Is this possible in a mod?

[capnq]

A couple of the stellar manipulation components destroy the ship as a side effect of what they do (star destroyer, black hole creator).

[Wenin]

Can you start off a game so that a planet could have a maximum population of 8000, but you onlly start with 100M people?

[Suicide Junkie]

If you were to set the planet capacity to 100, and then give everybody racial traits that expand planet space by 8000%, you'd get that.

Everyone would have to take your super Advanced storage techniques trait, tho.

[Wenin]

Is it possible to design a component that once it is used the vehicle is destroyed?

My friend and I are recreating a RPG world that he designed many years ago. He has a history created for the setting, and we are designing a mod that is being played during an earlier point of time than what the RPG players are typically set within. In this universe there are two different methods of innerstellar transportation. At the start of the setting only the first method of transportation is available.


1. Hyperspace - Travel through semi-normal space. All starting warp points will be "Nav Points". You go to these nav points to get on course for the charted cooridors between systems. These routes only go to neighboring systems, much like the road system back in the 1930's in the US. To travel from New York to Chicago took forever, since you had to drive THROUGH all kinds of small towns and other cities.


2. Jump Gates - These are ancient objects that were left behind by a long dead alien race. At the start of the setting they haven't been discovered. Once discovered the technology isn't able to replicated. These ancient devices come in sets, exactly like warp points. When you fly through these Jump Gates they increase the speed of your already existing Hyperspace engines by something like 10 fold.


So the objective is to recreate these alien artifacts within the game's limitations.

We want them to not be reusable. So once you "place" one of these gate sets in place you can't go off and place more sets in place without having a cost associated with their creation.

Anyway, I figured out a workaround. Stellar components use supplies right?

- Create a Warp Opening stellar component that can only be placed on a specific drone vehicle.
- Have the component use enough supplies to empty the drone of its supplies.
- Have the component destroyed for good measure.
- Following turn the drone is destroyed.

The resources put into building the drone really simulates the amount of resources an empire must expend into finding the Jump Gates and getting them into position (since the drone units won't cost any maintenance). These drones are going to be super expensive to simulate the rarity of the alien objects.

[Alneyan]

I'm not sure drones can give Stellar Manipulation orders. Their order set is highly restricted (Attack basically), so the SM button may not appear for them. That aside, it should work fine.

A possibility would be to remove all ways of repairing ships. I doubt you would like that, though you might justify it given your story. Another alternative is to make the component use a *lot* of supplies (as high as the game goes, if possible), and also provides these supplies. So, when the component is used, all those supplies are gone. If you make everything else use a lot less supplies, you should have a component that can only be re-powered by using five hundred ships or some such. This time, you would have to remove all "free supplies" stuff (Resupply Depots and Quantum Reactors basically).

A more interesting way is to create an Ancient Empire (or a slightly more inspiring name) with unique access to the Ancient Technology race trait (this trait would behave like Crystalline, Religious, etc). This Empire would then be able to research, build and repair the Ancient stuff, and give it/sell it/get it captured by the other Empires. However, you cannot repair components if you do not have access to all the requisite technologies, so these components would effectively be one-shot.

That approach is only worthwhile for a multiplayer game, of course, unless your idea of a fun game is to abuse the AI.

[Fyron]

In a quick test, I made a drone with a gravitational condenser. It had no stellar manipulation button while on a warp point.

[Wenin]

In a quick test, I made a drone with a gravitational condenser. It had no stellar manipulation button while on a warp point.

Ugh, damn it =(

That approach is only worthwhile for a multiplayer game, of course, unless your idea of a fun game is to abuse the AI.

Most games I play the AI doesn't really get to the point that it is making warp points. When they do it appears to be a bit random and not to helpful for them. The Warp Point tech is best used in the hands of a human player. Now AIs going around destroying stars is nasty. =)


The Ancient empire isn't around anymore, creating a race that can be conquered.... wait a second.....

Taking Alneyan's idea a step farther, what about creating an empire that is INVISIBLE. All of their ships have innate Cloaking ability that makes them never be detected. They would be designed like the pirates/raiders that I've heard talked about. They'd have to be designed so they never go hostile, don't know if that's possible, especially with Team Mode turned on. Even so, give them very restricted tech so that they never have weapons, and then would never attack anyone... though they could stumble upon someone or even mines. Anyway, they'd be designed to create "Gates" which would be slow moving ships that only have room for the gate. Analyzing the vehicle will get you nothing since it is all built off of racial tech. These "Gates" would be detectable, so they could be "discovered". Of course the race would have to not respond to any diplomacy.

Undetectable Cloak
Easy to do

Non-hostile Race
Make all activities to include enemy ships in system to generate goodwill towards other AIs.

Wandering Race
To avoid all the gates from being produced in a single system.
Give them only one mode, or have ALL of their modes do one function.... build "Gates".
Control the rate of production by giving them low production rates. Will allow the gates to have low maintenance costs once they're captured.

Mines
Only seen fighters and drones being able to be immune to mines and drones at a Settings level.
Could give them so much Armor or a Minesweeper ability that it's impossible to destroy them with a mine.... but they'd be clearing mine fields.

Randomly build "Gates"
These gate vehicles wouldn't have any cloaks. They could boarded and taken into custody

Never responds to diplomacy
Empty Speech file?
Set the highest Treaty to be no treaty?

Remove Homeworld or make it Invisible
Don't know how to remove it, will have to look into the Pirates mod see if they've done it.
Invisible by hiding it in a storm with complete obscurment. Though I don't know if this can be designed in the autogeneration capability, and make it not possible for other players.


Unable to colonize
Don't give them any colonizing tech, though they start off with colonizing tech of their homeworld.

Protection against Intel Projects
Give them the ability to produce LARGE amounts of Intel points, but only ever spend it on Counter Intel.


How would you prevent other AIs from just destroying these "gifts" instead of capturing them