A pirates life for me...

[Felan]

quote:

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Originally posted by Possum:
Cool idea, but how do you voluntarily self-destruct? What occurs to me is using tractor beams with ramming ships!

(/me flashes on Ben Hur)

"Ramming speed!"

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I think I self-destructed a ship once that had the self-destruct component in it. Just go to the use component option and use it. But maybe I'm wrong and it was that I had just wanted to self-destruct it but couldn't.

[Nitram Draw]

For the Tech trees you could put all the standard techs in a separate trait with no cost. Then if you did not choose this trait you could never use any tech from it.
This would allow you to modify all the standard races to get the tech without affecting the points in the game.
The Pirate could not use this tech. I don't know if there could be a flag to disallow choosing both Pirate and Standard trait but if there is a way, you would solve the problem. Of course the Pirate tree would have to be fairly large if you wanted a lot of variety available to the Pirate.

[Suicide Junkie]

As I have said about three times,
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-most things are left alone

-Colony components & other stuff pirates don't have require the racial tech
"Not a Pirate"

-Pirate stuff requires the racial tech
"Is a Pirate"

Just don't let anyone choose both.

[Nitram Draw]

SJ,
Do you have to rename the components when you paste them to them in the pirate tech?

[Windborne]

How about doing this instead:

create a "Pirate tech tree" and fill it with loads of cool pirate stuff, only each pirate ship item you add generates negative research and if possible negative happiness.

What this would do would be to make a race that became more "Pirate" less able to research things, and force them to fill their bases with improvements that generate happier populations rather then research, mining, etc . . . You might want to add in some special pirate happiness facilities too.

Some techs for ships:

Plunderer: remotely mines enemy worlds destroying recourses like robo-miners do for astroids.

Pirate: Advanced early ship capture technology, much more efficient then what you get later from the regular tree.

Pirate research center: Very small component that lets you analyze ships in space after you catch them, the way pirates get most of their tech.

Pirate retro-fit center: small shipboard component that lets pirates install their more advanced technologies onto ships they capture from primitive races.

Pirate mine warheads: Powerful mine warheads that only target engine, security center, armor, and shields. Basically small automated seekers designed to make enemy ships easier to board.

Large base-cloaking devices: A huge device designed to cloak pirate bases in enemy systems, learned early on it's easy to build, but it's too big to put on anything but stations/starbases, it does however give you excellent hiding ability, maybe later Versions could also do double duty as shield components for the base?

Pirate figher crew: small crews of pirates who specialize in manning fighters and using them to board enemy vessles.


Another advantage of this system is that eventually the pirate race could reform, disband its fleets, and start developing a real empire, not likely but possible. As for colonies, let them colonize, the more they spread out the more dangerous they are, and what happens if they wipe out all their prey? ARGH!!!!

[This message has been edited by Windborne (edited 13 March 2001).]

[Nitram Draw]

SJ,
Have you tried a game where you left out the resource facilities from the pirates tech? What did the game put in place of the resource facilities on your homeworld?
Cutting and pasting is a whole lot easier than creating a whole tech tree

[WhiteHojo]

I must not be following the rest of you... I'm a little lost on the some of the concepts mentioned here.

If you place all the tech that you want a PR (pirate Race) to have access to in a special Pirate Race Tech tree, the PR will still have access to all normal tech - all races have access to normal tech.

If you make the PR a racial trait selectable on startup and then allow em access to tech that is tagged somehow Pirate Tech (similiar to Org or Crystal, etc tech) but limiting em from access to normal non PR tech I'm not sure I understand how you do this?? A little further explanation might help (such as where exactly do you paste these "is a Pirate" and "is not a pirate" lines)

I have tried to add a new special racial tech similiar to the Org/Temp/Crystal/etc techs in the racial traits file and the Tech Area file - can't get it to work, keep getting an invalid parameter errror. Anyone els have success doin this??

While I'm on it - anyone know what the Restricted Trait and Required Trait lines in the racial Traits data file mean/do???

Another Q - anyone know of what all can be listed in the racial traits file as a racial trait type?

this modding makes my head hurt...


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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[Nitram Draw]

This will get the trait to show up as a choice but with the mod pack installed you can't load any existing race for some reason. You can create a new race though. You would need to add some techs to it to get anything out of it.

Name := Pirating
Description := Gains access to the Pirating Technology Tree.
Pic Num := 0
General Type := Advantage
Cost := 3000
Trait Type := Tech Area
Value 1 := 6
Value 2 := 0
Required Trait 1 := None
Required Trait 2 := None
Required Trait 3 := None
Restricted Trait 1 := None
Restricted Trait 2 := None
Restricted Trait 3 := None
If you want to restrict the Pirate from accessing all the standard techs you must make all the standard techs part of a trait that allows access to them and have no standard techs available. This may not be possible, as some techs may need to be present to set up the game.

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 13 March 2001).]

[WhiteHojo]

Nit - have you tried this new racial trait in the game yet?

I put that info in the racial trait file then designated the new Pirate Tech as a racial area of 6 (the next one available I assumed)...

tried to start a new game and when I attempted to add an existing race I get a error message saying can't find whatever-empire-I'm-trying-to-add.emp file....

message goes away when I remove the pirate racial trait.

very upsetting

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[Nitram Draw]

Yeah for some reason it will work with the TDM mod pack but it will only allow you to add a new race. I haven't added,saved and restarted to see if the saved one will work. I'll try that tomorrow.