Hidden Ancient Ruins

[Torkle]

Here's my goal: Make all the planets that have Ancient Ruins also have 'Sector - Sight Obscuration' at various levels. Looking at StellarAbilityTypes.txt, it doesn't seem that I can give two abilities to a given planet. Do I have to do something like overlay a storm with the sight obscuration ability overtop a planet that has ancient ruins?

[Fyron]

The only way to give any stellar object (save systems) more than one ability is to do so in the map editor. So, overlaying a storm is really the only way to go. But, the AI will still be able to see the cloaked planet and will send a colony ship there. They will not be able to colonize it because it is cloaked, but they will still try.

[clark]

Could there be a way to *turn off* the little notification that appears in the planet description?

So in essence, it would still be there, you just wouldn't see any indication of it.

[Fyron]

You could give dummy descriptions to all planets that are not connected to working abilities, so that you can not tell ruins from non-ruins.

With components/facilities/vehicles etc., if you have absolutely nothing on the "Abil X Description :=" after the = (not even a space), the ability does not generate a bullet in the abilities section of the item description. This might work with planet abilities too, though I am not certain of that.

[Torkle]

Thanks for the info Fyron. I take it that this trick has been tried before. Dang stupid AI. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Fyron]

A few wasted colony ships are not a big deal for most of the game. They are really only a concern in the early game, when they can potentially stunt the AI's growth. As long as the cloaked planets are not too prevelant, it shouldn't cause too many problems.

Actually, I just realized that giving the planets null ability descriptions will not work because the planets will still have the ruins icon. What you can do is make a few dummy unique ruins techs that do nothing and then making a whole bunch of planets have those techs in them. This will create a bunch of planets with the ruins icons that have nothing useful in them, and so will have the effect of masking the real ruins planets. You could even just give whatever percent of planets would have no ability a dummy ruin, so all planets will have a ruins icon.

Or, make the ruins graphic completely black, so you can't see them. But, the planets will still appear in the special planets list.