a few wee little questions...

[Lemmy]

these abilities:
Change Population Happiness - System
Change Bad Event Chance - System
Planet Value Change - System
Planet Conditions Change - System

can they be used on a component?
i was thinking about a space cruise ship, and a ship which generates pollution, thus increasing the chance of a natural disaster, or decrease in planet value/conditions.

[ July 06, 2002, 13:24: Message edited by: Lemmy ]

[Gandalph]

From using the Ultimate Mod extensively in 1.49, I know the Change Population Happiness - System and Change Bad Event Chance - System do work on components. There were religious components with these effects and I used them to create happiness ships I could move from system to system. I don't know if they still work in 1.67, but I don't recall anything in history.txt that says otherwise.

[Fyron]

Planet Value Change - System
Planet Conditions Change - System

These only affect your own planets when on facilities (including the Religious Versions), so I would imagine that they wouldn't work as you had planned. You could of course always test them yourself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Lemmy]

ok, 2 out of 4, not bad http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

i'm planning to do some testing, but i want to look through the files some more, test everything i want to know in one big try and see what's possible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Fyron]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif One more note: Religious value/conditions-improving shrines only affect the planets in your systems that you have colonized. They do not affect the uncolonized planets.

[Lemmy]

more questions:
Can planets be cloaked?
i figure this should happen in StellarAbilityTypes.txt, and should look something like this:
Name := Normal Planet
Number of Poss Abilities := 1
Ability 1 Chance := 50
Ability 1 Type := Cloak Level
Ability 1 Descr := Prevents level 2 Active EM scans.
Ability 1 Val 1 := EM Active
Ability 1 Val 2 := 3

but then you can only cloak against one type of scanner, since only one abilty is chosen.

[ July 07, 2002, 15:34: Message edited by: Lemmy ]

[Baron Munchausen]

No, planets cannot be cloaked. The idea you posted will result in an error as far as I know. The cloak level ability is for ships, not stellar objects. You can hide a planet but it will not be cloakable/uncloakable with a command. Give it the 'sight obscuration' ability, which is a stellar ability, and everything in the sector, including the planet itself, will be invisible until you have sufficient sensors.

We'd like to see planetary cloaks but it's one of a zillion things we'd 'like' to see. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Lemmy]

ah, ok, 'sight obscuration' is what i was looking for then, thanks.

[Phoenix-D]

it might work as-posted.

works for fighters.. but you can't turn it off for them

[Lemmy]

Give it the 'sight obscuration' ability, which is a stellar ability, and everything in the sector, including the planet itself, will be invisible until you have sufficient sensors.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">but this would also hide any ships in that ssector
What i wanted was to "cloak" tiny planets, uncolonized, untill you researched sensors good enough to detect them, but if you see enemy ships dissappearing in that sector, you would know there is something there.
Then my only hope for that is the way i posted it?

[Spoo]

Give it the 'sight obscuration' ability, which is a stellar ability, and everything in the sector, including the planet itself, will be invisible until you have sufficient sensors.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But if you turn on "show plant names" (whatever it's called) you still see the "empty" sector labled w/ it's planet's name. A bug in my opinion.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Lemmy:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Give it the 'sight obscuration' ability, which is a stellar ability, and everything in the sector, including the planet itself, will be invisible until you have sufficient sensors.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">but this would also hide any ships in that ssector
What i wanted was to "cloak" tiny planets, uncolonized, untill you researched sensors good enough to detect them, but if you see enemy ships dissappearing in that sector, you would know there is something there.
Then my only hope for that is the way i posted it?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Your only hope is for MM to add planetary cloaks. I know that giving a planet the cloaking ability won't work because I just tested it. The game says 'cannot load stellarabilitytypes' and then trying to generate a map creates a long list of errors.

You know, it would be nice to have both 'planet' cloaks and 'colony' cloaks. One would really hide the entire planet and be very high tech, maybe an artifact tech. The other would just be a normal facility you could get with cloaking devices. Being able to hide the fact that your colony is present in a system is just about as valuable as hiding the whole planet. The only thing you have to worry about is someone trying to land & colonize. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Spoo:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Give it the 'sight obscuration' ability, which is a stellar ability, and everything in the sector, including the planet itself, will be invisible until you have sufficient sensors.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But if you turn on "show plant names" (whatever it's called) you still see the "empty" sector labled w/ it's planet's name. A bug in my opinion.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, although this is not a 'documented' or intended use of sight obscuration so MM might not want to fix it. I would report it, though.

[Vildecor]

what about creating a facility with the "cloak level" ability? I'm assuming this would also not work, since cloaking seems hard-coded to work only on vehicles.

[Baron Munchausen]

That's right. It doesn't work either. Hardcode changes are needed for planetary cloaks.

[Lemmy]

ok, so the only way to hide a planet is with Sector - Sight Obscuration.
Unfortunate side effects is that enemy ships at that location will also be cloacked....there is no way to make a ship visible in such a sector, is there? Not without the appropriate sensors anyway

[Taz-in-Space]

BTW, the sector sight obscuration ability will not hide a planet from the AI.
I created a map in which I used this ability to 'hide' ringworlds until the tech allowed someone to find them.
Well, what I didn't know is that a player's colonization minister WILL see them and sent colony ships to that location. ( I don't normally use this minister.) However I am told that you still cannot colonize the planet until you have the tech to see the planet. So if your intent is to keep these planets uncolonized, then this ability IS the proper one! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Pax]

Originally posted by Taz-in-Space:
BTW, the sector sight obscuration ability will not hide a planet from the AI.
I created a map in which I used this ability to 'hide' ringworlds until the tech allowed someone to find them.
Well, what I didn't know is that a player's colonization minister WILL see them and sent colony ships to that location. ( I don't normally use this minister.) However I am told that you still cannot colonize the planet until you have the tech to see the planet. So if your intent is to keep these planets uncolonized, then this ability IS the proper one! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Uh.

Dumb question: how in the nine frozen hells does one manage to NOT SEE a bloody ring world ... ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Three billion times the surface area of the earth ... kinda hard to miss, n'est-ce pas? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Phoenix-D]

"Dumb question: how in the nine frozen hells does one manage to NOT SEE a bloody ring world ... ? Three billion times the surface area of the earth ... kinda hard to miss, n'est-ce pas? "

Divide that by the size of a star system.

That and the thing could be, oh, burried inside of a star that went red giant (not hot enough to melt whatever the world is made off), obscured by nebula.

Even the largest structure in the galaxy is invisible if there's something blocking the light between it and you.

Methinks a sphereworld would be rather hard to detect, too. Not a ring, but SPHERE. No light exiting from the resident star. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

[Taz-in-Space]

In the tradition of Startrek:

Techno Babble Answer #1: Light warping (bending) magnetic field generators http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

TBA #2: Totally transparant materials (and inhabitants) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

TBA #3: VERY thin ring world http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Pax]

Originally posted by Taz-in-Space:
In the tradition of Startrek:

Techno Babble Answer #1: Light warping (bending) magnetic field generators http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

TBA #2: Totally transparant materials (and inhabitants) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

TBA #3: VERY thin ring world http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Silly answer: an SEP field.

As in, Hitchhike's Guide to the Galaxy ... a "Somebody Else's Problem" field generator. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

...

HMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ........... .... speaking of the Guide ... has anyone ever thought of a tongue-in-cheek MOD based on the HGttG setting ... ?

[TerranC]

Yes. And we will name the mod:

Don't Panic!

*Cues the strange, green alien planet thingy covering it's face and sticking it's tougne out into the cold, dark void of space*

Actually, sounds like a good idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Lemmy]

another question:
Is there any way to make defense and offense bonusses cumulative?
it seems like it is hardcoded to 1 bonus per component family

[Suicide Junkie]

Just make multiple families of the same component?