Mars Mod Thread 1: Planning

[heardie]

Well, I'm still working on the first set of unit graphics, slowly.. Have empire earth to play as well you know

Would be nice if someone could whip up a tech-tree for me As it stands now, there is one technoology: Martian Timing

[HardWay]

Update on the terrorist unit:
I tried it with the editor, and as soon as the unit was built -- game crashed. Will try to isolate exactly what the problem is. Suspect that it is related to putting 'air missions' on a land unit. Dang.

Wish firaxis would allow the editor to warn you about a potential bad configuration.

[Lemmy]

you can put air missions on land units, but you won't get the option to perform themm, they are ignored.
So the crashing must be something else.

[Loader2k]

Hallo everyone.

My 2 cents:

1. Oceans on Mars?

Oceans on Mars from the beginning would be quite strange. But a map needs oceans or an equivalent. So just take an equivalent. Make ground regions, lets call them plains, on which you can build and settle ("plains" here stands for different types of regions). And as an ocean equivalent take "dust". Normal units cant cross dust (maybe because of sandstorms, sinking, or just the (abstract) necesserity to refuel regularly or whatever). Units that can cross dust can also cross plains (so actually it would not be exactly the same as ocean), but these would be expensive.


2. What does make the Mars-Mod different from Civ, SMAC and other Mods?

I think it would be a good idea to design the mod so that the player has to use the modern concepts from Civ from the very beginning. SMAC started like Civ... at the beginning ground units for a long time, then aircraft and planetbreakers (=Nukes) just shortly before the end. I seldom put those modern technologies into use, because either the world is very peaceful until they are discovered or it is so much work to manage the empire in times of war. I´ve fought so many wars with archers and legions and so few with planes.
So i think it would be interesting to have aircrafts as the standard fighting units right from the beginning (in fact i would even make settlers aircraft and give them an operational range of settling if possible) and to give the civilisations nukes very early and so on.

In fact i would make ground units very expensive. So that you would use aircraft whereever you can (it would be cheaper). But since aircraft have limited range, u would sometimes need expensive ground units or take an even more expensive carrier with you, that is able to pass plains or even dust.


3. Concerning terraforming and colonizing

Being dependend on terraforming sounds nice, because destroying those installations in a war could create a huge problem for a city. That also works in late Civ-Games when a bombarded city starts to starve, but i think an even stronger effect (no food at all without "irrigation", so that a city would _massively_ starve after a bombardement; i wouldnt implement permanent change of terrain) would be interesting in times of war. On the other hand i would be careful not to put too much micromanagement into the game (commanding workers is boring).

And since it´s Mars we are talking about i would only make a few places suitable for founding a city. So that u dont have the whole map settled like in Civ, but only important places. That would strategically be very interesting. Would also make for less micromanagement in the late game.


4. Concerning science

What to research? Problem is that the colonists come from earth which is very well developed and you would assume that the science labs there research alot quicker than some new colonies. So why research? In SMAC the colonists had lost this knowledge and science was mostly about re-inventing all that stuff. One possibility.
Another would be that most science on Mars cycles around new strategic ressources. Lets say there are 12 strategic ressources, you get access to 3 per age, and every tech puts one of the three ressources of its age into use.


Greetings,
Loader.

[heardie]

Anyone want to see the *pcx of the Colonist?

Go ahead...

[pwyll]

Great idea. I made some mars-like terrains. It has some smal errors, but I'm working to fix it soon. Also working on the goodyhuts.pcx - think a wrecked spaceship would doing it.





You can find the complete pcx files here -> Terrain.zip

Note: These terrain files are only beta

pwyll

[Jer8m8]

picture doesn't work

[pwyll]

hmmm i can see the picture...

here's the url -> http://www.geocities.com/nichols92295/mars.gif

pwyll

[heardie]

Nice work on the terrain If you make them a bit browner, and less red, then I'll be begging to use them

[pwyll]

ok doing this within the next two weeks, at the moment I havn't the time. But why brown? Isn't mars a red plant? Also made the goodyhuts and some irrigation and mining graphics.

pwyll

[heardie]

Originally posted by pwyll
ok doing this within the next two weeks, at the moment I havn't the time. But why brown? Isn't mars a red plant? Also made the goodyhuts and some irrigation and mining graphics.

pwyll

I just think the red is slightly overpowering. Still, great work.

[joost1110]

What if you would change the graphics of ocean to dust or something, and make it changeable to sea with pollution (terrafroming). Then you can't build on them and with enough pollution they would just change. Or you could make a unit, named terraformer for example, with the same effect as a tactical nuke (just change the graphics). When you hit one of the 'dust' terrains with it, it would change to sea. Makes those units not very expensive either. This probably won't work for the AI (I guess none of the ideas in this thread will work with the AI, so the human player would have to do all the terraforming).

[pwyll]

I think the mars-mod have to play after the game. Earth were destroyed by massive wars and the people left earth to beginn a new life on mars. Mars still is terraformed and so we had a smal oxygen athmosphere and water from the icecaps create oceans. On normal plains you don't find any food so you need to irrigate them - thats a problem. I don't know how to made this in this mod. Also you had smal forrests and jungles. We have to find a way to decrease them in the mod.

We also have to made new techs for our civs. Starting with an techlevel we had at the end of the normal game. So we had 4 new eras, starting with modern times and we had to create new units. Starting with some tanks, spaceships and marines. We need some futurisitc ships, think someone could crap this from ctp2. Also we could crap some futuristc units from ctp2. In the next era we could use this fantastic mechs from blueo.

We need 4 new erasplash screens, new wonders and many new units and much time to create this mod.

pwyll

[Reptilicus]

I don't think crapping out units is a good idea, nor do I think that air units would be suitable on mars being as there is very little atmosphere. Perhaps things like balloons you can get at the beginning, which is your main scouting units.

Nationalities.
To balance out the different nationalities, they can all land at different times with different units. For instance, America can land first turn with two brilliant scientests and a chemical plant, but then the chinese show up next turn with two cities expert craftsmen, etc.

Mars doesn't have oceans, so they need to go. I do hope it is possible to have oceans show up in late game.

Dust storms shouldn't be a random unit occurance, but something that lasts a few turns and covers a large part of the planet. During a sand storm, all the terrain stops producing and units are slowed, and air units are destroyed.

Power should be important. So, you need a power plant to have so many improvements, and maybe there can be a dueterium plant as a small wonder.

[heardie]

Originally posted by Reptilicus
I don't think crapping out units is a good idea, nor do I think that air units would be suitable on mars being as there is very little atmosphere. Perhaps things like balloons you can get at the beginning, which is your main scouting units.

Nationalities.
To balance out the different nationalities, they can all land at different times with different units. For instance, America can land first turn with two brilliant scientests and a chemical plant, but then the chinese show up next turn with two cities expert craftsmen, etc.

Mars doesn't have oceans, so they need to go. I do hope it is possible to have oceans show up in late game.

Dust storms shouldn't be a random unit occurance, but something that lasts a few turns and covers a large part of the planet. During a sand storm, all the terrain stops producing and units are slowed, and air units are destroyed.

Power should be important. So, you need a power plant to have so many improvements, and maybe there can be a dueterium plant as a small wonder.

Except that most of this isn't possible with the editor. Maybe if there is an expansion pack, but for now, we are stuck.

Also, I understand about air units, but I believe they still need to be in - can you imagine a game withouot air power?