Moding limitations & techiques?

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mordachai
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Moding limitations & techiques?

Post by mordachai »

Trying to change the tech tree so that each of the initial colonization techs give you the basic colonization module, rather than getting a module first, then researching a planetary type (seems ridiculous to me that I can colonize [native] worlds without the [native] technology!)

So, if the tree was Continental Colonization, Marsh Colonization, etc., all in parallel, and any one of them offered the colonization module, then it would be logically consistent.

However, I see that if I do this, the game engine just "gives" me the first one listed in the research file (i.e. the first tech that contains the colonization module).

So, no matter what race one starts as, they end up with "marsh" as their pre-researched colonization tech (because it is listed in the tech file first) :(

I assume this is a well-known limitation? :(
feygan
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by feygan »

How about just making it so that all the base techs are at the same point. So for example, you have a long column with marsh, ice, ocean etc all listed one under the other. They only require you to have the very first colonising tech. Then just have a second tech after each one that offers the increased rate of population growth, with a final third tier that offers up the advanced pod component. You would probably need to tweak the tech point requirements for them so they all on average were more expensive than other techs of their tier.

I am guessing this is your goal anyway, and the only thing I can think of is that you may have not checked each planet type tech for their prerequisite tech.
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Osito
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by Osito »

ORIGINAL: mordachai

Trying to change the tech tree so that each of the initial colonization techs give you the basic colonization module, rather than getting a module first, then researching a planetary type (seems ridiculous to me that I can colonize [native] worlds without the [native] technology!)

So, if the tree was Continental Colonization, Marsh Colonization, etc., all in parallel, and any one of them offered the colonization module, then it would be logically consistent.

However, I see that if I do this, the game engine just "gives" me the first one listed in the research file (i.e. the first tech that contains the colonization module).

So, no matter what race one starts as, they end up with "marsh" as their pre-researched colonization tech (because it is listed in the tech file first) :(

I assume this is a well-known limitation? :(

I wasn't personally aware of this, but note that there is a logic behind the way the colonisation techs are structured. I understand the logic to be this:

1. All empires can automatically colonise the planet type native to their starting race, provided they have a colonisation module to transport the colonists.
2. Thus, empires do not need to research colonisation of their own planet type in order to colonise native planets; all they need is a means of transporting colonists.
3. If an empire includes other races, which have a different native planet type to the empire's starting race, those other races cannot colonise the empire's native planet type (although they can colonise their own native planet type).
4. Thus, an empire needs to research colonisation of its starting races's native planet type because the empire may consist of more than one race. The reason for researching colonisation of the native planet type of your starting race is so that you can colonise that native planet type with colonisation modules built by any non-native races in your empire.

So there is a sensible reason for the vanilla structure.

[As an aside, this partly explains the tech tree structure in Francoy's Colonisation Mod, the principles of which were adopted in my own 'Research Unleashed': if you don't have any non-native races, there is no need to research your own native planet colonisation tech. In this regard, note that the advanced version of the colonisation tech is not needed by your native race, either, because it does not improve the population growth race of your empire's native race on its native planets. The advanced tech only gives extra population growth when colonising a race's non-native planet type.]

Now it may be that you already knew this, in which case please ignore my post.

It may also be that regardless of the above, you still prefer to have the native colonisation come with the colonisation module tech, in which case please ignore my post.

I may also have misunderstood your point; another good reason to ignore my post.

Incidentally, would a workaround be to ensure that each of the initial techs has an "Allowed Races" line, so that, at the initial tech level, each empire is only allowed to research the tech which corresponds to its native planet type? That would, of course, complicate the subsequent part of the tree, but I guess it would be doable, in principle.

Osito
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mordachai
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by mordachai »

Thanks for the response, Osito. I was aware of most of that, and suspected parts, but it's a huge help to hear it made plain.

Yeah, I think I'll live with Francoy's/your reinterpretation of that part of the tech tree. I played around with it for a few ours last evening, and found complications with various other patterns; leaving the one you had as being the best compromise IMO.

Restricting the initial colonization tech is an interesting idea, certainly... but I think it complicates more than creates a more logically coherent solution (which was really the only point, for me, to mess with it) :)
mordachai
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by mordachai »

NEW QUESTION(s):
It appears that one can make dependencies on techs from one of the other disciplines (e.g. Advanced Hangar Bays could require Large-Scale Construction - I've tested that it works).

However - it draws a line to where that tech is on the other page - so it just sort of draws pointing to nothing in particular, or the wrong thing (though the popup tip is correct).

Is this a known limitation? Are there any work-arounds? Some way to hide the dependency line while keeping the dependency?

Should I report this as a bug? Why are no techs dependent across disciplines?
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Osito
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by Osito »

I tried that myself when I was doing my own mod, but I gave up on it because it didn't work. I don't think it's supposed to work that you can have tech dependencies from different disciplines. Incidentally, I seem to recall that when the game is looking for the dependent tech it looks for one in the same discipline as the child tech. That's not very clear, so here's an example:

Say you make 'Advanced Hangar Bays' in the weapons discipline dependent on 'Hangar Bays' from the weapons disciple and 'Large Scale Construction' from the construction disciple.

For the sake of example, say that 'Large Scale Construction' is located at Row 30, Column 4 in the construction discipline.

When the game is making the check for parent techs, in order to find Large Scale Construction is will look for a tech at Row 30, Column 4 in the weapons discipline, not in the construction disciple.

So it was literally impossible to get a tech to properly depend on a tech in another disciple.

I could be wrong, as it's a while back since I tested it, but that's the way I remember it working.

Osito
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mordachai
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by mordachai »

The pop-up info when I mouse over Advanced Hangar is "requires Hangar Bay and Large-scale construction". It was just the line it drew that goes to row 30, col 4 (e.g.). It looks inane, but I'm hopeful that because the techs are uniquely numbered, and the tooltip says the right thing, that it actually works (it just draws the misleading line).

I may drop that dependency. But man! That would have helped me a ton as a total noob: oh, I need a big enough construction tech...(there is a comment in the tip saying "when construction size allows..." - but a direct dependency = better IMO).
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Osito
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by Osito »

ORIGINAL: mordachai

The pop-up info when I mouse over Advanced Hangar is "requires Hangar Bay and Large-scale construction". It was just the line it drew that goes to row 30, col 4 (e.g.). It looks inane, but I'm hopeful that because the techs are uniquely numbered, and the tooltip says the right thing, that it actually works (it just draws the misleading line).

I think you might find, if you test it in game, that it will actually depend from a weapons tech at the same place in the page. However, as stated above, I may have misremembered.

Osito
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mordachai
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by mordachai »

ORIGINAL: feygan
How about just making it so that all the base techs are at the same point. So for example, you have a long column with marsh, ice, ocean etc all listed one under the other. They only require you to have the very first colonising tech. Then just have a second tech after each one that offers the increased rate of population growth...
This is basically what I tried to do:

Colonize Continental------>Advanced Colonize Continental
Colonize Marsh------------>Advanced Colonize Marsh
Colonize Ocean------------>Advanced Colonize Ocean
Colonize Desert----------->Advanced Colonize Desert
Colonize Ice-------------->Advanced Colonize Ice
Colonize Volcano---------->Advanced Colonize Volcano

Where the first column entries all give you the basic colonization component, the second column the improved colonization, and etc.

It's a nice pattern - visually and logically. It means that to get a colonization module, you have to know how to colonize some type of worlds (instead of the magical "we can colonize our own without any understanding, and we still need to research our own later...) (although Osito points out how it's not totally inane, just a bit goofy IMO).

However, DW:U - when starting at tech level 1 or higher (normal game) - gives you as researched whichever of the above Colonize X that *appears first in the research file*. So, even though you're starting a game as a race whose native world-type is "Ocean", you get "Volcanic" if "Volcanic" happens to be the first-one mentioned in the research.txt file. Every single player in that game gets that one. So... :(
mordachai
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RE: Moding colonization limitations?

Post by mordachai »

QUESTION: Is it possible to setup a race to use a specific base picture for its DFB? It seems to use medium spaceport, no? Anyway to change that?
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