Hi all,



I wanted to get some feedback for an outline for a MOD I want to create, and I think based on what is editable in the day one release most of it is so far possible (going to be a learning experience as I go). My basic idea is to add some flavor to the game with respect to story arcs and player interaction. I want players of the mod to have long campaigns and watch their races evolve and see their role in the galaxy change e.g. a beginning minor race moving into prominence, becoming a large empire, fighting a civil war, recovering, consolidating, fighting a foreign invader from the fringe of the galaxy, working to unite the galaxy or conquer it, or just trade with everyone. The idea being to always give the player a set of difficult goals to pursue beyond just conquest and colonization, to give the players race some history over hundreds of years solving problems and tackling different issues and so on.



Here's my basic outline of features:



1. The ability to select predefined roles for AI races, for example:



Established Races - Races that have a vibrant galactic civilization at game start, have some tech and military advantage, and are in contact with the other established races and have some political/economic interaction with them, either allied or at war and so on.



Minor Races - Races involved in the galactic community with the established races, but with less techs and only one system, basically allied with and in the sphere of another established race.



Upstart Races - Races on the map with no other contact, few techs, and only one system.



Fringe Races - With similar tech as the established and minor races but not involved in galactic affairs and that are isolated on the edge of the galaxy, for example races with secretive research, or some other nefarious activity. Some of them might even control piracy or function as pirate havens. I also plan to use the fringe races every now and then to become a large existential threat to the galaxy and invade.



2. Civilization Goals & Politics (not just the ones that win the game)



These are things that I would like to add as possible between the races the ability to do joint research with another race, peace keeping, exploration, conquer a neighbor, build a trading network, and develop planets. (Building on foreign planets for instance and getting that production added into your score). Also options for embassies, creating neutral systems, requests to attack/defend a system, treaties to restrict technology or to restrict ship types etc.



3. Map, enlarge the map to reflect a more realistic galaxy size and add extra room so long campaigns can play out.



4. Governments, options to select local government types by planet and for the entire empire, each with certain bonuses/negatives. (functionally probably will do this using the buildings options)



5. Wonders, complex research or building projects that can be shared by other races e.g. building a 'gate' network for fast transport, building surveillance and defense networks, projects to evolve your race or a minor race, building massive space stations and manufacturing facilities in space and so on.



Lastly, I want to add a lot of random events and random even chains. Some for pure flavor based on faction alignment, some to reflect domestic events e.g. if your government type is a democracy (or you have the democracy 'building') then you get subjected to election events that give civ-wide or planet-wide modifiers.



And Eventually (its gotta be possible somehow)



I want to add and expand upon unit types, I want to add race specific unit types and make it possible to learn unit types from other races and acquire them. I also want to add the option to contract another race to build units for your, buy their units, and control their fleets.

I love this idea ! I HAVE to play this mod, definitely.

I definitely welcome more detail in my generate game experience, it would definitely add to the game's replayability. Currently, and depending on my personal race involvement in a game, I have to wait mid-game to see how the enemy AI races turn out (militaristic, economic, turtle defensive, expansionist, etc.). If I could add to this level of amazement then that'd be pure awesome!

Uhm, not wanting to sound pessimistic... but it's quite many of those things rather hard (and some might even be coded inside, haven't really studied files of this game).



I recommend that out of those things you set up, you start with trying to change map size (it's really easy tbh just changing couple values inside of file... just don't make it too big or it slows down).



I'm quite sure that random events are also easy to make, it's just that if you want player to have options you again need to mess with files bit more.



About wonders, why not, but once again I recommend that you try to figure out (atleast at start) way to add GC2 tradegood buildings/projects to this game. Basically building which adds +x amount of set luxury resource to player who build it.... it should be easier than to make completly new building which adds empire wide bonus (again, I haven't dived to files yet, it can be possible that both are exactly as easy if there is xml scripting involved)



Governments are easy IF it's possible to generate empire wide bonuses via xml coding. Basically you make new building which gives empire wide bonuses/negative effects and denies other government buildings.





and now comes my questions:



How easy it is to add players ingame (aka in new game menu) ability to choose AI behaviour code (out game would probably be easy)?

And how easy it is to add new winning rules to game (again remember that player need to have ability to easily toggle those on/off)?





As I see it, all these becomes easier ones we can easily/happily modify assets files without having to worry about size of those files but before that it can be... interesting :P.





Anyway I wait eagerly to see how this works (just imagine how much it would open to rest of us, just by seeing your coding would let everyone easily add new races and so on (I mean if you can handle those 2 questions)).

Just by looking throught that file 1 thing to add to list:



Make only intelligent Heroes.



Heroes like:







1

0

Administrator;Commander

Labor=5;Wit=0;Melee=1;Offense=3;Defense=6





are rather questionable.... only problem is that this makes Horatio bit weaker (but hey, cloning still transfers experience)

To create wonder (correct if I'm wrong). You have to make:



















for each wonder AND then define that building in 2 different cases (first lets you build it and second tells game what graphic to use).



It should actually be quite easy althought requires lots of work if you plan to make several

Hupailija - Agreed, I think the AI part and getting the AI to roleplay is going to be the hardest and it will all take a lot of work. Some things like in-sphere planets I will implement at game start by adding modifiers to random planets to simulate unadvanced races etc. (giving a population bonus or minus happiness or what have you depending).



Adding AI behavior in-game I believe I can accomplish it by modding the starting difficulty definitions and write the options over the default in-game difficulties so the player can select via that menu, I may also want to make it a separate list and just add it in to the gui. I might need to make the compromise of having the game stuck to one AI difficulty as far as fleet/building strategy goes though. From a cursory glance at the files I think its possible (definitely gonna be some trial and error), same goes for the winning behaviors but its going to take a lot of testing. I will keep the forum posted as I figure things out.



Also I agree with the idea for heroes, but it will also be a question of balance. I really want to give the player a feeling that their race is very unique and I want the heroes they have access to also reflect this since their races' civilization should have thousands of years of culture before even getting into space, they should be at least a little predisposed to one way of doing things. I've started modding the map and making minor changes in into my game and am kinda play-testing as I go along, also experimenting with how many race the engine can handle. . . seems like going way beyond 8 is gonna make things a little fudgey, so some of my ideas I might have to get a little creative with and simulate them from a more macro level via events and modifiers. I also want to write a lot of events and prompts on different accomplishments to kinda give each game a narrative, its going to take forever though. (also what's with the stock Horatio storyline, sounds kinda wacky to me)



***Plan to post on adding factions soon***

I wish that we would have way to more easily share mods (or actually part of gameasset files).



Anyway I suggest that you start with something simple.



I would probably create this masterpiece following way (yet I am not you and this is your project, I am happy to help if you want though ):

1) Map and guide others to easily change it. Try to figure out maximum values. Quite many has asked this and amount of work needed to do is nearly nonexistant (everything is already in forums, just in bit split apart)

2) Add building/buildings, this is also something what probably many wants (hey, if you figure out how to add new buildings instead of changing olds I would be really happy). This basically would increase amount of new mods by tens.

3) Government/Wonders, again this is something what atleast I would want (though I probably just figured out how to make happiness building produce luxury items ^^)

4) Rest, highly wanted stuff too but I wouldn't prioritize it as high.





Basically I would release this mod in a parts and tell how to change those, just because all of those small parts are so wanted. (and hey, we really don't have that many mods in here yet.. maybe it would woken up somebody to give us space for mods )

Hupailija wrote:
I wish that we would have way to more easily share mods (or actually part of gameasset files).



Anyway I suggest that you start with something simple.



I would probably create this masterpiece following way (yet I am not you and this is your project, I am happy to help if you want though ):

1) Map and guide others to easily change it. Try to figure out maximum values. Quite many has asked this and amount of work needed to do is nearly nonexistant (everything is already in forums, just in bit split apart)

2) Add building/buildings, this is also something what probably many wants (hey, if you figure out how to add new buildings instead of changing olds I would be really happy). This basically would increase amount of new mods by tens.

3) Government/Wonders, again this is something what atleast I would want (though I probably just figured out how to make happiness building produce luxury items ^^)

4) Rest, highly wanted stuff too but I wouldn't prioritize it as high.





Basically I would release this mod in a parts and tell how to change those, just because all of those small parts are so wanted. (and hey, we really don't have that many mods in here yet.. maybe it would woken up somebody to give us space for mods )

Agreed, as it stands right now I'm not sure if adding factions is possible (looks like it isn't) which is a bummer, but it does seem possible to use the pirates faction to do some interesting things.



Right now I'm going through map testing to see what scale is realistic for systems to run, the problem is I have a fairly beefy pc and what might run well for me probably isn't going to run well on most machines at all haha. (Currently I'm trying to set up a low settings/medium settings/high settings series of definitions for the map xml.



Then off to adding buildings and the like, pretty much agree with your gameplan here. If only pesky work wasn't getting in the way of my free time...

Agreed, as it stands right now I'm not sure if adding factions is possible (looks like it isn't) which is a bummer, but it does seem possible to use the pirates faction to do some interesting things.

Do not add, change



No but right now we are quite restricted with adding stuff (sadly) and to make any bigger chances we can choose easy way and alter previous values or hard way (which is surprisingly hard) and remove lines to add new lines.



What I am right now cursing is that I haven't found way to add new levels for heroes (seriously, it can't be that hard... I remove hero nro 61 and get multiple new lines make correct amount of letters to expansion... and see game crashing)





(bit personaly whining after this, feel free to ignore rest )



Bigger problem is that there is too little players (and people interested about modding) in this game :/ .



Basically modders need persons who watches what they do and complain, people who suggests stuff and people who tells them what they do wrong (last would be soo precious for me). (oh and easy and reliable way to share code)

Right now it kinda feels that we lack everything

Hupailija wrote:
Do not add, change



No but right now we are quite restricted with adding stuff (sadly) and to make any bigger chances we can choose easy way and alter previous values or hard way (which is surprisingly hard) and remove lines to add new lines.



What I am right now cursing is that I haven't found way to add new levels for heroes (seriously, it can't be that hard... I remove hero nro 61 and get multiple new lines make correct amount of letters to expansion... and see game crashing)





(bit personaly whining after this, feel free to ignore rest )



Bigger problem is that there is too little players (and people interested about modding) in this game :/ .



Basically modders need persons who watches what they do and complain, people who suggests stuff and people who tells them what they do wrong (last would be soo precious for me). (oh and easy and reliable way to share code)

Right now it kinda feels that we lack everything

Hopefully if we can at least partially get the mod ball rolling the developers will notice and hopefully the community for this game will expand as the game expands, it does have a ton of potential once it gets polished.