Eliminating Resupply Depots... =)

[Wenin]

Like many I'm sure, I'm wanting to remove Resupply Depots as facilities and just place that ability within the Starport and the Ship Yards.

Is there a way to have the game not try and give a Resupply Depot at the start of the game?

[President_Elect_Shang]

I would think it is no more difficult than deleting the re-supply depot then adding the ability on to the facility you want. I personally wouldn’t give both of them the ability, just the spaceport. SE4 should not have a problem with doing that as it will still meet the call for a re-supply depot and when the game does not find a dedicated facility it will use what ever has the ability.

[Suicide Junkie]

Homeworlds will grab a spaceport ability, a resupply ability, a SY ability, and the various resource abilities.

If you want it to look nicer than having two spaceports, what you can do is have some "Legacy City" type facilities, which do everything, but are so expensive that they can't be built while the game is going.

That way, you get a SY, and lots of Cities on the homeworld... everywhere else you will be building from scratch, so it should be fine.

[Wenin]

Shang,
My thinking is that if a Shipyard can build endless ships, fighters, and drones fully fueled they should be able to resupply ships as well. Also if you're a Natural Merchant, you'd start off with no Resupply Depot on your home planet, since you wouldn't be given a Spaceport.

I'm guessing if you give just the spaceport the resupply feature and delete the resupply depot, the start of the game will give you two starports as it reserves the first three slots for a Spaceport, Resupply Depot, and Ship Yard.


SJ,
I built a facility that had Starport, Resupply and Ship Yard. When I started the game, I had two of these facilities on the homeworld.

Is this what you were suggesting?

[Wenin]

If I give it just Starport/Resupply, everything works great if the race is a Natural merchant. If they aren't a natural merchant, they get two of these Legacy Cities.

[Captain Kwok]

I think by eliminating resupply depots you also eliminate some of the strategy.

[Wenin]

This is in preperation of eliminating the evil Quantum Reactor. =)

Trying to make a game that allows players and especially the AIs to play defensively more easily.

[Fyron]

Wenin said:
I built a facility that had Starport, Resupply and Ship Yard. When I started the game, I had two of these facilities on the homeworld.

Is this what you were suggesting?


No. What he meant was that the cities would also produce resources and research (and possibly intel), in addition to the space port and resupply depot abilities. This way, the HW will be filled with them. Making them also SYs will mean you get a bunch of stacking SYs on the HW, which could be a good or bad thing depending on how you set them up and the flavor of the mod.

You may want to familiarize yourself with how SE4 determines the facilities to place on a HW:

http://se4modding.spaceempires.net/ModdingTutorial.html#Chapter6

[Wenin]

Ok this is what I've decided.


Standard Starport
Space Yard with Resupply
Empire Capital with Resupply ability and Resource Conversion at 60% loss.


Natural merchants start with a Space Yard and Empire Capital, otherwise the starport is added.


Problem I have is that the benefit of the Capital is the resource conversion which becomes obsolete with the first level of resource conversion. So I need to add a third ability that will keep a player from just scrapping their capital once they get resource manipulation.

Something that's fairly unique.....

Edit Got it..... change Resource Manipulation into a Economic Technology. The Ultra Recycler... allows better selling of spare parts. The Resource Converter will translate into Upgrades of the Capital... allowing better trades at the capital's stock exchange. =)

[Parasite]

In a recent game I had a need to build a resupply depot first (three turns) and then I built a shipyard (5 turns). Maybe you could make a resupply station that is upgradable to a full shipyard in two turns.

This may be some of what you are trying to prevent, and if so, please ignore.

[Wenin]

Good point.

I'll design that

[Wenin]

Is there a way to prevent an AI from building a structure?

The Capital facility I built is super expensive (48 years to build) and the AIs are trying to build them in their systems. It has the resupply depot, and resource conversion ability.

I've added the Resupply Depot back to the mod.

[Wenin]

Found outit was the Combat Modifier - System ability I gave it.

I'm giving all of the standard facilities with that ability an AI Tag 01. Then replacing the Combat Modifier - System in the AI_Construction_Facilities file with AI Tag 01.

[Fyron]

Yes. Add AI Tag ## abilities to the facilities you actually want them to build. Next, go into each Mod\Pictures\Races\Racename\Racename_AI_Constructi on_Facilities.txt file and do a find/replace operation of the offending ability with the new AI tag.

This is necessary for any ability with values (ie: not space port or resupply). With valueless abilities, you can fool the AI into thinking the facility you want them to build is more advanced by making it require more total tech levels. They can be redundant.

This method does not require any editing of AI files, so is generally preferable for valueless abilities. Valued abilities only use the value of the ability in question when determining what is "more advanced," whereas valueless abilities are compared by total levels of tech reqs. Last position in the file is a tie breaker in both cases.

For example, you could make Space Port appear to require 5 tech levels thusly:

Name := Space Port
...
Tech Area Req 1 := Cargo
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Tech Area Req 2 := Cargo
Tech Level Req 2 := 1
Tech Area Req 3 := Cargo
Tech Level Req 3 := 1
Tech Area Req 4 := Cargo
Tech Level Req 4 := 1
Tech Area Req 5 := Cargo
Tech Level Req 5 := 1


A possibly cleaner way is to add an AI Tech tech area with, say, 15 levels. Set its start and raise levels to 15. Make it so that it is unremovable, since you will never want it to be removed. It is only meant to be used to fool AI into using the correct facility. Humans will have AI Tech too, but this is fine because it will allow the ministers to function properly. With the same 5 tech levels example above, it would more cleanly look like:

Name := Space Port
...
Tech Area Req 1 := Cargo
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Tech Area Req 2 := AI Tech
Tech Level Req 2 := 4

These redundant tech reqs do not change anything in-game; the facilities appear in the same place in the tech tree.