Any modders know how to do this?

[dgh64]

Hi, been lurking for a couple days, and I thought I'd make an accout so I can ask a question.... there are a few things I think should be different about combat and how unit equipment works:

*Unit HP should be determined by armor, not reactor... that's pretty obvious, at least to me... say, like 10 HP standard, and add an additional 5 for each level of armor?

*Regardless of which unit is attacking and which is defending, both should use their weapons to do damage. I mean, how exactly is my hull plating going to damage you?

*Reactor should determine how fast a weapon recharges... I was thinking a square root formula, so if Unit A has a fission plant (power 1) while Unit B has a fusion reactor (power 2), then Unit B would shoot sqrt(2)=about 1.4 times for every 1 shot Unit A gets. If A is fission and B is singularity, it would be 2:1, etc.

*bigger reactors should be more expensive, not less like it sometimes is

*non-combat units should always lose... and not do any damage... I mean, how exactly is a transport foil or a former shooting back?

*cruisers should move slower than hovercraft... that's how it works in real life, at least. Is is possible to make it so Doctrine: Flexibility gives you cruisers, while Doc Initiative gives you foils? That way the foil (which would now have the speed advantage) would come later in the game, but the cruiser would still be useful as a transport because it could hold more.

*just a suggestion... is there any way to add weight limits to different chassis? So, for example, make it so Infantry can only use gatling lasers or less, and for any bigger weapon you'd need a heavier chassis?

*along the same vein: is it possible to give certain chassis different HP modifiers, so for example a rover would have 2x as much HP as an infantry with the same other equipment?

That's all I can think of at the moment... I'm sure I'll think of more, and if I do I'll add them to the bottom of the thread. If anyone out there knows how to accomplish any (or preferrably all) of these, please let me know.

Oh, and one other thing. I'd really like to be able to look at (and print out) a jpg or gif that shows the whole tech tree, so I can find the tech I need and trace backward to see the quickest path to it, without going back and forth through the datalinks and only seeing one tech at a time. I could do it myself, but I'm just... lazy

[Selador]

*Unit HP should be determined by armor, not reactor... that's pretty obvious, at least to me... say, like 10 HP standard, and add an additional 5 for each level of armor?

*Regardless of which unit is attacking and which is defending, both should use their weapons to do damage. I mean, how exactly is my hull plating going to damage you?

*Reactor should determine how fast a weapon recharges... I was thinking a square root formula, so if Unit A has a fission plant (power 1) while Unit B has a fusion reactor (power 2), then Unit B would shoot sqrt(2)=about 1.4 times for every 1 shot Unit A gets. If A is fission and B is singularity, it would be 2:1, etc.

*bigger reactors should be more expensive, not less like it sometimes is

*non-combat units should always lose... and not do any damage... I mean, how exactly is a transport foil or a former shooting back?

I agree with you on most of these points; unfortunately this stuff is all hardcoded and can't be modded through changes to alpha.txt.

*cruisers should move slower than hovercraft... that's how it works in real life, at least. Is is possible to make it so Doctrine: Flexibility gives you cruisers, while Doc Initiative gives you foils? That way the foil (which would now have the speed advantage) would come later in the game, but the cruiser would still be useful as a transport because it could hold more.

This one CAN be done.

Go into alpha.txt (or alphax.txt) and look for the "#CHASSIS" heading. You should see this:

#CHASSIS
Infantry,M1,  Squad,M1,      Sentinels,M2,   Garrison,M1,  1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, None,     Shock Troops,M2,   Elite Guard,M1,
Speeder,M1,   Rover,M1,      Defensive,M1,   Skirmisher,M1,2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, Mobile,   Dragon,M1,         Enforcer,M1,
Hovertank,M1, Tank,M1,       Skimmer,M1,     Evasive,M1,   3, 0, 0, 0, 1, 3, NanoMin,  Behemoth,M1,       Guardian,M1,
Foil,M1,      Skimship,M1,   Hoverboat,M1,   Coastal,M1,   [COLOR="Red"]4[/COLOR], 1, 0, 0, [COLOR="blue"]2[/COLOR], 4, [COLOR="SeaGreen"]DocFlex[/COLOR],  Megafoil,M1,       Superfoil,M1,
Cruiser,M1,   Destroyer,M1,  Cutter,M1,      Gunboat,M1,   [COLOR="Red"]6[/COLOR], 1, 0, 0, [COLOR="Blue"]4[/COLOR], 6, [COLOR="SeaGreen"]DocInit[/COLOR],  Battleship,M1,     Monitor,M1,
Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1,  8, 2, 2, 0, 1, 8, DocAir,   Thunderbolt,M1,    Sovereign,M1,
'Copter,M1,   Chopper,M1,    Rotor,M1,       Lifter,M1,    8, 2, 1, 0, 1, 8, MindMac,  Gunship,M1,        Warbird,M1,
Gravship,M1,  Skybase,M1,    Antigrav,M1,    Skyfort,M1,   8, 2, 0, 0, 1, 8, Gravity,  Deathsphere,M1,    Doomwall,M1,
Missile,M1,   Missile,M1,    Missile,M1,     Missile,M1,  12, 2, 1, 1, 0,12, Orbital,  Missile,M1,        Missile,M1,

The red numbers set the speed, the blue sets cargo capacity, and the text in green is the prerequisite tech. So for example, if you wanted to switch the speeds for foils and cruisers, just change the 4 to a 6, and the 6 to a 4. If you also want cruisers to appear before foils, just swap the tech prerequisites: change 'DocFlex' to 'DocInit' and '[COLOR="rgb(46, 139, 87)"]DocInit[/COLOR]' to 'DocFlex'.

*just a suggestion... is there any way to add weight limits to different chassis? So, for example, make it so Infantry can only use gatling lasers or less, and for any bigger weapon you'd need a heavier chassis?

*along the same vein: is it possible to give certain chassis different HP modifiers, so for example a rover would have 2x as much HP as an infantry with the same other equipment?

No, and no.

Oh, and one other thing. I'd really like to be able to look at (and print out) a jpg or gif that shows the whole tech tree, so I can find the tech I need and trace backward to see the quickest path to it, without going back and forth through the datalinks and only seeing one tech at a time. I could do it myself, but I'm just... lazy

Here you go:

EDIT: too big to upload I guess. Go here instead: http://www.civgaming.net/smac/patch.shtml

[dgh64]

Thanks! I'll spend some time playing around with alpha.txt and see what else I can do

[Mart]

There is alpha(x) help for modding:

http://www.weplayciv.com/wiki/Alphax.txt_guide

Explains many entries, maybe you already saw it.
It is also good to search forums for threads with changes that people tried. It's maybe more work to go through all this stuff and filter what you need.

[dgh64]

Wow... I'm looking over the info, and I see there's a lot I can change... One of the things that was confusing for me, as a new player, was how tangled the tech tree is. Like, why do some weapons come from "build" techs? I know they were trying to make it "realistic", but I think I'll spend the weekend fiddling with it, see what I come up with.

[Mart]

Each tech has assigned value (relative) pertaining to all 4 groups, which shows how much it belongs to specific one. (And they are quite important for AI, as they mention) And the sum is flexible. The greatest value shows if the tech is "build", "explore" or other. As I understand, they have broader meaning, e.g. it is not only one application, like terraforming payload only, but the tech of Centauri Ecology enables whole bunch of stuff including terraformer equipment. Some techs have applications pertaining to more than one category.

This is how I understand techs. But I agree, some of them may appear out of place, I remember reading designer notes (?) about how difficult it was to create future technologies. But overall, Firaxis did a great job, as I now look from perspective of 10 years. Take a look into existing mods to refer to other ideas. There is "Design Workshop" thread with much stuff on Apoly, that was done also.

[dgh64]

I'm working on having almost completely separate branches for Conquer (including weapons, armor, base defenses, and unit abilities directly related to combat) Explore (terraforming, alien life forms, and Psi-related stuff) Build (most of the base facilities, and some of the advanced terraforming like boreholes and mag tubes) and Discover (chassis and reactors, as well as the labs for your bases and non-war-related spaceflight stuff. The secret projects are pretty evenly distributed among the branches according to what they do, and I tried to keep them "in order" (i.e. Weather Paradigm comes near the beginning, while The Voice of Planet comes toward the end) There are some connections between the branches, but it's not nearly as tangled as in the original.

Part of what I did was rename the weapons and armor, so it's not so high-tech. Most of my re-imagined weapons are things like Railguns that we either have now, or the military is proposing for near-future development. That makes it a little easier to come up with the associated technologies and how they lead from one to the next.

[dgh64]

I was just looking through alphax.txt, and I saw the following line:

50, ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit

If I set the penalty to 100%, will it do what I wanted, i.e. make formers and transports always lose and not do any damage?

[Mart]

Can be quickly tested. Start a game, enable ctrl-K the editor and you can quickly arrange test stuff.

Let me see this, very interesting idea, something like in civ3 and civ4 the worker.
------------
Ok, what I saw is that indeed chances of non-combat unit are zero. E.g. 2800:0 (attacked by scout ) or 2430:0 (psi)
Psi effect is maybe not that good, even former crews might have some will to survive...
------------
It works with negative values too. -50 makes former to defend with 150% strength.

[dgh64]

Maybe I'll put it like 90-95%, so at least the crew can get out and punch you in the face or something...

[Mart]

It would be good to have capability to set this factor separately for psi combat and regular combat. Psi fight was intended to be different.

One can reason, that non-combat unit should always yield to a mindworm boil as being not trained to fight. On the other hand, having no defenses against regular weapons, chances in psi would be interesting.

When I tried 100% penalty with former, it was destroyed by an alien mindworm with no damage to it.

Maybe a former with psi armor would be interesting to try.

[dgh64]

I've been playing a Gaian SP game the last couple of days, and my main enemy is the Caretakers. I'm using their bases that I've captured to rebuild my forces, but they don't have any facilities so my worms come out Pre-Boil, and I have to train them on the formers and colony pods that my more experienced worms leave behind. I still lose about a third of my new recruits because they're using armored formers.

[dgh64]

Sorry to keep bothering you guys with all these noob questions, but...

I'm trying to make it so you can build monoliths. I went to the terraforming seciton of alphax.txt, changed the prerequisite from "Disable" to "None", but it still doesn't show up in the Former's right-click menu. Is this because it's impossible to enable the construction of monoliths, or am I just doing it wrong?

[Selador]

Hmm, I seem to remember reading a thread about that issue from long ago, but I can't remember if anyone was actually successful in figuring out how to build monoliths.

Maybe someone who knows for sure will chime in.

[Selador]

I still lose about a third of my new recruits because they're using armored formers.

Yeah, armored formers count as combat units, IIRC.