Indestructible Starports - Whose Crazy Idea Was That?

The only reason I can think of is that it might have been done so that they could test the multiple starports being built problem (to reproduce it easier?). Although being indestructable doesn't mean un-upgradable, so I have no clue. In anycase, since the patch mentioned that they fixed that particular problem, I'm guessing they just forgot to take it out afterwards. I wouldn't expect it to stay that way in the final release version.

Yes IT IS UN-UPGRADEABLE. I took over several worlds with this latest beta. Stupid AI builds Starport on a PQ3 world and I cant upgrade it to research

Yeah, you can't upgrade it to something else, but you CAN upgrade it to something that it is suppose to upgrade to (IE: the next level up). If you don't believe me, make the Basic Factory undestructable, and go research xeno-factory construction. You will be able to upgrade to factories. The only reason I mentioned this is in my last post is because the AI considered the starport a soil enhancement anyways, so I'm pretty sure it would be able to upgrade it to something else.

I went one step further. I created a mod with a new starport, that provided industry points in addition to the regular starport benefit, plus with a lower cost.

And the AI *STILL* builds unupgradable starports on some planets!

@fsk+

Make your starport an upgrade of the old starport, it will auto-upgrade/replace the old one completely.

Does that work? I thought a starport specifically had to have the name "starport" to have that functionality.

I'll try an experiment.

Yup, it worked. Thanks for the tip.

Has anyone else been modding planetaryimprovements.xml besides me?

I submitted it as a mod, but it hasn't been "approved" yet, so it isn't showing up on the download pages.

It doesn't have to have the name that you see ingame. It has to have the internal name for the improvement(which is usually the same name) in the upgrade target field. This is super useful for making discovery spheres upgrade to neutrality learning centers automatically.

I hadnt thought about making an upgraded starport. Thats a really good idea. Maybe a bonus to ship defense or attack or something that are built from it... Hrm.. Is that possible?

Here's what I did:

Damn! Posting in XML doesn't work! That's so funny

Improvement>
S_Name>A Starport/S_Name>
S_InternalName>BasicStarport/S_InternalName>
!-- Note: This internal name is also used by code, so if you change it here, you'll have to change the code too. -->
S_Description>Your basic starport. You need this to launch constructed starships./S_Description>
S_Type>Normal/S_Type>
Cost>5/Cost>
Industry>8/Industry>
EconomicBonus>25/EconomicBonus>
Food>5/Food>
Maintenance>1/Maintenance>
S_IconName>BasicStarport.png/S_IconName>
S_QueryGraphicName>BasicStarport.png/S_QueryGraphicName>
S_UpgradeTarget>Starport/S_UpgradeTarget>
PlacementLimit>1/PlacementLimit>
/Improvement>

I made an upgraded starport that gives fleeting abilities, and then commented out the entry for the Orbital Fleet Manager. Basically it made all planets have the ability to fleet ships in orbit together. It was a simple little mod.

I hadnt thought about making an upgraded starport. Thats a really good idea. Maybe a bonus to ship defense or attack or something that are built from it... Hrm.. Is that possible?

Yeah, this is possible, it's the {StarshipQualityBonus} tag, and it will increase the weapons on the ship by that set percentage value similar to how the pirates or large ship colonization events works.

Hey, that gives me another idea. You could give +100% or even +200% soldiering to starports. That would totally eliminate the "attacker's advantage" in combat and it'd totally change the complexion of fighting offensive wars.

Must... learn to... get rid of... basic... horrid... starports...
I'll get to it after I finish this game so that I don't mess it up. ^^;
I just took 4 planets PQ4-6 and just found out about this update...
Had I only known they would be even more worthless planets than they already were I wouldn't have done it! Had to happen on my first crippling game too... I really really hope this is just a transient thing to help fix the multiple starports bug because I dispise this change.