ORIGINAL: tofudog
Once again the Tyranids.
Those biases and modifiers are all well and good, so I checked what difference a familybias of -50 would make to an already conquered world (in addition to the -50 from race (both 'nids vs Inties and the other way round) that was in place already.
Nothing.
The tyranids have an inherent happyness of +40%, combined with the various adds from living on a well-developed planet, rec-facility on the spaceport... this means that the measly -7 from being unhappy as part of my empire they get, even after all possible biases are set to maximum disagreement, just does not move anything.
On one planet (with pure tyranid pop) there is a notification about being locked into exterminate while xenophobic riots rage. This does not seem to do anything though, which is just as well, since other planets with mixed pops (tyranid/eldar/lacrymole on one) don't get that note.
After seeing this I think that those biases (the mod has both a biases.txt and a racebiases.txt - I believe only one actually gets read, so the other is redundant - they are identical anyway) mostly are for diplomacy while being separate states (which more or less works - having a positive relationship with incompatible xenos is really hard).
The vanilla behaviour for civilian populations (being a little unhappy here and there, but mostly docilely living their lives) is what's getting in the way here.
Can you imagine a w40korc mom shopping for groceries in a shop run by an eldar, while the kids are waiting their turn in the practice of a tyranid dentist?
Thought so.
I would be happy to see the behaviour of populations changed to get more radical - after all, with those lowered maintenance costs you can afford lots of strong garrisons to deal with frequent riots.
Maybe crank down happiness generally?
Maybe RogerBacon (who was messing with the exe for his own mod) has some pointers on what to look for?
As of right now I still think that the 'nids would be best as "silver mist on steroids".
I like your choice of pictures by the way (say hi to Isabella for me).
The existing mod does have a number of things that need fixing and I will go through some of the issues with the Tyranids. Refer to the picture below.
The first thing I saw is that their native planet is set as an ocean world..... I believe this needs to be changed as they do not look like a water based species.
The race family is to be changed to Insectoid-Xeno to separate them from other insectoid races.
With their characteristics I think changes need to happen where it states that Tyranids are very cautious and extremely unreliable..... I do not believe this fits the description of the Tyranids.
More changes this time to bonuses.
They have bonuses for being industrious miners giving them faster mining +10%..... when you look at the Tyranid as an insectoid form no way are they suited to be miners. As they devour life in the galaxy they would surely take the resources from other worlds instead of doing the mining themselves.
The second line in Bonuses describe Tyranids as being Natural Optimists giving them a happiness bonus of +40%. Tyranids as Xenos do not appear to be an optimistic race that are even slightly happy.
Are Tyranids master engineers? Perhaps they are.
A number of other areas need to be looked at but this is a starting point.
What I aim to do is make the Tyranids a much darker race whose goal is to devour all life, one planet at a time. They are not happy, they are certainly not cautious and when they see you they will have no hesitation in attacking you.
I am upping their rate of reproduction to 1.5 and changing other key areas which effect how fast they grow.
The Tyranids are seen as one of the gravest threats to the entire Galaxy. They seek only to consume all organic life and cannot be reasoned with or deterred in this quest. Good luck trying to become a friend to The Great Devourer
They are about to become a bigger threat in this mod.
tofudog..... in the picture below you will see a section inserted from the tyranid.txt file in the races folder. Go to the section in the file called SatisfactionModifier and change the value of 40 to 0.
The Satisfaction Modifier shows the rate of happiness at colonies. I have not tested the effects of the change here but please make the change here to make the Tyranids a not so happy predator species.
Regarding the bias files biases.txt does not need to be changed as it does nothing.
