New tech mod plan

[LT411]

There are a lot of good ideas in there. The amount of work it will take to propogate a redesign like that through all the mod files is daunting.

Good Luck,
LT

[Phoenix-D]

Hotfoot: I was going by memory on the sizes, I may need to fix that one way or the other (there will also be a one size lower stellar construction, FYI)

I'll take the effect on the fighters into account. I hadn't planned on the fighters (or bases, baseships, sats) being upgradable, but I guess I better..

The ship upragdes go like this.
Starting: Escort I
Research: Ship 1
Research: Escorts 1, get Corvete I
Reseatch: escorts 2, get Frigate I
research: escorts 3, get Destroyer I
Research: Escorts 4, get Corvete II
etc. for each class.

I plan on (eventually) adding 4 more racial traits: Energy Race (new tech tree), Totally Organic Race (new tech tree), miniturization, Swarm (new tree). Mini is self-explanitory, and I didn't think of it until you mentioned it Swarm, simply put, cuts your costs to 1/3. It will probably be a 3000 point trait..

Hopefully componets.txt and techareas.txt don't have upper file-size limits

LT411: the design will probably take the longest. I don't plan on making major changes to components, so components.txt will only be a change of tech areas for each component, and that can be copy-pasted easily. There's no upper limit to family names, so I'll just slap a 999 or something on the front to set these apart for the AI. Techareas.txt will be the big change, and will probably take a bit.

Phoenix-D

[Phoenix-D]

More component ideas..

WP mounts that extend range a bit.
Base ""
"Planetary Fortification" mounts that make a WP much tougher, at the cost of adding to expense. Like mounts that double or tripple the hit points of all components, plus the normal effects, simultating using the planet itself as a shield.

Jammers- 10k missiles that do minimal damage. Designed to present PD with a large amount of targets to fire at.

Sprint missiles- missiles that reach their max range in just one or two turns.

Small weapons- I may let some of the smaller weapons fit on ships, to round out that Last 3 kt you can get stuck with with certain mounts.

Hardened Structure- non-armor armor

As you can probably tell, I'll be shamelessly borrowing from other mods. This extra stuff will be added Last though, I want to finish reorganizing the SE4 tree first.

I'll be starting work on this tonight.

Phoenix-D

[Phoenix-D]

Well, you can forget about the "advanced colonization" tech areas. SE4 goes nutty when you try and make new colonization modules..

Phoenix-D

[Phoenix-D]

Update: the work on techareas.txt is pretty much finished, I think. Still needs to be balanced, and I'd love to find a way to get the advanced colonies working, but the framework is there.

Phoenix-D

[Phoenix-D]

OK, just learned about what the AI does when it encounters mines.

What ELSE does the AI research automatticly?

Phoenix-D

[Phoenix-D]

(Yes, I'm going to continue bumping this thread with updates)

OK, progress. Components.txt- almost finished, just need the decoys. Facilites.txt- finished. techareas.txt- finished. airesearch default.txt-finished.

I also modded the Happyness types a bit, made neutral into Xenophobic and added a seperate Neutral type. Also changed the defaultstratagies.txt to make a little more sense (ex: why the **** is the secondary stratagy for Maximum range.. POINT BLANK? )

I also found a little problem with the family numbers. See, every time I've added a new item, I just stick 999 on the end. But SE4 doesn't like it when that number goes over 65535; it barfs saying "unable to load components.txt" without giving a specific error. Very aggrivating to track down, that.

I should have a beta Version of this mod up later.

Phoenix-D