SJ's Tech Gridder 0.50 - now with ability support!

[Suicide Junkie]

Tech gridder 0.2b.zip
- Fixed output for multidimensoinal grids
- Changed preview windows to calculate and display values for the same number of steps as the # of tech levels specified in the tech area tab.
- Added "successful completion" message box, since processing can take some time when working on higher dimensions with hundreds of components.

Terran & Tesco:
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This is a more powerful component creator, designed with multi-dimensional grid techs in mind.

As an example, consider designing an engine.

First, create a basic template component.
A simple "Ion Engine I", with 200 minerals cost, 50 radioactives cost, 10 supplies used, and a size of 10 with 20 hitpoints.

Place this component in a text file by itself (be sure to have a line starting with "*begin*", just like the components.txt

Run the tech gridder, and select this the file above.
For the tech levels tab; fill in: 20 levels, starting at zero, and a tech area of "Engine Manufacturing"
In the cost tab, enter:
add: -7.5 ... multiply: 1 ... exponent: 1 under minerals
Add: 0 ... multiply: 0.95 ... exponent: 1 under radioactives.

Go to the Misc tab, and click "Grid this tech".

After a few milliseconds, the text file you had will now be filled with 10 components.
Ion Engine 1 through 10.
Their costs will range from 200 down to 50 minerals, and the radioactives will go down in cost with diminishing returns.

Now comes the powerful part.
Go back to the tech area tab, and change the tech area to "Engine Durability"
Go to the cost tab, and set the resource modifiers back to default (0/1/1)

Go to the "tonnage" tab, and set the hitpoints modifiers to multiply by 1.5, and exponent by 0.9
Set the initial value on the preview window to 20, and click preview. Observe the nice increasing curve with diminishing returns

click "grid this tech" again.

When you look at the text file again, you will find it now has 100 components, forming a 2-D grid.

Repeat the process to get a 5-level dimension that reduces supply use by 1 per level.
Now you have 500 components!

You can add as many dimensions as you like in the same way.

[ April 20, 2003, 17:41: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]