Changing values after game start

[PlanetNapalm]

I recently started a game with the Dark Nova mod. My race is Temporal. I just discovered that I don't seem to be able to upgrade my shipyard III to Temporal Shipyard I. I seem to remember reading that in order to do this I need to change the roman numeral for T.S. I,II,III to IV, V, VI.

Is is possible to make this change without restarting the game?

Thanks!

[Fyron]

Yes. You will have to save and exit the game, apply the changes, then reload your savegame.

Also, you have to place the Temporal Space Yards in the same Family as the normal Space Yards.

[PlanetNapalm]

Excellent!
Worked like a charm!

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm I have a bunch of races that give me errors of things not in their AI files. But its the leaky roof syndrome. When they arent in a game, I dont remember to fix it. When they are I thought I was stuck with the error Messages.

Will fixing a game on the fly work for other things also?
That would be sweet.

[douglas]

Almost anything except galaxy creation can be changed on the fly no problem. Just keep in mind that components and facilities, and possibly ship sizes, are kept track of by their position in the file. I once inserted some new components in the middle of a game and found that my population transport ships had been transformed into super-ultra-fast space yard ships with about two dozen space yard III's each.

[Fyron]

As long as it is either:

a) a single player game,
b) a multiplayer game where it is the host doing the changes before processing the turn, then sending out the altered data files,

most changes to the data files or AI files (well all to the AI files) will be reflected in-game immediately for a SP game or the next turn for a MP game. As Douglas said, do not insert new items in the middle, or you will break your savegames. Insert new items (even new levels of a component, such as a Space Yard IV) at the end of the file. You can safely move them to a better location before you start your next game, just not for the current game. Also, be very careful about changing sizes of components. You might get invalid designs, which you will never be able to build, or remove from the designs list. Same goes for removing a component by setting is tech reqs to 100 or so (maybe to remove that Version and add a new, altered Version).

Note that changing some files has no affect on a savegame, as many files are only read either when you create your empire file or when the game is started. Reference the end of the Getting Started chapter of the SEIV Modding 101 Tutorial for a chart which explicitly lists all files and their ability to affect savegames. The rest of the Tutorial is a good place to get modding help.