Editing Alpha.txt, having min row problems

[Zeiter]

I've been trying out some alpha.txt modifications lately, and something I've tried to do is to make the airborne chassis (needlejets and copters) more expensive. In the cost column for the needlejet chassis in alpha.txt, I changed the amount from 8 to 16. Then, when I tried it out, I had some curious things happen. First, the cost of missle needlejets was only increased from 5 to 7 min rows. I was expecting the cost to double. Secondly, when I tried to build some missle needlejets, the build cost was only 5 rows, even though the cost was listed as 7 rows in the design workshop. I also noticed that the prototype costs for other factions was adjusted normally, where it cost like 10 rows for them to build a missle needlejet prototype. However, once they built the prototype, the cost for them also went back down to 5 rows instead of 7 rows.

Even more bewildering is that I tried putting a colony pod on a needlejet chassis, and the cost ballooned to 24 min rows, so obviously the increased cost I entered in into alpha.txt is being taken into account some of the time. But why won't it work with the missle needlejets?

[Commy]

Looking at the cost equation in the help files might help a bit, but ultimately, I don't really know what to say. Remember that cost is based not only on the chasis cost, but also on the weapons and special abilities it recieves, although this doesn't appear to be your problem. Usually what happens in the game is things are rounded to the nearest ten when regarding minerals, and then industry bonuses reduce the size of all the rows. So when you go on the workshop screen, while an object might cost 125 minerals, in the game, it will be 13 rows, or 130 minerals...

Experiments have been done before about mineral costs and number rows and blah blah blah, but perhaps you should look at some other threads. One, I believe called something like industry and growth, might be particularly helpful...

[Zeiter]

Yeah, it wouldn't hurt to look at those threads, I guess, but that's not really my main problem. My main problem is getting the cost in the design workshop to match the actual build cost

[Googlie]

as this line is in the txt:

Extracted from alphax.txt
; Cost = Cost factor of chassis type (normally equal to speed)

There's prolly some linked formula that limits by how much one can exceed the other

Try giving your choppers and noodles a movement of 16 as well, then see if that then calculates the cost correctly

(I believe that when players tried to reduce the range of choppers, to make them less effective, it had the same result - they became cheaper to build as a result)

[Zeiter]

Thanks Googlie! I'll try that out.