SE IV Gold: Starting tech levels? Yes or No?

[geoschmo]

Neat idea, but I don't think it will work, for the same reason you can't open an .emp file that was created using a different Racial Traits file. The game can't open it. I tried it and got a "Cannot open test.gam" error message.

Of course I could have done something wrong.

Geoschmo

[Mark Walton]

It seemed to work in my test - important thing is, don't change the racial traits file back, only the tech areas.

Did a quick test; my "fighter" race was able to create and design fighters even after the tech was switched back to non-racial. I'll do more tests later.

Edit : Quick further test

1. Other races can't use the tech unless they choose the race special, until they research it (I know that was the idea, but it was worth testing!)

2. The tech cannot be futher researched until the "real" prerequisites are known. At this point the tech is just "there" as if it had been researched normally. (If you wanted, you could do the same trick with "Construction" and get players to choose both, then they could research from turn 1)

3. Haven't tested trading the tech (yet)

4. Have to decide at start what tech level any players will get (ie can't have one player choosing tech level 1 fighters, another player choosing level 2)

This gives us possible options for the regular racial techs... needs some experimentation but we may be able to make them tradable / learnable / researchable.

One thing I'm doing in my mod is making the current "ruins" techs into normal techs with extreme research costs. So, a player can research Neural Combat Nets (but it's probably prohibitively expensive). Most often, players will get that tech by landing on a ruins world (not a unique one, just a regular one, and getting lucky)

I might try combining this idea with the racial-startup ideas here.

One test; can we research techs which have our "special" tech as a prerequisite, even if we haven't learned the tech-reqs for our special tech?

[ 19 December 2001: Message edited by: Mark Walton ]

[ 19 December 2001: Message edited by: Mark Walton ]

[Mark Walton]

Another test.

Created 3 tech areas:

Dummy A
Dummy B (requires Dummy A level 1)
Dummy C (requires Dummy B level 1)

Initially, made Dummy B a racial tech type with start level of 1.

Started a race with Dummy B tech. Saved game, edited tech file so that tech B is now a normal, non-racial item.

Loaded game : Was able to research Dummy A and Dummy C, but not Dummy B.

So, it looks like this works; still need to test trading.

Another thing to test is how many racial areas we are allowed. I might make my mod so that ANY tech can be bought with racial points, and that ANY tech can be researched. Thinking maybe race points cost is based on cost of that tech at level 1, plus half cost of all pre-req techs. Only available at level 1. Then I just have 2 TechAreas files; one for game startup, one for game in progress.

[geoschmo]

Excellent bit of deduction here Mark. I have run some more tests and have some observations...

Trading techs is not a problem. As long as they are not listed as racial techs in the TechArea.txt files at the time of the trade, they can be traded. (Actually Racial techs can be traded as well, but the race receiveing it has to have that racial trait as well to be able to understand it.)

I ran some tests making Construction, Fighters, Mines, and Tropps all as Racial techs. As long as you select Construction and the other tech, you can research the higher levels once the TechArea.txt is back to normal. (As you expected, just confirming that one.)

The idea doesn't seem to work with multiple levels of the same tech though. I tried a few different tests and the best I could do was get it to allow one player level 1 fighters and one level 2 fighters at game startup. Which was what I was going for, but then when the TechArea.txt file goes back, they both end up with level one fighters, and the guy that selected level 2 fighters has to research construction, even though he had it as a racial trait. Either the game is getting confused or I fumble fingered something cause that doesn't make sense to me.

What should work though would be to change the TechArea.txt file so that there are no levels. Instead of Fighters levels 1 through 3, you would have seperate tech areas for Fighters I, Fighters II and Fighters III. It would flatten out the Tech Tree, actually it wouldn't be a tree anymore, it would be a list.

But then you could go as far as you wanted with this idea, depending on some hypothetical limit to the number of racial techs. You could truly select any tech at game startup. And as long as you selected that techs prerequisits you would also be able to research it further in the game. If you didn't select the prereq's you would have to research them all before you could move on. Also if there was a comp that required level 3 of propulsion (Emergency propulsion IIRC) then selecting level 6 would not give it to you. You would have to select level 1 through 6 of propulsion.

Not sure what the limit to the Racial Tech areas is. Maybe 255? We'd have to check with Aaron on that. The Racial Trait file would get pretty big as well. We'd have to rewrite the comp.txt and VehicleSize.txt and Facilities.txt files. But they wouldn't get any bigger really. You'd just have to go through and change the requirements. For example if you had a component that required Propulsion level 6, you would change that to require Propulsion VI level 1.

Would require a lot of changes to the files, but you'd only have to do it once. One hard part would be deciding what amount of racial points to require for each tech.

You'd also have to redo the AI's, but that wouldn't be as difficult as it might seem. I have some ideas already about that. It should be possible to adjust them so they function in this environment as well as in the stock one.

Geoschmo

[Mark Walton]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
Trading techs is not a problem. As long as they are not listed as racial techs in the TechArea.txt files at the time of the trade, they can be traded. (Actually Racial techs can be traded as well, but the race receiveing it has to have that racial trait as well to be able to understand it.)

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Good, I had hoped this would work. It means we can switch racial traits away from being racial, too, if we want. Careful there though... I would be inclined to put the research cost WAY higher. I mean, does it really break the game if a race can become psychic later? Should it really be impossible to develop Crystalline or Temporal tech after discovering space flight?

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:

What should work though would be to change the TechArea.txt file so that there are no levels. Instead of Fighters levels 1 through 3, you would have seperate tech areas for Fighters I, Fighters II and Fighters III. It would flatten out the Tech Tree, actually it wouldn't be a tree anymore, it would be a list.
(snip by MW)
Also if there was a comp that required level 3 of propulsion (Emergency propulsion IIRC) then selecting level 6 would not give it to you.

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Yes, very interesting! The points costs could be balanced out in proportion to the number of research pointe required to reach that level. So, if your race CAN produce top-level APB's on the first turn, they probably can't do a whole lot else. (Like, actually afford to build a vessel carrying one)

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:

You'd also have to redo the AI's, but that wouldn't be as difficult as it might seem. I have some ideas already about that. It should be possible to adjust them so they function in this environment as well as in the stock one.

Geoschmo

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I would be interested to hear those ideas, it may just be creating a different style of ai_research.txt : the idea would really have to work well though, for people to be bothered to do it... unless we name the techs in such a way that a script would handle it.

This might work well with some of the ideas I shelved for my mod (which one day will be in releasable format!!) regarding weapons (and other tech) development. I'll dig out my notes and start thinking.

[Mark Walton]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
The idea doesn't seem to work with multiple levels of the same tech though. I tried a few different tests and the best I could do was get it to allow one player level 1 fighters and one level 2 fighters at game startup. Which was what I was going for, but then when the TechArea.txt file goes back, they both end up with level one fighters, and the guy that selected level 2 fighters has to research construction, even though he had it as a racial trait. Either the game is getting confused or I fumble fingered something cause that doesn't make sense to me.

Geoschmo

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Sounds to me, like you created a seperate item in TechArea. Is this true?
I think that will not work, TechArea must have the same items in the same order... I think... will test at some point.

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Walton:
Sounds to me, like you created a seperate item in TechArea. Is this true?
I think that will not work, TechArea must have the same items in the same order... I think... will test at some point.

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Exactly. In the Racial Traits file I had Construction, Fighters I and Fighters II, as racial techs 6, 7, and 8.

Then in the Tech Area file I made Construction racial tech 6 with start level 1, fighters tech area 7 with start level 1, and another fighters with tech area 8 and start level 2. I was kind of expecting it to fail because of two tech areas with the same name.

It suprised me that it didn't, and the player with Construction and fighters I got level 1 in fighters and the player with all three racial areas got fighters level 2. But then when I went back to the regular tech area file the player with fighter level 1 still had it and the player with fighters 2 could build level 1 fighters, but couldn't research any further until he researched construction again.

Very confusing.