Infinitech Mod Starting

[Romulus68]

I like the idea of the large Tech tree but that leads back to Stock and Balance Mod. Stock forced you to constantly upgrade and refit to a point that you never got anything done, but refitting. The BM addressed that by reducing the number of Tech levels, but making them gain more per Tech advance.

Be careful not to do what stock does and trap people in the constant refitting loop. Reduce the levels, increase the cost to research and improve the returns per level gained.

[MrToxin]

Actually, I do plan on dealing with the constant refitting trap. That's where the idea of passive technology comes in.

The idea is, for example, that researching Projectile Weapons gives you bonuses to all of your Projectile-Type weapons onces they've been upgrades. However, within the damage code is bonuses from researching other technologies.

So, if you loaded your ships up with Slug Cannons, you could research Slug Shells for five levels and get a direct damage bonus to everything that fires Slug Shells. While, aside from that, other technologies give bonuses to range, to-hit chance, and all that fun stuff just by applying research. Should reduce refitting.

[Suicide Junkie]

Unfortunately that doesn't work.

The values are locked in when the ship is designed/built, and never recalculated.

[MrToxin]

Holy crap. Well, that just sucks. I'll just need to take other measures then.

Aside from slowing the tech rate down, I imagine making the level to level increases less drastic would do it.

[Suicide Junkie]

What you really want are *worthwhile* upgrades at each level, rather than small stat bumps

[Captain Kwok]

Suicide Junkie said:The values are locked in when the ship is designed/built, and never recalculated.

Crap. That's right. I had planned on doing the upgrades on the fly with my next mod, but it'd only be registered on re-loads or forced re-calcs.

I wonder if it might be possible to persuade Aaron to add a re-calc script function that could be used in the events script to force SE:V to update stats during turn processing.

[Santiago]

How much turn processing slow down would that cause? If any?

[MrToxin]

Santiago said:
How much turn processing slow down would that cause? If any?

Probably quiet a bit. Every module with a huge equation can turn into quite a few instructions. Sure, computers can process millions of them a second, but when ever module has dozens and there's dozens of modules on each ship alone and then hundreds or thousands of ships in the universe, that can get very very messy.

Anyway...I got an e-mail back from Aaron that said he's looking into fixing Planet Maximum Population. It works on components but not on facilities and that's weird. Of course, having habitation components for starbases opens up something else entirely but we'll see.

Makes me want the next patch real bad already.

Anyway...now I'm adding leaky defenses. I love how the new damage system works. The idea is that early defenses are leaky to everything while newer stuff gets less leaky. Everything also has a counter and you can research stuff to specifically penetrate specific kinds of defenses.

I also managed to put in teleporting munitions. The idea is, once you research technology that allows you to teleport stuff, the obvious step is to drop explosives, viruses, and mean little robot dudes directly into the enemy ships. They bypass all defenses. Of course, they take lots of energy to use.

There is one type of "shield" that every other weapon penetrates that only gives 1 point of defense. It's called a Teleport Negation Field and it prevents all damage from teleporting munitions. Neat idea, I think.

[Suicide Junkie]

Captain Kwok said:

Crap. That's right. I had planned on doing the upgrades on the fly with my next mod, but it'd only be registered on re-loads or forced re-calcs.

Not even then.

If only it did recalculate when you reloaded the mod after tweaking something... then auto-upgrades would just work on PBW.

It is seriously Written In Stone. You have to copy the ship design, and then retrofit your old ships to the new, identical design to get the benefits.


Of course, it may have been changed in a patch... couldn't hurt to try it out again.

Be sure to build a real ship, and test its stats in combat after you get your tech levels. The component report will probably say a different number than the value carved into the design.

[Suicide Junkie]

MrToxin said:
OK, Planet Maximum Population doesn't seem to work on facilities. Disappointing but we'll see what the next patch brings. If it doesn't get implemented, I'll stuff it in a future mod design or something. In the mean time, I'll make do.

Max pop, supply & ordnance storage should be working in the next patch! Yay!


To this end, I post for your consideration the following system:
1) Set all non-breathable planets to have a population maximum of 1M people.
2) Set breathable worlds to have a population maximum of 500M-2500M based on size.
3) Set the population modifier for less than 2M people to be -99.9% to build rate. (Modifiers for 2M or more people are normal)
4) Provide "Dome" facilities, which cost 1 mineral and give +50M population capacity.
5) Provide other facilities such as "open air city", which cost multiple thousands of resources, and have a requirement of <i>NO Dome facilities on the planet</i>

This means:
Breathable worlds are normal.
Non-breathable worlds MUST build a dome facility before they can build anything else. (Build rate of 2.0 per month until they get that second million people)

"Open air cities" and any other facility you wish to restrict to breathable worlds, will be restricted to breathable worlds via the "no domes" policy.

If you increase the effect of population bonuses (and/or penalties for low pop), cities and domes become important to build once population gets close to max.

Add arcologies and orbital habitats for long-term investments to keep planetary development rolling along into the mid and late game...