rate (in turns) that happiness is changed. Instead of per turn, it could be per two turns or per year. I experimented with it and it always acted the same. The UPC nullifies the happiness penalties of the Labor Camps and Strip-Mining Facilities. I was hoping that the game added up the happiness modifiers for all of the facilities on a planet instead of simply using the "best" one. I'll have to make it so that Subjugators can't build UPC's and their kin. Oh well...

I also tried changing the second value of the abilities that modify planet values, but it didn't make a difference. I wanted to see if I could make the value drop per turn instead of per year, but I couldn't get it to work.

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
[b]I didn't know there was any ability to set different ability numbers like the movement generation ability.[b]

What exactly are you talking about? Do you mean that you can change the standard movement rate of an engine, thereby doubling or tripling its speed, or the different movement bonuses, or something else?

Also, I still can't get negative reproduction rates or negative Replicant Center abilities to work. This all puts quite a damper on my vision of the Subjugation Technology.

Baron Munchausen · #3 August 19th, 2001, 10:55 PM

The "Extra Movement Generation" ability checks the second number as an "identifier". If two components in the same ship have the same identifier, you only get the performance boost once. If the two components have different identifiers, you get the bonus for both components, added together. Dunno why he couldn't have just used component family like ECM/Sensor abilities do, but that's the way this ability works.

Now if only facilities would also work by "family" or have some sort of identifier for the ability. Then we could have UPC compensating negative modifiers in other facilities, the Time Shrine would stack with other production modifiers, and all sorts of interesting things could be done with infrastructure.

Fyron · #4 August 20th, 2001, 06:56 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Now if only facilities would also work by "family" or have some sort of identifier for the ability. Then we could have UPC compensating negative modifiers in other facilities, the Time Shrine would stack with other production modifiers, and all sorts of interesting things could be done with infrastructure.

Hmm... guess I'll have to wait awhile before I can finish my Subjugation Techs then. Where exactly would I send an email to request changes in the next patch?

Fyron · #5 January 12th, 2002, 01:58 AM

Ahh, one of my first Posts. Ahh, memories...

Anyways, back to the point: Will any of these ideas of mine work in SEIV Gold? I'd love to finally be able to mod forced labor camps, strip mining (in infinte resource games), etc.

Skulky · #6 January 13th, 2002, 03:26 AM

i thought of a solution to the improvement ideas. you could do a ship, interrogation center, that has max 1 engine and moves about with the special ability to improve happiness, could be several Versions of this ship, system wide? then you could also drop troops on the planets and they could have special 'police' components. The interrogation center ship would have the abilites in its vehicle type so no other ships could have it. I can't think of any other ideas for the 'subjugation' tech tree, might be better to make them an entire race with a culture type and other modifiers and call it like a fundamentalist facistic dictatorship or other inventive name.

Fyron · #7 January 13th, 2002, 10:05 AM

Troops already make populations happy. I don't think happiness modifier abilities work when placed on ships or troops anyways. What I need for these techs to work is for negative values for happiness to actually work. And the name "subjugation tech" was just a project name. It wasn't meant to be any sort of final product name. I never came up with a better name because my ideas didn't work.