Hello,



This is purely a cosmetic mod, it hides any star system improvement which the current system isn't going to benefit from.

It is very conservative in this regard, so if a planet you haven't colonized yet, can benefit from an improvement, it will still appear (so you can build it before colonizing the system).



It also removes any and all trade mods from the tech tree for factions which have the endless war trait and haven't picked blockade breakers. This means you can play Cravers without having to shuffle through all the trade-upgrades that will never ever happen.



Grubsnik.zip



In order to "install it" unzip the folder to "My documents\Endless Space\Modding\" and select the mod from the mods screen when you start the game.



If you encounter any bugs while using the mod, please let me know so I can fix them.

Hooray, a very nice idea. Perhaps to compensate for the removal of trade upgrades, you could replace them with base FIDS increases?

I like the changes to StarSystemImprovements.xml, if it is OK with you I will add them into the next revision of the community bug fix mod and give you credit. (I have also changed the file so it will be a merge.)



I am not certain about your changes to TechnologiesDiplomacy.xml. There is one behavior of tech trading which was not clear to me, and I don't really agree with, but "that's the way it is". Any tech which is race-specific is not tradeable, even if it "should be". For example, sowers can neither give, nor receive any of the colonization techs, because all of them are race-specific. It clearly doesn't provide any benefit to another player to get the sower version of a colonization tech, or vice-versa. But they are different techs in the xml, so they are not tradeable. Similarly for the techs which grant a ship hull, because they unlock different things. So efficient shielding, for example, is never tradeable.



I do not quite follow your changes in this file, but you have added a new race-specific technology for the non-craver races. This makes the tech no longer tradeable, which appears to be a gameplay change. Can you explain a little more about the motivation for this change?

Mostly it was adding eternal war versions of the techs, so you wouldn't be getting a tech with an unlock you would never ever use. This seemed more elegant than getting techs with upgrades which you will never see.



I failed to consider tech-trading for that. Since if you we're at eternal war, techtrading isn't really your style. Of course you can still tech-trade while at eternal war, when you are negotiating for a cease fire. In that case, I've introduced some unintended changes to gameplay.



Davea, you are most welcome to roll the changes into your community bug fix mod, even if you only grab the chances from StarsystemImprovements.xml

Harel55 wrote:
Hooray, a very nice idea. Perhaps to compensate for the removal of trade upgrades, you could replace them with base FIDS increases?

Well, you took the eternal war trait, knowing you we're giving up trade as a consequence.

Removing that consequence would be a game change, so I'd rather not. You are more than welcome to do it yourself, based on my code, but I prefer the original game balance for now.

davea wrote:
There is one behavior of tech trading which was not clear to me, and I don't really agree with, but "that's the way it is". Any tech which is race-specific is not tradeable, even if it "should be". For example, sowers can neither give, nor receive any of the colonization techs, because all of them are race-specific.



Similarly for the techs which grant a ship hull, because they unlock different things. So efficient shielding, for example, is never tradeable.

Trading colonizations techs there are ways to solve.

I've just added the "tolerant" unlock as a hidden unlock to the regular versions and removed the special versions.

FactionTrait.xml is just included in a clean version with no references to the techs I've removed.

TechTrade.zip

Grubsnik wrote:
Trading colonizations techs there are ways to solve.

Interesting, I'll have to check it out. Can the hull techs be treated the same way? How about techs which are just "moved" for a race?

The hull techs are a tad trickier, you can, but the tooltip and title of the improvement will no longer be race-specific.

Grubsnik wrote:
The hull techs are a tad trickier, you can, but the tooltip and title of the improvement will no longer be race-specific.

Good point, the race-specific name of the hull is in the tooltip. Oh well.

Thanks....really useful mod....

iam going to tryit.

I have merged this into the community balance / bugfix mod:



/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/15801-released-community-bug-fix-balance-mod

Excellent mod idea. (I suggested the same thing in suggestions and was referred here). I'll give it a try and let you know if there's something odd.



Okay, I had some trouble getting it to load properly (the game doesn't restart when you click load, it only ends.).



Quick thought: Does the mod do anything about technology that stops being useful in a system? If not, should it? This is in relation to terraforming a planet so that a technology is no longer useful.