Modding Question about Game Setup

[President_Elect_Shang]

In the Empire setup during game setup I see that the choices of planets and atmospheres come from the PlanetPhysicalType.txt and AtmosphereTypes.txt files respectively. Is there a way to keep the planet and atmosphere types without giving the player all those options? For example can I stop a player from picking “None” and “Ice” at game startup but keep both as potential planets for colonizing later?

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, you can't block atmosphere choices as far as I know.

You could unlink the colonization techs from the homeplanet, however.
That wouldn't prevent a player from choosing Ice, say, but you could change the picture used in race setup to have a big red X over it and thus discourage people from picking a bad type.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I was thinking of doing just that same thing! I have managed to edit out other options in the MainString.txt file. However I had to enter “No Longer Used” or the blank lines would cause the boxes to bunch up and look weird. I tried to delete and renumber the lines but the total number of lines appears to be hard coded as the game complained it didn’t have the right amount and stopped working. Am I the only person that has started moding this file? I suppose I will have to create yet another thread in the Knowledge Base. That will have to wait till tomorrow as I am just too sleepy. Besides I would like to spend some *ahem* quality time with the wife if you know what I mean… Night SJ meet you back here after my surgery.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Ok I have replaced the ones I didn’t need with a black circle and the words “NOT USED” in white letters within the circle. Not that I am that far yet; however, I wanted to ask anyway. I know in SE4 we could make asteroids planets; can we still do this?

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, its probably easier.
You could add Volcanic and Water surface types, for example. Asteroids would be just one more option.

Hrm...
I suppose, if you really wanted to go nuts with it, you could clear all of the atmosphere types, and add a whole lot of surface types...
Types such as:
- "Rock - Oxygen"
- "Rock - Hydrogen"
and so on...

That would allow you to limit colonization by "atmosphere" (which is now a surface type), although it would also prevent you from modding in atmosphere converters.

[President_Elect_Shang]

To meet my needs I only needed to remove the colony modules for ice and gas. After that the problem was stopping a player from taking them, then moving on to colonize rock. You can see the exploit here so I won’t bore you with the rest. Asteroids… good they are the last colony type I need to add. No atmosphere converters for me. You have to take it as it comes!

Now here is an interesting tid-bit for the UI file. I changed Rock Planet tech area for colonization from Rock to Industrial Tech (one of my two master tech areas). So by default you start at Industrial Tech 2, I did it this way so the mod could be retro engineered. Anyway I started a test run and wouldn’t you know; it overrode my setting to start at Industrial Tech 2 and started at Industrial Tech 1. Odd…

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah, SE always forces your starting colony tech to level 1.

If you obfuscate the tech requirement formula, you might be able to get SE5 to avoid setting the tech level.


You could also make a zero cost, one-level throwaway tech area for colonization, which requires Industrial Tech.
SE5 would then set that to one, and leave industry alone.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I decided to remove the Industrial Tech requirement and leave it with no tech area assigned. Then I placed the Colony Module component under Industrial 2 (in case of retro tech later). Finally I assigned the gas and ice planets to “Can Not Be Colonized” tech. That worked perfect. In my minds eye Industrial 1 is from the industrial revolution to a point further along in the information revolution than we currently are. I see humankind reaching that point sometime between 2010 to 2020. Then Industrial 2 is from the information revolution to the threshold of intra-system travel and a bit beyond for safe measure.