New to Distant World, Modding Questions

Distant Worlds is a vast, pausable real-time, 4X space strategy game which models a "living galaxy" with incredible options for replayability and customizability. Experience the full depth and detail of large turn-based strategy games, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game. Now greatly enhanced with the new Universe release, which includes all four previous releases as well as the new Universe expansion!

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Marble7
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Feb 27, 2015 2:38 am

New to Distant World, Modding Questions

Post by Marble7 »

Hey everyone. I've been playing Civ 4 for years and one of the things I loved the most about it is the huge amount of user modification that is enabled through simple text editing.

Just bought Distant Worlds a few days ago and already have a ton of mod ideas in my head that I want to try out [:)]. Of course though I am aware that some things can be modded and other things can't be. So here are a couple of newbie questions.


1.) I am thinking of creating a parasitic race that repopulates through slavery or elimination of foreign species. Noticed in the race files there is a "Colonypopulationpolicyexterminategrowthrate" entry. Tried this out in game editor but didn't seem to have any effect...is there a good method to mod a race to get a large population growth rate boost if a foreign race is enslaved or exterminated?

2.) Unique Units. Think of these as hero units that are in some other 4x games. These units would be around 50% strong than the generic versions of themselves. Is it possible to allow a civilization to build a special infantry/ship such as the Millennium Falcon but only allow it to be built once?

3.) Is there anyway to trigger certain racial events without it being time/cycle based. For example if I want to mod a warlike race to receive a free troop general if they eliminate an empire would that be possible?

Aeson
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:36 pm

RE: New to Distant World, Modding Questions

Post by Aeson »

This would have been better placed in the Design and Modding subforum (tt.asp?forumid=795).
2.) Unique Units. Think of these as hero units that are in some other 4x games. These units would be around 50% strong than the generic versions of themselves. Is it possible to allow a civilization to build a special infantry/ship such as the Millennium Falcon but only allow it to be built once?
Not directly for ships, as far as I know. You could try creating a special resource that doesn't spawn anywhere and see if you can make your custom species start with just enough of it (or them) on the homeworld to create a few special ships and have that resource be required for construction of your hero ship components, but you run the risk of having the player add too many of the special components and thus run through the stockpile of special resources without being able to complete the vessel. One other possibility that comes to mind for a unique ship would be if you can find the design for the starting ship (or the starting derelict) in the home system on pre-warp starts, and modify that to include the hero components.

As far as the troops go, if you're not aware, you can make troop strength vary depending on the available resources. There are a number of species whose troops will be better if recruited at a location where a specific resource is available; examples include the Naxxilians, who go from a base strength of 129 to a strength of 139 if Jakanta Ivory is available on the recruiting world, and Humans, who go from a base strength of 121 to a strength of 126 if Emeros Crystal is available on the recruiting world. So that's one way you could have an initial batch of particularly strong ground troops. I don't know that troop recruitment consumes boosting resources, though, and experience will effectively wipe out the differences between your special hero troops and your regular troops given enough time (in the very long run, all troop units have the same maximum strength, but even if your hero troops maintain an edge, they'll fall far short of that 50% superiority you're looking for long before that point). One further issue is that if you develop the tech for Cloning Facilities, you can create troops with the same statistics as your best troop in the category anywhere that builds a Cloning Facility, which means that if your hero troops remain the best you have, you'll eventually create armies out of their equally good clones.
Marble7
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Feb 27, 2015 2:38 am

RE: New to Distant World, Modding Questions

Post by Marble7 »

Yep meant to post this in the modding section but accidentally did it in the general. The resource idea seems pretty good, will have to try it.
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