BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

[Mod] Enhanced Terraforming v1.6 (game version agnostic) (append mod)

Enables repeated use of terraforming improvements, using strategic resources TEMPORAILY as a way to slow growth down

External Link

(tl;dr: Link to the mod is near the bottom of the post )

One of the more persistent gripes regarding GC III from some players seems to be the terraforming system. Currently, there is an incentive to hold off upgrading tiles until the very last terraforming technology is unlocked so one will not accidentally improve a tile that could be used by the Ultra-Terraformer later on. Also, the Altarians do not ever get access to the Ultra-Terraformer and some players consider them to be at a disadvantage to the other factions late-mid game due to this.

Beyond that, some people just want to be able to create Super Planets with dozens of tiles on them.

Well if any of the above has been a concern for you, then this might just be the mod for you.

What this mod does is, eventually, allow for the upgrading of any and all tiles that the Resequencing Station (the best terraforming tile improvement in the base game) can improve. This means that it truly does not matter what order tiles are upgraded in since, eventually, any and all of the ones available to the Resequencing Station can theoretically be upgraded. This removes the guessing game/adjacency angst that accompanies the current improvement system. See a tile you'd like to improve and have the ability to improve it? Fire away, without any concern about "wastage".

There are a couple of catches, naturally.

Before I go into that, a caveat. THIS MOD IS NOT INTENDED TO BE GAME BALANCED. You WILL be able to create absurd planets with this mod that can crank out just about anything you can think of.

However, there are a couple of mitigating factors. First, the AI is more than willing to create "super planets" itself. This means that it will be able to get many Class 30+ planets to crank out death fleets against you, as well as researching techs as fast as it can.

Secondly, by having so many tiles on planets, it might actually be useful to make "mixed" planets, such as a production/research world or a research/wealth world. The costs of buildings means that, after a certain point, it really doesn't matter if one is cranking out 500mps a turn or "only" 300mps. Since more than a few factions are designed to have mixed worlds (say any faction whose improvements boost two different things equally), having more tiles to play with might them more viable. But this is just a guess, and one I haven't checked out.

To help slow down planet tile growth during the early game, a couple of brakes have been introduced.

The biggest, by far, is the fact that it takes the temporary use of strategic resources to upgrade tiles. The neat trick here is, a strategic resource can be used for an improvement, but once the improvement "goes away", the resource is put back into the pool of available resources. Well, an improvement that upgrades a tile is just that. The upshot of this is, a strategic resource is "tied up" in the upgrading of a tile, but released back to the player once it is done.

A nice side benefit, at least as far as I am concerned, is that this gives something else for the player to use strategic resources for in the early game. Perhaps it's just my playstyle, I often find my self with more strategic resources than I know what to do with. Well, I found that I had plenty use for them while testing this mod out.

Inspired by what Sorentoft did for his mod Terraform More, the other two brakes are cost and the amount of land it takes to upgrade a tile. The use of strategic resources is aready a pretty big break, however. As is the increased cost (well, except for the last repeatable terraforming improvement - that one costs slightly less). Because of this, the amount of land needed to upgrade a tile is not as restrictive as it is in his mod; opening up more tiles, sooner, than in the mod Terraform More.

Finally, and the main reason I made this mod, this mod is/should be version agnostic. Simply plop the folder generated by the zip file in the link below into your GC III mod folder, and everything should be fine. It should work with any and all other mods out there. Though I wouldn't suggest using it with other mods that modify the terraforming system, as the improvements available in the game might be somewhat redundant.

----

The six new improvements added by this mod all become available when the base terraforming improvment is unlocked by a faction. The six new improvements also use the exact same icon as the base improvement. Mostly because I did not feel like searching for compatible art or trying to figure out what to use in their place.

Pictures of the descriptions of the six new improvements:

Also, as said at the top of this post, I have added a technology to the Altarian Tech tree that allows them to get the final level of terraforming technologies.

----

Finally, the link to get the mod:

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0By8Y969dyvLHNDctWGdVX0g2Skk (v1.0)

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0By8Y969dyvLHdDJ4RG93MHA0U1E (v1.1)

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0By8Y969dyvLHVVRVSGNqTlhZZzg (v1.6)

To install, click on the link above, unzip the file downloaded, and then put the unzipped folder into your GC III mod directory, along side whatever other mods one might have.

There is a README attached that goes over most of what is included above, as well as a few other comments and observations.

Also, as noted in the README, credit is given to both Deathwynd for inspiring me to make a mod that uses planetary improvements that are both game version and mod agnostic as well as Sorentoft for his idea of upping the LandPercentageMin as a way of slowing the growth of the class of planets.

UPDATE (9/15/15): Updated to allow factions based on the Yor Tech Tree to have access to Enhanced Soil Upgrader.

UPDATE (9/16/15): Corrected Link.

UPDATE (2/18/16): Updated to allow factions based on the Torian Tech Tree to have access to Enhanced Soil Upgrader.

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

NOTES/OBSERVATIONS:

I have done some small amount of testing of this mod. The AI will build them, though I don't know if they are building them too fast or too slow. For my own faction testing, the "pace" seems to be pretty reasonable, as I didn't have planets grow super quickly. On the other hand, the fact that two first repeatable terraforming improvements respectively took a single unit of the two most common resources made it so I was rarely in a position where I couldn't upgrade a tile somewhere.

I couldn't spam them out, no. It was more of a steady stream, which is what I was aiming for.

If one clicks on multiple improvable tiles on a single planet, yes, multiple resources will be "tied up". Nothing to do about that, I'm afraid, as the game doesn't know that the resources will become available once the improvement is built. But if one has lots of resources laying around, perhaps it's not that big of a deal. And if it is a big deal, just improve tiles on a planet one at a time.

Yes, as noted in the README, this does largely render the Ultra-Terraformer useless. Nothing to be done about that, I'm afraid. Though maybe some edge case exists where it is still useful.

However, and my limited testing seems to back this up, the other terraforming improvements still have their uses. First and foremost, they are cheaper and don't take up a resource to build. If one is in a resource crunch for whatever reason, getting a "freebie" can be very valuable. Secondly, they affect more land than the repeatable ones. So while the repeatable ones are affecting X tiles on the planet, a more difficult one can be upgraded "early".

Finally, and this is something of a long term project that might not ever see the light of day, I want to try to recreate the "Orbital Terraformer" Galactic Achievement from GC II. That Galactic Achievement made it so ALL upgradable tiles one had on all current and future planets were instantly upgraded when colonized/conquered/acquired a planet.

It'd be a VERY expensive GA, mind; both in cost and strategic resource requirements. Like really, REALLY expensive. But it'd probably be worth it.

I am fairly certain I know how to do this for any and all potentially upgradeable tiles that a faction currently has. The trick is having the game check after the GA is built for any new planets that faction might get. I have some ideas how this might be done, but they're tentative right now I and I might not get to trying it out for weeks or months. Or indeed, ever.

Still, if I can ever figure this out, this mod will be updated with that Galactic Achievement as a capstone.

I'm thinking of having it cost something like 5000 mps and tie up 5 (or more) of ALL of the strategic resources, permanently. You want all upgradeable tiles for "free" for now on? Better be prepared to pay a hefty up-front cost.

That's for the future, however. For now, I want to see how this does in the wild.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Ok I can't be absolutely sure if this would work in an improvement but this is how I do it in a custom faction trait.

<Triggers>
<OnEvent>OnConquerPlanetFirstTime</OnEvent>
<Target>
<TargetType>Planet</TargetType>
</Target>
<Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime>
<PerformAction>
<Action>TerraformTilesOnPlanet</Action>
<ValueParam>25</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>30</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>0</ValueParam>
</PerformAction>
</Triggers>

<Triggers>
<OnEvent>OnColonizePlanet</OnEvent>
<Target>
<TargetType>Planet</TargetType>
</Target>
<Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime>
<PerformAction>
<Action>TerraformTilesOnPlanet</Action>
<ValueParam>25</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>30</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>0</ValueParam>
</PerformAction>
</Triggers>

I tried using an improvement with an OnConstructImprovemnt trigger to tereraform tiles on a planet with the intent that it terraform one tile every time an improvement was built. Unfortunately it only worked once when that improvement was built. So I suspect that improvements won't trigger repeatedly but give it a try and see how it works out.

Anyway nice mod and well thought out gonna give this a spin.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Quoting Deathwynd,

reply 2

Ok I can't be absolutely sure if this would work in an improvement but this is how I do it in a custom faction trait.

<Triggers>
<OnEvent>OnConquerPlanetFirstTime</OnEvent>
<Target>
<TargetType>Planet</TargetType>
</Target>
<Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime>
<PerformAction>
<Action>TerraformTilesOnPlanet</Action>
<ValueParam>25</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>30</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>0</ValueParam>
</PerformAction>
</Triggers>

<Triggers>
<OnEvent>OnColonizePlanet</OnEvent>
<Target>
<TargetType>Planet</TargetType>
</Target>
<Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime>
<PerformAction>
<Action>TerraformTilesOnPlanet</Action>
<ValueParam>25</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>30</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>0</ValueParam>
</PerformAction>
</Triggers>

I tried using an improvement with an OnConstructImprovemnt trigger to tereraform tiles on a planet with the intent that it terraform one tile every time an improvement was built. Unfortunately it only worked once when that improvement was built. So I suspect that improvements won't trigger repeatedly but give it a try and see how it works out.

Anyway nice mod and well thought out gonna give this a spin.

Checking my preliminary notes, that's what I was already looking into, though I hadn't gotten as far as you did there. I was also thinking of using OnStartOfTurn, or whatever it is called, somehow, but I don't know how exactlly. The biggest hole I have in my plans is Culture Flipped planets, and planets recieved by trade. Not sure if the two examples you gave is enough to cover them. That's why I want to look at start of turn triggers. Worst comes to worst, maybe it can keep running the trigger at the start of each turn on all planets, even if they've already been checked.

Thank you very much for the XML blocks, I'll look into them when I can. Also thanks for the kind thoughts about the mod. Very much looking forward to what you think of it.

==============

As a side note, if I can figure out how to get OnStartOfTurn to consistently work on all turns once a trigger has been made, I plan on look at a couple of the Ideological traits. It.... annoys me that the "free tile" ones only affects the planets one currently has, and not on all future planets. If I can get the mooted Orbital Terraformer to work via OnStartOfTurn, I might just turn my attention to that next.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Doesn't the strategic resource cost just make this rather micromanage-y? I mean, I'm still going to produce the tiles - I just now need to revisit the build queue 3-4 times rather than loading up the queue in one turn and leaving it to bake. I'm not even sure that it will prevent the AI from mass-terraforming and crippling itself, since the AI only queues 2-3 things at a time anyway.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Yeah I'm not so keen on the strategic cost, as I play with rare resources, mostly tho combat the constructor spam. But I suppose that is my problem!

Successfully updated karma reason!

You could look at the OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToSelf trigger event, that might cover all non colonization methods of obtaining a colony.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Quoting naselus,

reply 4

A fair concern. I reckon there are four ways to slow down growth. Make it so tile improvers become available later via later techs, make it so they take more land to upgrade, make it so it costs more to upgrade, and make it use a game mechanic. All have upsides and downsides.

I can't increase costs TOO much because then it becomes annoying to upgrade tiles on planets with little to no production. Especially those Class 5 or Class 6 planets that can do with a lot of lovin'. But even with a factory or two, it'd be annoying to sit back and wait for them to slowly upgrade.

The land percentage route is the way Sorentoft went, but there are complaints about the growth being too slow as the tiles simply aren't around to upgrade in the early game.

I suppose I could have monkeyed about with the tech tree, but, as I said, I wanted to make this as agnostic as possible.

Still, your concern is a valid one. OTOH, when I was testing this, I didn't find the micromanagement to be much of a problem for me at all. Sure, my threshold for that is pretty damn high; at least compared to some. Still, I often decided to say "screw it" and queue up two or three improvements on a planet and just eat the resources. I usually had more than enough resources to go around, as I was still building other things besides tile management.

Also, I'm not sure it is the best use of production to queue up ten or so tiles and letting them bake anyway. I mean, it's what I tend to do when I get the U-T in the base game. But I've always had a feeling that I shouldn't be doing that. It might be better, strictly from a maximization of production point of view, to upgrade a couple of tiles, build on them, upgrade a couple of tiles, build on them, and rinse and repeat. After all, a planet that is simply sitting around and upgrading is a wasted planet in some ways.

As for the AI, it's hard for me to say if it was crippled or not. I did check on their builds via the console a few times and saw that they were building other things besides the tile improvements, so that's something. But I didn't do any sort of rigorous testing to see if the AI was crippling itself with all of the tiles being available. I suppose if the AI is being harmed by this, I suppose I can play with the AI weights in a new xml. But I'm hesitant to do that for version compatibility concerns.

Then again, due to my playstyle, I'm not sure I'm really the best person to judge AI performance. One of the reasons I'm releasing this to the wild now, actually. So I can get some feedback on the mod as a whole.

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 5

Yeah I'm not so keen on the strategic cost, as I play with rare resources, mostly tho combat the constructor spam. But I suppose that is my problem!

Well, admittedly, one of the reasons why I used strategic resources, besides the natural break factor, was to find a use for them.

Give the players more options seems to be a theme of GC III, so why not run with it? Want to upgrade planets now? Well, it'll cost you in resources and (perhaps) time-managment. Want to wait until you can go *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* on a planet and upgrade many tiles and let it "bake" for a while? You have that option as well, as long as you wait for enough resources to be pooled in reserve.

Playing on rare, I could see being a problem. But going up one level of resources to Uncommon shouldn't make the constructor spam too problematic, I would think. And even playing on rare, that simply means that everyone (including the AI) grows at a slow rate, but still grows.

Also, I decided from a Lore point of view that the use of strategic resources makes sense. In-universe they are being used to make super*/enhanced versions of other buildings and ships. So why not extend this to tile improvers? Seemed like a logical progression of a preexisting mechanic. That it happened to slow down growth was a very nice piece of convergence.

* How "super" they are is a matter of (much) debate.

=====

Now all of the above being said, I KNEW that the use of strategic resources could be a bit... controversial. Hell, when I first heard this idea mooted in a devstream a long time ago, I had a visceral reaction against it. But when I found that strategic resources come back to the player after use, I became intrigued. Perhaps it's the zeal of a convert, but I honestly really do like this solution here.

Still, if people don't like the idea of using strategic resources, but still want an "append mod"/version agnostic mod, it's easy enough to strip out the resource requirement by going to the file EnhancedTerraformingImprovementDefs.xml and taking out all of the things that say:

<Stats>
<EffectType>ThuliumCost</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Improvement</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
<Value>1</Value>
</Stats>

And the like (for all of the strategic resource types, naturally). It'll almost certainly throw what little balance there here is in this mod out of whack. But if one doesn't like the use of resources, there's the solution.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Quoting Deathwynd,

reply 6

I've tested using an OnStartTurn trigger with a trait that would go off periodically. The problem I ran into is it requires a parameter for which turn to activate. This means it requires an individual trigger entry for each turn, which is reasonable when its just a few.

You could look at the OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToSelf trigger event, that might cover all non colonization methods of obtaining a colony.

I'll check this out when I get the chance. Probably won't be for a while though. Thanks again!

As for OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToSelf, it might not cover the cases where someone buys a planet deep in another factions territory. But now we're getting to extreme edge cases, where it becomes perhaps impossible to cover all situations.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

A bit of an update on the attempt to recreate GC II's Orbitial Terraformer. Did some playing around with a "proof of concept" improvement to see if I could even do what I wanted before I touched the tech and resource requirements.

Good News:

I was able to make an improvement that terraformed all of the tiles that the Resequencing Station can upgrade, faction wide.

I was also able to make it so that improvement then upgraded all new colonies that were created via colony ships.

And it was also able to upgrade all tiles on all newly conqured planets after the improvement was built.

Bad News:

The trigger that I hoped would cover culture flipping (OnPlanetRebellionComplete) didn't work.

Neither OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToSelf nor OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToForeign worked. I included OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToForeign in the hopes that the game would think that a planet given to me via trade or culture flip would then look at the tile and see a change if it was still deep in their territory.

----

As I look now, I only see OPTOCTS and OPTOCTF (and, for that matter, OPRC) in the Global Def files and that's given me an idea or three to work with (including looking into <GlobalTriggers>). I also have a crazy idea of possibly making this a Racial Trait, but seeing if I can add a prereq of some sort to it so people can't choose it at startup (the prereq probably being the tech that unlocks the improvement getting built). Or, as a horrible kludge, make it cost 5000 points or something like that, making it unavailable at startup (if there was a way to "hide" racial traits or abilities from the faction creation screen, that'd be even better).

What I wouid really like though is the ability to check for something each and every turn, as that way I wouldn't have to jimmy-jack around with a bunch of different triggers or create something horribly kludgy.

Anyone know if Derek Paxton is taking questions directly about the modding capabilites of GC III? I know about the "General Modding Questions" thread, but I'd kinda like to ask the source if at all possible.

Still, I'm not admitting defeat here. I have more than a few avenues I'd like to explore. Including seeing if I can do something with TerraformTilesOnPlanet on a planet by planet basis if I have to.

Successfully updated karma reason!

You can make an item, ship component, improvement etc dependent on a race trait but I have had no luck making it dependent on both a trait and a tech. While you can set a state flag such as patriotic with an improvement I don't know of a way offhand to add a trait to a faction from an improvement or a tech though both can do pretty much everything a trait can.

A kludge for the orbital terraformer might be a free or cheap improvement, call it something like orbital beacon, with a prereq of the orbital terraformer, that can be built on flipped planets etc. You can use <Improvement>Improvementname</Improvement> inside the Prerequ tags to make one improvement require that another exist before it can built, though not sure if it is willing to check for a faction wonder.

Anyway sounds like you are making good progress, keep it up!

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Quoting Deathwynd,

reply 10

Well you can hide traits from the creation screen, but not abilities. Traits are defined in RaceTraitDefs.xml but if they don't have an entry in RaceTraitSliderDefs.xml then they exist but aren't accessible from the custom race screen.

You can make an item, ship component, improvement etc dependent on a race trait but I have had no luck making it dependent on both a trait and a tech. While you can set a state flag such as patriotic with an improvement I don't know of a way offhand to add a trait to a faction from an improvement or a tech though both can do pretty much everything a trait can.

A kludge for the orbital terraformer might be a free or cheap improvement, call it something like orbital beacon, with a prereq of the orbital terraformer, that can be built on flipped planets etc. You can use <Improvement>Improvementname</Improvement> inside the Prerequ tags to make one improvement require that another exist before it can built, though not sure if it is willing to check for a faction wonder.

Anyway sounds like you are making good progress, keep it up!

Thanks for the tips! The thing about being able to hide racial traits could potentially be very very good, as I think that might be a way to do a "check every turn to see if X happens". Something worth looking into at least.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

While I'm banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the last pieces of the Orbital Terraformer (SPOILER ALERT: It ain't looking good if I want to keep this as an append mod), I thought I would ask if any one has given this mod a try and what they thought of it.

Comments about the pace of growth of planets are especially welcome.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I have tested it out, and IMO the pacing seems good, not too fast, the only issue I would mention is the resource bottleneck, if you simply get terribly unlucky, especially if you play uncommon or rare resources it can be troublesome to make good use of the enhanced terraformers. That being said the base terraformers always end up filling the gap regardless so I don't see it as an insurmountable issue.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Play with it and seems to work fine in the game so far ... the items show up in the queue to be used and do not seem to cause any crashes ...

Successfully updated karma reason!

Great Mod!

The problem with resources is that their ratios to one another are way different.

Swimming in durantium but just a couple promethium nodes...

Perhaps you should take that into account as well.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well hopefully that gets adjusted soon, also there it's a mod that largely foxes this too.

Good point regardless though.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

How does the distribution work. How many tiles can you terraform with just durantium, etc, etc.

I have been using a mod that adds an improvement to an advanced terraforming tech. I forget the name of the mod/improvement, The Prometheus Project or some-such. The improvement lets you terraform any tile on the planet. I have found that it is costly and tedious to terraform a lot of tiles on a lot of planets. In my case a lot is no more than 20. I can't imagine how tedious it would be for 75-100 planets on abundant map. It was taking me 6-7 turns per tile on planets with over 100 production.

I am looking forward to your Orbital Terraformer. That was a cool feature in GCII.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Thanks for the feedback everyone, much appreciated!

I'll address the points brought up in reverse order (more or less).

I'm running into a pretty big roadblock on the Orbital Terraformer. Try as I might, I can't get OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToSelf, OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToForeign, or OnPlanetRebellionComplete to do anything on an trigger set to an improvement. I suspect, but only suspect, that it is because the OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToSelf, OnPlanetTileOwnerChangeToForeign, and OnPlanetRebellionComplete triggers only have meaning if set in GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml. At least, that's the only place I can find them showing up in the base trees. If so, I have a problem because that xml is NOT appendable. Not that I can see at least.

The game might execute those three triggers from a racial/ability/cultural feature. But like Deathwynd, I can't figure out a way to do it via an improvement. I don't think it is possible for an improvement to grant a tech, so that's problematic as well.

Ultimately, all I really need is for the game to react in way X once thing Y has happened, and to check for it each turn afterwards OR for it to apply in situations A, B, C, and D. And it is... frustrating that I can't get that last bit to work.

Trying to kludge it on a planet-by-planet basis didn't work either. Haven't given up yet, but I'm stepping away from it for a few days as I want to think things for a bit and let it percolate in the back of my head.

===

As for ratios of resources, I'll think about it. I'm fairly sure that I'd have to play with the values found in MapSetupDefs.xml, and I'm leery to do that as I want to keep this version/mod agnostic. But I COULD release this in two different forms, one as an agnostic mod and one with modified values. Might depend on if there is enough call for it.

Part of my problem is, I play on Abundant resources, so that could be affecting my judgement on if there are enough resources in play.

I did see this coming a bit though which is why I tied the first three levels of enhanced terraformers to Durantium and Thulium, which are, by far, the most prevalent resources. My thought process was, even if Antimatter, Promethion and Elerium were rare, there would still be plenty of tiles from the first three sets of improvements. Then, once more and more traits and techs are unlocked, the scarcer resources would become more plentiful. Either that, or people could go out and club other people over the head for others.

But this does seem to be a bit of a recurring concern. If I don't want to play with the ratios of the resources, I might play with the LandPercentageMin of each improvement instead. Make it so more land is unlocked by Durantium, Thulium, and Elerium and less is unlocked by Promethion and Antimatter. I will say it is not a coincidence at all that Antimatter is required only for the lowest level of LandPercentageMin.

So thanks for the feedback, it's given me things to think about. I'm leaning toward adjusting LandPercentageMin, if only because making it so there are more resources in play is a pandora's box that I don't particularly want to get near.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Quoting Franco fx,

reply 17

How does the distribution work. How many tiles can you terraform with just durantium, etc, etc.

Planetary Soil Imp: .35 Land, 30mp
Enhanced version: .45 Land, 40 mp, 1 Durantium

Soil Engineering: .30 Land, 30mp
Enhanced version: .40 Land, 50mp, 1 Thulium

Terraforming Plant: .25 Land, 45mp
Enhanced version: .35 Land, 60mp, 1 Durantium + 1 Thulium

Habitat Improvement: .20 Land, 67mp
Enhanced version: .30 Land, 90mp, 1 Durantium + 1 Thulium + 1 Elerium

Resequencting Station: .15 Land, 101mp
Enhanced version: .25 Land, 125mp, 1 Durantium + 1 Thulium + 1 Elerium + 1 Promethion

Ultra Terraformer: .45 Land, 225mp (repeatable)
Enhanced version: .15 Land, 200mp, 1 Durantium + 1 Thulium + 1 Elerium + 1 Promethion + 1 Antimatter

So the Enhanced Terraforming Plant can handle everything the 1st level Planetary Soil Improvement can take. The enhanced version of the Habitat Improvement can handle everything that the regular Soil Enginerring can handle.

This should be around 50 to 60 percent of the upgradable tiles on a planet. Maybe more, maybe less, depending on the planet. This was a desgin decsion as I wanted it so that even maps that were rare(ish) on resource generation still were able to upgrade a large amount of tiles.

Willing to play with the percentages a bit though, and/or resource generation if people think it is worthwhile.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Getting back to the Orbitial Terraformer, a pair of questions for modders more learned than I.

Is it possible to 1) create custom resources and 2) have improvements be dependent on the existence of custom resources and (most importantly) 3) give the player resources WITHOUT them being mined? As a kludge, I was thinking of tying a secondary planetary improvement (say a near freebie that "links up" with the main Orbital Terraformer) to a resource that is granted by the improvement.

Looking at StrategicResourceDefs.xml, I see no particular reason why that can't be customizable. And if I don't do anything to MapSetupDefs, it shouldn't appear on the map. Getting this hypothetical resource into the player's hands and tying an improvement to it might be more problematic, given how finicky the calls are for improvements.

My main alternative to the above kludge is figuring out how to "turn on" a racial/cultural trait mid game for a faction. If I could do that, then I might have another few avenues to explore.

So if anyone has any suggestions for that, I'd be most grateful.

Successfully updated karma reason!

1. Nope, this is determined in the XSD's and any change to the xsd's breaks saves not to mention being a total horseshit PITA.

2. See 1

3. its possible by giving an improvement a negative resource cost to grant resources to the player but again not a custom resource.

The adding a trait to a race mid game isn't really doable as far as I can tell.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Quoting Deathwynd,

reply 21

1. Nope, this is determined in the XSD's and any change to the xsd's breaks saves not to mention being a total horseshit PITA.

2. See 1

3. its possible by giving an improvement a negative resource cost to grant resources to the player but again not a custom resource.

The adding a trait to a race mid game isn't really doable as far as I can tell.

Balls.

Thanks for the answers here and in the other thread. I think I am going to have to bite the bullet and send a ticket to support to ask why these triggers aren't triggering from an improvement. Might be a bug for all I know. At the very least, maybe I can get it cc'ed to Derek so he can look into these triggers and see what is a goin' on.

Thanks again for the help.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Just found out something interesting. The Yor don't get the first level terraforming improvement, Planetary Soil Upgrade. Silly devs. This is gonna screw them very slightly in the base game, since that means they will get one fewer tile per planet than most other races. Oh well, that's for another thread.

The main concern for THIS mod is that I use the techs that unlock the "Enhanced" versions of the terraforming improvements with the base ones. This meant that the Yor (and all custom/minor factions based on the Yor tech tree) were not getting access to the Enhanced Soil Upgrader (the "Enhanced" version of the Planetary Soil Upgrade).

In a way this isn't a big deal, since the Enhanced Refinery takes care of all of those tiles as well. But the whole point of the first level of Enhanced terraforming improvements was to use all that Durantium that can be found in the early game.

So I am going to update this mod and give the Yor access to the ESU via one of the techs they already get. I could "double dip" it via Planet Utilization, easily enough. But I don't like the idea of giving two repeatable upgrading tile techs at once. Looking over the Yor tech tree, I think I will put it in the Power Matrix tech. It's at the same level as the Planet Utilization one, so it'll be cheap. And it sorta kinda fits with the lore.

I'm going to wait until 1.3 drops fully before releasing the update, as I want to see if the Snathi Revenge tech tree is going to factor in to this. Might as well take a look at the Peacekeepers/Drengin/Pirate tech trees as well, even though it only matters for the AI in those cases (and if one has the appropriate DLC). Still, dot the t's and cross the i's and all that.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Just to make it sure: so all of the the terraforming tools are usable on all of the potentially terraformable tiles? That is, even the lowest tier terraformer can be used to improve the same tile as the most advanced terraformer? Because if yes, then this is exactly the mod I'm looking for. The terraforming mechanics in GalCiv 3 always annoyed me due to the constant fear of wasting terraformers.

Also, I think that now I will finally have a use to all of those strategic resources I have, as well as a reason for me to buy the ones I don't have from my neighbours.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BuckGodot

Join Date 11/2009

+73

Quoting Starus,

reply 24

"Lowest" and "highest" are problematic terms thanks to the way SD has set things up, unfortunately.

To break it down,

The first tier of terraformers can be used over and over again on X number of tiles

The second tier of terraformers can be used over and over again on X AND Y number of tiles.

The third tier of terraformers can be used over and over again on X AND Y AND Z number of tiles.

And so on and so on. Also, the use of resources is temporary. You get them back into your pool once the tile is terraformed.

Does that answer your question?

Successfully updated karma reason!