Trying to do an engine mod

And by "engine" I mean "drive"

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm trying to do an engine mod that limits ships to one engine a piece (and then after that I was going to mod the speed of the engines to compensate), to feel out how that "solution" would work.

I was actually going to propose this as a fix, but I decided I should probably try it out myself first.

IMHO it helps the speed problem, the colony rush issue (admittedly toned down somewhat again in TA vs DA, as well as DA vs DL), and it might actually help the AI in its handling of faster ships, but given that the final speed for say hyperwarp III would still need to be fairly significant (hi, immense maps), I'd say probably not. It does, however, give a REAL benefit for researching the next engine tech, as well as solving the issue (though it appears the majority here would not view it as a problem, necessarily) of smaller ships being significantly slower than larger ones; particularly when attempting to move them in fleets.

It's also more realistic, i.e. adding two warp drives onto a ship wouldn't make it go faster IRL; but giving it a better warp drive would.

In any case, I'm assuming placementlimit doesn't work in gc2types, and it seems I can't change up an engine so that it has module properties (i.e. mining/construction). Apparently the mining/construction module limits are hard coded, and not actually dependent on their type. My guess is warp bubble/adv warp bubble are hard coded as well, so I can't just copy from them, either.

If it's relevant, I'm attempting this in DA 1.80q.100, though I hope to apply the results back to DL (1.50.133, of course?). As far as TA goes, that's an entirely new situation, due to how far everyone goes in engine techs now (or doesn't go), but I would hope it would be workable there as well.

Comments? Criticisms? Suggestions? Solutions?
modding
5,136 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Not gonna work. I tried to make several new one-only modules when I was trying to make my mod, and nothing worked. I tried to make a new Power Generation technology(power core modules, give more space on a ship), but couldn't make the limit work.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thought as much. I was thinking of copying the default hulls and integrating the engines into the hull, so to speak (with the appropriate tech requirements/etc), but I'm not sure if the AI would actually use the new hulls. Not to mention it would probably make the hull selection screen a bit crowded.

There's also the fact that with non-tiny/small/cargo hulls (in DL/DA) and non-tiny/cargo hulls (in TA), I'm fairly positive I'd need to specify two tech requirements for these custom ones, and I'm honestly not sure if the game supports that, but the way the tree is set up would lead me to believe it doesn't.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yep, unfortunetly, there is NO way to specify a limit on how many of a certain ship component you can put on a ship. I really wish there was. Oh well, maybe push for the feature for the 2.0 Patch, eh?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can't have multiple tech requirements, and adding the engines to the hulls amounts to simply increasing the [speed].

One way around the problem would be to make certain hulls available with certain techs, each hull type having a greater speed - and doing away with the engine components altogether.
You would in effect be combining the engine techs with the hull techs. But instead of new engine components that are added to hulls, new hulls with greater inherent speeds are made available.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's what I was saying. But, for example, a huge hull in this way would need A) the normal massive scale building to unlock it, and B) warp drive V (for instance). If I just set one of them as a prereq tech, then either someone can just rush warp drive V to get a huge hull without massive scale, or someone can rush massive to get warp drive V without warp drive V itself.

I was thinking of having it set up so that faster hulls are unlocked in the tree only after the base hull has been, and in the normal engine order, but that would increase the overall tech cost.

But then I tested two prerequisite techs, for lack of anything better to do, and it works. I was, to be honest, shocked-but pleased. I'm unsure if three will work, but based on the fact that two does, my guess would be yes. And it doesn't unlock until you have both of them, which is fantastic.

At first it seemed like it wasn't working, as I loaded a saved game and attempted to research from there. I'm not sure what led me to believe that was the problem, but I fired up a new game and it worked perfectly. So apparently the game saves a copy of the data within the save file itself, which is probably a good thing, to avoid phantom techs and things like that, but it did throw me off initially.

Which brings me back to my original question of whether or not the AI will actually use the hulls-more to the point, will it recognize that a hull with say speed 5 is superior to a hull with speed 1 after it has unlocked it? And it also re-raises my concern that this way of doing it will clutter up the hull selection screen, but I'm not sure there's a good way around that.

I guess the engine techs could all just be made to increase speed, and not actually unlock anything at all. I'm not sure how I'd fix the ship cost difference, though.

And zarguon, I'm with you on that. There are just so many interesting things that can be done with one-only modules, but most would be far too overpowered if there was no limit.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's interesting about being able to have multiple requirements. I thought it was not possible in DL, so I guess I'll have to try it out.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Didn't test DL yet, just DA. Don't know why it wouldn't work in DL as well, though.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

But then I tested two prerequisite techs, for lack of anything better to do, and it works. I was, to be honest, shocked-but pleased. I'm unsure if three will work, but based on the fact that two does, my guess would be yes. And it doesn't unlock until you have both of them, which is fantastic.
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Does it display on the tech tree properly too?
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


But then I tested two prerequisite techs, for lack of anything better to do, and it works. I was, to be honest, shocked-but pleased. I'm unsure if three will work, but based on the fact that two does, my guess would be yes. And it doesn't unlock until you have both of them, which is fantastic.


Does it display on the tech tree properly too?
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Each prerequisite tech specifies that it unlocks said component, yes. However, it does not state (or show, unless you count the display in the other tech) which other tech(s) may be required for a specific component, as it does for ships.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Which brings me back to my original question of whether or not the AI will actually use the hulls-more to the point, will it recognize that a hull with say speed 5 is superior to a hull with speed 1 after it has unlocked it? And it also re-raises my concern that this way of doing it will clutter up the hull selection screen, but I'm not sure there's a good way around that.
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maybe theres an easier way to do this. could you try just eliminating all engines and instead have every engine tech give a boost, or bigger bonus, to speed? im thinking that would leave it less complicated for the AI, less cluttered, and still give you the same results. also you could really detail it down to each race as how much a speed bonus they get. maybe a small reduction in the size of hulls to compensate for not having to use space on an engine.